BLM and SMN BUFFs info is coming out!! PATCH 2.3 Preliminary

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Originally Posted by 65shion

To everyone saying BLM is the hardest to master. Let me laugh.
Im sure you have 251 piety and time mana ticks accordingly to make UI to AF with Fire III manaless and be full mp. Yes, im sure, because out of 100 BLM, maybe 1 does it but who knows, maybe you guys are the exception :) Also, we are talking endgame here, 90 doesn't matter one bit.

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Wait, so you're laughing at the notion that BLM is even hard to play but then claim that you only see 1 out of 100 blms doing it right?

lol @ all the haters coming into the blm/smn thread to hate. Can't wait to out dps our static mnk in T8 while i aetherially manipulate all over his face. mmmmm taste that blm flavor.

Imo the proposed buffs (and def cd nerf) sound about perfect, Manawall should perhaps have been nerfed to 30s, rather than 20s, but that's my only nit-pick.

I'd glad they did not simply make BLM easier to move and maintain DPS.

Keeping skill level and knowledge of a battle highly important.

Blm is not "hard"
Just your rant about blm getting buff, mellee should get one, again why?
Monk and Dragoon and obviously Bard have uptime vs spell speed so very few great blm's will do more single target damage.
True perhaps this buff calculations will have to be made as blm may be closer damage wise
I would even wager you have not played blm that much.
This thread was about blm buff not about whiny mellee who want a buff because they cannot optimize their rotations

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Originally Posted by 65shion

Just absurd. The easiest class to play and now probably the one dealing most dps with requiem except, in some fights, monk. 108 mnk here with blm, brd and smn 108 aswell in my static, so i know what im talking about

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If your a Monk and your statics BLM is on par with you currently for T8 etc, your playing your Monk very poorly.

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Originally Posted by 65shion

As blms, they scale better than other classes with gear.

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What a total load of garbage, Monks scale far better with gear than BLM.

A Monk upgrading from an i95 - i110 weapon has a far greater dps gain than a BLM upgrading their weapon.

It is no surprise that the melee come crying in this thread. I for one am very glad that with these buffs. I went SMN for a while because it was more DPS in all content but Turn 4 of the 1st coil of Bahamuth. I also think SMN is a lot easier to get high DPS. I'm truly sorry, but those who say that BLM is probably the easiest class, don't know what they are talking about. Literally 1 mistake in your rotation as a BLM can cost you greatly. You have no room for error. This is less so on other classes. I have noticed that as a BLM when you fuck up, there is no real way to get your DPS back up unless the RNG Gods are upon you. Finally, I think SE have a better notion of the class than some melee in this thread. BLM will by no means be King, so stop crying.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

If your a Monk and your statics BLM is on par with you currently for T8 etc, your playing your Monk very poorly.



What a total load of garbage, Monks scale far better with gear than BLM.

A Monk upgrading from an i95 - i110 weapon has a far greater dps gain than a BLM upgrading their weapon.

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I said in some fights. As MNK i do more dps on t6-7-8-9 (pre heavenfall), even with x2 requiem. Also im talking about what will happen with this 36 potency buff, not atm.Please read.

I don't see what load of garbage u mean there. Maths are maths, and math says any class have 80% dmg, hence they scale better. Also, I said MNK along with BLM scale better than other classes in my post, maybe you wanted to be the smartass type quoting bits when i've been discussing this in quite a few posts. Double clap for you, sir/miss.

Just wanted to give my opinion and since many variables around the different people talking here are present (mostly regarding endgame), this won't go anywhere.

You should do more DPS on pretty much every single encounter but T4 as a monk. where do you get this 80% damage from? An increase of 20 potency on 4 attacks is by no means an 80% increase of damage. Or do you mean something else?

To all the blms who are upset about the potency only change - it's exactly what I asked for and I love it. Good job SE you got it 1000.15% right if blms got a mobility change, it would of made little difference to the blms who currently do coils and play it well. The problem with blm wasn't moving and casting (thats a skill issue) it was our numbers couldnt keep up, period. I could post a perfect parse on t8 and still barely get over 430, high end monks get 470-500 and high end dragoons get 450-480, also on fights like turn 9 the gap is smaller melees get hurt by mobility too (flanking etc) they make up for this by the ability to play their jobs.

I've told this to many blms and some have listened, others have denied it... if you want to do better damage then practice, practice, practice... queue up for titan ex and practice casting while moving, you know those double plumes? you can cast a blizzard 3 in between those, land it and still manage to dodge both sets, make it a point to be mobile and cast.

