Black Mage

(Disclosure: this is a copy/paste from another post I made, but I feel it's going to get buried/ignored and I'm really curious about what more experienced Black Mage players think of it.)

What if Sleep and Freeze applied debuffs to a target when their Control effect ends or is resisted?
Like Sleep decreases auto attack speed, skill speed, spell speed by X% (Effect Named "Groggy")
And Freeze causes the target to take extra damage from all sources (Effect Named "Fragile")

It occurs to me that Control is really the utility of the Black Mage (like how Recovery is Red Mage Utility) given how over the top powerful Sleep is on paper. And DCUO had a neat trick with Control abilities where they also provided debuffs for times when Control was immune or not needed (like a boss fight with only one target). So If I took those concepts and applied them here, it might work.
No one would really care that much if you toss a sleep into an AE pack, they'd break immediately and now they're all debuffed so it's still valuable. And if you were using kill priority single target it works just as well.

Thoughts? I'm genuinely curious.

This thread needs to stay alive. Blm needs to be a viable raiding option.

Can blm clear all savage and ultimate? Yes, but that's a terrible argument when every other dps job is a better option by a lot. Nobody wants a dps that is crippled by comparison to other jobs.

Yeah the, Can a BLM etc clear savage or Ultimate, is kinda like saying a person on crutches can finish a marathon. He will manage to finish it, but he will be most likely the last one to finish.

BLM needs something to make them more equally desired in a raid team. Like Freeze, or maybe Blizzard 4 also puts on the effect Fragile as Tzain mentioned.
I still feel Umbral Hearts needs a buff, to compansate for the loss of Raging Strikes.

The useless spells we have also need some love, either change them completly or add effects to them.
Sleep could make Bosstargets Drowsy, and on every other normal mob it still does sleep. Drowsy could make Bosses hit weaker. 10-15sec duration
Remove Blizzard 2, and replace it with Burst. Though i think asking for such a change midexpansion is too much.

aside beign late for extreme changes I don't see them give us access to an ancient magic before unlocking BLM

Oh look, this thread is still going


Yep, Freeze should get a trait letting you use it at zero MP (after flare) to give you immediate Umbral III, and at level 68 with Enhanced Umbral Heart, it should also give you 3 umbral hearts. Boom, aoe damage issues fixed.

Still a proponent of heightened mobility complimenting heightened damage and against "flat" potency increases as they don't solve real issues with the class. For those of you who are "newcomers" to the thread, consider my (abbreviated) suggestions list from page, like, 30 of this thread:

-Thundercloud refreshes Astral/Umbral timer
-Thunder dots of all grades are additive up to 60 seconds (vs. "refresh" of the timer as is now)
-Convert reduced to 60 seconds recast, removed HP cost (call it Indulge, if you will). Alternatively, Convert stays 180 seconds recast, gives you a full bar of MP, and a set of procs
-Upon obtaining (not using) a proc, 5 free seconds add to the Foul timer, also perhaps giving a "free" foul every time the Enochian buff is used.
-Foul double potency single target
-See the above Freeze suggestion
-Umbral hearts give +10% damage for the spell consuming the heart, also the consumption of all three hearts could give a Firestarter proc, or insert other incentive here
-Firestarter "chain" from free Fire III into free Fire IV
-Aetherial Manipulation recast reduced to 15 seconds

Also, as was established some 15 pages back, one of the biggest issues with the job is that it has no real two minute synergy that can be lined up with Hypercharge/Stratagem/Trick Attack/Foe Requiem/Devotion. One of the reasons that jobs like SMN are so strong is that it can utilize burst windows very effectively and minimize weaker windows. BLM has none of that.

Ultimately all we can really do is toss out suggestions and see what they do, but just about everyone is in agreement that it's in dire need of attention at this point, so I'm glad we've made progress.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Well our point of wiew is very biased tbh, we always say the gap is big but never quantify it really, which tends to blow things out of proportions.
I mean if parses are something to go by the difference on using a BLM or meta is about some secs shaved off from the kill.

