Elemental Magic Adjustments Continued

[RAIST]

The duration cut is the balance for having them as a subjob.

Even so, it's still what...7-9 ticks as a level 49 cast?. Base damage around 25, modified by dINT and MAB, as well as day/weather bonuses. That's still a nice spot of potential damage from a 26 mp spell that you learned around level 28 or so.

And that's the point I was trying to make. A spell learned below level 40 that when used at 99 can out damage and be vastly more efficient than one that has to be meritted at 75 or otherwise learned around level 70 or higher--can even rival/exceed the output/efficiency of a spell learned at level 90+ for that matter.

[Daemon]

Seriously I do hope the devs reanalyze the way us mages have it in game. Its pretty ridiculous that we are heavily needed on most jobs as support to keep the non magic casting jobs alive and a good amount of our mp go toward that and the very few Nuking jobs that we do have are being given limitations and unfair adjustments. On the nuking side of things, Making us use even more mp to cast spells that are not even new..... Whats going on?

How old are Tier IV spells?

We are given new gears through adoulin/delve to improve our MAB+INT Etc, then adjustments from the devs are being made to improve our dmg makes me think that the dmg with the new gears was off and thats why these stats are being changed

where as....

DD gets new gears and their dmg are even more massive than before yet I dont see any adjustments being made so they can "Have more power but more downtime"

Blackmage is not a cheap class to play. Some of us, If not all, actually spend Millions of gil on 1 spell .... "Cough..... Meteor.... Cough......"

And by the way, this is not about Abyssea, where you have cruor buffs, atmas, and other options to give you overpowered stats and abilities...temp items to give you MP...

This is about playing outside zones where you depend on your real stats. Where you actually have to carry food, medicine, elixers, TP wings, any other viable resources to recover your mp.

SE really... You give us a cookie but take away our milk.

[Daemon]

Also please take in consideration that BLM and Nuking jobs do in fact have competition with DD jobs.

THIS IS AT END GAME POINT OF VIEW

The reason Nukers were needed back in the day before Abyssea was for Magic Burst, or because they could deal a massive amount of damage instantly to a monster enough to make a difference and wanted for in parties compared to DD jobs that didnt have the gear/ abilities like self skillchain, as we have today (Note: DDs are always favored by mages to be out protection, our shield). To be included and not forgotten, SE gave Blackmage the ability to proc in Abyssea/VW.

And because back then DD jobs did not have the best gears/ REM/ Abilites as we have now, People did in fact have patience to wait on BLM to recover MP because everyone knew that the job could deal massive amounts of dmg VS DD plus it was a slower environment. Yet today we are living in a way faster environment than before, Events dont have time to wait on BLM to recover MP.

Times have changed and today this is the hardcore truth....

Why on earth would any party want to hire a Nuker when you can get a DD who can deal the same damage (if not more thanks to delve) VS 1 spell in 1 weapon skill especially jobs that can self skillchain, spam WS, no downtime, outdamage nukers over time, and has a much higher ability to survive being that DD job have higher HP, Higher Defense, better capability to own higher Defense gear/ -pdt gear?

TP is the DDs version of MP Pool, except they have several gears and support buffs, subjobs (SAM) to make TP regain faster with no limitations. They do not have to rest to raise it, does not need to spend it on every functional aspect of the job that limits them or Forces them to make wise making decisions to stay fluent, only needing it to dedicate toward Weapon skills unless you are playing Dancer. Regardless of any level WS, TP cost to use any and all Weaponskills can still be used at 100% TP where as BLM spells vary in MP cost on every level.

Which is better? Asking for a job who has EMP/Merit or a mage who has magian trial? Sadly asking for a mage if they own REM/Merit doesnt make any difference why? Merit weapon skill Realmreazer and Shattersoul? Wait thats DD WS, Mages are not DD. Hvelgamir For BLM? Wait that only recover MP and aftermath for occ dmg? So that does nothing to contribute in dmg factor. Sure BLM can gain MP with Hvelgamir, but then TP is the issue... Do you see my points here?

Mage REM doesnt give people enough reason, motivation, drive to go out and make these because either magian trial staffs are easier and give a reasonable cause to make due without or because some of the stats are just not good enough to want to put the effort in obtaining something we can already make due without, also why waste time on this if there is no wow factor? Some of these trials are beyond ridiculous... Mythic?

Shattersoul Magic Defense reduction / Omniscience Magic attack reduction? Vidohunir Lower Magic Defence? Same as Shattersoul ..Failed and became unpopular that GEOMANCER was given these as spells. (Reason? Lack of Merit points to waste on getting Shattersoul? Because you actually have to DD to use it? Omniscience? Because you actually need to DD and gain TP to use it which doesnt even last long?

Whitemages have to heal all party members anyways so there can be no arguement that nukers can be self sufficient from having cure. Especially when DD have the same abilty to sub a support job for cure as BLM can.

