Black Mage

I really just want to throw fireballs..

this makes me want to have a buff on my BLM (only unlockable when doing savage/extreme). "due to the nature of battle, Shantotto imbues you with a passive ability called Foul Divide. It lets you rack up Foul charges up to 4 to help decimate your enemies."

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Originally Posted by Lelila38

With food I'm over the 1920 mark, I cast B4 every time. Unless there's movement or mechanics forcing me to cut my rotation short.
The rotation feels fluid like that, you can even weave Thundercloud props in without losing a Fire 4. It's just lacking power. I think a potency increase, or even giving us back the potency we used to have, would solve this.
If you look at Flogs, the top people use Blizzard 4 pretty much in every rotation too now, whether just for foul alignment or to actually yield a dps increase, I don't know (Ps4 so can't test myself).

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Ye I imagined it would be like that, I had the feeling that speelspeed would allow us to use B4 more since honestly the only thing that B4 really allows us to is to fire off more F4 in a rotation.
I wonder if they planned this all along
That said it would mean also that umbral hearts giving an haste buff could be counterproductive, maybe a dmg buff would be more beneficial since it would also give us a small burst window

I think I also remember Yoshi advising Blm to stack Ss at Sb release.

I have gotten quite a few comments from BLMs on a youtube video talking about what META means, and seems alot of them have encountered being talked down to or tried to get them to leave etc.
When I tried joining a Shinryu PF where there was open to all classes, but when I joined as BLM, it took a short while before I was removed, and the PF had changed to only include SMN or RDM. That pissed me off :(

This is some of the comments I have received on the youtube video I commented on:
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As a SMN i seen some of the hate for BLM even in small dungeons it wasn't really hate it was more like the Tank and Healer were both telling the BLM "your doing the wrong rotation" i didn't think it was this bad tho after every combo they would correct him it was a bit frustrating i felt bad for him.. maybe they were just trying to help but it felt they didnt want him there i tried to lighten up the mood "just play SMN man no one knows that job" they laughed then just tried to complete the final boss.. i guess SMN and BLM are in the same boat when it comes to "being wanted in progression content" i honestly dont know i just do dungeons because i dont think its worth the hassle.. i played RDM a bit and could see why people would prefer that over 2 other difficult Jobs to learn.. i'm used to playing Summoner and i like to help out the healers i also like that high damage
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Im play FFIV 3 YEARS and for first time feel sad because i feel same im main BLM love it dont care .... and suck you enter pf booom out you are blm or even 4man content that real blow my mind real is for real comments go learn your job change class serious tha comments last times ears... im thinking IM not bad im doing my thing or did something wrong . should not ...OR BECAUSE WE HAVE TO FOLLOW FUCKING META DO THAT AND THAT BE ON THAT DEMAGE DONT DIE BLM DONT DIE we die we die just whant have FUNN and love my job BLACK MAGE and go continue do my thing .....
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BLM main here. Completely agree. I suck at RDM. I am able to play BLM further and better than RDM by any degree. What most people dont realize is that for BLM not only do we have to learn our job, but we have to learn the tanks and healers jobs to a degree to avoid them. It was one of the best feelings of proving everyone wrong that a BLM can and does clear o4s. I know a scholar that would never bring a BLM because they have "no utility". Right now BLM feels so unwanted because SMN does more at the high end tier and has aetherpact utility.
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As a BLM main I can really understand what you say... when slots open for casters is either rdm only or rdm prefered... I do have to say I've seen more BLMs now that at the beginning of the expansion or at the beginning of savage content, but still very few :/
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I have played BLM since 1.0, and I’m noticing people in PF excluding BLMs entirely. And it seems many blackmages feel excluded as well as even when playing the class to its fullest, our damage isn’t any higher than other more utility heavy classes. So yeah why bring a BLM who has zero raid utility or buffs for party when any other classes can do same or better damage.
It has to be a reason why I also ever see another fellow blackmage in the server I’m on and in any roulette/PF.

Just last night I joined a group for Omega4S TRAINING group and they removed me from the party shortly after I joined.

