With Sortie reviving the job in the minds of the community everyone wants to suggest things to improve Black Mage. Which, to be fair, it does need some system level adjustments. However, much of the suggestions heavily focus on either damage for a job that already caps damage or core system related aspects.
I do not think system related adjustments are going to happen, and there are better ways to approach this. That being said, here are my suggestions.
Black Mage Adjustments:
Job Ability
- Manafont - Change duration to 3 minutes.
- Elemental Seal - Change recast to 5 minutes.
- Subtle Sorcery - Change duration to 1.5 minutes
- Manawall - No adjustment
- Enmity Douse - No adjustment
- Cascade - Change the ability completely as it is nearly worthless.
Cascade adjustment ideas off the top of my head would include:
- 5 Minute Recast, 2 Minute Duration - Improves Occult Acumen effect for the duration of the ability.
- 5 Minute Recast, 2 Minute Duration - Take full advantage of day/weather effects for the duration of the ability.
- 5 Minute Recast 3 Minute Duration - Elemental Magic Recast -25% for the dration of the ability.
I would personally prefer the occult acumen adjustment idea.
Gear Related Adjustements
- More occult acumen options.
- -Aja related equipment to either extend the cummulative magic duration or bonus further. Bonus further meaning it increases the benefit to the existing cap in less casts.
Mechanic Adjustmenets
- Improve the power (fTP) of all staff weaponshills and most club weapon skills.
- Raise Enfeebling Magic Skill from a C to a B rank.
- Raise Staff Skill from a B- to an A- rank.
- Improve the power of Blaze Spikes, Ice Spikes, and Shock Spikes.
- Keep the AoE magic reduction penalty at the existing -10% per foe , but cap the reduction at -33% before any other specific AoE reduction penalties on a foe such as in Odyssey or Divergence - Jeuno.
System Related Adjustments
- Give BLM Impact natively.
- Provide BLM access to Earth Crusher, Sunburst, and Cataclysm natively
- Reduce the global delay/cooldown of spells from 3 seconds to 2 seconds. The same delay as Weapon Skills or Job Abilities. There is no reason for spells to have a 33% higher action delay after casting.
- Adjust -Aja related spells so that the Cumulative Elemental Magic Bonus also reduces the consecutive nuking penalty (aka "Nuke Wall") by 25%. Overwritten by, and does not overwrite Rayke effects 50% reduction to the penalty.
I do not believe the nuke wall should be removed, but I do feel BLM can seize it's future in the minds of the community by reducing the penalty slightly during the duration effect of -Aja magic.
This shouldn't be difficult to add I would imagine. Rayke already interacts like this in the code and would just be reused with the enfeebling effect of -Ajas with a lower debuff priority.
Otherwise, we don't need the extreme or fancy changes to BLM most players are calling for. The fact no one seems to call for the same global cooldown for magic as abilities or weapon skills always surprises me.
If I had to ask for one extremely unlikely adjustment that is far more involved than the previous:
One Unlikely Request
- Skillchain Magic Burst window should not be interrupted for the entire 9 second window by another weaponskill unless a new skillchain is made. This would allow BLM to fit into a wider array of setups.