Black Mage What Need to be Changed and Improved [Discussion & Feedback]

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Originally Posted by Chrysania

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BLM will not be able to do much of anything IF CC IS NERFED TO WHERE IT SHOULD BE IN PVP, because the class design made BLM so heavily dependent on being able to hold still for pretty much ever.

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Your argument about CC being nerfed "to where it should be" making Blm useless, then CC wouldn't be nerfed to where it should be. That would mean CC is too weak to allow the BLM(or other classes with CC)to provide support not just for its own set of abilities but also in support of the group.

I am leveling BLM now and almost finished it. And guess what - I did not equip BLM crystal at all during that. Why?

Yes, why? There are no actually useful spells until maybe Flare which is at 50. Yes, Manawall is a decent one but really - can do without it. But what gets worse - I lose ability to cross-class Conjurer. WTF? Never thought the job is making you worse than your parent class. So I lose ability to Raise, Protect, Stoneskin... Yes, those are not my primary duties but they are so useful!

Compared to WHM every single skill that WHM gets is "Oh shit how I like that" - BLM skills are like "WTF is that?"

Getting to exact points.
1. Convert. It has a pretty limited use but it is generally fine. Can live with that one but can liv ejust fine without.
2. Freeze. It is so bad! It would have use if it had something from below:
- High damage. It is typical for a vortex-like spells to deal very high damage if the enemy stays within area. It would definitely have it's use in PvE for that purpose.
- Debuff increasing incoming damage. Would also be great. 15% would be fine.
- Much less cast time
- Replacing bind with heavy snare that does not break on damage.
3. Apocatastasis. It has such a limited use! Maybe a raid boss and protecting a tank... But that really is relevant to a small portion of people that actually raid AND it is an off-profile spell making BLM's hard life even harder forcing to monitor boss casts in addition to mana management and positioning. Make it a THM spell (and cross class it to healers) and give us something about destruction. Say some burst or... just something.
4. Manawall is a very useful spell. I can't argue it has many uses. The only spell which has unarguebly its place in BLM's inventory.
5. Flare. While the idea of the spell is ok, implementation fails. This one should be more straight about mana requirements. Also it should definitely have a much bigger radius!

And about radius. Again I am comparing BLM to WHM. Holy (while WHM can't spam it all the way) has such an enormous radius! Blizzard II is still ok but Fire II and Flare have such a small radius that I rarely manage to hit even 2 targets with them (and Cure III btw but that's a different story). When tank pulls a pack I expect all my AOE nukes hit all the pack but that is not the matter. Please increase AOE radius in PvE for Fire II and Flare!!

I have BLM at 50 and I enjoy playing it. However I 100% agree that Freeze and Flare are useless and I have no idea how they were green lighted in the current state.

As a Level 50 BM with Relic (to qualify that I've thought about Black Mage for a long time): Black Mage is fun.

1. Convert is very useful. Double Flare combo. Get yourself out of jail card. Extra burn damage on raging cycle. Get yourself killed on HM Titan you're not paying attention during stomps D:
2. Freeze - Ok - this one is bad: I don't have this on my bar.
3. Apocatastasis - I have saved parties from wipes more times then I know with this. Tank has no gear? Apocatastasis during hard mobs. Healer falls asleep or goes into full DPS mode for the lulz? Apocatastasis so he takes less damage while healer gets their head back into cure mode. Healer not surviving during some aoe? Apocatastasis and see what happens.
4. I can tank with Manawall (as long as it's on CD). Nuff said.
5. Flare: best AOE attack. Best burst damage. If mobs aren't close enough, that's tank's fault D:

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Flare are useless

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No it's not

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Originally Posted by Pacifyer

I am leveling BLM now and almost finished it. And guess what - I did not equip BLM crystal at all during that. Why?