I do love my BLM, but this makes me remember my Unholy DK in patch 3.1.4 in WOW when blizzard made Unholy universally unwanted for any semi serious raid group and I was forced to play another class, but I didn’t like any other classes, so I simply stepped down from raiding and was even removed from the guild. It took blizzard 3-5 months before making changes that made Unholy worthy again.

I do NOT want to experience that again as it will probably put me off playing XIV for good if I get excluded from content due to the worthy ness of a class is undesirable. As I know as well many groups dislikes BLMS as they feel they have to work around the need for BLMS to stand still as much as possible to be able to maintain their damage and they don’t like taking care of our “special” needs.

But in the end, it’s the players themselves that causes these things to happen as their combined selfishness of fast progression means they seem to gang up on the ones who is the biggest slowdown of said progression.

The synergy that melee and ranged physical dps shares also seems to make magical damage dealers less desired unless bring a RDM for the raise ability.

I am going to give it until the next big patch and see if they make any changes to blms that makes people look at them as equals.
It really sucks having played XIV since patch 1.15b and this is the first time ever I feel my favorite class is being looked down upon :(
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I really dont like seeing this as it seems more and more people write about this happening in game. Something HAS to be done about this and soon or I fear a mass exodus of BLMs quitting their jobs, or the game entirely as their favorite class makes them feel unwanted :(

The sad things is that what truly slow down progression is more the skill of a player than anything else, ppl say that NIN is necessary to the group however they never talk about the huge responsability that comes with playing NIN nor the fact that latency can be a problem to NIN playstyle.
Before we spoke about how is problematic putting all eggs in one basket in reference to a pure dps job format well NIN is not so far from it, you are essentially telling some1 you don't know to carry 7 eggs in a baskt to your home.

The meta formation works in an aggregation of ppl with same goals and skills, it's not a free card that gives you the kill, if you are not as good on a BRD as you are with BLM you might just be as much as a liability.

Also ppl should be more careful that RDM does less total dmg then a BLM even with rdps accounted for (embolden is 175 or less rdps) so the only thing that really makes ppl want it over a BLM is the ress............but then fights like ultimate happens and you might just go with a SMN (tbh phase 3 and 5 are not as bad as ppl thing they are for BLM anyway)

Speaking of which I never gave it a true thought but what is the opinion of T4 on 2 targets?

It is amongst players. Just last night i ran Expert Roulette as Red and there was a blm in the group. The short of it is they indicated too bad blm is not viable in any content. It is very sad to see (or hear) especially that parties do not except blm or remove them.
I think the wait for changes is too long because other jobs seemed to have got fixes in a shorter time period, oh but blm is Yoshi's main so surely we get all the love...

we, blm, get removed from such pfs too, cause the leader (dps or tank) wants his/her dps buffed, a rdm and (a bit) smn can buff others, but not the blm -.-'

.. if the leader is a healer, than they want the rdm to do the rezing (or in worst case the smn)

we blm just have to live with being a "greedy" dps (that atm doesnt even do that much dps -.-')

besides, blm are hard to handle in new content (probably the hardest dps in end raids, making us a liability hence we tend to die more till the fight is learnt)

blm NEED a utility (with the amount dps we do) OR more dps with utility (but I suspect its a matter of time, Smn have gotten the spotlight for now, after beeing left behind in 4.0, it will shift again)

.. OR more dps with no utility' (but....)

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Originally Posted by Lelila38

I think I also remember Yoshi advising Blm to stack Ss at Sb release.

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Speaking as someone who went straight to the 2300 ceiling, I found more benefit in dropping down to 1700 to pick up more DH/Crit.

None of the encounters so far really hit us with significant interrupts that our cooldowns right now can't handle. However, as you mentioned, it does feel as if we don't hit as hard as we should be.