The only thing mobility changes would have done was decrease the gap between poor blm players and good blm players, and make okay blms players equal to good blms players... I'm very happy they decided to reward good play.

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Originally Posted by ViviAnimus

You should do more DPS on pretty much every single encounter but T4 as a monk. where do you get this 80% damage from? An increase of 20 potency on 4 attacks is by no means an 80% increase of damage. Or do you mean something else?

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80% from Astral Fire III. Fire III potency 220>240 +80% 396 -> 432.

Anyways im off, just wanted to point out my opinion based on my set mate BLM in full bis and his dps. Never was much of a forum poster hehe.

I agree very much with you, Xisin. But how you parse 430 DPS on a BLM is just above me. I am an iLVL 105 BLM with ilvl 110 weapon. I get one requiem (no battevoice) and parse around 380. I can do more than 300DPS on Titan EX but I fail to see how someone gets more than 400 unless there are some extraordinary circumstances. I do play with a controller, but this does not hinder me (macro AE), nothing different for movement and nothing different when it comes to skill usage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POy_KGENS08&hd=1
This is from a month ago and I have gotten better. But if you have time, I would like to hear a critique as to what I am doing wrong.

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Originally Posted by Xisin

I could post a perfect parse on t8 and still barely get over 430, high end monks get 470-500 and high end dragoons get 450-480

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And this is why I said the changes are unbalanced. You do 430 now and by next week, you will do 460-470. "On par" with other jobs and yet you do 4000 dps when there is trash mobs involved. So on the one hand, we have Blm's as AoE king and on the other hand, you are now "on par" with single target damage of Drg, mnk and smn.

Insane.

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Originally Posted by Truedragon

And this is why I said the changes are unbalanced. You do 430 now and by next week, you will do 460-470. "On par" with other jobs and yet you do 4000 dps when there is trash mobs involved. So on the one hand, we have Blm's as AoE king and on the other hand, you are now "on par" with single target damage of Drg, mnk and smn.

Insane.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUeeIjyI7QQ

I'm not an expert on the BLM even though it is my secondary class and I main on SMN. I still have yet to discern all of the secrets of the BLM job. However, I do think that even with this change BLM will not be on par with SMN, MNK, DRG in ST dmg but I can definitely tell that the ST dmg buff was much needed. Granted there are already people who play BLM and have learned to play their role the max. I still do not think that BLM will ever be on par with ST dmg jobs but this will help the job immensely. As for SMN, I agree with others before me. The changes to the egis will not warrant the use of ifrit egi over garuda egi. Furthermore, I still can't wrap my mind around this concept of making garuda egi atk instant. Can someone tell me what the purpose of that was?

It's funny. I foresaw the Manawall duration nerf a while back. I'm most surprised it happened so soon, hah.

It's kinda dumb, but I'm most excited for the Apocatastasis buff more than anything.

The potency buffs didn't address any of the main issues that conflict BLM at this current moment, which is a real shame.

I'm a bit indifferent to the changes, but at least all BLMs will be doing more free damage now.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

Apocatastasis was useless, now it can actually do something, minor, but still something.

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20% magical DR on an ally isn't "minor". That's on par with most tank CDs. It just has the longer CD to account for the fact that you can give it to anyone, not just a tank.

As to people wondering about the DPS increase, here's some math.

There's a simple equation you can use to determine BLM pot/GCD (explanation here; if I got any of the numbers/casts phase wrong, feel free to correct me). Currently (2.1), BLM has...

(275 + .25 * 340) + (220 * .5 * .8333) + ((150 + 70 * .4) * 1.8 * 6) + (220 * .5 * .8333) = 2465.73 potency over 9 "GCDs" = 273.97 magic potency per GCD

With the potency increases, BLM has...

(275 + .25 * 340) + (240 * .5 * .8333) + ((170 + 70 * .4) * 1.8 * 6) + (240 * .5 * .8333) = 2698.39 potency over 9 "GCDs" = 299.82 magic potency per GCD

This means that BLM will see about a 9.4% (299.82 / 273.97 - 1) increase in total damage, which might as well just be a 10% increase.

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Originally Posted by DonnieD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUeeIjyI7QQ

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this one fits you more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkTb9GP9lVI

Dont know if its a typo or not, but the cast timer for Aerial slash is already 1 sec. The RECAST timer is 3 seconds. So does that mean garuda will attack 3 times faster?

