Are you satisfied with Black Mage as it is currently?

I've been a BLM since I started in FFXI, but I find myself playing the job less and less. It seems rare to see BLM being used outside of Abyseea and some older content. To be fair though I have done Incursion as a BLM and my delve group has utilized a BLM on some occasions. BLM can be good for soloing reives and is pretty decent in WKRs.

I think the main issue that I'm concerned with is the lack of attention that BLM has gotten in the past updates. Our biggest problem seems to be Magic Accuracy against high-tier mobs. Stacking MACC instead of Magic Damage/Magic Attack seems to be a self-defeating cycle. The only way that BLM is viable in Incursion is to have a GEO alongside simultaneously boosting the BLM MACC/MAB and weakening the mob's Magic Defense.

Some thoughts I had:
Boost BLM elemental magic accuracy (or add Elemental Magic skill to some weapons)
Increase the effectiveness of higher-tier spells (maybe add MACC vs high-MDEF mobs)
Make non-elemental magic damage more effective (comet/meteor make them less of a novelty)
Allow BLM some method of reducing the enemy's magic defense (similar to frazzle)
Boost the potency of elemental enfeebles (burn, shock, etc)
Reduce the recast of Enmity Douse (5 minutes would be nice, or have a way to significantly decrease the recast via merit/job points)

BLM has some decent gear, but there hasn't been many stand-out pieces recently.
It would be nice to see equipment that features Elemental Magic Skill, MD, MAB, INT or a combination of all.

I do hope this doesn't come across as whining about the "good ol' days" I'd just like to see BLM as the glass cannon it was meant to be.

Anyone else have thoughts?

No, BLM needs some help. I think its on bottom of the list of jobs people say need help only because its decent in skirmish. Nobody uses BLM for practically anything anymore. It would be cool if they had certain BCNMs require magic dmg but SCH competes heavily against BLM for that anyway and they can heal/support ontop of strong nukes. AM2 is really nice for hate management but theres nothing that really requires magical dmg that can't be done in other forms like skillchains.

Yeah BLM was the original job I joined this game to play.

It's sad that its become so useless and underpowered compared to what SAMs or any other heavy DD can pump out in dmg. I'd love to see BLM burn pts come back in let's say things like Incursion, -ga nuking Liij-Vok for 80k Blizzaja would make me fall in love with this game all over again!

I think SE have been trying a little more than usual to make magic damage viable, with mobs that take increased magic damage or require magic damage in certain phases, but players seem to just use formless strikes or /RUN. I think there needs to be an effort made to make magic damage viable across the board, instead of forcing its use to exploit weird mob gimmicks - people will always find ways to avoid taking a BLM, and that's sad.

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Originally Posted by Jerbob

I think there needs to be an effort made to make magic damage viable across the board, instead of forcing its use to exploit weird mob gimmicks - people will always find ways to avoid taking a BLM, and that's sad.

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The problem with this approach is other jobs can provide nearly as good magic damage while bringing along much more utility, specifically Geo, Sch, and Rdm. Blm has a niche (which is stepped on by Sch) for mass mob control through Sleepga, Sleepga II, and Breakga. They can fill a DD position in a Sam solo/party by focusing on SCs and MBs as well, though so can any other caster really. Enmity Douse and Subtle Casting allows them to nuke for more than other casters before taking hate, though Sch can do something similar with it's SP2 as well. The only other unique and useful spells they bring to the table are Comet, one of 2 Dark based nukes, the other being Noctohelix, and Meteor, the only source of spell based non-elemental magic damage. They still bring other useful aspects, Stun, being fairly MP efficient with use of Aspir and Aspir II, and possibly becoming the strongest tank in existence (for 5 minutes) when JPs hit the 30 cap with Mana Wall capped.

Blm has a lot going for it overall, its just a lot of things that other jobs do better, or do well enough while offering more. If enmity was to ever be truly fixed, perhaps they could just shape them up well enough through buffs to -jas, their own MAB/MAcc, and more unique high damage spells to make them able to compete for a DD position with melees, something that other casters can't easily do due to casting mechanics.