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

we, blm, get removed from such pfs too, cause the leader (dps or tank) wants his/her dps buffed, a rdm and (a bit) smn can buff others, but not the blm -.-'

.. if the leader is a healer, than they want the rdm to do the rezing (or in worst case the smn)

we blm just have to live with being a "greedy" dps (that atm doesnt even do that much dps -.-')

besides, blm are hard to handle in new content (probably the hardest dps in end raids, making us a liability hence we tend to die more till the fight is learnt)

blm NEED a utility (with the amount dps we do) OR more dps with utility (but I suspect its a matter of time, Smn have gotten the spotlight for now, after beeing left behind in 4.0, it will shift again)

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You listed example of bad conduct from other players, you could that they are the greedy ones in a way

That aside I don't really think that we die more than other jobs in current content or that is much harder for us, as ppl have stated regarding to the movement department we are at the strongest we've ever been and honestly even Shinryu EX isn't much of a problem, I'll stretch even by saying that even bahamut is very well possible.

That aside we cannot and must not condone wrong behavior on PF, there's nothing in PF that cannot be overcome with most combination of jobs, unless a PF is aiming only for logs ( and even then you'll be more successfull with friends) there is 0 reasons for you to ask a precise group composition aside maybe loot sharing.

This doesn't means we are optimal to the group, it only means that ppl asking for optimal grouop composition in an unoptimazited enviroment is really ridiculous

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Originally Posted by Altera

But in the end, it’s the players themselves that causes these things to happen as their combined selfishness of fast progression means they seem to gang up on the ones who is the biggest slowdown of said progression.

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This is the player's reflecting a game issue though. This is what happens when you have a job to not have anything to bring for too many patches in a row and now we can't even use Apocatastasis as an excuse as sometimes we could in Heavensward. right now we sadly have nothing to justify our spot in the parties because SMN can just do more damage than us without party buff coordination and while RDM damage is low they can raise and bring a damage buff to others (even though embolden is weak, people feel good by having that) and both SMN and RDM can Raise. The most laghable part is when Yoshida said BLM would be great to give MP to healers when we are actually the worst caster to do so.

Just remove Scathe, Freeze, Blizzard 2 and Sleep and give us these spells and utilties and we can be useable again xD
These spells was part of THM/BLM in 1.0 XIV

https://i.imgur.com/oTGk8wt.png

I feel like I keep turning into a broken record the longer I return to this thread but from my experiences with the class, from 2.5 to now, Black Mage's identity once YoshiP fully took the reins was for the class to be a near-virgin level pure DPS... an identity it embraced quite nicely in ARR, an identity it maintained in HW as well as it could and one that Stormblood now kinda devalues.

And yeah, while it's easier to see value in White Mage as a "pure healer" or Paladin as a "pure tank" and balance them as such, a "pure DPS" appears to be an utter nightmare to balance, especially when dealing with classes with utility and support abilities... and nearly everyone BUT Black Mage has support of some kind. Granted, Samurai is pretty close with its semi-selfish "slashing resist down" ability, but it does show a bit of the problem when it came to balancing Black Mage.

YoshiP didn't fully embrace the idea that "because Black Mage can only get support if they use cross role unlike literally every other DPS in the game, this puts us in a very big issue where we lack the ability to actually compare to the other classes in terms of contributions beyond damage... but now that Summoner hits as hard as we do and HIGHER, either Summoner needs to be nerfed, or Black Mage needs to be buffed.

Altera makes an interesting point with both good and bad, and I'll address both sides.

The good is that we know that Scathe, Freeze, Blizzard II and Sleep are useless and should have something done. However, rather than entirely proposing their full removal, I propose a few... uh. Transformations. to make them better.

Scathe: Just a flat 200 potency. No benefits from Astral Fire, and doesn't maintain Umbral Ice. This would make it so that if a player is stuck on the move, it can and will get the job done alongside Thundercloud. That said, Enhanced Scathe should remain, a rare doubling that encourages you to use it whilst you're stuck moving... or grant a chance that upon hit, it triggers Thundercloud, though it'd be a rather high chance, like 50%.

Freeze: Make it Flare potency (so 260) with Flare drop off with a high MP cost. Simple as that. Oh, and no manual targeting. Bind is fine tho.