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Originally Posted by Truedragon

And this is why I said the changes are unbalanced. You do 430 now and by next week, you will do 460-470. "On par" with other jobs and yet you do 4000 dps when there is trash mobs involved. So on the one hand, we have Blm's as AoE king and on the other hand, you are now "on par" with single target damage of Drg, mnk and smn.

Insane.

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I'm ashamed somebody as ignorant as you is in my Free Company.

These changes are just a big cop out. SE needs to go back the drawing board and focus more on gameplay rather than graphical content. Yoshi P even said a while back that they were focusing too much on graphics and yet here they are doing it again. Keep this up and it will be 1.0 all over again. There are several jobs with gameplay issues since beta and all that was done was put a bandaid on it.

Focus more on gameplay, find out what is fun, and make it so.

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Originally Posted by Elemia

I'm ashamed somebody as ignorant as you is in my Free Company.

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Oh pray do enlighten us with your godly knowledge and skills then.
430*1.09 is not 469 dps?

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Originally Posted by Kitru

I'm pretty sure Astral Fire is a 25% increase per stack, which would put AF3 at 75%.

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AF1 is 40%, AF2 60%, and AF3 80%.

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Originally Posted by 65shion

Get ur shit together SE and give melee some love.

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I don't often say this, but

lol

The idea behind these changes were to raise the ceiling (the problem was the ceiling was not high enough for blms, a certain threshold was impossible to hit) and not raise the floor (more help to those that struggle with blm). Potency changes do just that. Potency changes help out those on the low end and those at the high end. movement changes would only help out the low end, and trust me on this monk literally takes a dump on anything that blm does in this game (except brayflox and turn 4 but really who cares about this content even as a blm i hate brayflox now), and thanks to disembowel a pt will almost always take a competent drg (keyword competent) over a competent blm in 2.2 due to how useful bards are. (in 2.2 drgs did higher single target, good aoe (not blm like but good aoe) and really good burst.

on T8 vivi, bard leads battlevoice req, then blm starts Raging strikes (yes first) Thunder 2 (having RS on T2 is ideal since its potency) F3, fire chain, chase flare as hard as possible you should get RS with your flare. (By chase i mean dont use it until you normally would i.e 400ish mp or so.) it's more important for flare to have RS than T2 so it your spell speed doesnt allow it, skip applying ragingstrikes for the T2 and apply it after fire 3, if you are lucky a thundercloud will hit and put the dot potency up (but not for long since you re apply at the end anyway unless you literally proc thundercloud on an empty tank.) I'm not getting into the basic rotation because I don't do anything different than most blms here.

use an x pot of int and food at the start and chase int pot cds, from here on don't use an int pot unless you get a proc and use it, cause omg the pot lock animation is strong. Next bard song will be paeon probably so plan accordingly. make sure to single flare every dread convert or not and double flare with convert up, don't triple flare it wastes time and damage unless you have a million targets to hit. you will probably have a foe req up for most dreads, unless ballad is up by you can take advantage of ballad anyway since it allows for flare to be cast without interrupting your rotation (ballad gives 79 mp... YES!)

I hit a dread tower once and an explosion tower once for the pt and have to move for ballistic missiles. So I do some mechanics but not a lot of them. I'm i110 with an i115 wep


The only thing a controller would hurt you on is fast reaction on abilities you normally wouldn't use as it requires more input and time than a keyboard, but it shouldn't hurt you on normal rotation/everyday business. I use a naga mouse and will never look back (I used to love my controller also until i tried this thing out, it is sick.. trust me. Allows you to cast every spell you have with just two thumbs inputs... amazing.)

The only buff BLM would need is Surecast lasting like 15 seconds and you being able to move while casting without interrupting the spell cast if under Surecast.
Also Surecast should not end after only one spell is cast as it is today.

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Originally Posted by atomicdeath

Dont know if its a typo or not, but the cast timer for Aerial slash is already 1 sec. The RECAST timer is 3 seconds. So does that mean garuda will attack 3 times faster?

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You are mixing up ability names.

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

You are mixing up ability names.

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XD yep.

In that case, these changes are worthless.

My take on the changes: almost exactly 90% of BLM damage (calculated by pencil and paper over multiple tests and definitely not a parser *cough*) comes from Fire + Fire III + Blizzard + Blizzard III, the rest being Flare and Thunder spells. So this buff should be nearly a 10~% buff as the numbers say to overall damage. Now, from my experience playing in maxed out gear and playing with nearly maxed out geared other DPS, this puts us exactly where we should be: a bit above BRD, near SMN/DRG (before counting the buff it gives BRD), and below MNK, rather than closer to BRD.