It's worrying that ppl say that utility jobs will always be chosen in comps but never actually talks about the hardle that comes with it.
If you fuck up your ley lines timing the dps loss is inferior to fucking up trick attack or foe or any other raid buff.
It's possible that SE consider this when they speak about jobs beign fairly close, we don't know exactly what is their metric on job balance which in leads us on having hard times on giving feedbacks.
That said there also the fact that the community is not mature enough

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I'm gonna expandon this a bit to give some idea of how bad the situation really is.
I said earlier in this thread that if BLM were to get a flat 10% increase in it's damage it would be a contender for the top damage contributor in a raid team. Which as a"pure DPS" job I would assume they should very much be.
Now, saying the only benefit to having more damage is "shaving seconds off a kill" is very misleading. Higher damage does much more than just a slighty faster kill time. Even in ultimate there are mechanic skips that are possible which free up cooldowns and healing. Pushing phases faster can also provide more efficient timings of cooldowns, and in many cases skip difficult mechanics entirely (think a12s).

Next up, you talk about the burden of correct play with utility jobs, as if one class has a harder time playing correctly than others. While the total dps loss of missing a trick attack is indeed larger than the loss of missing a ley lines, outside of trick attack every single raid dps buff is simply activate on target. Instead of requiring smart usage within the buff duration, you simply press it once and your team benefits.

If you are talking about how these jobs function at a high level of play, it is safe to assume these abilities won't be missed.
If you are talking about how these jobs function at a lower level of play, the difference is even larger between utility and "pure DPS" jobs. While the individual damage contribution of the BLM/NIN player will be lower, the potential gain from the damage utility remains the same.

I was using examples on a broader sense, while I don't agree that it's safe to assume that we won't do mistakes even at higher end, especially in pugs you see ppl not lining cds perfectly or using them at all, I don't think it's fair to say that using raid cds wrongly is not a big deal, I've seen plenty of litanies used during a boss jump (or chain strategem/trick attack applied on the heart instead of shinryu)
I don't think that while talking about game balance we can seriously think only about high end when making an argument to SE, because honestly that's a part of the game too and quite frankly if the meta comp would require a more careful playstyle to reach a certain height of dmg I could actually accept that but I don't play ranged so can't really say

I do agree about what you said about phase skips, but I was talking about the speed kills done with or without meta groups tbh, though ye shoul've been more precise

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Originally Posted by Remedi

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The only thing that could justify a bad litany like that is a random skip, and you can normally predict those accurately (Creator gave me a lot of training there, thanks A11).
When Sfia says "high level" he doesn't mean a god-tier player somehow playing with 7 idiots.
He means a party of skillful people playing together. Which is what you see in serious progression, high-end speed kills and more recently, Ultimate.
This "pug" example in the vacuum where everyone is bad except for the subject of the argument doesn't mean much. Of course if you're shoved into a terrible party things go South fast. That's why Hashmal is such a clown fiesta.

This kind of balancing is always meant for the top cut of the playerbase. This is simply because it's only at that level that the issues become apparent, when people are fully utilising the resources they have available (and optimally) that the discrepancies become visible.
It's these heavily invested, heavily devoted people that become disenchanted when the state of the game balance bodes ill.

Someone who's on the 50% of any job (and that's the majority of the playerbase) can get better just by reading basic guides about their job and try to have good uptime.
Someone on the 75% percentile can start to keep track of their buffs/dots and do the rotation as well as possible while keeping those up.
Someone on the 90% percentile can now optimise the rotation for each specific fight and alter it with regard to skips/timings and make sure the little things are all done perfectly on top (weaving ogcds and stuff like that).
All of these happen regardless of the state of game balance. You have so many avenues of drastic improvement before these imbalances become a critical issue that they honestly make no difference.