Yes, why? There are no actually useful spells until maybe Flare which is at 50. Yes, Manawall is a decent one but really - can do without it. But what gets worse - I lose ability to cross-class Conjurer. WTF? Never thought the job is making you worse than your parent class. So I lose ability to Raise, Protect, Stoneskin... Yes, those are not my primary duties but they are so useful!

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Equipping your job crystal gives you a pretty decent stat boost.
Having Protect or Stoneskin in a party is really not necessary because your healer has either superior versions(WHM) or the same as you(SCH) and since you can't combat rez Raise also has a really limited use.
Jobs are intended for party play while classes are for exploring/playing alone, so I would advise you to equip your job crystal at least while in a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by EzriNuru

I have BLM at 50 and I enjoy playing it. However I 100% agree that Freeze and Flare are useless and I have no idea how they were green lighted in the current state.

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seriously??????????????? really????

because critting a crowd of enemies for 1400-2100+dmg each or outright kill plumes in garuda spawn is so useless. I can cast 3 1400-2100 flares in a row into a crowd. thats so USELESS aint it.

You guys need to wake up. Flare can do some nice damage on crit yeah, and so what ? BLM is already the lowest crit rate job. You cannot spam Flare. You guys need to realize something.

Think BLM is the best AoE job ? It's not.
With my full dl with relic+1 my non-crit flare (with no buff) average 1150. I can't spam it, it wouldn't worth it, I use Firaga, Fira, Fira, Fira, Flare, Transpose, Firaga, Fira, Fira, Flare, Transpose, etc... My Fira does average 450 aoe. My flare average 1150. Both with Astral Fire III up, because without it, damages are awful.

Now guess what ? The best AoE job is WHM. With same gear than my BLM, the WHM, with all stat points into Mind, can aoe with Holy for 700 average damage. And they can spam it because it does not consume all their MP.
As BLM with no Astral Fire up, my flare average damage is ~600. And I spent all my points into Int.

Something is clearly wrong.

After reading this entire thread, I just wanna say that if you are casting flare when you have over 350 mp, you are doing it all wrong.

Flare useless?

Casting 2x Flare with Raging Strike in CM runs, those adds survives only if they are Gods!! ¬¬

We need Focus! As an ability I mean. Longer cast time for double damage.

I just wand a better audible queue for firestarter and thunderproc

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Originally Posted by HoroBoro

3. Apocatastasis - I have saved parties from wipes more times then I know with this. Tank has no gear? Apocatastasis during hard mobs. Healer falls asleep or goes into full DPS mode for the lulz? Apocatastasis so he takes less damage while healer gets their head back into cure mode. Healer not surviving during some aoe? Apocatastasis and see what happens.

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Uh, what? It's only applicable for fire, ice, and lightning attacks, not general damage. If you think you're saving anyone from Mountain Buster by throwing that on them, you're fooling yourself.

I have to agree with this thread. For a class that talks about nothing but destruction, it has a lack there of.

Convert, manawall and flare are all awesome, the others are completely pointless and off my bar.

I will say doing Swiftcast--->Flare--->Convert--->Flare---> Transpose---> Blizzard III if quite fun and very destructive :D

I won't be condescending but I am surprised at the low level of skill or lack of knowledge around this class. This job is not just about damage but control. If you are not using all your spells including Freeze, Lethargy, Virus (in the absence of SMN) etc., then you are not playing it to its potential nor correctly. Much like those complaining about bard who is a DD support class; BLM is a DD control class.

I wanted to add that we should aim to learn and play classes as designed versus trying to change them to what we want. You'll enjoy the game more.

Flare is fine the way it is. For those of you who say it's useless, here's a tip: use it at the end of your fire rotation. So, Fire spam until you don't have enough mp for fire then Swiftcast > Flare > Convert/Transpose(Skip to Blizzard if using transpose) > Fire/Firestarter > Blizzard 3 > Thunder 3 > repeat. Only use flare with swiftcast, it's not worth it otherwise.

