Black Mage

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Originally Posted by Sfia

We are the worst caster to use manashift. We have 1 time in our rotation where we can use it (and only under a randomly generated proc) without a mild-significant dps loss. Compare this to SMN/RDM being able to freely weave this at no loss now.

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I generally agree, but really now, clipping one GCD during ice in a 8min fight is nothing. Your normal damage variance is larger than that, and critting once over your statistical average nets you more DPS than that one Manashift loses.

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Originally Posted by Sfia

Addle and apocatastasis now have to be either weaved with procs or instant cast abilities (of which we have limited and cannot be relied upon) or you lose dps. Compared to SMN/RDM, they can do this freely at any time with no loss.

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SMN does lose out on a Wyrmwave by using Addle and maybe has to use Ruin 2 instead of 3. If of course every needed Addle lines perfectly with Bahamut that's a different story.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

SMN does lose out on a Wyrmwave by using Addle and maybe has to use Ruin 2 instead of 3. If of course every needed Addle lines perfectly with Bahamut that's a different story.

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uhh, they have addle-less 11 WW rotation

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Originally Posted by Waliel

I generally agree, but really now, clipping one GCD during ice in a 8min fight is nothing. Your normal damage variance is larger than that, and critting once over your statistical average nets you more DPS than that one Manashift loses.

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every gcd clip can potentially cost you hundreds of potency, and there are dozens of situations in the game currently where this is the case. Simply saying "if you crit once you make up for this loss" is a flawed argument as you would have the potential extra global as well as the crit without it.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

SMN does lose out on a Wyrmwave by using Addle and maybe has to use Ruin 2 instead of 3. If of course every needed Addle lines perfectly with Bahamut that's a different story.

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As Freyja said, addle is not required for bahamut.

After some thoughts, I think that making so that foul gains a 10% increase each time it's casted won't solve anything really.
We said earlier that there are moment were we are forced to lose AF/UI because of outside factors and also that as the percentile gets lower the dmg gap increases compared to the other job, if that's correct then that change will not help at all, it'll just ake losing enochian a needlessly painful eventuality, much worse than lose the 4 eye stack that DRG had or a SMN death pre 4.1 imho
It'll also mean that foul potency would have to be nerfed at the start to make up for the ramping up, meaning that out dps will just go down as the kills gets faster and faster.

Honestly If anything is going to change it's probably be a potency buff there's no escape that, giving some utilitty to the class will be probably something of the next EXP, if they are going to shift the mentality of the job,
Ultimately the problem is not only localized on BLM in the end. SMN ARE too strong now and the old meta is still active Thanks to players feedback.
Since the playerbase is not omniscent or always right we should be very careful on what we ask and be very mindful on the background of what we want.

That foul buff proposal in tandem with increased Astral/Umbral timer and possibly a "meditate" skill would solve your initial complaint about it, I think. Furthermore, I don't think they would necessarily need to nerf the potency down because the build would take so long that there's no way single target the enmity would be too much to handle, plus there are still Lucid and Diversion. It would just be a good way to reward playing the class well.

Potency buff is the most likely adjustment the devs would make, particularly for a non-major patch (say 4.11, for example *fingers crossed*), but it's a band-aid fix that does not address the real issues of the job. As I've said in this thread probably about a dozen times, it's natural that some classes are worse for progression than others, but BLM is just way too far behind when combined with the other factors such as damage lost while moving. Compare, for instance, to Samurai which is pretty easy to play and recover on AND has strong damage (and obviously doesn't rely on cast times constantly). This makes sense, meanwhile BLM might be "easy" to learn to play but to master it is much harder, and it's painful to recover on and do mechanics. This alone negates its "damage as utility" adage, which is why I personally think that a meaningful solution to the class is to fix its mobility rather than increase its potency. A BLM can thwack a dummy really hard, but no fight is a dummy, save for T8 perhaps, and this makes it lose its "damage as utility" from the get-go, which I've already asserted is very flawed logic on SE's part.

I was considering your other fix to AF/UI maintenance, however you pointed out that loss of char control can happens and you might lose your buffs (imagine A11S and Shinryu EX) or looading screens (A12s), true a job might be less optimal for specific boss encounters, however it still stands that won't change anything for speedkill or farmkills in general your damage will go down because of it. In the end it would not be extremely helpful imho especially when we have much more spells that could use a look upon
like as you already said Convert or even scathe (which let's be honest is the spell got hit the most by the powercreep) HECK even Freeze could be made useful since they made useful tribind.

Also if their idea of SAM and BLM is to be the selfish dps where they strenght is their big dmg, why not simply making them have Big self dps? I know you say that utility is dmg but there is a point where having a big number can ovetake that OR be a reasonable alternative and if SE is hellbent on this they should deliver.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Also if their idea of SAM and BLM is to be the selfish dps where they strenght is their big dmg, why not simply making them have Big self dps? I know you say that utility is dmg but there is a point where having a big number can ovetake that OR be a reasonable alternative and if SE is hellbent on this they should deliver.

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Because at the end of the day utility dps has the same problem as tanks. A large majority of people want to be the big dps. It's no fun saying oh I gave everyone else x amount of dps through the fight, or oh I took x amount less damage as a tank. The moment selfish dps dominates hard enough to make them worth bringing and worth their value over an utility dps, everyone is going to flock over to the selfish dps. Everytime they take a little damage away from an utility dps, or a tank, the uproar is massive. Thats the reason bards and machinists always start balanced then become op. I'm more understanding of drg, smn, and mnk complaining since they didn't sign up to be an utility dps, but they are/have headed down that road as well.

Edit- that's also why no matter how good sam/blm are they won't be wanted in post prog pf since everyone wants their own dps padded, including the tanks and healers.

>Also if their idea of SAM and BLM is to be the selfish dps where they strenght is their big dmg, why not simply making them have Big self dps? I know you say that utility is dmg but there is a point where having a big number can ovetake that OR be a reasonable alternative and if SE is hellbent on this they should deliver.

The sweet spot would be having enough personal damage that you would be doing as much raid DPS or more than any other potential DPS in your slot, but not enough that you could actually bring multiples of the class and have it be a good thing. Although stacking damage buffs are so potent, that would probably have to be an extreme amount anyways.

The stacking of damage buffs (Hypercharge + Foe Requiem + Trick Attack + Chain Stratagem all on two minute timers (or one minute, which still means they will be up during the two minute mark)) is the biggest reason that synergy turns into meta when considering utility like this. This is why all classes should bring some utility, even if it isn't quite as strong as others, so you can at least work with it rather than say it contributes NOTHING, which is exactly what BLM contributes right now. "Damage" doesn't count, as I laid out already.

As much as I'd LOVE direct damage buffs on BLM to bring it up to par, I don't think it'll ever happen. Why? It would make BLM (and SAM) completely broken in single player and 4 man content. SAM & BLM duo as DPS in regular dungeon would mean boss-phase-skipping amounts of DPS compared to "normal" comps. Or that's what my gut tells me, I haven't done the number crunching.

The way I see it is that we need some group-buffing offensive utility or we'll remain as the worst(?) option for serious content.