Black Mage

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Originally Posted by Llugen

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.

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We want to lock as little of our damage ceiling behind RNG as possible.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

We want to lock as little of our damage ceiling behind RNG as possible.

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Oh? And why is that? All the other ranged classes' damage/gauge relies pretty meaningfully on procs (Bard is obvious, MCH is pretty obvious, gauge on RDM is a big deal, and if you can avoid Ruin II on SMN and instead use Ruin IV when you get it, it's quite lovely).

I see no reason for the RNG not to lie in our favor. Plus if consistency is what we're after then things like Thunder Ready and an added trait that grants a Firestarter after three consecutive Umbral Heart-using Fire IV would fit well.

The idea of granting a firestarter is lovely. Lowers rng dependancy, eases movement while letting us use thunderclouds more reliably and killing the duality of sharp Fire vs Thunder. There are other ways they could make it too, but I also had that same idea to tie this effect to Hearts. Remember.... BLM deals with a lot more rng than people commonly think...

Or letting Firestarter and Thunderstorm stack their procs? Like having up to 5 firestarter procs waiting to go?
This way Sharpcast adds 1 to the stack. And double procs don't hurt as much?
Plus you could store them up for burst moments or when forced to move.

There were many ideas about this but most resolve around easing the keeping of stacks to help into Thundercloud use. Its a mix of QoL with a damage increase while shaving off the rng implications of BLM procs. The nature of Thundercloud and Firestarter can make Sharpcast to become a bad choise after you already used it for the proc of your choice, so fixing that while giving BLM a damage boost would be too good to be real. So good that I doubt it will happen.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

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.

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What if Aetherial Manipulation was altered to a trait.
Now if you hit a movement key during a cast, you move yourself 5 yalms in that direction instantly, but don't interrupt your cast. If a ley line is active under you when you do this, the leyline moves as well. This effect can only be used once per cast time.
On top of being useful, I think it would look pretty cool to go bopping around like that.
I would say that it should have a 'safety feature' though, that it stops at the edge of a cliff, so that you cant toss yourself off titan just because your controller decided to be overly sensitive.

I like the way Aetherial Manipulation currently works because it's great to move to healers and such, but I could see that being another skill entirely. Aetherial Snap, or something. It'd be great if manipulation/BtL worked during casts, but alas.





At this point all we can really do is continue to raise awareness of the issue (promoting in particular that, of the 16 recorded groups (on everyone's favorite website) having cleared unending coil, NOT A SINGLE ONE has brought a BLM and furthermore BLM is the ONLY job that has not cleared unending coil) and pray they address it in the next live letter/patch pending. Someone brought up that there IS a precedent for overhauling skills that desperately needed work mid expansion by referencing shield swipe, I forgot about that. We can only pray, it would seem.


It would just be really fabulous if we could get some direct dev feedback. Also, I want to take a moment to say that I don't think all of my ideas are perfect, I just think having more ideas breeds having even MORE ideas, and stumbling through some bad ones can lead to some great ones. The more we collectively brainstorm the better, even if none of them are used.


Oh, to add insult to injury, someone in my FC pointed out to me yesterday that "the most iconic class of the entire FF series is laughably gimped in this game." Not sure if I should be laughing or crying.

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Originally Posted by Tzain

I would say that it should have a 'safety feature' though, that it stops at the edge of a cliff, so that you cant toss yourself off titan just because your controller decided to be overly sensitive.

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And why would that be ? Other jobs with dashes can fall, so no safeties :)

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Originally Posted by Llugen

At this point all we can really do is continue to raise awareness of the issue (promoting in particular that, of the 16 recorded groups (on everyone's favorite website) having cleared unending coil, NOT A SINGLE ONE has brought a BLM and furthermore BLM is the ONLY job that has not cleared unending coil) and pray they address it in the next live letter/patch pending

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However It needs to be said that, from watching the compositions, it's mostly paranoia that forbades BLm from clearing the fight since a group without NIN has cleared it, I mean the point of it probably missing the dps to clear the fight really doesn't seems to stand at this point

edit: Ofc I'm not saying that BLM is fine yadda yadda yadda or anything mind you but at this point considering all the comps that killed ultimate the only reason some1 has not killed it as a BLM is also a problem of how they are perceived by the community just like DRG and the floor tanking of them

I suppose I feel like that doesn't actually make it better. If the community doesn't like the class then they aren't going to play the class, and the result is the same. It still needs addressing.

