Black Mage What Need to be Changed and Improved [Discussion & Feedback]

We need Focus! As an ability I mean. Longer cast time for double damage.

I just wand a better audible queue for firestarter and thunderproc

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Originally Posted by HoroBoro

3. Apocatastasis - I have saved parties from wipes more times then I know with this. Tank has no gear? Apocatastasis during hard mobs. Healer falls asleep or goes into full DPS mode for the lulz? Apocatastasis so he takes less damage while healer gets their head back into cure mode. Healer not surviving during some aoe? Apocatastasis and see what happens.

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Uh, what? It's only applicable for fire, ice, and lightning attacks, not general damage. If you think you're saving anyone from Mountain Buster by throwing that on them, you're fooling yourself.

I have to agree with this thread. For a class that talks about nothing but destruction, it has a lack there of.

Convert, manawall and flare are all awesome, the others are completely pointless and off my bar.

I will say doing Swiftcast--->Flare--->Convert--->Flare---> Transpose---> Blizzard III if quite fun and very destructive :D

I won't be condescending but I am surprised at the low level of skill or lack of knowledge around this class. This job is not just about damage but control. If you are not using all your spells including Freeze, Lethargy, Virus (in the absence of SMN) etc., then you are not playing it to its potential nor correctly. Much like those complaining about bard who is a DD support class; BLM is a DD control class.

I wanted to add that we should aim to learn and play classes as designed versus trying to change them to what we want. You'll enjoy the game more.

Flare is fine the way it is. For those of you who say it's useless, here's a tip: use it at the end of your fire rotation. So, Fire spam until you don't have enough mp for fire then Swiftcast > Flare > Convert/Transpose(Skip to Blizzard if using transpose) > Fire/Firestarter > Blizzard 3 > Thunder 3 > repeat. Only use flare with swiftcast, it's not worth it otherwise.

But yeah, freeze. It is useless. Needs reworked. It should at least give umbral Ice III when used, and should also deal more damage, or have another special property.
Maybe it could restore a percentage of MP based on how many mobs are hit, and reset the astral/umbral time. Something like 20-25% mp per mob would be nice. Then it would be useful for killing groups of enemies at least. Spam fire II > no mp > Freeze > repeat. Just an Idea.

Apocatastasis, pretty pointless as of now. I can't really see it being used in the future either. IMO it doesn't fit with the BLM theme and should be changed to Burst or something.

Manawall/Convert, those are awesome, so no need to change them really.

Surecast also needs reworked imo, I know it's not a blm ability, but still, it's useless.. I can't see this skill being useful even for soloing, and Blms are not tanks, so this ability makes little sense. Like someone said above, I think it should be changed to a "focus" type ability from the older FF games. Double damage/double cast time, would be great with swiftcast.

I would like to see firerstarter proc be as we cast it or not be on the gcd

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Originally Posted by Ifervan

I won't be condescending but I am surprised at the low level of skill or lack of knowledge around this class. This job is not just about damage but control. If you are not using all your spells including Freeze, Lethargy, Virus (in the absence of SMN) etc., then you are not playing it to its potential nor correctly. Much like those complaining about bard who is a DD support class; BLM is a DD control class.

I wanted to add that we should aim to learn and play classes as designed versus trying to change them to what we want. You'll enjoy the game more.

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lol

I won't be condescending but you are all bad.


Please tell me when you find freeze to be useful. It seems like every mob which resists sleep resists freeze too. At BEST it's a failsafe when sleep fails and the crazy part is it's much more expensive and a much longer cast. That means if sleep gets resisted you can either recast the dirt cheap AOE target-following 1.5 sec sleep or waste swiftcast on freeze and ruin astral fire III. Better hope you have a firestarter proc to resume fire spamming afterwards.

I don't know if you've played other Final Fantasy games or not but black mages have NEVER been utility/control units. I picked BLM in this because I wanted to nuke, not throw limited resist buffs on tanks or borrow crappy debuffs from other classes. If they wanted to for some strange reason turn BLM into a red mage in this they should have the decency to change the class description.

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Originally Posted by NeoAmon

Hello,


2- Freeze @ lvl 35:

"Covers a designated area in ice, dealing ice damage with a potency of 20 and binding enemies that enter."

Possibly the very worst spell/skill in the entire game with no competition what so ever. Long cast time that does almost no damage and the bind debuff does not last more than a very short few seconds, what worse is the bind effect breaks as soon as the target is hit by anything. This spell does not have an actual good use in the game to the point many BLMs don't even have it on their bar. I tried to think of any good use, even in Garuda HM but why would I even use it when I can Flare the feathers as they spawn to no health.

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tri-disaster would like to have a word with you

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Originally Posted by SkyfangRauss

tri-disaster would like to have a word with you

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Casting tri-disaster doesn't remove your primary damage buff (astral fire).

It also does 1.5x the damage, takes less time to cast and has a longer bind. Lol, freeze, lol.