BLM Utility ideas!

Melee and Caster role abilities aren't lacking. Rangers' are just too good.

Well, though I will still say that manashift could use a rework + drain maybe getting a healing back buff? I agree that ranged roles are too good, I would say that imho apocat is a bit less powerful than palisade since palisade also works on autos (unless you have special bosses that do magical autos) and now TBs have been mixed, with some bosses having sometimes a magical and a physical TB.
That said when you give good role actions to jobs that already bring many to the party you kinda make them sorta of a sure pick and if you sure pick them you might aswell create a party centered to buff them or that works with their type of dmg

edit: I think it might have already been thought of but what if B4 had 0 or near to 0 MP cost so that you could cast it regardless of the MP you get in blizzard stance?

Blizzard IV costing less MP would just be a QoL for pre Foul rotation and let people the old HW opener without costing them MP on the second Fire cycle. Would be interesting, but not needed.

Guess it would be nice for dungeons and post flare situation? But whatever.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

This is kind of my primary thing. I find the relative strength of the Jobs fine, but the Caster Role is heavily lacking in the Role abilities. Technically melee as well, but they directly boost Ranged and Tanks, so...

---

I'd really like to see a slight survivability buff in the form of a caster variant of the Bloodbath ability (e.g. Necrogenesis from 1.x, likely a shorter, higher-percentile damage-to-HP buff) to replace the useless Drain ability. With all three casters being so bursty at times, I imagine they could make good use of it.


Separately:
On the other hand, the only utility I'd be okay with BLM getting is the ability to place Manaward on others purely as anti-magic damage, or a return of Mana Wall to absorb a portion of damage that would have been taken by the BLM or its party members behind said wall, up to a cap, but I doubt the game could even handle the latter, as we've yet to see a capped buff except in the form of per-individual shields.

@Blm

buff B4 to 280 too..., like the F4 counterpart (and when we're at it, buff Flare to 280 too)


thats all the "utility" Blm probably needs, as a fast fix

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Blizzard IV costing less MP would just be a QoL for pre Foul rotation and let people the old HW opener without costing them MP on the second Fire cycle. Would be interesting, but not needed.

Guess it would be nice for dungeons and post flare situation? But whatever.

---

Well was thinking as an alternative to the Mp fix if they decide that they will never fix it ofc

For role actions, all I want is for square to fix friggin manashift. It's shit compared to refresh. Rest of caster role actions are fine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shiroe

@Blm

buff B4 to 280 too..., like the F4 counterpart (and when we're at it, buff Flare to 280 too)


thats all the "utility" Blm probably needs, as a fast fix

---

I wouldn't mind but i'm not even sure that would result in a buff of 0.5% dps

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

I wouldn't mind but i'm not even sure that would result in a buff of 0.5% dps

---

it would probably not be much of an increase, .. but I dont ever expect Blm (or Sam) to ever have so much dps, that it would get them real spots in the "meta'

but that increase was kind of the minimum SE should have done . and could help / fix blm atm

bumping F4 up to 300 (or 320) will never happen, .. but bumping up B4 to 280 might fix the B4 rota .. and the flare bump to 280 helps blm atleast get back near the aoe throne a bit, .. with its long aoe pre-cast rota only fair (and some even use flare in SP rotas when tripple is up)

it would have made blm overall better, fixing it like this should have been have been done from the start, when SE gave F4 280 .. and now SE could probably fix it like this finally (B4 & flare 280 too), without thinking to much about it ("is it too much, will it shake the overall balance, will fights end too fast etc.")

This is a BLM Utility Request thread but most of these suggestions are to boost BLM potency and DPS (which is already very nearly the best).

Manashift could work like Wish/Chant in FFT: Sacrifice 20% MP to restore twice as much to an ally. So you sacrifice 3k MP and gives whoever 6k MP.

That is what it should've been in the first place

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Manashift could work like Wish/Chant in FFT: Sacrifice 20% MP to restore twice as much to an ally. So you sacrifice 3k MP and gives whoever 6k MP.

---

Even just sacrificing 20% of yours to give the greater of 20% of yours or theirs to the target would help a fair bit. It'd still essentially just be "shifting" the mana around, but the amount would then have the same, rather than less, relative value when moving from a RDM to a healer, etc.

TBH, I'd rather see BLMs get some kind of a Magic Vuln Up debuff that would boost its own damage and help promote an alternative to the 4/3+1 Physical-dominant meta. Heck, the melee combo of RDM is, iirc, unaspected (which means magical) damage type, so it might benefit from such a debuff too. Perhaps as a GCD spell, forcing you to alternate 6 and 5 Fire 4 cycles to cast it every second cycle?