Do YOU want to try to play BLM in that movement mechanical nightmare? Just about everything comes up perfectly for SMN, why would anyone give themselves the headache?

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Do YOU want to try to play BLM in that movement mechanical nightmare? Just about everything comes up perfectly for SMN, why would anyone give themselves the headache?

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If I got rewarded with top tier dps, yes.
That's the fun part, having this tight and perfect plan that I can execute lovingly while most people fall flat on their asses :(
I genuinely like the turret thing just because of how deeply strategic the job becomes. This is the quintessential chessmaster job.

Anything that reduces rng and can also help with mobility is fine tho. Like, using 3 Umbral Hearts could reset the Sharpcast cd (buffs hearts, buffs dps, bufs mobility and has no rng all rolled into a package).
This would alleviate your woes, further play into the whole "master planner" thing we already have going on and give us a tiny buff (not sufficient in itself, but something nice).

Just a random example to illustrate where I'm coming from- less rng is good, so having tools to force/secure procs is also good (and helps with what you and others are talking about regarding mobility and whatnot).

(I feel like you and i always end up on different sides of the fence when it comes to this, although this time I'm trying to sorta meet halfway. I just hate rng that much.)

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Originally Posted by Llugen

I suppose I feel like that doesn't actually make it better. If the community doesn't like the class then they aren't going to play the class, and the result is the same. It still needs addressing.

Do YOU want to try to play BLM in that movement mechanical nightmare? Just about everything comes up perfectly for SMN, why would anyone give themselves the headache?

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True, but I feel like it can be used against us by SE, that's why I keep saying to be very careful

One thing that I think needs to be said is that our rotation is simple to do, BLM is one of the easiest job to achieve perfect damage in a dummy, what makes us hard (and IMO fun) to play is movement in a real fight and how it means we have to sometimes save our offensive CDs to achieve better DPS differently from most jobs that'll just use their CDs ASAP, if you boost our mobility too much the job will be just easy and boring and if the mobility buff comes with no damage or party utility buff we'll still be the worse DPS in the game since we are 3rd (and way behind SAM and SMN) in personal dps on Catastrophe, a super easy fight when it comes to movement.

Some QoL like 30 second procs, less cooldown on Transpose, some way to make sure we get a Firestarter proc (loved that idea of getting a proc after using all Umbral Hearts) are all fine and help with movement in their own way without making us some kind of mobility god.

What I think the class needs right now is more damage and some small utility for the party (magic vulnerability up give us both and is thus my favorite idea) and some kind of burst window so we have better sinergy with the other classes, my idea is to boost Convert hard and also give it a 120 seconds recast so it will be up during party buffs like Hypercharge for example.

FFIV (the remake on DS, not sure on the original) had Palom an ability to double his intellect for the next spell.
I guess we could get a similar skill no? I mean SAM has kaiten

(Though I think if they want to add really new skills it'll be for the expansion, but I guess it's a start)

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Originally Posted by Lina_Slayer

One thing that I think needs to be said is that our rotation is simple to do, BLM is one of the easiest job to achieve perfect damage in a dummy

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While I agree with this sentiment, I think this holds for many jobs. Bard and Red Mage also have a very simple rotation (the dps jobs I played in this tier).
The only "difficult" thing about bard is know when to delay a few key cds (like knowing if you should delay an Empyreal on or two gcds), knowing if you should clip your dots early, understanding when to Foe and when to go for 2 stack Pitch Perfects. Even then, the rotation isn't hard at all (and the job itself is super lenient). It just takes some thought to min/max (kinda like BLM too).
Just a thought. I think the BLM rotation is easy, but I also think most dps rotations are easy.

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Originally Posted by Lina_Slayer

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Agree on most of that. Stuff I been talking about for a long while around here. Good to see someone else getting it. I wouldn't say 30s procs though, I think having Thundercloud procs on the same duration as the Thunder debuff would be perfect on that regard. On the utility side, that isn't really needed if we just get more damage as we should, having onvert itself to be 120s would already be good enough to help fit stuff in some party-wide buffs without changing its effect. Though convert effect should get a small fix/rework.

....The forums are awful. They delete your composed reply if there is an error (session timeout/maximum posts per day exceeded) instead of saving it when you go back so you have to re-write EVERYTHING you wrote. R I P

I fully agree with you Galvuu on strategy on the class, but right now there just aren't enough tools for strategy, particularly simple movement dodging (other than "the caster slide" and pray). At that point the "strategy" becomes suffer damage loss and cry silently.

