Quote Originally Posted by Slib View Post
Hey everyone,

I would like to share some thoughts on areas black mage could use some improvements...

1) Base nuke damage seems very low, making many fights require a Skillchain to be set up in order to push out decent damage.

2) Ancient Magic 2 needs to be looked at. They are very far behind in the games current state.

3) Is it possible to add more spells yet to the BLM list? Spells like Virus, Curse, or even Aga 4 and Aga 5 spells.

4) Can we remove the AoE damage reduction if there is more than one enemy hit? Right now Black Mage seems to be the only one affected by this. Weapon skills are unaffected, blue magic is unaffected, bst pets are unaffected and so are smn avatars. Why Black Mage?

5) Can the WS, Vidohunir, be adjusted to have extra damage based on tp? Similar to Leaden Salute and True Flight?

6) My last one! Might be too overpowered, but can we have a way to reduce Mana Wall cooldown?

Anyone else have any suggestions?
1. This would be tricky because any increase to the base would get multiplied by bursting. I personally believe that the real solution would be to reduce target MDB to reasonable levels on higher clvl fights (particularly those that have selectable difficulty levels,) and reduce the elemental resistance alongside to reasonable non-guaranteed-resist levels.

2. AM2 would need to be juiced up to T5 damage baseline at least in order to be worth using given MP cost.. Seems like a big fat "nope", especially with the devs' pathological resistance to touching merits.

3. No room for new spells sadly enough.

4. Agree that this particular mechanic feels discriminatory since it only hits BLM hard (and GEO to a lesser extent for -ra's, but who uses -ra's? Heck, I feel like the only GEO who bothers w/ an actual MB set... <_<) BST and BLU aren't affected because they use monster abilities, not "Elemental Magic", same goes for SMN too most likely.. but I don't think that monsters are affected by the same target-number based reduction for AOE Elemental Magic, and we have long since passed the point where BLM AOE could possibly be dominant if the reduction were removed. I mean, seriously, my Subduction hits for ~8k unbuffed with vorseals active. There's no reason to keep this in place other than the difficulty level of removing it. :/

5. Totally changing the nature of the WS mechanics feels extreme. Maybe simply uncapping the WSC term would be enough to make it worth wanting to use? We really aren't logical choices for large increases in WS damage.

6. We already have 50% uptime on near-immunity to damage and full DOT immunity. That seems good enough to me. Far more than a cooldown reduction, I desperately want a means to reduce the enmity lost when hit with Mana Wall active.. and more available Enmity+ gear for BLM. Losing 180 CE per received hit is brutal given how little enmity we generate thanks to all our Enmity- traits/gifts/etc. If permitted to dream, please make it undispellable. Feels pretty lousy for a 10min CD JA to get wiped off long before it should otherwise. Yes, I love Mana Wall tanking, but mostly just hoping to be able to generate/keep enough enmity from BLM spells to hold a boss while Raises are going out after a wipe. lol