At end game, Nukers should be able to recover MP much faster than wasting several slots on refresh gear, Cast more than 5 spells, and not have to sit every 3 minutes to recover MP.

As I pointed out before its just sad being a level 99 mage and depleting your entire mp pool on 1 monster in Adoulin.

Nukers have less Defense, Less HP, Less ability to survive. And All high level Spells consume too much MP, takes too long to cast and require alot of waiting. Manawall? At the sacrifice of our entire MP pool to tank dmg for how long?

This is the biggest turn off toward nukers, If it has no purpose in areas where its not forcibly needed, then people do compare facts such as:

(And yes this is DD VS Nuker analysis)

1. How much damage over time can the job contribute to the alliance?
2. How well can the job survive?
3. Does this job serve a purpose to what we are accomplishing vs other jobs?
4. Does the job require us to wait on them especially in zones where we are limited in time? (Time is a very important factor)
5. How fast is the job compared to others? Mages have spellcasting time/recast/MP pool VS DD who wear TP/Haste gear.

This is just a basic list of things but Feel free to add to what i say or debate on what I have written. But today most parties are set to favor DD over Nukers because of the things ive listed above.

Look at the history of all FINAL FANTASY games before the MMORPG era? Why did we love Blackmage? Because it was more powerful than all other jobs with awesome spells without such hardcore limitations and use.

Reasonable solution?
1. Higher level spells should be able to deal massive amounts of damage without consuming a good chunk of our MP pool.
2.We should be able to be more powerful than DD instantly way above DD's Weaponskill since strategy is the key to Nuking due to Enmity. And because DD have the ability to Damage better over time. (Example: Meteor Cost 418 MP and barely does what 3K damage if you solo cast?)
3. MP,Emnity,Recast,Cast Time already limits us on time factor which is why strategy is important for the safety of the party and is more than enough reason to give us more power,lower the amount of enmity higher level spells give toward enemies so we can cast more than 1 spells without getting face buried into the ground, less limitation, better MP or the ability to cast more than 5 Spells before depleting our entire MP Pool.

Why?

Because at level 99 we are through with the EXP leveling phase and deserve to enjoy the spells we have paid for especially if we invested millions and millions of gil for just 1 spell, paid our dues, maxed our skills and worked hard to earn the high end gears that improve our damage. Making adjustments to lower level tiers for less MP and higher damage is not making proper adjustments or fixes for level 99. These small adjustments may help us cast more low level spells on lower level content to help us do more, solo better and get things done quicker but this really doesnt contribute much to us playing higher level content where we need to kill fast due to survival issues.

Even with the power of atmas, Cruor buffs, in Abyssea BLM STILL depletes MP too fast. Yet the refresh rate from MM Atma gives us a reasonable amount of time to recover our MP pool that allow us more freedom and comfort to do more things. Why can't we have this freedom beyond Abyssea? If it was really THAT overpowered it wouldn't have existed to begin with. Yet Adoulin/Delve content is either similar level or higher than Abbysea. Level 99 should not have such hardcore limitations as if we were back at the level 75 era.

Sadly this update will only give more people reason to favor Scholar.

[Chimerawizard]

stuff

I agree 100%.

It's no small issue. Community reps, please make this known to the dev team.
I really think the formula determining magic DMG is wrong.

This is a fantasy game; I have read many a fantasy book. What happens if a novice magician were to try to attack his master with a spell?
The master dispels the incomming spell like an annoying gnat.
What happens when a master does the prep work and goes all out?
A dragon is brought to its knees.

How would that convert into a dmg equation? It's gotta have some stat between the caster and the target play a huge impact on DMG. dSTAT < 0 = pesky gnat. dSTAT = lots = dragon pwnage.

Intelligence seems like a good thing to compare for this result.
things like
x*dINT/[x+dINT] (large x value); x^dINT (low x value); dINT^x (low x value)
All have potential to make the above dSTAT functions true.

This will give people reason to think about mage DMG.

As far as I know, BLM has been useless since the release of abyssea for everything other than proc/stun ****.

[Daemon]

After watching videos of BLM on FF14.... I saw a guy with 3,411 MP, HP 2,000.... Refresh is so fast compared to us in FF11, and he is playing solo.... What we have been asking the devs to fix for years seems like they got it right in FF14.

The more we get ignored, the more reason its getting to switch over to the new game than stay here.

[Zhronne]

The more we get ignored, the more reason its getting to switch over to the new game than stay here.

Looks like you only want to see the glass half full for FFXIV.
Which is good I suppose, there undoubtely is that half full glass of water that you talk about and I agree, it's there and I like it.

There also is the half empty part though, which you seem to have forgot.
No spell tiers, no elemental resistances/wheel, no full elements for BLM (they're split between CNJ and THM), no debuffs (Arcanist will change that, luckily), blah blah blah.