I'm also glad we agree on the Firestarter/Thunder Ready proc idea, but I still think having that on top of more RNG based Firestarters from Fire IV would be good. A stackable set of Firestarters would also go into movement strategy if you had several saved up etc.


btw, getting a Firestarter proc after using all three hearts could also work for AOE pulls and getting back into Astral faster rather than having to hardcast Fire III. This in tandem with the Freeze suggestion could really streamline the BLM AOE rotation. Furthermore a guaranteed Firestarter proc based on Umbral hearts might even mean no longer needing to cast Fire to refresh Astral during single target if you can squeeze all four based on remaining MP in after the proc

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but if they make fire4/blizz4 2.5 second cast times, and make both 280 potency, gives us about a 10% pps boost. That should be enough of a DPS boost to put us on top of the meters.

Add in some qol changes and we might finally be good.

Qol changes:
instant caste foul
foul adds 3 seconds to current af/ui timer
‎30 second procs
‎thundercloud adds 3 seconds to af/ui time
‎blizz3 restores 1800mp on use

Of course none of these changes do anything about our lack of party buffs, or burst ability. I don't really have any good idea on how to fix those.

I think they should just make all spells cost zero MP in Umbral, or they should fix it so the MP regeneration doesn't rely on the server tick. Also, 10% probably isn't enough unless there is a mobility adjustment as well.

I get the feeling they would say that they made foul cost 0 MP exactly for that reason though, but as I said I think that a rework on resource generation would be good for everyone

Bad Idea
Turn Ley Lines into a toggle ability that reduces BLM damage by 10% (adjust number to whatever for balance) but front loads all their abilities to be instant cast while Ley Lines is active. That way, they can still attack on the move while losing a little bit of their damage.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

I think they should just make all spells cost zero MP in Umbral, or they should fix it so the MP regeneration doesn't rely on the server tick. Also, 10% probably isn't enough unless there is a mobility adjustment as well.

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I read this and started to take a closer look at how the Umbral/Astral mechanic currently works and how it affects and is affected by MP costs.
Then I started to compare it, what I recall from 2.0, and how my Red Mage plays currently (in regards to mp usage) and realized that there are some very deep seated problems that need be addressed in a core mechanic of the job.
As a result, I'm stepping out of BLM theory crafting as I now think I have gone beyond 'Fixes' and into 'Fundamental Overhaul'.

That's basically where I've been at for most of this thread, to be honest. Asking my entire party to accommodate me playing BLM and work around me is just too much, plus playing RDM/SMN is way more convenient with the ability to raise and handle mechanics like a champion, not to mention the inclusion of party buffs.

This is a problem with the design of the job ("turret" DPS) as far as I'm concerned, at this point. Really all I want to see is less punishment for needing to handle mechanics outside of swiftcast/triplecast, and the best way to do that is better/more procs and other instant casts (Fire/Blizzard, Foul, Fire IV starter, etc).

BLM does not need to be a movement machine like flipping SMN during Dreadwyrm Trance, but the punishment for having to move in an emergency is a MASSIVE margin over the other caster jobs.


Edit: Hell, give the job Astral/Umbral IV, making it so that in Astral the costs of fire spells are not doubled and spells consuming Umbral Hearts cost zero MP (as well as increased fire damage to 2x), and in Umbral, your entire MP bar is regained with a single server tick and nullifies all MP costs to zero.

BLM been fighting against MP ticks since ARR days.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

That's basically where I've been at for most of this thread, to be honest.


Edit: Hell, give the job Astral/Umbral IV, making it so that in Astral the costs of fire spells are not doubled and spells consuming Umbral Hearts cost zero MP (as well as increased fire damage to 2x), and in Umbral, your entire MP bar is regained with a single server tick and nullifies all MP costs to zero.

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You know, if we admit that Umbral/Astral mp management is 'too big to fail' then maybe we can match the spells to the playstyle (Blizz -> Thunder -> Back to fire).

What if Blizz spells were DoTs?
And Thunder spells were insta-cast DD? (helps with mobility issues)
Change Thunderstorm to 'Coldsnap'.

So you'd cast Blizz 1/3 on a single target (or Blizz II on a group) to kick off the phase, thunder a few times to get to full mp, switch to Astral and Firespam. Blizz DOT starts to run low, you shift back, refresh the dot, get some mp back and boom goes the fire spell again.

And if you really want to get weird....
have fire spells proc a stack of Coldsnap, have Blizz Dots proc a Stack of Firestarter.

