BLM Suggestion

I will quote myself here:

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Originally Posted by Nezia

I always thought about a lvl 60 perk that makes AF have a really long duration(like 40~50 secs) but fire IV would consume 10 secs or so from that duration, this way we would still have the rotation of 3 fire IV 1 Fire I, but we would have a breathing time of 10 or so seconds in which we would be able to move without butchering the rotation.

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I believe that this plus a damage buff would fix BLM for the rest of the expansion.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

-snip-

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I really believe RDM is in need of a minor damage nerf, like 2~3% overall damage loss, RDM just brings too much damage for the amount of mobility it has. But I will agree here that the main issue is not RDM being too strong, but BLM being too weak. Summoner could use a minor buff too, but I would argue that the main issue with SUM right now is that it's magic damage debuff is pretty bad because BLM is too weak to be brought into the group and RDM utility making you want to group it with physical damaging classes not magic ones like SUM.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nezia

I will quote myself here:



I believe that this plus a damage buff would fix BLM for the rest of the expansion.

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O_O

I would argue that your suggested changes would butcher the soul of BLM instead. 10 seconds of being able to move without penalty completely destroys the turret nature of this class. If the only complaint is BLM's lack of DPS, wouldn't the simplest DPS increase solution be best-- potency buffs?

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Originally Posted by soslinky

O_O

I would argue that your suggested changes would butcher the soul of BLM instead. 10 seconds of being able to move without penalty completely destroys the turret nature of this class. If the only complaint is BLM's lack of DPS, wouldn't the simplest DPS increase solution be best-- potency buffs?

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There is a lot of penalty actually, since there are not many instant casts spells like RDM, and thunder does not tick as high as SUM dots plus his pet, so by itself not being able to do damage while moving is a penaulty. With my changes you still would not want to move and moving would still make a number on your overall dps, it just would no longer butcher your rotation.

Enochian Suggestion:

Enochian is no longer required to cast Fire IV or Blizzard IV.

Enochian has been changed to a trait which has a chance on elemental damage to change Scathe into the more powerful instant spells Conflagrate, Shatter, or Burst.

• Conflagrate - Deals 150 potency of unaspected damage and afflicts the target with Conflagration, causing your Fire spells against the target for the next 12 seconds to increase the damage of the next by 10% of their damage dealt, but increasing their mana cost by 15%.

  For some really, really big final numbers, especially if Fire IV crits chain.

• Glaciate - Deals 150 potency of unaspected damage and enhances Blizzard I and Blizzard II with the Shatter effect, causing your next spell dealt while Heavy or Bind is still active to automatically critically strike.

  Prep CC targets for 1-hit KOs.

• Burst - Requires a target affected by Thunder I, II, III, or IV. Consumes the remaining damage of Thunder on the target and any enemies within 6 yalms to deal their full damage instantly. If available, will consume Thundercloud and add its periodic potency to the damage calculation for the target and additional enemies within 5 yalms.

  As strong as Foul, but used as a finisher, since it won't have DoT damage.

  This provides a fairly powerful mobile tool. It is not, however, a substantial DPS gain in itself except under specific scenarios, allowing it to be held for periods of necessary movement.

Related Changes:

Polyglot now follows its own (new) gauge, allowing Foul upon reaching 100. For every second spent under AF/UI, the Gauge charges by 1 per stack of AF/UI. Each time you swap between Astral Fire or Umbral Ice, you generate 5 Gauge.

Time to charge should be basically unchanged.

Additionally:

- Ley Lines and Between the Lines now share the same hotbar slot.
- Fire IV and Blizzard IV now share the same hotbar slot.

- The Black Mage may now receive mana and mana-cost-reducing effects from other sources during Astral Fire. However, natural mana regeneration is still impossible.
- Umbral Ice and Astral Fire levels I and II now benefit a third and two-thirds, respectively, of level III’s effect on the opposite element’s cast times.
- Mana regeneration during Umbral Ice no longer follows the global tick. It ticks once every second, scaling with the Black Mage’s global cooldown.
- Upon shifting into Umbral Ice, the first tick of mana now occurs instantly.

- The cooldown on Convert has been reduced from 180 seconds to 120.
- The potency of Scathe has been increased to 130.

- The damage bonus of Astral Fire has been reduced to 20/40/60%.
- The potency of Fire I has been increased to 200, up from 180. (Resultant: 320, down from 324. -1.3%.)
- The potency of Fire II has been increased to 100, up from 80. (Resultant: 160, up from 144. +11.1%.)
- The potency of Fire III has been increased to 270, up from 240. (Resultant: 432, unchanged)
- The potency of Fire IV has been increased to 300, up from 260. (Resultant: 480, up from 468. +2.6%.)
- The potency of Flare has been increased to 300, up from 260. (Resultant: 480, up from 468. +2.6%.)

- The potency of Blizzard I has been increased to 200, up from 180.
- The potency of Blizzard II has been increased to 100, up from 50.
- The potency of Blizzard II has been increased to 270, up from 240.
- The potency of Blizzard IV has been increased to 300, up from 260.
- The potency of Freeze has been increased to 200, up from 100.

Yes it's true that regardless of how tight or loose your AF stacks limits your rotation against movement it will still require you to stay put to dish out DPS. But the problem we're currently experiencing isn't that BLM's are losing too much DPS due to bad positioning and proc management. The problem is that when we pour our heart and soul into a GREAT run: extremely minimal movement, calculated positioning, zero enochian loss, excellent weaving, perfect mana ticks, and more-than-usual thunder procs, the DPS is nowhere near where we expect it to be.