[Teiei]

No spell tiers, no elemental resistances/wheel, no full elements for BLM (they're split between CNJ and THM), no debuffs (Arcanist will change that, luckily), blah blah blah.

Because BLMs in FFXI have always made use of their full list of elements... right?
Don't kid yourself, BLMs have only ever focused on using thunder/blizzard (unless the enemy was heavily resistant) because there has never been a reason to use anything else. There are almost no enemies in the game that actually take extra damage to a particular element.

Far as I can see the only major change to occur with this adjustment, in terms of spell selection, is that BLMs will spam stone/water instead of thunder/blizzard. So instead of actually balancing the elements they're only shifting the favored elements that everyone will flock towards. The balance of efficiency on spell elements will be extremely skewed in favor of earth and water.

I'd like it if you could spread the efficiency around a bit here; otherwise the result will be more of the same with a different element hording all the attention. Please consider the situation and give us some reason to spread our spell usage around to all the elements.

[Daemon]

Because BLMs in FFXI have always made use of their full list of elements... right?
Don't kid yourself, BLMs have only ever focused on using thunder/blizzard (unless the enemy was heavily resistant) because there has never been a reason to use anything else. There are almost no enemies in the game that actually take extra damage to a particular element.

Far as I can see the only major change to occur with this adjustment, in terms of spell selection, is that BLMs will spam stone/water instead of thunder/blizzard. So instead of actually balancing the elements they're only shifting the favored elements that everyone will flock towards. The balance of efficiency on spell elements will be extremely skewed in favor of earth and water.

I'd like it if you could spread the efficiency around a bit here; otherwise the result will be more of the same with a different element hording all the attention. Please consider the situation and give us some reason to spread our spell usage around to all the elements.

I'm already removing all my merits off Ice and Thunder and putting them into Stone and water. Seems like efficiency overrules and Ice and Thunder is just going to cost too much MP. Although I must give Motenten credit for a wonderful job at the new spreadsheet.

[Chimerawizard]

I have almost finished converting my potency merits over. Next is AM2.

It has given me use for the 30 merits I was just sitting on.

[Motenten]

Yes I know cycling through different tier IV and III spells can help you conserve mp, but my post was not about that. I just took only Ice and Thunder IV as an example that if you casted each of those spells 5 times at level 99 with the new MP cost adjustment, how much MP we are using?

Which my concern is Tier IV spells are not the highest Tier spells in game yet the cost of these spells are being adjusted to use more MP than now in the future update..

I used Tier IV because you used Tier IV. For MP efficiency, Tier V is very close to Tier IV. With a high-end gear set, damage per MP looks like:

Stone IV: 26.2
Stone V: 26.5

Thunder IV: 14.8
Thunder V: 14.0

Your issue of how much damage is done with a given MP pool will look pretty much the same whether you use T4 or T5 nukes. The real efficiency difference, though, is choosing Thunder/Ice vs Stone/Water, which was part of the entire point of these changes to magic damage -- making it so that there's a -reason- to use any given element of nuke.

Dealing more damage to a monster with a spell in a party situation will only give you more enmity, which could put the entire party at risk right? therefore BLM and other nukers will have absolutely no choice but to use lower tier spells regardless right?

Question 1: Yes. Question 2: No. There are lots of variables which affect whether the blm will pull hate, so there is no absolute answer, there. Personally, I'd use lower tier spells for tactical reasons -- primarily MP efficiency, but also to conserve MP while building up higher tiers of Cumulative Damage effects so that I can use higher damage nukes with the higher cumulative bonus.

But when you are soloing, and you need to kill a monster fast, and Tier 4 spell is not exactly the best spell we have but one of the higher decent spells we have that we use on a daily basis gets an mp raise. Whether you deal 1k or 10k damage, it doesnt change the fact that you still have to sit the same amount of time to recover mp.

You're conflating two different arguments, there. It's difficult to respond to because there's no logical connection between the two points. The time you have to rest is dependent only on the MP spent, not the damage done, yes. However if you deal 1k or 10k damage, presumably there must also be a difference in the amount of MP spent. Therefore your conclusion has no relation to the antecedant.

You're also indicating a vast gulf in difference in damage done vs MP spent, which does not appear to be the case at all. Between tiers 4 and 5, there is almost no difference. Between Thunder and Stone, there's generally a 2:1 difference, not a 10:1 difference.

But when you are playing in Adoulin, we dont have time to be casting these lower tier spells on monsters when dealing with something that can kill you in 3-4 hits.....

Only applicable when soloing.



As far as damage output over time and MP recovery, we can look at that a bit more carefully.