In terms of second coil, from my experience, BLM will do slightly worse (within a few percentage rather than 10%+) than SMN in T6, T7, and T9 but the gap will be much smaller than it currently is, to the point where I wouldn't call it plain inferior as I would in 2.2. The possibility of getting RNG screwed is still higher on BLM than SMN in all those turns due to how BLM plays but that's part of the job's difficulty, making the best of movement via Firestarter, Swiftcast, Aetherial Manipulation, Manawall, and Manaward occasionally. I do think BLM has the potential to beat SMN in T8 in 2.3 assuming no Ballad, as it's always been close due to the fight's MP draining length and standstill nature.

I was hoping for something like a 1.5-2 second cast on Fire, or major Scathe reworkings, but this will do for now (unless brutal coil is even more movement heavy, then maybe not so). I still think SMN is the superior choice over BLM from a min/max standpoint, both utility and HOW their damage is dealt which is more mechanic friendly, but this will let a very well played BLM keep up with the group rather than just being obsolete, so I'm happy.

While I am not unhappy with the potency boosts, I feel that it is completely disconnected with the real issues regarding BLM.

Fundamentally, BLM is punished for stacking their GCD. Every other class in the game is rewarded for using their next ability the nano-second their GCD finishes, thereby optimizing their ability-use. BLM, on the other hand, is punished for doing so.

1) Casting Fire3 right after Blizzard3 results in being able to start casting Fire3 before our Umbral3 stacks are applied, negating our decreased cast time for Fire3.

2) Casting Fire1 right after a previous Fire1 results in casting the second spell before the potential free/instant Fire3 appears. This can result in obtaining a second free/instant Fire3 before we have the chance to use the first proc, losing and wasting damage. If we wait to see if the first Fire1 gave the proc, we can potentially end up waiting for no reason at all, which makes our fundamental problem even worse; not being able to stack our GCD. ie- Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

3) We lose our Astral/Umbral stacks before the spell is actually finished casting. This causes two problems:

-Being forced to dodge essential AoEs before the spell is finished casting results in losing our stacks without the fair exchange of being able to cast the spell. This has happened to me on a number of occasions in almost every end-game fight.

-Finishing the cast of Blizzard3 with empty MP, followed by my saved free/instant Thunder3, still forces me to wait before I can start casting Fire3 to get the full effect of my Umbral3. The added wait time isn't long enough to cast another spell, but long enough to force me to twiddle my thumbs during a fight.

tl;dr - BLM is fundamentally broken on a mechanical level. We are punished when we attempt to optimize our ability-use with the GCD.

I didn't read everything. With these buff, my bread and butter Fire 1 has more potency than Fester. I will do roughly 10% more dps making me equal to my SMN in t9 and just a bit less than my Monk in T8. The change on Apocatastasis is great. manawall was maybe too good and they judged they needed a nerf. Regular BLMs will do about the same numbers than other DPS now but exceptional BLMs will just wreck numbers.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Regular BLMs will do about the same numbers than other DPS now but exceptional BLMs will just wreck numbers.

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I hope so. Like I said, I'm not unhappy with the potency buffs we got, I just wish they would address the true problems with our class.

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Originally Posted by Ramath

I hope so. Like I said, I'm not unhappy with the potency buffs we got, I just wish they would address the true problems with our class.

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I don't feel punished by moving. I use Aetherial Manipulation to move, I Sprint. I don't get in the middle for Beams in T9 because I know my healers are extremely good and they can live without me. I always finish my casts lol. It's not something one can really teach to somebody. You just have to know how much you can wait to finish a cast and predict the movements you'll need to do.

Regardless, BLMs in general will do good and people probably won't ditch them from SCoB with that buff.

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

I don't feel punished by moving. I use Aetherial Manipulation to move, I Sprint. I don't get in the middle for Beams in T9 because I know my healers are extremely good and they can live without me. I always finish my casts lol. It's not something one can really teach to somebody. You just have to know how much you can wait to finish a cast and predict the movements you'll need to do.

Regardless, BLMs in general will do good and people probably won't ditch them from SCoB with that buff.

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I know you said you didn't read all of it, and I understand that, but you missed most of the point of my post. Movement is just a very tiny aspect of our problems. Like you, I'm able to handle movement quite well. The real issues are independent of movement, and aren't solved by "moving right."

