Black Mage

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Heh, wouldn't that be something, if F4 could push you into AF4 with the benefit of another 20% damage, but only for like 3 seconds.

A huge boost in damage if we can turret, but effectively non-existent if we're caught with our casts down.

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Something along these lines could be great in conjunction with a few small tweaks to AM and transpose cooldowns. I've been thinking about how nice it would be if Foul was able to grant 3 stacks of whatever AF/UI stance you're currently in. That way even if we transpose into U/I we don't have to either eat the slower cast time or blow swiftcast. It means if we get wonky Foul timings we can afford to use it during an AF cycle. I can dream, right??

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Originally Posted by Kaebora

An anecdote, for what it’s worth: I’ve mained and raided almost exclusively with BLM since 2nd coil. I consider myself a good black mage - not great enough to warp a party, but generally an asset.

SMN and BLM are broken. I shouldn’t be able to practice a SMN opener 20-30 times on a dummy on Thursday and Friday and then equal or beat my top BLM parses on Sunday.

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Switched to SAM for similar reasons... Played BLM as my main throughout HW, used it as my 'comfort class' for first runs, and always felt like I was contributing well to the group (even when I didn't know the mechanics 100%).

Enter Stormblood and BLM feels 'off' from the start. I couldn't quite work out why at that point so I pressed on, telling myself that I just needed to learn / re-learn a few things and it'll be good times again... that is until I did my first 2 runs of Rabanastre:
- First run I went BLM and, to put it mildly, it was a horror show; BLM was such a terrible choice :(.
- Second run I went with SAM, a class that I hadn't done much more than a half-dozen dungeon runs on at 70, but wow, compared to BLM it was like I'd cleared Rabanastre a 1000 times already; dealing with mechanics, even those I hadn't gotten a handle on the first time, was almost effortless (and my DPS was, of course, far better as a result).

Now BLM isn't all bad, and it still feels good when it works (the frequency of which varies greatly depending on the encounter), it's just that compared to other classes (most directly SAM and SMN) it is just so much more work for the same (or worse) results.

The 'fix' I'll leave to the Devs (:eek:), but whatever they do I just hope they focus on making BLM fun as much as 'balanced'.

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Originally Posted by Oshirigami

No it's not. It's because their personal DPS isn't high enough to overcome the lack of a raid buff.
SAM doesn't have this problem as much since SAM actually does damage.

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This blatantly false. Samurai is widely considered the weakest melee due to its lack of utility and damage not being nearly high enough to make up the difference. Monk already nips at its heels and Summoner surpassed it with the recent buffs. Yes, Samurai brings high damage in a vacuum, but like Black Mage, it simply can't compete with Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Disembowel, Shadewalker and Smokescreen. Even the oft-maligned Brotherhood comes out ahead.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This blatantly false. Samurai is widely considered the weakest melee due to its lack of utility and damage not being nearly high enough to make up the difference. Monk already nips at its heels and Summoner surpassed it with the recent buffs. Yes, Samurai brings high damage in a vacuum, but like Black Mage, it simply can't compete with Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Disembowel, Shadewalker and Smokescreen. Even the oft-maligned Brotherhood comes out ahead.

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What an objectively false statement. I'm not sure how you can come up with it when the facts of numbers (and job designs themself) contradict it.
SAM is in twice as many parses as BLM for a reason. It's better. Although SAM is definitely less valued than NIN and DRG in most groups, you still see it. Usually so in triple melee comps, in top parses much more than BLM on top of more parses in general.

SAM and BLM are comparable jobs. SAM and NIN are not.

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Originally Posted by Oshirigami

What an objectively false statement. I'm not sure how you can come up with it when the facts of numbers (and job designs themself) contradict it.
SAM is in twice as many parses as BLM for a reason. It's better. Although SAM is definitely less valued than NIN and DRG in most groups, you still see it. Usually so in triple melee comps, in top parses much more than BLM on top of more parses in general.

SAM and BLM are comparable jobs. SAM and NIN are not.