But yeah, freeze. It is useless. Needs reworked. It should at least give umbral Ice III when used, and should also deal more damage, or have another special property.
Maybe it could restore a percentage of MP based on how many mobs are hit, and reset the astral/umbral time. Something like 20-25% mp per mob would be nice. Then it would be useful for killing groups of enemies at least. Spam fire II > no mp > Freeze > repeat. Just an Idea.

Apocatastasis, pretty pointless as of now. I can't really see it being used in the future either. IMO it doesn't fit with the BLM theme and should be changed to Burst or something.

Manawall/Convert, those are awesome, so no need to change them really.

Surecast also needs reworked imo, I know it's not a blm ability, but still, it's useless.. I can't see this skill being useful even for soloing, and Blms are not tanks, so this ability makes little sense. Like someone said above, I think it should be changed to a "focus" type ability from the older FF games. Double damage/double cast time, would be great with swiftcast.

I would like to see firerstarter proc be as we cast it or not be on the gcd

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Originally Posted by Ifervan

I won't be condescending but I am surprised at the low level of skill or lack of knowledge around this class. This job is not just about damage but control. If you are not using all your spells including Freeze, Lethargy, Virus (in the absence of SMN) etc., then you are not playing it to its potential nor correctly. Much like those complaining about bard who is a DD support class; BLM is a DD control class.

I wanted to add that we should aim to learn and play classes as designed versus trying to change them to what we want. You'll enjoy the game more.

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lol

I won't be condescending but you are all bad.


Please tell me when you find freeze to be useful. It seems like every mob which resists sleep resists freeze too. At BEST it's a failsafe when sleep fails and the crazy part is it's much more expensive and a much longer cast. That means if sleep gets resisted you can either recast the dirt cheap AOE target-following 1.5 sec sleep or waste swiftcast on freeze and ruin astral fire III. Better hope you have a firestarter proc to resume fire spamming afterwards.

I don't know if you've played other Final Fantasy games or not but black mages have NEVER been utility/control units. I picked BLM in this because I wanted to nuke, not throw limited resist buffs on tanks or borrow crappy debuffs from other classes. If they wanted to for some strange reason turn BLM into a red mage in this they should have the decency to change the class description.

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Originally Posted by NeoAmon

Hello,


2- Freeze @ lvl 35:

"Covers a designated area in ice, dealing ice damage with a potency of 20 and binding enemies that enter."

Possibly the very worst spell/skill in the entire game with no competition what so ever. Long cast time that does almost no damage and the bind debuff does not last more than a very short few seconds, what worse is the bind effect breaks as soon as the target is hit by anything. This spell does not have an actual good use in the game to the point many BLMs don't even have it on their bar. I tried to think of any good use, even in Garuda HM but why would I even use it when I can Flare the feathers as they spawn to no health.

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tri-disaster would like to have a word with you

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Originally Posted by SkyfangRauss

tri-disaster would like to have a word with you

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Casting tri-disaster doesn't remove your primary damage buff (astral fire).

It also does 1.5x the damage, takes less time to cast and has a longer bind. Lol, freeze, lol.

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Originally Posted by jcw005

Uh, what? It's only applicable for fire, ice, and lightning attacks, not general damage. If you think you're saving anyone from Mountain Buster by throwing that on them, you're fooling yourself.

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No - I save under-geared tanks during dungeon runs. I save healers who can't move when tank fails interrupt on Ifrit because they're busy healing. I save healer when Tanks die. I save people on Wanderer's during slime fight. I save people who happen to take void thunder when they're not suppose to. I save people who can't dodge void fira for some reason.

I save virus for mountain buster.

I'll save even more people when Shiva and Ramuh comes out.

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Originally Posted by Ifervan

I won't be condescending but I am surprised at the low level of skill or lack of knowledge around this class. This job is not just about damage but control. If you are not using all your spells including Freeze, Lethargy, Virus (in the absence of SMN) etc., then you are not playing it to its potential nor correctly. Much like those complaining about bard who is a DD support class; BLM is a DD control class.