The changes seem fine to me. The challenge of playing BLM well is to maximize uptime, not a rotation. Not adding a mobility buff allows that tradeoff to remain.

If damage was low, a straight potency buff will improve it. A ~13% is bonus to fire I is quite a bit. I hope not too much.

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Originally Posted by 65shion

let me remind you: no other class have a perma 80% dmg boost on their abilities, not even mnk with GLIII+FoF+BfB+DK. What this means? the more gear blm gets, the more profit he gets than rest of the classes. It's a fact. Same happened at the start of the game with mnk when everyone were saying they were shit. Until they were geared. As blms, they scale better than other classes with gear.

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No, that's not how it works. The 80% buff just means that those spells have higher potency in an astral phase. It's not some sort of special modifier that changes the typical potency-over-time formula. Example: Say I have a brown mage and a purple mage. The brown mage spams a 100 potency spell with an 80% damage boost. The purple mage spams a 200 potency spell with no damage boost. The brown mage may as well be spamming a 180 potency spell, and will never overcome the purple mage despite the buff. Black mage mechanics are a little more complicated, but this illustrates the point. The potency system in general is very easy to adjust, so any class can scale better or worse with a few tweaks to the numbers.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

...The challenge of playing BLM well is to maximize uptime, not a rotation...

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I agree. I truly do. This only enforces my point even more. The issues I outlined in my first post (#69) talk about the fact that we are punished when we attempt to optimize our up time.

Again, I am happy to see a potency buff. It's always fun to get a buff. But I still feel that they are ignoring the fundamental problems with the class. Like you said, potency is an easy adjustment, and it feels like SE took the easy way out and simply slapped a potency buff as a cheap fix instead of addressing what is really wrong.

You know I'm just going to go out here and say that 65shion is retarded. He has to be there is no other way.

I'm dissapointed, this is such an uncreative buff. Anyways, BLM gonna be OP now, I was already doing 350-400 dps in t6 with mostly ilv90 gear and ilv95 weapon, wonder how much I'm going to do now. At least fix the "infinite flare" bug. And yes, I do think it is a bug; the switch to Astral Fire and MP zero are suppose to happen at the same time but they don't due to a delay. And no, this "bug" is not just for purely aoe fights, but you do have to be good and creative to make use of it for Coil content (and no, you don't need this bug to do the DPS I listed). Yea, yea, I told everyone about "the bug;" the more people use it, the more likely SE might actually do something about it. If SE decides it's intended, then whatever, more OP BLM for me.

SMN buffs were fairly minor but they never needed a buff in the first place. I am interested in the Ariel Slash cast time reduction though, it might make Garuda better than Ifrit in purely stationary battles now, which is completely stupid cuz that was Ifrit's one advantage. Then again, just cuz Ariel Slash is instant doesn't necessarily mean her other attacks (other than contagion) are now worth using. I wanted Ifrit's stationary battle advantage to be more pronounced so idiots will stop blindly following what they read on the Internet but guess we'll see.

I just seriously hope SE don't screw this up and resort to yet more buffing, because nerfs will only be followed by incessant whining (well, more whining than usual anyways). Really SE, you better know what you're doing. The buffs don't seem to be TOO drastic but, again, we'll see. SE has been better at balancing mechanics around range and melee lately but range will always have an inherent advantage; if they made both have the same dps, balance issues are bound to pop up sooner or later. When the game first came up, melee already had higher dps potential but we all know how that turned out.

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Originally Posted by PenutButter

...range will always have an inherent advantage...

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Normally, I would agree with this statement in any other game. But it is not true here, in FFXIV:ARR. As someone who has played both melee and ranged in all serious end-game fights, I can tell you that that backline moves just as often, sometimes more so, than the front line.

Anyone who truly feels like the ranged should have lower base dmg as a result of getting to play a turret class, hasn't played backline very often, if ever. It's so easy to think the grass is greener on the other side.

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Originally Posted by Ramath

I agree. I truly do. This only enforces my point even more. The issues I outlined in my first post (#69) talk about the fact that we are punished when we attempt to optimize our up time.

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Why is the difficulty of maximizing your uptime "wrong"?

It encourages and rewards a player for making good decisions, while penalizing a player for making poor decisions. Should there not be some element of player decision and payoff involved? Some reward for taking risks?

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Originally Posted by PenutButter

I was already doing... 400 dps in t6 with mostly ilv90 gear and ilv95 weapon

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Can you prove this claim?