Blizzard II: This one is tricky because it feels bad, and shouldn't exist. That said, increasing it to 80 potency would allow it to match the base potency of Fire II, giving it a purpose in pre-Blizzard III AOE rotations.

Sleep: ...Okay, you got me. This one shouldn't exist. However, I instead suggest Temper from classic Final Fantasy 1 instead, to grant an extra DPS boost, ala Enochian but without the maintenance. Perhaps a 10% damage increase for 30s and a 90s cooldown? Maybe also give a 5% damage boost to those around you when you use it? I dunno.

The bad is that the abilities she's suggesting to replace Scathe, Freeze, Blizzard II and Sleep with are depreciated abilities that clash with Black Mage both thematically and gameplay wise, from an era where Thaumaturges were HEALERS and Conjurers were Red Mages in all but name and lore. Thaumaturges ever since 1.2 have reverted to the Black Mage identity of "damage" elements, the Fire, the Ice and the Thunder, and abandoning its kinda void mage identity of 1.0. That's probably why they locked up Mumuepo. Gameplay wise, when trying to buff a Pure DPS class, you try to increase their damage or make it easier to inflict damage, not try to mess with the identity to make it "viable". In fact, this is the very issue that Monks are feeling at the moment, but a few people in this very thread are failing to realize the ramifications of what they're doing. Messing with a job's identity for the sake of improving it may work for those who only care about the job's usability, but has a high risk of alienating people who have supported that job since the beginning.

You need to improve the Black Mage on the merits of its DPS, not by giving it utility that may or may not clash with its gameplay style. The only kind of utility the class should have is either its pure power or a self-serving buff that happens to make other DPSes hit harder. And that's it.

I'm afraid I'll have to say that new spells are usually something they add during an expansion what we need are ttweaks to skills which are more likely to come.
It'll be already a miracle if they'll change the effect of our less used skills asking for completely new skills is too much of a stretch

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Originally Posted by Remedi

I'm afraid I'll have to say that new spells are usually something they add during an expansion what we need are ttweaks to skills which are more likely to come.
It'll be already a miracle if they'll change the effect of our less used skills asking for completely new skills is too much of a stretch

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Considering Scholar got Miasma II, and both ACN jobs got back Sustain... and PvP classes gained new abilities each, I don't think it's as much a stretch as you may think, but I do see your point.

They got skills they HAD back those were not new skills, there's a huge difference

1.0 skills are completely lost they would've to recreate them from scratch

as for PVP they got skills already in their arsenal they got nothing really new

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

TL;DR: Make Scathe, Freeze and Blizzard II killy, and replace Sleep with a self buff.

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I don't see those changes affecting the current status of Freeze and Blizzard 2.

For those two, I'd suggest this.

Blizzard 2: Enemies hit by this spell are inflicted with Shatter. They will take additional damage from the first Damaging spell that hits them, at a reduced rate when that spell is an ally's.

Freeze: Turned into an ability.
Duration: 15 seconds
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Radius: 10y
Effect: Enemies within the area effect are afflicted with Heavy and Shatter for as long as they remain inside.

Black Mages gain a Caster friendly boost as well as a personal damage increase. Blizzard 2 and Freeze both gain a definitive spot in the spell arsenal.

My problem is that B2 is a Point-Blank-AoE, so unless you change it to be a targeted AoE you'd be losing uptime running in and out of trash mobs trying to hit them and avoid AoEs.

Not considering the fact that B2 is inferior to F2 in a nearly all PvE situations.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I don't see those changes affecting the current status of Freeze and Blizzard 2.

For those two, I'd suggest this.

Blizzard 2: Enemies hit by this spell are inflicted with Shatter. They will take additional damage from the first Damaging spell that hits them, at a reduced rate when that spell is an ally's.

Freeze: Turned into an ability.
Duration: 15 seconds
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Radius: 10y
Effect: Enemies within the area effect are afflicted with Heavy and Shatter for as long as they remain inside.

