Black Mage

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Perhaps all jobs need not excel at everything...

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I agree on that, but right now there are jobs that excel on everything, and jobs that excel in absolutely nothing.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

To be honest proving a point that balance is fine based on a novelty run of a 24 man raid seems a little bit... petty. If it was intended to prove a point at all outside of being goofy and fun, that is.

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Uh? I don't think he wanted to prove that balance was fine at all

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Uh? I don't think he wanted to prove that balance was fine at all

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In that case disregard what I said completely, I got the wrong end of the stick :p

So what do you folks think would be the most LIKELY fix to the job in 4.2? As much as I like tossing around creative suggestions, I know that many of them are not practical for a "hotfix"/patch but should be saved for the next expansion, so here's my list:

Increase of proc timers to 30 seconds
Increase Thunder III DoT to 30 seconds
Potency of Fire IV/Blizzard IV increase to 280
Convert recast reduced or MP reward increased
Reduced recast of Aetherial Manipulation to 15s or 10s (please please please please)
Potency of Fire I increase..? Maybe?
I can still pray for that suggested Freeze fix, and honestly it sounds like that wouldn't be all that hard to implement either.

i think it does resemble what they would normally do

Another quality of life thing I’d love to see is a change to Umbral so there is less reliance on server ticks for MP. It could give MP the way that things like Void Fire and Pyretic work with HP but in reverse.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Another quality of life thing I’d love to see is a change to Umbral so there is less reliance on server ticks for MP. It could give MP the way that things like Void Fire and Pyretic work with HP but in reverse.

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People been asking this on OF since 2.0.

Generally speaking SE should change how things like TP/MP gain are handled from a gain every 3 secs to something like wow where the gain is dinamic

edit: now it's: X every 3 secs
while dinamically woulòd be: X OVER 3 secs

Just add :
enochian refresh Astral fire / umbra ice

And I think we're set.
The best would be "fester refresh af/UI duration"

I'd prefer if Sleep was remade into something more useful such as:

Curse
Instant. 180 CD
Increase target's magic damage taken by 10%
Duration: 20s

This gets rid of a more or less useless skill (outside of niche uses) gives them a Raid Utility skill (albeit a minor one) and increase their own damage.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

I'd prefer if Sleep was remade into something more useful such as:

Curse
Instant. 180 CD
Increase target's magic damage taken by 10%
Duration: 20s

This gets rid of a more or less useless skill (outside of niche uses) gives them a Raid Utility skill (albeit a minor one) and increase their own damage.

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a magic vun could help blm (and caster comps) overall..., but would prefer if it didnt need an extra button/new move, instead be applied by B4 or T3 (dots)

The lack of any sort of feedback is a bit depressing. I keep seeing less and less players around who plays BLMs, so I kinda hope when the Devs looks at the class activity, that they notice and will do something.
They did post on fanfest the split between Classes and Races played, so I would love to see the % of classes played atm.

Atm the synergy between melee and ranged physical just seems too desireable, and either should be weakened/removed, or Magical Synergy should become a thing.

Would be great to see some of these happen:

Flare gets its original version back where it hits every mob equally
Fire4/Blizzard4 pot increase to 280-300
Umbral Hearts - Next 3 spells cast has a 5-10% potency and crit chance increase
Make Freeze not a ground targetted spell, and make target being affected by Fragile, taking increased damage from all sources for X amount of time
Sleep changed into Blood Rite, which increases damage of allies.

I am just loosing my interest in the class lately seeing how people look down on BLMs lately. And I have talked to players who has done O4S, and gotten quite far on Ultimate, and they have told me that there is absolutly zero benefits or point of bringing a BLM to that content as other classes can do equal personal damage as well as bring more to the table for the raid teams :(

If patch 4.2 rolls out, and no changes to BLMs, I am considering cancelling my subscription for the first time since 1.0, and return to other MMOs and see if my favorite classes there are fun to play and useful in all content

Honestly I have no idea how to fix BLM other than potency changes to increase it's DPS, maybe increase thunder dot duration to 30s? I personally feel BLM should be nothing but pure direct damage, followed by RDM then SMN since those jobs can provide indirect damage modifiers.

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

a magic vun could help blm (and caster comps) overall..., but would prefer if it didnt need an extra button/new move, instead be applied by B4 or T3 (dots)

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My problem with that is it would make BLM have a permanent (or near permanent) magic vuln debuff and while it would be a boon to BLM, it would probably be too much of a buff in general. Unless they limited the buff to benefit the BLM alone, which defeats the purpose of my suggestion in making it a raid utility skill, it would make BLM the DRG of casters with other casters demanding a BLM to boost their damage.

