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This is how I feel as well when playing BLM. It's extremely underwhelming, heck THM is underwhelming, BLM is useless if it was not for gear restrictions.
As mentioned before, going BLM in my mind should allow for some really destructive powers otherwise unobtainable but instead you get buffs and debuffs that have close to no usefullness...
I seriously hope they did this because they are saving the sweet stuff for later patches.
BLM is fine. Freeze is godly on garuda hardmode.
I don't know why Burst was completely dropped. It sort of rounded out the high level elements, but now it's just Flare and Freeze. I liked 1.0's Freeze better because it had high damage and more importantly a hate reduction effect. It was a nice follow up after high spike damage. Burst was tough to use but it made Convert useful since you needed as little health as possible. The high level BLM spells are just kinda wierd now.
I'm only level 46 so I can't really speak for endgame content, but I hope at some point these spells become more useful because as of right now I haven't been able to find any use at all for them when playing through content.
Black Mage really adds nothing to the THM class. If you look at other classes, like say Warrior, the Marauder class acts as a base with a little bit of damage and some tankyness and the Warrior job adds on the enmitty / sustain / and extra tankyness to take the base class of Marauder and shift the class into a tank direction.
All of the other classes / Job combinations in the game work this way. Even Conjurer has a good bit of damage, heals, and CC with White Mage taking the healing part of the class and adding to that.
Black mage is the only one that seems really out of place. THM seems to have everything it needs in it's class while the job of Black Mage adds very little. Even the skills you do get from Black Mage seem very random and lack a focus. The skills gained from other class's job extensions all focus on something from the base class and enhance it (conjures healing, marauder's hp and enmitty, arcanist's pet healing, ect.) the Black Mage job doesn't focus on anything from the THM class. It seems like a bunch of random things thrown together.
Also because of the way THM is set up (lots of damage in the base class with little else) the class is pretty much locked into a heavy DD field. No matter what job THM turns into, it will still always have Fire 1-2-3, Umbral/Astral 1-2-3, Thundercloud, and Firestarter.
IMO, it would have been a better idea to move one (or two) of THM's big DD passives into Black Mage. Firestarter for example would have been a good trait to have as a Black Mage only (after casting fire there is a 40% chance of your next fireIII spell costing no mana, and having no cast time). That would have moved a lot of the classes damage to Black Mage and identified Black Mage as THM's heavy magic damage job branch, leaving the THM class with different ways to branch off.
Alternatively moving the 3rd stack of umbral / astral to Black Mage would work as well, or even giving Black Mage access to a 4th stack.
As it stands currently Black Mage adds nothing to THM that THM can't do on it's own. Aside from the stat increase and job specific gear there isn't much reason to roll as a Black Mage over a THM in most cases.
The black mage is the ICON of FF and i hate being one our skills are useless, I can't agree more with what's been said here we should have meteor and quake, instead of damage reduction spells that are crappy and short lasting, freeze is absolutely useless it takes a lifetime to cast for 20 damage... erm no...
Absolutely disgusted with BLM and Square, they really need to sort these skills out!!!
I agree 1000%... the higher I get, the more I realize wow there is absolutely no black mage or even mage to this class... the game is so beautiful looking, so amazing looking, there are soo many players everywhere which I absolutely love... but man I see the black mage spells, and I see all these people talking about it... and its just fire ice fire ice... which is fine there is alot of "few buttons u press alot" but this is literally same 3 buttons thru the entire game and it doesn't look like it will change at 50... I am really upset I chose this and wasted my time, I think I will change to archer and go into bard... it just seems like their wasn't alot of thought put into at the end / level 50 skills/ pvp / future content... it seems like they spent 90% of their time making the 1-30 leveling so amazing and nice and story so beautiful, that the main basics of the game are lost.
Well the package as a whole works fine. At 50 you'll be managing firestarter procs, thundercloud procs, sleeping mobs, dodgeing attacks, quick casting spells, managing umbral / astral 3, etc. It's the fact that THM does all of this on it's own without the need of BLM. All BLM adds to THM are a few semi-useless buffs, Another bind (long casting time bind), and a semi-useless aoe fire spell.
Other jobs get abilities that add onto what that class already has, BLM on the other hand gets:
Convert: Near useless unless you mess up your rotation and end up with not enough mp to cast BlizIII. Could be used after a Flare but with a 3 minute cooldown on a class that already restores it's own mana incredibly fast makes its near useless.
Freeze: Another situational spell. Low damage, high casting time, and binds. Kind of moot when we already have an aoe sleep spell. Very situational.
Apocastasis: No, just no.
Manawall: Again mostly useless as you won't be getting hit much anyway. Seems like a pvp skill but why give it to BLM? Why not just put it on THM and give BLM something more damage dealing focused?
Flare: A complete letdown. Costs all your mana and does barely more damage than a Fire III. It is aoe but for costing all your mana it just isn't worth it. It could make a good combo with Convert if Convert didn't have a ludicrously long cooldown.
My concern for the job is when they eventually add a second job for THM, that BLM will be completely useless. As it stands now there's very little reason to even use BLM so when a new job is added to the THM class, it's very likely that it will simply replace BLM because the BLM only spells are so weak.
I also agree that this is a problem, while THM has a solid set of skills (minus the lvl50 one and manaward), BLM dosn't add anything of value to it which makes me think they just rushed it, i really hope they can look into this and overhaul some of spells, to start with they could merge the 2 ward spells into one and make them last more and scale on INT. Move apocalipsis to WHM or just remove it and gives us a dps CD, being able to cast while moving for a few seconds would be great, or how about this (Manaflow: for the next 15 seconds spells cost no mana and deal 10% more damage)
I wonder if we're all playing the same class.
At 50, BLM is an unholy beast. A BLM50 is a well-oiled wrecking machine of burny evil and punishment, with an obscene and highly inappropriate level of survivability. THM isn't even fit to hide under its ebony mantle. Let's break it down:
Brutalize a boss? Check
Burn adds? Check
Take hits from the adds? Check
Bathe in an otherwise unavoidable AOE? Check
Crowd control? Check
Kite a boss from 10% to win when all the party has choked? Check
Look awesome doing it? Oh heck yes, Check
BLM beats the pants off of THM every day. What can a THM do that a BLM can't, raise? Raise is for healers, children, and peasants - a DPS is for dealing death. You want more than 2 spells and a drool-worthy rotation? That's for the BRD and SMN, a BLM cares not for such things. The BLM finds something disagreeable and then melts it. And when it is done crying for daddy to save it, the BLM blinks an eye to full mana and then melts it some more. Then the BLM converts and melts the cinders. Then the BLM drives to its house and kicks its dog.
Do not despair of the BLM, and do not be tempted by the fleshly contrivances of the THM. A BLM needs no other tools. A BLM is already death.