I wanted to add that we should aim to learn and play classes as designed versus trying to change them to what we want. You'll enjoy the game more.

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Everything you just mentioned, aside from virus, gets completely resisted in binding coil.

Maybe you're onto something. Perhaps, ... just perhaps. Our "other" class will be Red Mage, then some of those spells might make sense.

Freeze is useful on Garuda if you are not killing the plumes. But if you have a SMN you won't be on bind duty.

Flare is best used when you're under 700 MP, right before Converting. Or if it will finish off a mob group use it then Transpose while running to the next group.

Manawall is awesome. My favourite usage is right before Repel in AK. You don't even get knocked back. Can only use it once in that fight due to the recast however.

Apocatastasis is a waste of an ability. Much like Aerial Manipulation (THM I know) yet these are meant to be two of our better abilities based on when you get them.

I lol at people trying to teach us how to use flare yet using it incorrectly... Most of us probably know how to use it correctly and still find it underwhelming. Why don't we have some high cooldown NUKE spell ?

And no one but me is shocked by the fact WHM have a better AoE dps than BLM ?

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Apocatastasis is a waste of an ability. Much like Aerial Manipulation (THM I know) yet these are meant to be two of our better abilities based on when you get them.

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It's so true sadly ... the skill itself is so useless that most BLM i know don't even have it in the skill bar which I don't really mind because I know he isn't helpful at all in most situations. :confused: Even more questionable is the fact that the BLM can only cast the skill on a party member except him/herself ... And why is there no area of effect for this buff like with the skill "Mantra" of the MNK it would make the skill itself a little bit better. Please Square Enix swap that no use at all skill with something useful for the BLM like for example i dont know ... maybe a "Silence" ;) As in other versions of FF the BLM didn't only had attack spells he had some crowd control / debuff spells too. There is nothing wrong to adjust something really useless with something that comes in handy :o

So taking out the crappy spells, what would the ideal rotation be?

I really wish they would give BLM a thunder spell...they got rid of burst for some reason.

Thank you for your continued feedback on the usefulness of each ability. As you can imagine, we'll continue to make class and job adjustments on a patch by patch basis as necessary. However, at this point, we can't comment just yet on whether or not we'll make adjustments to abilities like Freeze or Apocatastasis for the upcoming PvP system as its not yet implemented.

I like the idea of Aetherial Manipulation a lot and I use it whenever possible (such as grouping up for WHM aoe heals), but the problem is it is not an effective escape in PvE because it doesn't seem to update your position until you reach the end. The further you 'blink' the longer the game thinks you're not moving. For example if you use it on Titan HM in a landslide you will get hit virtually every time to aoe effects whereas never if you just run, the move should really not have the powerglide because your character is not actually moving as far as the game is concerned, I would much prefer it to instantly teleport you to the targeted party member.

need more threat drop, quelling not enough

One odd thing about BLM is that we have no real innate offensive CDs. Raging+Quelling are awesome but from archer, arcanist skills are purely defensive, swiftcast is useful but not really in terms of a timer aside from aoe double flare with convert due to GCDs. Every single BLM CD is defensive and all major offensive tools are RNG based.

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Originally Posted by Kyp

need more threat drop, quelling not enough

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I have to agree with this. The more i improve my gear it becomes extremely hard to play with tanks who are still gearing up. i either have to hold back big time (sometimes that doesnt even help) or do things that will allow the tanks to gain enough aggro to probably end a boss fight. I tell other dps to focus on the boss as i solo adds in my wp and ak runs when i am with a tank who does not have their relic. few relic tanks can even hold aggro even after quelling strikes if i end up with a crit spree and once again i have to resort on doing anything to buy tanks time. Heck some tanks on my server refuse to let me join their runs because its such a pain and i can only imagine it being worst for black mages who have it worse than me. Either lower the cd on quelling strikes or give us an ability that can lower our threat somewhat that can go hand in hand with archers quelling strikes.