A permanent magic vulnerability wouldn't be much different from the permanent physical type dmg that the physical classes have atm and that is the idea behind it

Also personally I don't think it would make casters that OP compared to other comps

At this point almost nothing they would feasibly do would be "too much" of a buff to the job, not even kidding.


Even if they flat increased its entire damage output by 20%, that still would change nothing about its difficulty with dealing with mechanics (and by extension its inherent damage loss). Even with a buff like that I still would see SMN being more valuable overall than BLM in unending coil.


Consider even just the first phase and the movement involved. Between hatches, liquid hells, and fireballs, not to mention twisters, BLM absolutely does not have enough tools to fully maintain maximum damage uptime and MUST resort to scathe or pray for procs while still being pretty heavily worked around/babysat. All of those mechanics REQUIRE movement if selected/when applicable, so even such a massive damage buff would STILL put it at a disadvantage (and all that is to say nothing of the movement required for the final phase and the nael phase).


This is ultimately (ha get it? Ultimate-ly? Ok sorry) why I strongly feel like the "face" of the class being "turret pure DPS" has to change. Triplecast is great... once every minute. It NEEDS more mobility options for raiding.

Just a thought about freeze. Rather than be a lame AoE attack that bind, why not revamp as a damage mitigation tool for BLM so they could have a set time of just standing in place and nuking?

Call me a broken record, but I really think Freeze with my aforementioned proposal could single-handedly fix BLM's current aoe dilemma. Plus it's an AOE skill, so that makes sense.

BLM doesn't really have an AoE dilemma though. If BLM has any dilemmas is mostly on the nature of their rng procs and how they interact with the gcd by gcd rotation and stack refresh. And also MP ticks issue that haunts BLM since ARR.

Also, BLM's area damage is good. What sucks is their single target.

I used to think BLM aoe was good until I ran as BLM with a SMN in the party. Without making allusions to our favorite website, let's just say I was thoroughly shocked by the damage discrepancy.

tl;dr on the matter is that aoe phases in general favor burst damage because the whole point is for things to die really fast, so when painflare can do 200 potency per target (with no falloff!) as a literal off-GCD and can be "dumped" back to back to back, the "infinite" aoe damage that BLM brings is weak in comparison, not to mention deathflare and bahamut and the pet aoes. One solution for this issue might be let Flare consume only one Umbral Heart at a time so you can do four per fire phase. This would need coincide with the Freeze suggestion, as a significant portion of BLM aoe phases involve slowcasting Fire III and potentially slowcasting Blizzard IV, both of which are significant aoe potency losses.

SMN AoE is better in general, this is much true. But do remember that people's favorites you know what are really bad with Bane. BLM still excels in AoE over many jobs, even over SMN depending on the conditions. Even then, making BLM AoE better won't fix any of the issues listed on this thread's OP. But I do see where your claims come from.

“Damage as utility”/“Pure damage” should include AOE damage, correct? Or am I wrong?

BLMs sustained AOE is the strongest, but as I mentioned in the previous post, trash pulls and AOE phases are always “bursted” down, not sustained. This will always put SMN on top of BLM, unless the SMN doesn’t even get to dump the stacks (so less than 10 seconds, in which case who even cares lol)

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Originally Posted by Llugen

“Damage as utility”/“Pure damage” should include AOE damage, correct? Or am I wrong?

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You're not wrong. But that is also non-issue on a game that the majority of the content are on single target centered encounters. If potential changes came to fix BLM's issues happen to make their AoE better so be it, but it shoudln't be the focus. It's like how cheapening BRD's TP costs on their single target skills let them eventually Quick Nock better in Heavensward.

Well that’s part of why I think a fix to Freeze is warranted but not much else is really needed. Maybe using a Thunder IV cloud does extra damage to a target that already has the Thunder IV dot. That could be neat.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

A permanent magic vulnerability wouldn't be much different from the permanent physical type dmg that the physical classes have atm and that is the idea behind it

Also personally I don't think it would make casters that OP compared to other comps

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I think a better solution is to put a 10% non-stackable magic vuln up with 100% uptime in the 3 casters (in BLM it can be on BlizzIV), nerf SMN potency so they deal the same dmg they are doing now, while BLM and RDM will be doing ~10% more damage closing the gap between the casters, giving the role something powerful that only they can bring (like only physical ranged can bring Refresh for example) and it also somewhat preserves our utility as the selfish class because while magic vuln up is party utility it'll be something that is more attached to the role rather than the job.

Rework idea for Convert:
Convert - For 20 seconds spells will cost HP instead of MP, ends if casted again. Recast: 120 seconds.
It gives us some kind of a 2 minute burst phase that lines with Hypercharge, Trick Attack, Chain Stratagem, etc. and it makes the spell riskier but much more powerful (it'll give like 8 extra fire IV rather than 2 but the HP cost will be massive), the only problem is Foul timing but it can be fixed by making Foul oGCD during Convert or something like that.