Im a new BLM but overall i like the rotation. I just think that you are currently not rewarded for minimising movement disruptions and whats not. Seems to me that BLM is roughly 10% behind what it should be.

The only quality of life change i would like to see is Astral Fire/Umbral ice going to 15 seconds and gaining a small amount of maximum mana so im not reliant on mana regen rng. Everything else i think is in a pretty good spot.

True, and it is also true that devs should not make classes expecting that you would find only ideal situations, in other words, they should not balance BLM imaginning that you would be standing still all the time, so since BLM brings 0 utility to the group just like SAM it would be fair to balance BLM in way that you would be putting close numbers to a SAM even while you are doing mechanics and moving at times, that would be fair, right?

Now let's say that they do what I just stated above and flat out buff BLM damage so that you would do numbers similar to SAM's even while doing some mechanics. Now imagine if said balance was done, in a fight where very few movement was required, how would BLM damage be then? It would be just off the charts! It would probably be so strong that groups would isolate BLM in a place and tell everyone to not get near him so that very few mechanics can harm him and tell the BLM that in the ocasion of a mechanic happening to come for him just ignore it and keep dpsing.


All that said my point is: it is impossible to balance BLM the way it is now, some QoL changes must happen, otherwise BLM are fated to be too strong or too weak.

@Nezia

What is your honest opinion of SE giving back the 20 potency they nerfed from Fire4? Would it make BLM too strong or too weak? Use the existing fights available as a factor in making this decision. Also, what do you mean by 'fights where very few movement was required'? Which fights were those? Midan, Creator, HW Trials EX. All of them required BLMs to run or die. If they release a Striking Dummy EX then yes, BLMs might be DPS king next to SAM.

If they reduced sharpcast time to say 30 seconds you could choose to do f4-f4-f1
-f4-f4-f1p-f4-f4 every rotation if needed, that would help a lot. Also reducing swiftcast time would help.

F3p ^^ was supposed to be, can't find how to edit on my phone :)

Load of BLM Ideas:

Combine leyline and the teleport to it into one button.
Allow teleport to leylines for a few seconds after the effect ended.
Grey out Ench if it is active so i can't fat finger it >_> Or make it give 5 secs to your Astral/Umbral Timer if clicked
Make Foul insta cast, or make foul restore a handful of MP.
Each foul reduces the CD of Triple Cast, AM and ley Lines by 5 seconds.
Foul adds a fire res debuff to the targets.
F4 Crits have a chance to reset Augmentation Cooldown.
Each hit with scathe adds 1 second to your Umbral/Astral Timer.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

@Nezia

What is your honest opinion of SE giving back the 20 potency they nerfed from Fire4? Would it make BLM too strong or too weak? Use the existing fights available as a factor in making this decision. Also, what do you mean by 'fights where very few movement was required'? Which fights were those? Midan, Creator, HW Trials EX. All of them required BLMs to run or die. If they release a Striking Dummy EX then yes, BLMs might be DPS king next to SAM.

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Reverting the nerf on fire IV would be like a 5% dps increase at most, BLM would still be weak.

Also, Lakshimi for example does not need that much movement, when marked you can just stand and let others with more mobility move, you can also stand in places such that her pushbacks will not harm you.

Just spitballing here.

Greatly reduce Triple Cast's cooldown and give it an MP cost? If the issue is that Black Mage can't be doing its !@#% because mechanics make you move every 15 seconds, having Triple cast be like, 30% of your maximum MP but basically be available on demand would alleviate most of that, no? Triple cast as it is now is a minor gain for raw dps (You're casting on the GCD instead of at Fire 4 / Flare's cast time), but having it be, say, a 15 second cooldown with a 30% mana chunk gives you a few options for its use.

1. Minimizing Ice time. Instant casts pretty much removes the MP tick issue. With good spell speed, okay latency, and quick fingers, you can TC Blizz4, TC Thunder4, and use the last one Fire 3 to transition.
2. Prepping two quick Fire4s (Triplecast, Fire 3, Fire 4 x 2)
3. On demand mobility (Burn 30% of your MP to have 3 Fire stance spells while avoiding mechanics)

While it breaks the paradigm of 'abilities don't cost MP/TP', that's kind of Black mage's thing. MP means nothing to you in the long run, but it means everything in the here and now, and giving Triplecast a high cost with a low cooldown gives it a more interesting application instead of "Nothing happens for 90 seconds so I can use this, otherwise wait for the heavy movement part and use it"

And yet BLMs are losing to RDMs in DPS on Lakshmi. Again, we're back to the question of what's really wrong with BLM in 4.0. Is it that we are being punished too much for movement or is it that our spell potency being too weak?

Back in HW I would agree with the people who said that losing enoch was a heavy penalty and it was true. You had to keep enoch off-cooldown and make sure you never drop it every three AF cycles. The good thing about 3.0 BLM was that this risk of heavy DPS penalties was balanced by the enormous amount of DPS we were able to dish out.

But now in 4.0 we're being out-DPS'd by RDM, a batman utility belt in the form of a caster, in Lakshmi. Please don't misunderstand me and think I want RDM to get nerfed. They're fine as they are. It's just that we need BLM to get buffed, without affecting BLM's core gameplay mechanic.

I think it purely comes down to potency. While movement hurts, it wouldn't hurt so much if the potency values were higher just so that even in movement situations we can beat rdm in dps. Right now if we can stand absolutely still for 80% of the fight we may only get slightly over rdm in dps, which means its not movement that's killing us, but potency. BLM still boils down to knowing when to use Triple/swift cast and to position yourself ahead of time to be in a good spot. the 20 potency lost of fire IV was actually closer to i thinkk 36 potency due to how the AF multiplier works.