But if when you start nearing the 95%+ you still see a big gap between your job and the others, you realise that all your investment was a waste. It's here that balance becomes an issue- you're suddenly limited by the game itself moreso than your execution. This is actually the worst feeling ever.
Especially in a game like this, where we play a self-insert avatar. Oh look, my catgirl witch now has to be a bard in Ultimate. So much fun >.>

those percentile for the avg player should be shifted to 35%tile now because some many players on fflog are starting to do optimization/speed kill/whole team buffs 1 sole player to boost/padd numbers.
plus ppl getting better gears.
if you look back just a shy few weeks ago logs the todays equivalent %tile is much lower

That's why fflogs snapshots your percentile from when you cleared it and doesn't devalue it over time. Also that's how percentiles work. 50% is the average, if more people learn the fight better/more people have gear, obviously the averages will go up. The only time the percentiles aren't reliable imo are the first few weeks when someone who got super lucky with drops will be much higher than someone who got shafted on drops, around week 10ish it mostly evens out due to books.

But, I agree, jobs should be balanced around 95-99% and nothing lower. In competitive games, fighting games, mobas, fps, rts; the successful ones are always balanced around top level play. Ffxiv isn't a competitive game, but we are still competing for spots in raid groups. If you balance around lower level play, it limits player growth. You can't balance around zerg rushes or fireball spam, if you do then once the player outgrows the level of the strategy they will either quit since they hit a wall or they will be forced to switch and resent the game for it.

avg players are the ppl coming into the omega at the gear set they achive at the time. right now ppl that have 340 and 345 weap raised the bar so high on o1s and o2s that those avg incoming players are getting 35%tile or less.
im talking about ppl just getting thier first clear and following few weeks and not how they on farm already.
ppl that even use log usually are the mote proactive players that wants better dps. thats when they go on farm their numbers should in thoery get better but im like said i dont consider those avg.
i guess an avg player imo is common ffxiv players that just do the content for clears only, thus why i have a hardship to lump their %tile on todays optimized/padded numbers.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

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Tbh I don't disagree with what sfia said It's just I was talking generally not really on the high end spectrum to try and rationalize SE stance on what they said

The problem is that SE seems to want to balance them all only by average player's output. Which makes better players realize some jobs are just too much better at high skill level so the average players ditch the not so good and bad jobs to play the better jobs even though they won't get much benefit out of doing so.

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Originally Posted by Komaru_Tatoro

those percentile for the avg player should be shifted to 35%tile now because some many players on fflog are starting to do optimization/speed kill/whole team buffs 1 sole player to boost/padd numbers.
plus ppl getting better gears.
if you look back just a shy few weeks ago logs the todays equivalent %tile is much lower

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Do you have any evidence that the pool is filled with a bunch of players who don't have gear? The one thing FFLogs lacks is the ability to tell the iLv of people entered in.

I wish there would be a way to see potency per sec. At least it wouldn't be gear dependant and allow you to see if your lower damage is caused by gear or poor rotation / execution.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

The problem is that SE seems to want to balance them all only by average player's output. Which makes better players realize some jobs are just too much better at high skill level so the average players ditch the not so good and bad jobs to play the better jobs even though they won't get much benefit out of doing so.

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True that, though not sure if they have a choice in that

That said they ditched one job to make sure that balance was all right so I'd say we should still make them know it

Angry bump because there are people thinking that RDM needs help right now, which to be fair it is undertuned now that SMN is a god, but seriously wait your damn turn.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Angry bump because there are people thinking that RDM needs help right now, which to be fair it is undertuned now that SMN is a god, but seriously wait your damn turn.

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What a childish post. I'm sorry that amid the dozens of BLM balance posts, someone dared to make a thread about RDM balance. If you're really gonna act like that, wait your damn turn: Dark Knight and Monk are ahead of you.