Well ye that was what I think should be added, I was answering to aguy saying that a 100% magic vulnerability would be too OP

I'm with whoever said there's no reason to nerf SMN potency only to buff BLM especially and apparently RDM by proxy because of just how strong the physical meta is.

The casters NEED to compete for a spot. SMN can only just barely do that as it stands now, so nerfing it is a bad idea.

That Convert proposal would be REALLY taxing on the healer(s) in the group and would basically be the new #floortank trying to maximize it during big party hits like Almagest. This wouldn't be very fair in the end (as healers want to utilize burst phases as well); if anything of that sort, just make Convert function like Thin Air, or reduce the MP cost of skills by 90%.

Convert just feels so out of place without Raging and with the rotation change. It's like they didn't even bother to think how it would interact with BLM's kit.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

“Damage as utility”/“Pure damage” should include AOE damage, correct? Or am I wrong?

BLMs sustained AOE is the strongest, but as I mentioned in the previous post, trash pulls and AOE phases are always “bursted” down, not sustained. This will always put SMN on top of BLM, unless the SMN doesn’t even get to dump the stacks (so less than 10 seconds, in which case who even cares lol)

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one of the reason when i have a smn in party, i just go straight triple flare after f3 even tho i have 2 umbral hearts to spare for f2. this way its playing tugowar for who depleting the trash mobs hp faster and more lol

Well and this may come off as selfish but blm should output more damage for both Single target and aoe, it is all that we have to "bring". Smn has great utility so damage should never have been so much higher.
I do like the proposed changes you guys have said for freeze and personally i would like flare potency back along with adjustments to Thunder.
FireIV also feels weak to me atm. not sure about you guys

I don't think having a caster comp would fix any things. It would just feel like a band aid

I don't even really want a "caster comp", and in fact it will never be viable until we get a "caster" tank (possibly Mystic Knight or BLU), I ONLY want a caster to be viable at highest end over BRD+MCH.

Down with the physical meta!


Edit: and even then, all three casters would be fighting over the same casting gearset for drops and the entire rest of the gear that would drop would be "wasted". Sounds extremely inefficient to me.

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Originally Posted by Maero

FireIV also feels weak to me atm. not sure about you guys

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I agree it does, honestly as xenosys said in his stream anyone has access to fell cleave nowadays

At this point I will concede that Fire IV and Blizzard IV should get reinstated to 280, Foul should be stronger potency single target (double), and that the Thunder III DoT should be increased to at least 27 seconds if not 30 seconds (which of course intrinsically increases the potency of Thundercloud by 160). As stated recently, some AOE love would be very appropriate too, particularly in the form of Freeze giving Umbral III and Umbral Hearts after Flare (I also really like the idea of Thunder IV cloud doing additional Fester-style damage if reapplied when the Thunder IV DoT is still on the target).

However, I still stand FIRMLY by my assertion that the biggest thing wrong with BLM is that its design (hardcasting turret) is just not conducive for progression/raiding/endgame. Could you imagine trying to do even first phase unending coil on BLM right now? What if you get picked for every Hatch? Never mind even getting picked for liquid hell and fireball, and needing to be either really greedy or sacrifice for twister. Movement management undermining maximum DPS flies directly in the face of "pure damage caster", and only further reinforces the reluctance to put BLM on the roster.



No amount of potency buffing is going to fix this issue. It NEEDS NEEDS NEEDS a mobility improvement. What that means can be up for debate. I personally like the idea of more reliable procs (things like Thunder Ready and maybe successful usage of all three Umbral Hearts grants a free Firestarter) Or making more things instant cast, possibly removing the cast time for Blizzard/Fire I completely while under Enochian, and the cast time from Foul. Hell, they make it so the job can just move at 70% normal speed while casting uninterrupted, or at normal speed and increase cast time by 10% or so while moving. If they wanted to get fancy, there could be a way to "build up" casts that can be used while moving through the Enochian timer and the caster can save up the stack as long as needed and then the stack ticks down during every cast while moving. Oh and for the love of god reduce the recast on Aetherial Manipulation, please and thank you.


I'll say it again: EVEN IF they increased BLM's damage by a flat 20% that would mean NOTHING if the job cannot maintain uptime which is ABSOLUTELY the case in unending and it is pretty standard in most endgame raids as well. Mechanics drastically hinder BLM to the point where no reasonable amount of damage increase will suffice. The "turret DPS" needs to go, rather, the turret needs to gain some legs.

blm in the first phase of baha isnt really that bad. i tried it and other than liquidhell thr other mechanics are fine because usually a proc/swift/triple could give you enough time. i mean if close range melee get target by that random liquidhell, they lose uptime like blm anyway. hell il say rdm as a regular liquidhell baiter is quite tough too, compared to brd/mch.
the only thing that is really holding blm from ult baha is thr general conception that blm isnt prog friendly as smn/rdm.