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Objectively false yet 99% of all speed kill groups omit Samurai. It's also by and large the least popular job for Ultimate next to Dark Knight. In fact, let's compare the two top ranked Samurai and Ninja on FFlogs since both are equally Balance padded. Samurai comes out ahead by only 800 over one of the weakest DPS jobs in the game despite getting one extra Balance (13 vs. 12). Ninja, meanwhile, buffs the entire party by 10% every sixty seconds and allows tanks to basically never even look at their aggro combos or tank stance. That utility alone far surpasses Samurai's direct damage. You also almost never see Samurai in triple melee comps. That "meta" is Monk, Dragoon, Ninja.

Parse totals only displays popularity. Summoner has less uploads than Samurai and roughly a thousand more than Black Mage yet it laughs at both of them. Now if you want to argue Samurai is easier to play and achieve high damage compared to Black Mage, I'd agree. Your post insinuated Samurai doesn't have the same issues Black Mage in relation to its competition, i.e other melee DPS.

"their personal DPS isn't high enough to overcome the lack of a raid buff."

It does. Hence why it's not used in Speed Kill groups or Ultimate.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

I feel like Eno and Af aren't the same as the kind of damage modifier that we lost from raging strikes, though. Losing RS is what feels wrong with BLM right now, nothing to bridge the gap that left behind. It means we don't even have a bursty window to line up with everyone else. We're totally isolated from the workings of the rest of the group. That and a number of small nitpicky things. It's impossible to use half of BLMs kit without first using Eno and being in Af so it doesn't feel quite as "additive" as say SMN or RDM popping Embolden and Devotion, if that makes sense?

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I think getting a cooldown akin to raging strikes would be a good start. Also giving back the 20 potency they took from BlizzardIV and FireIV for god knows what reason to begin with.

I actually like that Flare isn’t weaker than any other at-will spell in terms of Potency so I’d prefer that BLM gets a damage boost by some other means.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Some things are actually a problem outside of BLM

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Agreed, Disembowel is the main issue for imbalance between the two roles of Ranged DPS jobs. Which in itself causes an issue to the melee side as well. The meta isn't as stable or too strong as it once was on Heavensward post MCH and BRD's absurd buffs. This thread was mostly to put a spotlight on the fact BLM as a job has no desirable traits for your potential party members even on a time the meta team isn't ridiculously stronger. I can only justify myself to play BLM because it is my favorite job and parties that play with me don't care. But justify myself while looking for a static group of even on PF where people can lock the job out is becoming harder each day. And yes, those issues are outside of BLM, but being a pure damage job that can't keep up wih other's party buffs just show that the battle team been underestimating players to stack buffs in some kind.

RDM is liked by their Raise and easygoing playstyle. They won't hurt your party's flow by being there even though their party contribuition is smaller than BLMs. So yeah in the end the issue is also a popularity issue. You can say BLM is better than a RDM for a farm party since no detahs are being expected but people are more likely to accept a RDM than a BLM.

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Originally Posted by Oshirigami

SAM and BLM are comparable jobs. SAM and NIN are not.

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What, not sure if you're just trolling or being a bit clueless about the game. If the later is true I suggest to give a better read on what people been presenting on the thread so you can understand better why people are saying what they are saying. And if you don't understand them simply ask and I can asure they'll try their best to make themselves clear to you. As in for SAM having a more presence, read my posts when I touch about job's popularity and also there is the fact BLM can havebig presence over group positioning (specially bad BLMs) that can cause issues for some. While SAM doesn't.

The problem of job popularity comes also when some weaknesses gets pushed to the extreme so that they become meme levels.
RDM resses are near that because deltascape was relatively easy and forgiving, but when failing mechanics instant wipes your party that is a moot point and you are essentially left with a worse version of SMN.
As for BLM, aying that we are at the worst in the movement department is factually wrong as our movements tools pool has really increased with SB and 4.1 did fix surecast which honestly was a much bigger fix for us that the other casters.

Anyway I found unlikely that they are gonna add new skills mid expansions, so I'd say that we should work with what we have and build on it.
The B4 adding a magical weakness for example, a duration of 30 secs on our procs, which in turn would allow us to better play on movements fights, are probably things that SE would add rather easily.
Maybe making so that scathe can trigger both thundercloud and firestarter could help too

what do you think of this guys? modified freeze to have the additional effect of what wildfire does, storing 25% dmg and detonate at the end. And also give freeze a cd timer so that it cant be reused constantly.
or just make freeze have magic weakness debuff.
just tossing up ideas to bettet use the skills we barely use