No offense but as much as I agree that both jobs needs some adjustments I don't think bickering like this will be of any help

Neither do I. I also think its stupid to act like balancing is, or should be, a line. Both jobs need buffs; I concede Black Mage is in a worse spot than Red Mage right now, but there is no "wait your turn"; issues are issues whether or not it's that job's "turn".

Dark Knight really isn't "ahead" and monk certainly isn't. The ONLY issue with monk damage is that DRG is too good for piercing. Nice try, though.

Your class does what it is supposed to do. Ours does not.

Or to translate: Your job has its has its casts into dualcasts (insane movement capability for mechanics), melee combo (more movement capability), raises (support), and cures (support whether your like it or not, and it absolutely DOES help despite what that other bloke said, I have saved our tank from wiping the party with it before), and embolden (which to really beat a dead horse could use a buff), not to mention is faceroll easy to play.

Our job is supposed to have no utility and do the highest damage and it doesn't even do that, let alone having to sacrifice even more damage to deal with mechanics. So no, I have zero empathy for RDM complaining that its damage is too low. It could use more party utility damage, sure, but certainly not more single target damage.

As things stand I wouldn't call SMN overtuned anymore for the simple reason that if you nerf SMN everyone is simply gonna run double ranged, which means that both RDM and BLM are undertuned or that ranged needs a nerf.
That aside the only redeeming quality that RDM has over SMN is beign a rez bot and while you might find it ok, honestly it's not that great.
Compare it to healer balance, while AST+SCH is preferred for speed runs WHM's raw power has a value especially in proh, RDM utility in chain ress diminishes even before prog ends(depends from battle tbh)as we already said their total dmg is even inferior to BLM atm.
In reality it's not who is in a worse state but casters as a whole are simply not that great in a team composition right now

There certainly is no need to nerf SMN's damage to compensate, BLM just needs buffing to compensate and RDM needs a fix for Embolden to compensate.

Furthermore, the insane vice-grip of the physical meta needs to go away right now and something needs to be fixed with piercing either being removed or applicable from BRD/MCH as well, and ALL melee should get shadewalker instead of Diversion. Any nerf to any caster would only further hammer home the physical meta. In fact, I would propose that EVERYTHING that does "physical damage up" should just increase magic damage as well.


And yeah, to be blunt, these RDMs are basically whining that their class is "only good in prog and disposable afterward". well gee must be nice to have a class that's at least good/desired for SOMETHING.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Dark Knight really isn't "ahead" and monk certainly isn't. The ONLY issue with monk damage is that DRG is too good for piercing. Nice try, though.

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Both have been complaining for longer than Black Mages have. They're ahead in the queue, so in your words, wait your turn.

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Your class does what it is supposed to do. Ours does not.
Or to translate: Your job has its has its casts into dualcasts (insane movement capability for mechanics), melee combo (more movement capability), raises (support), and cures (support whether your like it or not, and it absolutely DOES help despite what that other bloke said, I have saved our tank from wiping the party with it before), and embolden (which to really beat a dead horse could use a buff), not to mention is faceroll easy to play.

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Your class has triple cast, swift cast, sharp cast, between the lines, and aetherial manipulation. You have ley lines, and your BNB is spamming Fire IV and managing one dot on top of that.

I'm glad that for progression your vercures saved people. However, that doesn't change that it's a DPS loss on top of already being tuned low due to having it. Worth pointing out, that bloke has said and cited multiple times, Yoshi P is on record saying that class difficulty is not what they balance DPS around.

Are we done posting random stuff about people's jobs?

BLM needs its old potencies back, and maybe a return of Raging Strikes. RDM needs Embolden buffs, and maybe a few potency buffs here and there. Both are simple fixes. Neither negate the other's addition.

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Our job is supposed to have no utility and do the highest damage and it doesn't even do that, let alone having to sacrifice even more damage to deal with mechanics. So no, I have zero empathy for RDM complaining that its damage is too low. It could use more party utility damage, sure, but certainly not more single target damage.