If BLM ever gets utilities then it should be of the offense kind and it doesn't interrupt the flow of BLM's rotation. Something simple like a very short magic vulnerabilty debuff that adds up in percentage for every Fire IV you cast on the target would be pretty nice.

While it's something I would agree, I want to point out that they kinda shot down that possibility by saying that if they had to give BLM that utility they would've to decrease the dmg.

We should work hard to make them reconsider it (without dmg nerfs perhaps)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remedi

While it's something I would agree, I want to point out that they kinda shot down that possibility by saying that if they had to give BLM that utility they would've to decrease the dmg.

We should work hard to make them reconsider it (without dmg nerfs perhaps)

---

I mean, if smn gets to have a raise for almost zero dps cost on single target, and actually zero dps loss for anything involving adds or a second target, blm shouldn't lose any dps for mild utility.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zerathor

I mean, if smn gets to have a raise for almost zero dps cost on single target, and actually zero dps loss for anything involving adds or a second target, blm shouldn't lose any dps for mild utility.

---

Unless a Magic Vuln has uptime like Garuda-Egi's Contagion, it can't be considered mild utility anymore. If you can refresh it like piercing and slashing it would make BLM a bit too strong (and before you go lash out for potential bias, BLM is my most played DPS and I dislike SMN to no end) since you potentially affect PLD with the Holy Spirit window and healer dps with it. Hell even Ninjutsus are often magical.

If its a refreshable GCD, its too good and 9/10 times part of your rotation, requiring to lower personal DPS to balance our rDPS contribution.
If it is an oGCD with low uptime similar to contagion, it can work out but still comes with the issue that BLM is g a r b a g e at weaving without triplecast.
If it is ogcd high uptime, see both of the above.

Keeping in mind that BLM is the best target for using manashift (for one having the most MP out of all casters and basically refreshing MP freely under UI) and still has the caster role action suite available, it is difficult to give BLM any utility that neither breaks it, makes it op or is just braindead like the often-suggested idea of having any form of a resurrection on it. If you ask me, I'd even remove resurrection from the Arcanist kit and make it Scholar only.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

snip

---

If mana shift had zero cd and you were able to dump an entire mp bar if you really needed to, blm would be the best user of manashift. It's not like that though, it's smn. They don't have a limited resource pool anymore with lucid dreaming, so they will never run out of mp from shifting, and they're able to WEAVE it at ANY POINT in their rotation, for at the very most a cost of 20 potency worst case scenario. 40% of the time it would be zero cost.

Then go blm perspective: ONLY can shift in UI, and if it was clipped, the animation lock essentially costed you 125 potency. If you shift in AF, it costed you 125+260 potency for the f4 you threw away. The only way for a blm to shift without loss is to get a t3p available in UI.

Hell, manashift is actually part of smn opener for extending foe from the bard.

Make mana shift 30 sec cd so blm could use it on every ice rotatio. That way BLM could boost healers mana on progress, if healers have to ress more. Make blizzard 4 or foul instant cast so no need clip casts. Other casters would run out of mana if they would use it on every 30 sec + ress on top of that. I would like to see more mana control on casters in general, especially once ruin 1 removed from summoners. Feels stupid have mana bar, if you can never run out of mana.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zerathor

I mean, if smn gets to have a raise for almost zero dps cost on single target, and actually zero dps loss for anything involving adds or a second target, blm shouldn't lose any dps for mild utility.

---

Raise on SMN has been broken for a while and frankly raise should not exist on casters especially since there's the double standards of RDM beign gutted for it while SMN aren't

@Reinhardt_Azureheim while blm beign the best mana shift user candidate is true from a quick glance the reality is that you can't use it unless your are in ice phase and it also is a dps loss because of clipping, meanwhile SMN has none of this issue.
And then you remember that refresh has no weaknesses, gives more MP and is aoe

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Unless a Magic Vuln has uptime like Garuda-Egi's Contagion, it can't be considered mild utility anymore. If you can refresh it like piercing and slashing it would make BLM a bit too strong (and before you go lash out for potential bias, BLM is my most played DPS and I dislike SMN to no end) since you potentially affect PLD with the Holy Spirit window and healer dps with it. Hell even Ninjutsus are often magical.

---

You mean too strong like TA is too strong?