For melee, you generally have 4 tiers of damage output (this is using standard Delve weapons, and in the ideal environment, not counting time between mobs): 250 DPS when unbuffed, 350 DPS when buffed and supported by a mage, 600 DPS when supported by brd+mage, and 900 DPS when supported by multiple brds (or Daur brd), cor and mage. Those are -very- rough numbers, and vary a great deal depending on target, gear, etc.

Using my spreadsheet, a blm with top-end gear could cycle through all the T5 spells (to avoid recast, so as to maximize DPS) for about 700 DPS over the course of 30 seconds (assuming no resists, since I don't have that calculated in yet). That would consume about 1200 MP, or roughly their entire MP pool.

If you continuously cast T2 nukes (ie: pick a single element and cast as often as recast allows), or T2 ga nukes (single mob target), you could do 280-300 DPS. MP efficiency for the Stone line would be 22 for ga2, 33 for T2, or 44 for ga1 (250 DPS). MP cost per cast would be 21 (ga1), 32 (T2), or 83 (ga2) for the Stone line. Reuse time would be 4 seconds for T2 and ga1, and 7 seconds for ga2.

Assuming self-supplied refresh and 6/tick in idle gear refresh, that's a recovery of 12 MP per spell for ga1 and T2, and 21 for ga2. With an MP pool of 1000, that would allow continuous casting for roughly 9 minutes (ga1), 4 minutes (T2), or 1.5 minutes (ga2). Given a 10 minute Convert timer, Stonega spam for ~250 DPS is maintainable nearly perpetually, and corresponds to what an unbuffed melee can manage.

If you can get an outside rdm and brd (GHorn lvl 95) buffing you (ie: party/alliance situation), that's 26/tick refresh. Stone III + Water III (total avg MP cost of 125, reuse cycle time for both spells together is 9.5 seconds) would be 3,442 damage for 360 DPS (melee tier 2). 1.5 seconds is used for casting them, leaving 8 seconds idle time, recovering 69 MP per cast cycle. That could be maintained for a little under 3 minutes (or 6 minutes if you burned Convert).

Note that this also ignores being able to use Mana Wall for your most powerful nuke every 10 minutes, which would raise net DPS a fair bit for scenarios where you're otherwise MP-limited.

Top-end hMP set is somewhere around +80. Base Clear Mind for blm is 30, with +3 per additional tick. Along with the 21/tick outside refreshes, it would take 60 seconds to recover ~1050 MP. That reduces effective long-term DPS by 12-25% (depending on the scenario you're working towards).

Still, at best you're looking at tier 2 DD capability for moderate-length fights (5-8 minute range), or a quick burst of ~700 DPS that you can do for 30 seconds every 100 (MP pool of 1200, which would take 70+ seconds to recover, giving an average DPS of 210).

With a slight variation, if you're well-prepared (and assuming you're the only blm, for the purposes of cumulative damage effect), you can do something like:

Stoneja (gain cumulative effect 1)
Stone III
Stone II
Stonega
Stonega II
Stone III
Stone II
Stonega
Stonega II
@ 30 seconds:
Stoneja (gain cumulative effect 2)
Stone V
Quake II
Stone IV
Stonega III

Total damage: 33,412.3
Total time: ~48 seconds
MP spent: 1200, 200 of which is assumed recovered from refresh sources
DPS: 696 (average with recovery time: 310)

This can also be continued using Convert, along with the AF3+2 pants enhancement on Cumulative Effect durations, allowing a third tier of CE bonus and another entire MP pool. An additional blm further increases both of their damage through additional cumulative damage tiers. Allowing for the outside refreshes, total damage output can be quite good.


The main problem is that you can't maintain it for very long. You need 6 DDs all putting out 450 DPS over 8 minutes to kill Tojil. Two blms could conceivably keep pace with them, but only for a minute or two. As you say, if 40%-60% of your time is spent resting, you're not very effective as a DD.


Further, Cor buffs are horribly anemic for nukers. Wizard's Roll, the equivalent of melees' Chaos Roll, maxes out at 16 MAB with a blm in party, which is maybe 8% damage. Chaos Roll maxes out at +40% attack with a drk in party, which is +32% damage if also using Berserk (and not capping attack).

An 11 cor roll should give far more than could be gained with a single piece of gear. Chaos Roll gives 31% attack, which no piece of gear can even come close to comparing to. Wizard's Roll gives 12 MAB, which is beaten by numerous pieces of gear. Same with Warlock's Roll, and probably Scholar's Roll. The Geo buffs and debuffs for magic accuracy/evasion are massive. Cor mage rolls should be adjusted to be comparable.

+50 MAB and +50% Conserve MP would still only be a 15%-20% increase in damage, with a bit more viability for long-term sustainability.

I'd also suggest a -2 seconds per tier of Clear Mind applied to the time until the first healing tick hits. Having to wait 20 seconds for the first healing tick is just obnoxious.