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And I have no sympathy for you in particular. You're the person drawing lines in the sand as if only one can be buffed at a time. You're the one making pointless quibbles against other jobs and telling them to shut up and sit down. Just like SMN did to BLM at the start of the expac, and look where we are now. Black Mage needs buffs, nobody ever said anything else, you're the one who made a point of it to start sounding the alarm bells that one single thread, titled "Red Mage could use some help" was posted, as if RDM getting any potential buffs would negate any fixes BLM would get.

Go read my post in the other thread, it will illuminate for you why there is most certainly a line particularly with the caster role. Potential buffs to RDM very well can and most likely WILL invalidate any buffs to BLM because if the single target damage of RDM creeps up closer to BLM even with buffs, it will still be stronger to just take RDM and BLM will be even further in the outhouse.

That's a very closed-minded way of thinking. No, it illuminates nothing besides you acting the same way Summoners did at the start of the expac, and now they're overtuned and the BLM they were shutting down are left in the dust.

That is not "closed minded" thinking, that is verbatim exactly what happened. I've been saying that BLM isn't going to reflect its role (high damage no utility) since the beginning of 4.0 because I read what Eirene Snow wrote and Tsundere Imouto (with whom I work closely) and tested it myself and saw that the power was ALREADY creeping.

Classes are to be balanced at the highest levels of play, not the average levels of play. So tons of SMNs had no idea how to play their job which is why they wanted/needed buffs so badly. Now it's just insane. Should RDM get significant single target damage buffs, it will only further put BLM behind as "the strongest with the least utility". This is logic, not closed mindedness.

To be fair there could be the extreme for BLM to get a potency buff too, considering how pretty much everyone has access to fell cleave-like potency nowadays

But still I don't think this bickering will lead us anywhere

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Originally Posted by Llugen

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Let's stop for a moment.

We can both agree that SMN got overbuffed. We can both agree RDM does not need to be the strongest, or even the second strongest caster. I'm not asking for "significant" potency buffs; perhaps 10 potency per action on the melee combo. The fix to embolden we've both agreed is something RDM absolutely needs. We both agree Black Mage needs significant buffs from here.

My problem only comes in when you come around saying Red Mages should sit down and shut up and pretend we have zero problems until Black Mage's are fixed. Being buffed as though it was in a vacuum is what made SMN destroy BLM like it does.

I can just hear Peter Cushing saying "this bickering is pointless" as Governor Tarkin.

I'm not sure that it is "pointless" but it is definitely more heated than it should be. I apologize I'll cool off.

I envision RDM as being support and offensive utility, and I'm pretty sure SE would agree with me, so by that logic there is no need for any more personal damage from RDM, just more support. Groups already still love RDMs, whether or not one thinks it is "competitive at endgame" (which I'm pretty sure most would absolutely say that it is), so I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there is really no need to buff its damage, not to mention that its ability to handle mechanics has almost no bearing on its damage, unlike BLM, so yeah. It just seems very short-sighted to be interested in RDM buffs at this time.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

I can just hear Peter Cushing saying "this bickering is pointless" as Governor Tarkin.

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Idd that was the intention all along

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Originally Posted by Llugen

I envision RDM as being support and offensive utility, and I'm pretty sure SE would agree with me, so by that logic there is no need for any more personal damage from RDM, just more support.

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I would just prefer it if it had less support, and more offensive utility. Defensive utility wears off fast; again, PLD and WHM in 3.x.

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It just seems very short-sighted to be interested in RDM buffs at this time.

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And here's the main thing I actually disagree with you on: I don't think we should ignore one job's problems just because another job has bigger problems. They cannot be buffed in a vacuum; if anything it'd be better to buff them alongside each other, to better take into account their balance relative to each other.

To further illustrate, the difficulty lies in that there is generally one reserved caster spot, and all three should make an argument for why they are viable for the position.