Hmm. I do see what you mean there. It is difficult to carve a niche without any effective specialist tools. Sadly, as you say, SE has allowed SCH to trample all over the place since its introduction so I can't see an easy way to help BLM without them all crying foul.

I do think that approaching the problem by focusing on magic damage in general first is the right way to go. Once magic damage isn't at so much of a disadvantage in general, then BLM will probably be in a better position for us (and SE) to see what it needs to differentiate it from the other elemental magic jobs.

If magic is more practical to use then having multiple nukers at once might be on the table again. With -ja cumulative effect bonus, Meteor and the like available, plus other suitable additions, BLMs could find their niche in groups where more than one of them is participating. In that scenario, BLM would be good as a one-in-a-group nuker but unparalleled in a team with other BLMs. That would be fun! Just an idea.

the problem is they need to get our magic damage to scale to 119 they way they have melee or even higher. throughout most of FFXI's history blm was outdoing even most SC for damage. But melees wanted to zerg and thought they should be the damage kings, so SE has been beefing melee damage over and over and over again, but largely doing nothing for nukes. Now, until Aby Blm could keep pace by stacking elemental gear that mirrored the spell and after aby you could use TOTM elemental staves to mostly make up the difference. But now with iLevel swapping 7 different gearsets really isn't viable as there is more benefit from the iLevel than there is the elemental affinity. Now, I don't want them to get us back to needing 7 different gear sets, that was asinine to begin with and with most of us playing more than 1 job frankly there isn't the swap space for all that trash. So we NEED nukes to scale up. with straight iLevel 119 gear (decently augmented if needed) we should likely be doing over 6k on a tier 5 nuke to keep pace with Sams-and historically we should be doing MORE than the Sam, the guys stuck with Tier 4 nukes should be about even with a comparably quality geared Sam. And Frankly, the difference between us and Sch tossing a tier 5 nuke should be large enough that we have our own niche to put us back in parties.

Unfortunately I doubt it can happen, SE has a marked bias over the last four years of only listening to non-pet non-tank melees when setting priorities. and it's strange because the gist I'm getting from comments is they want to encourage more balanced parties instead of zerg only but it just keeps not happening.

I agree Blm could use some buffing, but Blm is actually kinda nice in incursion, ability to use Sleepga2+Breakga keeps things like gram droogs adds locked away quite well and help with stuns, though to be fair Sch can do this trick as well, though they usually save strategems for stun timer rather than control, and are better stunners.

I look at it like this;
I can rapidly cast stone for 1100+ dmg
in the same time that I can cast 4-5 stones a SAM can let loose at least 1 if not 2 Tachi: Fudos for about 9k ea.
BLM and other magic damage dealers need to be able to compete with melee fighters

I use Stone as an example, as the t5 spells are not worth the MP for the dmg they do.

Hmm... no, not really. Tier 5 spells are BLM's highest DPS option at the moment. They do require some support to spam, but it's still our best option.


To crosspost from FFXIAH:

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Strengths of BLM:
1) No engage delay for our damage
2) Substantially better unbuffed DPS than a melee
3) Damage can be essentially hate free
4) One of the best sources of AoE damage in the game
5) Manawall (rez cap to 30 JPs prz)

Weaknesses of BLM (most have already been hit):
1) Magic Accuracy is an issue at higher levels. We need magic sushi, or at least elemental magic sushi.

2) Magic damage buffs do kind of suck at the moment. The best we have is Malaise (~2x damage), and it still doesn't really compare to melee Haste (5x damage).

3) We require too many buffs in group content. In group content where we can't afford to take hate, we have to lean on AM. AM has a longish recast time, which means we need high levels of Haste to really sustain our nuking if the monster has any specific elements that it resists. So we not only need magic damage buffs and sources of Refresh, but we also need Haste similar to a melee in order to be damage competitive. If we're doing high-end content, we also need magic accuracy buffs to stay competitive at the moment.