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

Thank you for your continued feedback on the usefulness of each ability. As you can imagine, we'll continue to make class and job adjustments on a patch by patch basis as necessary. However, at this point, we can't comment just yet on whether or not we'll make adjustments to abilities like Freeze or Apocatastasis for the upcoming PvP system as its not yet implemented.

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Dear Hvinire, why forum community workers like you fully ignore threads about monk's skills and its disbalanse. What threads?
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ff-Petition%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Need-rebalance

Maybe community team specialy ignore players thoughts about monk? What else should I think about this silence?

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Originally Posted by Onyxys

Dear Hvinire, why forum community workers like you fully ignore threads about monk's skills and its disbalanse. What threads?
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ff-Petition%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Need-rebalance

Maybe community team specialy ignore players thoughts about monk? What else should I think about this silence?

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You should think monks are working as intended?
Also, there has never been a CM post in dps role forum. I'm not sure if any of the role forums has had a response.
This is standard practice. Those forums are not for feedback, but to discuss the class with other players.
They are read by the CM's but they are not replied to. Not sure if this is policy, but any other MMO I've played it usually is.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

You should think monks are working as intended?
Also, there has never been a CM post in dps role forum. I'm not sure if any of the role forums has had a response.
This is standard practice. Those forums are not for feedback, but to discuss the class with other players.
They are read by the CM's but they are not replied to. Not sure if this is policy, but any other MMO I've played it usually is.

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No matter where thread is. Second-link-thread has 390 replies from players- this meens, that problems of monk's balanse and monk's skills realy worry players but NO ANY COMMENT from community team. Now look in this thread- just 80 replies and community worker is here. Why it is so? Ignoring of monk's thread I see. It is true

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Originally Posted by Onyxys

No matter where thread is. Second-link-thread has 390 replies from players- this meens, that problems of monk's balanse and monk's skills realy worry players but NO ANY COMMENT from community team. Now look in this thread- just 80 replies and community worker is here. Why it is so? Ignoring of monk's thread I see. It is true

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390 replies tells me it does not really worry players. 390 replies of which there are probably quite a few duplicates. That is a very very small % of monk players.

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Originally Posted by Onyxys

Maybe community team specialy ignore players thoughts about monk? What else should I think about this silence?

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Yes they hate your class perhaps .
In all seriousness, would u feel better if a mod posts saying " thanks for your continued feedback..... we cant comment yet if we're going to make any adjustments" in one of the monk threads ?

Personally using Astral Fire III, Raging Strikes, Swiftcast, Flare > transpose + Convert (brings mp back to full after casting Thunder II/III and starting Fire III to continue rotation) Is fine by me. I love seeing myself hitting 1800-1900 damage on enemies, especially when i can nearly one-shot Garuda's adds. I see nothing wrong with Flare other than the inconvenience of using it properly.

As for Freeze, i would love a potent aoe bind or stun. A move i would love to see is an aoe around the player that simply pushes mobs back 2-3 feet and stuns them for a few seconds, or a single-target enmity reducer. Freeze itself is just bad.

Apoctostatis i think should be a less powerful version of manawall/manaward to place on a party member, or atleast make the original buff last the usual 30 minutes.

Although a magic-defence reducing spell would be awesome :P

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Originally Posted by Onyxys

No matter where thread is. Second-link-thread has 390 replies from players- this meens, that problem of monk's balanse and monk's skills realy worry players but NO ANY COMMENT from community team. Now look in this thread- just 80 replies and community worker is here. Why it is so? Ignoring of monk's thread I see. It is true

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How many of those replies are people defending monks? The reply count isn't the same as how many people agree with it.
I posted in those too, but I don't agree that monks are weak.
I mean, I could easily look at "Likes" instead. This OP has 26. The monk threads has 6 and 4 respectively. That's hardly convincing.