It's a sad truth, but the truth of the matter is flat out that any "power creep" damage wise from the other jobs, RDM included, literally puts BLM further behind in the minds of parties as far as desirability goes. Hence, the job really does not need more personal damage, only more offensive utility to surpass devotion + radiant shield (+contagion). Any more personal damage can and will usurp BLM's "pure damage" position, particularly as it relates to handling mechanics (it is actually impossible to be 100% efficient on BLM, while it is possible on RDM, or if you don't like 100, the maximum efficiency of RDM will always be higher than the maximum efficiency of BLM due to its ability to move and handle mechanics.)

I think even worse, is all three casters are fighting for one spot as well as against physical dps as well. I am completely behind offensive utility buffs for Red Mage; I don't know if you saw it or not because of the page cutoff, but I do agree with you a lot on the adjustments needed. I just don't think RDM should be left alone; especially if Black Mage gets overbuffed as we've seen SE do with jobs that need fixes, RDM would then be the only Not-God caster. Even better, if RDM got a buff to its offensive utility to aid magic damage as well, maybe that would help even more to put BLM on the map.

Unless they REALLY buff BLM’s single target damage, it would still be shunned by parties over RDM unless there is a justifiable enough damage gap between the two, so it really is a brother-against-brother relationship, sadly.

A multiple caster comp could really only be viable when we get a magic damage tank. Otherwise, physical meta is just too strong. Imagine Mystic Knight PLD WHM AST BLM NIN SMN RDM.
Even then if all three casters are fighting for loot, it probably wouldn’t be good progression wise unless they change the way the loots work even further than pages (not to mention LB)

I'm hoping we get a Blue Mage tank in 5.0 either way.

I also wouldn't be opposed if they started diversifying caster gear at that point; melees all have different gear practically.

You say unless...I say there's no choice but to. Black Mage needs to be on or above the same tier as SAM, and right now it just isn't; even then, both need some damage boosts from the current tier that SAM is at now.

Does limit break get stunted with multiple casters? I thought that was just for regular class stacking.

Consider as well that parties want to BE FED, not to FEED. Even if BLM's damage was above SAM damage, it would still mean less party buffs for the whole group and more feeding/catering to one player, and that alone is big enough reason for just about every party to desire RDM over BLM no matter how much higher the damage is (hence my fear of the power creep)

The LB is slowed with double jobs not roles, yes, but if there were say 4 casters in the comp that would mean no melee LB3, which would likely be problematic. Plus, this further reinforces the need for NIN, as it has magic damage (raiton, hellfrog, etc) and of course the tyranny of trick attack. And besides, to help deter BRD+MCH, perhaps the LB really SHOULD be double roles and not double jobs.

BLM needs to be above SAM power level for the simple reason of the lack of magical buffs in the game, as for the gearing problem realistically only RDM and SMN really share gearing since BLM prefers spell speed (besides the splitting of physical gear is problematic since the inventory issue of the game).

I Think Xenosys explained the power creep problem very well when he said that now everyone has fell cleave, which hurts more when we consider that we got nerfed in the 4.0, I feared that the fire4 nerf + raging strike loss was scary, I was told it was fine and well......not really, I do understand that they wanted to close the gap between enochian and non enochian rotations, but that + the power creep of other jobs led to this situation and because of that I think we should get a small potency buff in some way (it doesn't need to be a straight +20 potency buff to F4, it can be something else)

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Originally Posted by Remedi

I think we should get a small potency buff in some way (it doesn't need to be a straight +20 potency buff to F4, it can be something else)

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A real stupid idea I totally suggested once upon a time was that every use of Fire 4 increased Fire spell potency by 10, reset when AF ends. It intrinsically adds value to Blizzard 4 and boosts up the convert window as well. You could combine this with B4 also providing UI3's speed boost to the fire spells it benefits and suddenly Black Mage is machine gunning out ramping Fire spells.

I think that adding that effect to umbral heart would make our rotation odd since it would make foul not coming up during UI