Black Mages gain a Caster friendly boost as well as a personal damage increase. Blizzard 2 and Freeze both gain a definitive spot in the spell arsenal.

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You didn't read the full proposal for the two skills? Freeze would become the Umbral Ice "Fire II/Flare," and would build to Umbral Ice II/III while still providing good AoE coverage. After all, in the ideal situation of using it, Flare would wreck your opportunity of having Umbral Ice III ready for Blizzard IV then Fire III, since you'd be forced to Transpose into UI.

In all fairness however, the Shatter idea sounds nice as a trait for Blizzard II once it gets obsolete, but Bind is already fine for most AoE situations for the two of them. That said, if only Blizzard II had more of a point than--

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

My problem is that B2 is a Point-Blank-AoE, so unless you change it to be a targeted AoE you'd be losing uptime running in and out of trash mobs trying to hit them and avoid AoEs.

Not considering the fact that you B2 is inferior to F2 in a nearly all PvE situations.

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Okay, THIS. All of THIS.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

You didn't read the full proposal for the two skills? Freeze would become the Umbral Ice "Fire II/Flare," and would build to Umbral Ice II/III while still providing good AoE coverage. After all, in the ideal situation of using it, Flare would wreck your opportunity of having Umbral Ice III ready for Blizzard IV then Fire III, since you'd be forced to Transpose into UI.

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The UI3 might make it worthwhile, but I'm too lazy to do the math. Assuming it stayed 3.whatever cast speed, I think that might have it be slightly better than just prioritizing B4/T4 and then going straight into AF3.

Though, if the math showed it coming out as neutral or better, the other issue it presents is that it might simply be better to just stay in UI3 for Freeze Spam. That's the primary reason B2 got nerfed, because at 100 potency, the quicker cast, infinite spam B2 outpaced F2.

Strictly speaking, while Ice phase not having high damage options is pretty meh, I'd rather Fire be grossly higher than Ice, and Ice serving to set up / buff that phase.

hope the devs notice the importance if the first post in this thread (and the amounts of likes, reflecting the need of blm)

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Though, if the math showed it coming out as neutral or better, the other issue it presents is that it might simply be better to just stay in UI3 for Freeze Spam. That's the primary reason B2 got nerfed, because at 100 potency, the quicker cast, infinite spam B2 outpaced F2.

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Even by buffing the potency of Freeze to be 260 like Flare, it would never be as powerful as Flare for one simple reason: Astral Fire III. Certainly, Blizzard II was in a spot where it was hitting harder than Fire II (despite Fire II having 180 potency when you apply Astral Fire III) because of its sheer speed. Flare and Freeze already have the same cast speed, and the difference between their full practical potencies is quite vast. I don't think it's a problem to raise Freeze's potency to make it viable in a rotation.

Flare has 4 secs base cast speed, freeze should be 3 if memory serves right

That aside dunno how much we should focus ourselves on aoe problems when the main one is our single target dps

@shiroe Hope so, I mean the colorblind thread got an answer, I suppose they are reading this thread too

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

hope the devs notice the importance if the first post in this thread (and the amounts of likes, reflecting the need of blm)

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don't worry after all its Yoshis cls - so buffs are incoming for sure.

Wouldn't bet on it, as things stands no jobs can really be said to not beign able to clear content when played perfeclty and there's not a real huge gap on what you can do or what you cannot do, consider that ppl have said that BLM are terrible on utlimate because of the need to learn the fight, well that is kinda BS since you are gonna need about 100+ hours to get a kill so plenty of time to adapt to the fight, the lack of synergy is still true yes, but we don't know how much really SE cares about optimal gameplay really.

It is also possible that they consider synergy groups as doing a higher dps when played well as intended since if you fuck up with buffs uptime you are not fucking just yourself but everyone else in the group too

blm got love at ca. 4.05 (it was broken at 4.0), and has gotten attention,.. but at 4.1 lost ground again

rdm has had high attention since 4.0 and is still loved (new class, easy to handle, super-rez)

smn had issues / no love till 4.1, now its finally getting attention/more players..