4) The normal macro system doesn't let us take advantage of the 80% fast cast cap or occasionally quickens in any reasonable way, and that's a problem that needs to be fixed. BLM will never be a respectable DD without 80% fast cast (and hopefully occasionally quickens procs).

5) That extra half a second that you have to wait after you move before you can cast again without getting interrupted is actually incredibly limiting for magic jobs in roaming situations. If they eliminated it, BLM would be even more potent in situations like Outer Ra'Kaznar skirmish.

6) I worry about our reliance on Spaekona's Coat +1. Gear becomes obsolete eventually.



In terms of tales of success, I have DDed comparable to SAM in the past but it took a considerable amount of support and was only against iLevel 127 content. I'm certain that it could still get better, but the amount of support that it requires is inefficient as hell. I'd say these adjustments should take place in two stages. The first stage would be introducing a potent Elemental Macc food and giving us some kind of Spaekona's Coat-like job trait that levels up (say 1% at 30, 2% at 60, and 3% at 90). The second stage would be introducing a way for macro users to actually benefit from all that fast cast and occasionally quickens and then balancing magic damage accordingly. They could also fix problem #5 in the second stage if they wanted.

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One of my gripes is they went thru the effort to give us a low enmity option not to dissimilar to rng relic ws.... but kept it behind a horribly long cast/recast spells with even more mp/dmg efficiency. So in the end AM/AM2 wouldn't have pulled hate anyways because of how slow of dmg you'd do. Need to redo it's cost, cast time and recast time like you guys did all the other single target nukes

I'm not worried about the "hate free" for damage-and if they fix our damage we wouldn't be hate free, we'd be back to the old days of blm (which I liked btw) of moderate, moderate, moderate, MASSIVE KILL-SHOT damage for casting. I never found that burdensome. the burdensome part was after, that we had MP issues because of it meaning we had to rest while the next mob was coming in to regain MP. oh, and being careful that "massive kill-shot" actually was the kill shot because it was a huge volatile enemy grab and if it didn't work... well finding out exactly how potent defense actually is has always been a painful lesson for nukers of any stripe. It should be for ANY DD source but most just prefer to claim the healer sucks instead. We pass that off as "teamwork" now.

Well I meant they had this great idea to give us low hate and them left it locked behind something pretty much unusable.

As far as massive killshot and rest between... given todays mob hp and the pacing of game it would need to be very massive indeed... like bigger than can be displayed lol

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Originally Posted by dasva

Well I meant they had this great idea to give us low hate and them left it locked behind something pretty much unusable.

As far as massive killshot and rest between... given todays mob hp and the pacing of game it would need to be very massive indeed... like bigger than can be displayed lol

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I was speaking more in terms of regular partying, I guess it would be a capacity point burn today instead of XP/merits, which is against normal mobs. against bosses the issue is-and maybe this is subjective-but it seems my nuke for 3k damage draws more hate than the Sam's WS for 8k damage. and that simply shouldn't be the case. we need to be able to be spamming tier 4 nukes on bosses and then unleashing something major with AM2 that far exceeds what tier5 nukes/tier3 AoE nukes can do on boss mobs for us to be viable again. and yes, our upper level damage needs a serious buff by SE for that to happen. I don't have an issue with pulling the mob's attention when I just topped the party's top DD by 25% in a single cast, I DO have an issue with pulling hate when I just did my highest spell and only did 60% of the sam's last WS, 2 seconds before my cast.

It's completely subjective. You aren't drawing more hate the issue is everyone dealing any real amount of dmg caps enmity fairly quickly. They've made some adjustments but I believe a on say a delve boss iirc from the little testing I've seen you should be able to capped with about 30k total dmg and the only thing that effects how much enmity you get from dmg is mob lvl and of course normal things like +/- emnity gear. Which is why xp mobs you don't have much trouble because they die before you deal that much.... but since those bosses have ~1 million hp you end up being capped for the majority of the fight. Which leads to the situations of basically whoever took the last action has hate unless you just recently lost a bunch from dmg which takes all of about 2 seconds to recap. Once you cap it doesn't really matter how much dmg you do or how fast because staying capped is completely trivial and could be done with a melee sch.