This way you have an positive incentive to go to Umbral, to use up the coldsnap procs and to refresh the dots to generate firestarters. (assuming we go with a 'proc stack' mechanic, which I get the feeling people would enjoy)

Darn it....I thought I was done with the theorycrafting!

Interesting, certainly, but that sounds like an expansion-worthy overhaul to me, particularly since it would need to be balanced at lower levels as well and fundamentally change the way the class has worked even from level 1. BLM needs help immediately, so I don't see this being viable for, say, 4.2.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Interesting, certainly, but that sounds like an expansion-worthy overhaul to me, particularly since it would need to be balanced at lower levels as well and fundamentally change the way the class has worked even from level 1. BLM needs help immediately, so I don't see this being viable for, say, 4.2.

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You think?
I figured it was fairly drop-in-ready since, from a mechanics standpoint, I'm really just taking the thunder line and renaming it Blizzard and taking Scathe and renaming it Thunder.

An entirely new stance with procs happening in opposite stances? That's how I read it, anyway

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Originally Posted by Llugen

An entirely new stance with procs happening in opposite stances? That's how I read it, anyway

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I must not have explained it properly. Let me try again.

You cast Blizz III, you apply a Single Target DOT to the enemy. Each tick of that DoT has a chance to proc Firestarter. You are in Umbral III state.
You cast Fire III, you are now in Astral III state.
You cast Fire I, it has a chance to proc Cold Snap, which acts the same as Thunderstorm did for the Thunder Dots (do full DOT damage instantly).
The Blizzard DoT procs, you get a Firestarter.
You cast Fire III.
You cast Fire I, it procs Cold snap. You cast Blizz III to instantly use the cold snap, doing full DOT damage and putting you into umbral III. (*)

Like i said, the opposite stance procs is the odd part, but that's just to give some flow to the style and to get around that annoying thing where you proc firestarter after queuing Fire I already.

*this part feels clunky. Assuming that procs stack, I might require Umbral phase to consume Cold snap, so it becomes a sort of 'burst damage phase' and 'MP regen phase' if you have a few stacks from the fire spam. Plus, there's no real reason not to allow all fire spells to proc and not just fire I.
Hopefully that makes more sense?

can someone for the next live letter or in any other (soon?) interview, ask Yoshi when.t.f. and how.t.f. is he going to adresse the blm issues pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and become our blm saviour...
(otherwise, blm are going to keep on dying out)

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

can someone for the next live letter or in any other (soon?) interview, ask Yoshi when.t.f. and how.t.f. is he going to adresse the blm issues pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and become a blm saviour...

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I mean, by his logic of "DRK is fine, look it cleared ultimate! World first even!", then Black Mage which has yet to get a recorded clear is really in the doghouse and needs addressed.

Oh but blm is Yoshi's "main" so clearly we will get all the love
Yes i am being sarcastic ...

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

I mean, by his logic of "DRK is fine, look it cleared ultimate! World first even!", then Black Mage which has yet to get a recorded clear is really in the doghouse and needs addressed.

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But it probably won't, because the info we get from Devs is always conflicting.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

But it probably won't, because the info we get from Devs is always conflicting.

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Unfortunately...

Live letter on the 15th. We should really probably make a "formal request" or another original post/thread with a concise list of at least mostly agreed-upon grievances/suggestions just in case the developers aren't interested in reading this massive thread.

Probably also a question in the question thread for the LL and dump likes on them to make it visible

Where do we find the LL question thread, then because we should get on that pretty much immediately. I vote either Sfia or Galvuu make the post since they probably have more credibility than I do on the job now that I'm a SMN traitor (although I guess Galvuu is a BRD traitor too).


Hey remember when I posted this on page like 7 of this thread 2 months ago? Good times.
http://puu.sh/yxYoe/283e72629e.png

Usually they have a question thread for the LL, but maybe there won't be this time since it's LL aimed to show off patch 4.2 content, but if there's one it should appear in the dev tracker list anyway

From the looks of it, next LL will get in details on the Glamour system revamp. Kind of how they spend a bunch of time when they released the Wide Cross Hotbars I guess.

I mean, the glamour system could also definitely use an overhaul, I certainly won't complain about that, but we should be drawing as much attention to the BLM issue as possible as well. It is the only (yes, ONLY) class in need of DESPERATE attention. (refer to the 4.2 balance predictions thread for my full thoughts on who needs attention where)