SE is probably awaiting till more blm and rdm shift over to smn..., than it will probably consider buffing/fixing blm.., just wish it would happen before 4.2

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

smn had issues / no love till 4.1, now its finally getting attention/more players..

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Not really, dot potency buff was really big buff, it give us flat 200+ dps. After that change summoner raised from bottom to top tier.

RDM was strongest caster 4.0, BLM was strongest caster after 4.05, SMN have been strongest caster since 4.06.

4.06 was the big smn change?.... ah, ok.. thought it was 4.1

Since the dots buff SMN dmg actually skyrocketed (more so when they started attribuiting radiant shield dmg to SMN too, something that after some tests I honestly don't agree with)

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

4.06 was the big smn change?.... ah, ok.. thought it was 4.1

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4.1 was mainly quality of life and probably small buff in general, but dot buff make the biggest difference in dps.

fingers crossed than, that blm fix might come 4.12 or something, even if only a "fast fix" like increased fire potency...,

blm QoL fix might come later (losing enochian with fire 2 under ice astral, convert hp fix, etc.), if at all..

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

fingers crossed than, that blm fix might come 4.12 or something, even if only a "fast fix" like increased fire potency...,

blm QoL fix might come later (losing enochian with fire 2 under ice astral, convert hp fix, etc.), if at all..

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with fire 1 under ice astral'

That won't happen, you lose enochian the moment you lose either astral fire or umbral ice, they would have to change fire 1 and blizzard one effect for that which would in turn make trasponse useless

transpose would be an instant solution, ... where as if you have time to cast fire 1(or swiftcast + sharpcast / proc fire 1), you wont lose enochian / foul build up

Dot buff was what made SMN damage to become comparable to MCH, 4.1 changes were mostly QoL to easy rotation, make Devotion not a pain to use and reduce penalties SMNs suffered by death. It ended up boosting their rdps but not by a lot, really. SMN was already good pre 4.1. This shows that if they want a job to deal more damage all they have to do are simple potency buffs here and there.

@shiroe Maybe but I won't be surprised if ppl told me to git gud about it tbh

its a general blm issue, casting fire 1 (or fire 2) while under any ice astral makes anyone blm lose enochian/ foul build up...

maybe I need to git gud too, complaining about that..., but it is annoying

One thing I also remember in 1.23 patch, was that Flare had a chance to put a Burn damage over time effect on the targets. How about make Umbral Hearts also have a chance for Fire4 to add a DOT as well as the 3 next spells used under Umbral Hearts dealing 5-10% more damage?

Freeze in 1.23 was also pretty good, had very decent damage, and was our Enmity Dump, and it had like a 90-120sec cooldown, and we didnt had to aim the spell manually.

I was also saddened in ARR that they removed one of our 3 Ancient Spells: Lightning's Burst which did more damage the lower HP the player had. It did an amazing amount of damage if Thundaga procced as well, and it had a whopping 900sec CD
This Low HP / High Damage kinda suits the BLMs style as sometimes we do eat a survivable attack with Manaward to continue DPSing.
It would also be PERFECT for use in O1S or any other raid boss that had like a ability that puts you to like 50HP. And if you had Thundercloud, Burst would guarantee a Critical hit. Low HP + Thundercloud + Long Cooldown = Massive burst damage :D
So yeaaaaah, please bring back ancient magic Burst ;)

Yeah it been discussed previously that adding a damage bonus to Hearts wouls be a good buff since it would solve two of BLM's concerns at once. I personally think a fix +X potency would be the best if that would be the case. Allowing BLMs freely cast a Fire inside Hearts for no damage loss keeping the rotation fluid and avoiding some small disparity between players that a percentage would coulr when added on F1 vs F4. Also a lot of good suggestions that could potentially improve BLM's AoE were frowned upon a while ago, but since SMN has now a better AoE damage, that shouldn't matter anymore really. So if said heart buffs affected Flare, it wouldn't be broken at all. But could also throw Fire II into further oblivion.