I still feel like the Raise debate is too overplayed in this whole discussion, because overall, dying and raising is a massive DPS loss that doesn't serve a party very well outside of places that lack DPS checks. That said, Summoner DOES need a nerf, but Raise is not the justification to do so. Summoner can hit the same levels of DPS as a Black Mage despite having Contagion, Radiant Shield and Devotion, which is something you don't see on any other class but Summoner (and Monk to an extent). Hell, look at Ninja. Ninja consistently finds itself at the lowest ends of damage versus other DPS jobs (with only the underpowered Red Mage and highly utility based Bard as lower) but Trick Attack makes up for that difference in a mostly fair way. Ninja is certainly a shoe-in, but Black Mage having access to 555 potency per cast + utility is frankly absurd and broken as all hell... which is where people come from when they complain about Summoner's potency.

Summoner definitely needs a damage nerf. Maybe a slight utility buff as a result, but it shouldn't be at the literal top tier of damage.

No. It's really just raise. The rest of smn utility is extremely negligible. If smn didn't have raise, they'd go back to bringing mch or bring a rdm for group prog. So yeah, I'd say it's 99% the justification.

But smn shouldn't be nerfed, blm should get some form of utility that can possibly prevent deaths, or a noticeable dps edge

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zerathor

No. It's really just raise. The rest of smn utility is extremely negligible.

---

I'm sorry, but as negligible as that utility is, that's more effective than the raise itself. What does raise do for anyone that's not progressing? It serves as a DPS loss for the whole party and the fact remains that if people are dying consistently enough for you to be concerned with rezzing, then there's a problem with your party. Very few, if any, Extreme/Savage/Ultimate bosses are balanced to be beatable with more than maybe two or three raises due to the stringency of both DPS checks and enrages. Hell, in most cases, a raise won't save you if it's a healer or tank that's dead since the party will often dissolve rather quickly, especially if you're dealing with a boss with a major add (Byakko, Halicarnassus, Guardian) or Shinryu who gets to auto attack both tanks.

Is Raise useful for the likes of Deep Dungeon, Eureka and other low tier content? Oh, certainly. But that's not what the dev team really balances for. They tend to be more focused on balancing for raiding, where Raise doesn't matter because dying is just that painful. This is why Red Mage is almost never taken past progression: it's so weak when you stop considering Verraise that you may as well take literally any other DPS instead of Red Mage. Embolden is such a pathetic form of utility due to its drop off and its damage is just... not good in comparison to other jobs. Only Bard is weaker than Red Mage, but then you realize "wait but not only does Bard get a massive DPS boost from Dragoon, they already have some of the best utility to work with on account of them being a Ranged-DPS and also their native Bard kit!"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sunspawn

You mean too strong like TA is too strong?

---

Too strong as in every single caster is balanced assuming no permanent magic vuln.

You want stupid numbers? Put 4 summoners in the same party and see what a full 15% magic damage uptime looks like.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

snip

---

Never once have I been asked to go from blm to smn for devotion, or contagion, or radiant shield. Guess why they wanted a smn? I'll give you a hint: the same thing they said a rdm would work for too.

You're downplaying how strong a dps raise is in ultimate or even savage by a lot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

Too strong as in every single caster is balanced assuming no permanent magic vuln.

You want stupid numbers? Put 4 summoners in the same party and see what a full 15% magic damage uptime looks like.

---

I know I've essentially double posted since this post is so quick after my last one, but I've previously given a look at what Black Mage would need to be nerfed to in order to even accommodate a 5% vuln up.

The answer would require BLM to lose a massive chunk of their potency, with Fire/Blizzard being reduced to base 150 potency (or 297 practical potency for Fire), Fire III/Blizzard III reduced to 220 (436 practical potency), and Fire IV/Blizzard IV being reduced to 240 (475) as a maximum. The potencies for Fire I/Blizzard I and Fire III/Blizzard III didn't simply come from nowhere, these were the numbers from ARR. And this would still be a 15% damage reduction on our whole rotation to accommodate the fact that we have two healers with us at all times. And as you mentioned, Kabooa, this vuln up gets more ridiculous when you add either additional Black Mages or a few Summoners to have an even higher magic damage up time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zerathor

Never once have I been asked to go from blm to smn for devotion, or contagion, or radiant shield. Guess why they wanted a smn? I'll give you a hint: the same thing they said a rdm would work for too.

You're downplaying how strong a dps raise is in ultimate or even savage by a lot.