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Originally Posted by Komaru_Tatoro

blm in the first phase of baha isnt really that bad.

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Shh, just agree with me. We really need changes. Tell you what, I'll go in there and try it myself tonight on BLM, but really we're just talking about the same thing from two different angles. If "pure damage" is supposed to be BLM's purpose, then maximum uptime is something that it NEEDS more tools for, period.


I'm not suggesting that BLM needs to be a movement god but the difference between BLM moving and any other ranged moving is incredibly massive. SMN loses a whopping 30 potency (or none, with a Further Ruin), RDM loses nothing if not horribly timed, and BRD/MCH also lose nothing. It is true that melee get screwed in that regard, yes, but considering the balance of ranged/melee, I don't really see that as an issue in a needs-fixing sense. This is why they have gap closers and such.

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Originally Posted by Komaru_Tatoro

the only thing that is really holding blm from ult baha is thr general conception that blm isnt prog friendly as smn/rdm.

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Raises are ridiculously powerful to push through Nael and avoid Iceballs to double and kill people, also really strong for Trios that require all 8 players alive.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

However, I still stand FIRMLY by my assertion that the biggest thing wrong with BLM is that its design (hardcasting turret) is just not conducive for progression/raiding/endgame.

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That's why in a patchwerk style fight with no movements BLM should be number 1 by a large margin.
Turret type jobs can work if you do a double balance with a standstill scenario and a classic fight scenario, that's also why procs should have longer duration, imho each jobs should have a weakness since weaknesses it's what make jobs balanced (that's why DRK fell out of favor since they covered WAR shortcoming).
I still stand that we are at the strongest we ever been in the movement departments and asking for more well........at that point they might aswell give us casting while moving but.....I mean seriously now.

I agree that all jobs should have a weakness of some kind, but making it movement/mechanics is just poor design. EVERYONE has to do mechanics, and suffering a (estimated) 70% potency loss due to unfavorable movement is ridiculous. Again, SMN loses a whopping 30 potency if no proc, and the others lose arguably nothing. BLM loses the difference between Fire IV (468? iirc) and flipping SCATHE at 100 if your movement tools are already blown (so 79%), not to mention that the movement means you also lose the potency from another Fire IV due to needing to refresh the Astral timer AND guaranteeing your MP table to be messed up. This is pretty much completely unacceptable.


Also, call me a broken record again, but BLM had SIGNIFICANTLY better movement in 2.0 than it ever had post 3.x. Damage reliance on procs and consistency of getting them due to using Fire I to fill meant the ability to move potentially every 6 seconds for potentially up to 8 if you include swiftcast in there and get a good Thundercloud/another Firestarter, which is to say nothing of being stuck in Ley Lines. One movement of 3 casts every minute does not match up to the value those procs used to have.

Fire/Blizzard I under Enhanced Enochian should be instant cast. This alone might fix the aforementioned discrepancy of potency; it's still significant (324 vs 468 from Fire IV, or 504 if they do decide to give the 20 potency back), but at LEAST it will diminish the punishment from where it currently stands, and with the added chance of additional Firestarters from using Fire. I think on top of this it would be meaningful for either Fire IV to have a chance to proc Firestarter itself, or give Fire IV the ability to BE Firestarted (for more Fire IV per Astral).


Side note: How difficult does it sound to add the remaining timer of Thunder III upon successful Thundercloud usage as damage to the NEW Thundercloud? So if there are 18 seconds worth of Thunder III remaining on the target and I use another Thundercloud, it adds the remaining 240 potency to the Thundercloud hit AND reapplies at 24 seconds. Does that sound horribly difficult to script/program? It feels like it to me, but that might be one good potency solution on top of increasing Thunder III DoT to 30 seconds.

Well I said earlier that scathe should be reworked since by now it has been eaten away from power creep, frankly speaking from 60 onward it should at least be 200 potency base (still a big difference from F4 ofc) also it should have some other effect baseline since let's be frank it doesn't do anything for us execpt screwing us.

I have various ideas like making him extend/refresh AF/UI or beign able to proc firestarter/thundercloud while not costing any MP and tbh we do have the precedent of SE changing completely an ability like when they did it for shield swipe in HW.

Regarding F1/B1, personally I'd like for enochian to upgrade them to F4/B4 (and making so F4 procs firestarter and refreshes AF), some might say that it would make BLM rotation too simple but meh this are my 2 cents