BLM needs more damage

I don't mind being a turret, it makes fights interesting having to plan my positioning. However, since most fights these days require heavy movement, and the moments we can turret are rare, the dps reward from these moments should be much higher than what we currently do.

That is the fun of Black Mage and it's defining trait in the end. The point in the OP is that the Job's design brings nothing that is both unique and strong out of it.

What blm need is not potency increase but more easy to keep up dps. BLM is so easy to lose dps during mechanic.
muhahahhahaah that just my 2 cent though

The problem is that even with perfect uptime the overall potency is too low compared to other jobs

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Originally Posted by Remedi

The problem is that even with perfect uptime the overall potency is too low compared to other jobs

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Exactly. Even on a dummy, BLM will be handily out-DPS'd by both Samurai and Summoner while barely keeping up with Monk. When the whole identity of the job is supposed to be a selfish DPS that offers immense damage but little utility. It presently fails at, well, everything.

I'd prefer them to give us a flat out potency increase. Don't need more movement skills, the ones we have in Triplecast and Between the Lines are rather decent. But we should be rewarded for standing still and casting by those high numbers.
Also I've said this a lot already, but if they wanna give us utility, I'd really like to see a Magic Resistance Down debuff, possibly tied to Umbral Hearts. I generally believe every class should be able to apply a debuff against their own type of dmg and not have to rely on others to put it up for them.

In recent discussions with my static, I think a solution that might be useful would actually be for Scathe of all spells.

It'd be the perfect candidate for one good reason: It's currently useless. However, in much the same way as Tri-Bind, it can be made into a better spell with a simple change: Make it 150-200 potency, and allow it to slightly extend Astral Fire/Umbral Ice by 2s per cast.

As it immediately stands, Triplecast and Between the Lines are... well, barely noticeable beyond serving as our source of bursts when we use Leylines and for our opener for Triplecast (plus Swiftcast) and situational uses for the latter (Such as the possibility of a place to return after placing Maniacal Probes). Black Mage is heavily gimped when it attempts any kind of movement, that something needs to allow us some kind of option so that we're not the lowest players on the totem pole in terms of usability.

I say this over an overall potency boost for one reason: dungeons. Some changes if too powerful might overpower a class for some pieces of content while attempting to bring them up to speed. As dungeons don't really use much in the form of movement, and giving BLMs a potency boost for ALL of their spells (or their most practical to boost spells) would make their damage skyrocket in dungeons. We don't want ANYTHING to be MUST takes, but we want to make things equally valid but different. Bring the player and not the class and all.

Perhaps other spells should see some adjustment, like Blizzard II becoming less terrible or Freeze being a reliable tool for AoEing as a BLM, such as making it give a 260 potency AoE that provides a single umbral heart per cast when in Enochian.

As bourne has said the dmg on a dummy of BLM is still low and that is because overall their potency /cast is something that other jobs easily attains not to mention they have a way to burst out more dmg while beign less adffected by movements.

While I agree that scathe should receive some buffs because as it stands is effectively useles it doesn't change the fact that to function as a turret dmg dealer the reward should be much higher than what we have right now

Also dungeons aren't that hard and besides for deep dungeon style RDM is still a better pick

The problem of just giving us (and the same logic applies to SAM too) enough personal damage to trump other classes personal damage plus offensive utility (let's call it tDPS short for total DPS) is not dungeons because those are already unbalanced by default and are quite frankly super easy with any standard group, the problem happens in low skill raids, right now the strongest class in the game in terms of tDPS is probably NIN, however a super skilled NIN in a low skill party (read a party that can do the mechanics but by playing ridiculously safe and at a giant dps cost) probably has way less impact than a skilled SAM due to the rest of the party profitting much less from TA, this is why selfish dps is probably impossible to balance as the level of dps you'll have to give to them to be viable in high end groups, will mean they can basically carry the dps of bad groups.

Magic vulnerabity is IMO a much better idea than just potency increase because our tDPS will somewhat depend on our group capacity to capitalize on the debuff.

I have a suggestion that will fix all of the problems. Why not make all raid utility that isn't tank healer and brd/mch
only affect yourself?

Ex. TA only affecting ninja, Devotion only for summoner, disembowel only for dragoon. This way most dps roles are "selfish" and then parties can take whoever they want.

The buffs are just for you like ley lines is for blm. Your DPS is yours and you don't rely on certain classes.