---

You're overplaying a DPS raise's potency for anything but progression. I've not once denied its potency for progression, only for afterward. Obviously, those three abilities aren't much on their own, but Summoner also brings much higher damage than Red Mage does, and the additional universal 2% from Devotion, the 10% for the summoner themselves and the healers from Contagion, and the "revenge" shield + physical vulnerability of Radiant Shield doesn't hurt either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

snip

---

Even in ultimate groups that clear, the raise greatly improves success rates for reclear. And for savage, if you're done with prog, why does any of this matter? You could probably clear these savage floors with 7 warriors and a healer if you really wanted to. They're a joke.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remedi

@Reinhardt_Azureheim while blm beign the best mana shift user candidate is true from a quick glance the reality is that you can't use it unless your are in ice phase and it also is a dps loss because of clipping, meanwhile SMN has none of this issue. And then you remember that refresh has no weaknesses, gives more MP and is aoe

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zerathor

Then go blm perspective: ONLY can shift in UI, and if it was clipped, the animation lock essentially costed you 125 potency. If you shift in AF, it costed you 125+260 potency for the f4 you threw away. The only way for a blm to shift without loss is to get a t3p available in UI. Hell, manashift is actually part of smn opener for extending foe from the bard.

---

Does "only manashift while under UI" and generally using anything ogcd after instantcast(proc)s no longer go without saying? I mean come on, I thought it was common knowledge by now that it wouldn't need to be cherrypicked on a post.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Keeping in mind that BLM is the best target for using manashift (for one having the most MP out of all casters and basically refreshing MP freely under UI)

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Does "only manashift while under UI" and generally using anything ogcd after instantcast(proc)s no longer go without saying? I mean come on, I thought it was common knowledge by now that it wouldn't need to be cherrypicked on a post.

---

so the best suited job for mana shift is the one who can only do it at a minimal loss (still astronomically larger than smn) during a 2 gcd window every 30 seconds, or zero loss if by a chance you get a proc to occur in that 2 gcd window of that said 30 seconds? It does go without saying you only shift under UI, and try to use ogcd's during instant casts. Its those reasons why blm is horribly suited for mana shift in comparison to a job that essentially has zero mana problems and can shift for no dps loss at any point in their rotation.

I think sfia in the mogtalk caster podcast talked heavily on the awkwardness of a temmate asking for MP and you answering that you can't do that yet.

The simply fact that you need to be in UI to even use the thing makes BLM the worst user of Mana shift, all the other casters can find a place to use it much easier than BLM

Biggest problem with other casters is partysynergy between other meta jobs. Summooner have that synergy with 1min aetherflow timers, 30 sec dot timers and 60 sec rouse timers. From same reason mch is insanely good for speed kills because trick attack have 1min cd and 10 sec duration. Can you guess what is wildfire cooldown and duration? Exactly same than trick attack. MCH synergy is perfect between other meta jobs. But then we meet another problem. If you dont play with these meta jobs, do your job become underpowered? Mch is by far least played job in savage. It is actually pretty weak, if you dont perfectly line up your cooldowns.

BLM can use well manashift, its use is not different from how you use every single spell in the BLM's rotation, you have to plan it. Like when you are in a mindless spamming of fireIVs you are thinking where to go and what to use to max out your dps you should also look for healers MP and use manashift before they need to actually ask you for mana. That beign said ofc i agree, other casters are better suited, but don't think that manashift is bad for BLMs becouse that's not true. Also if you are in a situation where your healers are asking you for mps becouse they finished all their pool, using manashift won't make any difference...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aenar_Aenoquar

snip

---

Again, it's more the issue of being a dps loss in your rotation every time you did it without weaving it behind a thundercloud proc during UI, unless it's in the middle of a downtime period you can't attack the boss. Doing it 3 times over a fight can equate to a spell being cut out. If that spell was a f4, that can be pretty big.

On A Kefka (savage) my total damage in normal Kefka was 2.35M and i casted 60 FIV with an average damage of 20k-->

(2.350-0.020)/2.350 = 0,9915 meaning overall damage loss is 0,85% ( considering a FIV beign cutted out)

Considering i casted 59 other spells during the fight i could naively say that the probability of that happening is 50% But that's overthinking, since manashift just shift your rotation by few seconds, so your dmg loss is an average of all your spells, so the idea is that you can do the average:

SUM (Spell's Average Damage*Number of casts) / SUM Number Of Casts --> For the same fight that gave me an average of 16.1 K per cast. So the loss should be something like (1- (2.35-0,016)/2.35)*100 = 0.68%

So on an average parser of 6k you loose 41 dps. And this is when you use manashift 3 times.

Summoner doesn't lose anything. They can weave it basically at will whenever Ruin 4 is available, or during Dreadwyrm Trance.

Or just take a minor loss via Ruin 2, which is used enough for any number of reasons that it's practically not a loss then.