Black Mage

I'd like to point that (imo) there is nothing wrong with BLM being a selfish dps akin to the SAM.
There are only 3 caster dps, not everyone one wanna bring said support to the team other than dps (I know a BLM who was upset with the introduction of manashift).
The only real issue concerning raid buff is that BLM don't bring enough dps to compensate their inability to support. The fact that they also have a turret playstyle doesn't seem to help much.
Concerning the absence of cooldown to line up with other team burst, beside reducing LeyLine CD to 60sec I don't really see what SE could do beside reworking a few more things (allowing Thundercloud/Infest to stack I dunno)

manashift and apo will get their cd shortened (but I don't know by how much), ideally, it'd be nice if BLM could give back mana on par with BRD or MCH since they're essentially the best job at that.

Imo to make BLM more interesting they should also make him suffer less from movement when learning.
Some skill rework could help like make Scaith more viable (refreshing AF/UI timer, making lots more dmg for instance).
Making mana tick faster could be nice too.

While I understand and agree with what you're saying by and large OP, I'm hella excited for the 4.1 SMN changes. I've ditched SMN/RDM in lieu of gearing for my BLM and tanks specifically since we got Savage, and with SMN becoming literal godtier again (it seems), I'm excited to see how the two stack up once I can put SMN through the Savage ringer for the week. BLM is the SAM of the casters, you're meta 2nd highest DPS, and because you have no specific utility that the others don't also share with you through cross role. Maybe those numbers changed, or will change after 4.1, but BLM is one of the most rewarding jobs because of the awareness and mechanic checks you yourself need to perform to play optimally. If I did have a way of gauging DPS, and saw a BLM pumping out 4.5K or more damage, I'd do whatever I could as a tank or other DPS since I don't heal much, to see what I could do to further make their job easier to turret. They're still very great and tbh I don't think there's much to worry about, the Physical DPS being all adjusted and buffed up is just an issue all of it's own because casters were being phased out of most groups. But SMN being what it will be soon, will still be keeping the spot open on it's own more or less.

4.1 should be great because I'm excited to start using SMN again alongside BLM.

>I'd like to point that (imo) there is nothing wrong with BLM being a selfish dps akin to the SAM.
>BLM is the SAM of the casters, you're meta 2nd highest DPS, and because you have no specific utility that the others don't also share with you through cross role

To all the people saying this - SAM has the exact same problems BLM does, and is one of the weakest in terms of raid DPS in the game right now. This is a significant problem with the game's current design. Their personal DPS is no where close to being enough to offset that they do not have party damage buffs. Meanwhile, you can play SMN, do almost identical personal damage, AND have radiant shield + devotion now. Same argument for MCH, which will do very similar personal DPS, but have a 6% hypercharge.

Please, please start looking at the contribution to the raid's dps rather than the job's personal dps alone. If you do, you will see a very disturbing imbalance in this game that is only getting worse for BLM, and even SAM.

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Originally Posted by BlackcatChen

To all the people saying this - SAM has the exact same problems BLM does, and is one of the weakest in terms of raid DPS in the game right now. This is a significant problem with the game's current design. Their personal DPS is no where close to being enough to offset that they do not have party damage buffs. Meanwhile, you can play SMN, do almost identical personal damage, AND have radiant shield + devotion now. Same argument for MCH, which will do very similar personal DPS, but have a 6% hypercharge.

Please, please start looking at the contribution to the raid's dps rather than the job's personal dps alone. If you do, you will see a very disturbing imbalance in this game that is only getting worse for BLM, and even SAM
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Alright then, let's calculate the gain from the nin TA which is currently the most powerful raid buff in the game, boosting damage on a single boss by 10% for everyone 1/6 of the time.

For that I'll use Alte Roite's fight, since it's pretty basic for every jobs.

I'll use the parse for the top SAM dps (with no nin in their party) and the top NIN, both got about the same amount of balances (10 for the SAM, 9 for the NIN) and we'll see what is the real dps of the NIN once we factor its utility to the party.

So the SAM did 6367dps (2.58M damage over 6.34 minutes of fight)
The NIN did 5723dps (1.97M damage over 5.34 minutes of fight)

(Edit: which in both case is weird, I guess the parser kept counting dps few seconds after the death of the boss since 2.58M/394 seconds = 6548dps for the SAM and 1.97M/334 seconds = 5898DPS)

Now we'll give back to the NIN the damage they provided to the party.

6 TA of 10 seconds over the fight
so 60 seconds out of 334 seconds of fight mean it was there 17.96% of the time
17.96% of the total damage of the party (11.41M) amount to 2 053 800
Out of the 2 053 800 damage, 10% belong to the NIN so 205 380
add that to the NIN total damage 1 970 000 + 205 380 = 2 175 380

The top NIN real dps is 6513 (2.17M over 5.34 minutes of fight)

So yes this is just an average, to be really accurate we would need to determine how much damage was made precisely during each Trick Attack. But it does show that while being powerful and not making the nin any less viable the utility is not that crazy and depend a lot on the dps of the players that are with you opposed to your dps being entirely in your hand for SAM or BLM (making only you accountable if you screw up your dps).

Please do not use parses with balance and left eye feeding as an argument (on either side of it, it still doesn't add up regardless). Also, the value of trick attack in parse runs, and the value of trick attack in speed kills where burst is utilized is very, very different. The value of trick attack can be almost triple of what you noted. I can prove that, but I'd rather not on the OF because of really obvious reasons (like possibly getting banned for it).

Also...
>so 60 seconds out of 334 seconds of fight mean it was there 5.6% of the time
Wait isn't 60/334*100 = 17.96%?!

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Originally Posted by BlackcatChen

Also...
>so 60 seconds out of 334 seconds of fight mean it was there 5.6% of the time
Wait isn't 60/334*100 = 17.96%?!

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You're absolutely right about that, was a pretty clumsy mistake, I changed that

But the circumstances were the same for both, both had a dragoon, both had about the same amount of balances buffs. As I said it is an average. Just here to show a more clear value of the utility, which is actually pretty balanced.

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Originally Posted by Sigiria

You're absolutely right about that, was a pretty clumsy mistake, I changed that

But the circumstances were the same for both, both had a dragoon, both had about the same about on balances buffs. As I said it is an average. Just here to show a more clear value of the utility, which is actually pretty balanced.

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Shadewalker

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Originally Posted by Sfia

We can only wait and see :) BLM is in a really bad spot right now. But I know people have been really vocal about MCH/SMN and that got the ball moving on appeasing those people - hopefully we're not overlooked!

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The thing is though, SMN and MCH didn't want more damage, they just wanted their job to be less clunky. SMN looks better, but putting 1% on Hypercharge is... I dunno what they were thinking.

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Originally Posted by Alkimi

The thing is though, SMN and MCH didn't want more damage, they just wanted their job to be less clunky. SMN looks better, but putting 1% on Hypercharge is... I dunno what they were thinking.

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All we can ask for is more dmg though, SE decided that's what defines our role. Blm is actually not that clunky with enough spell speed, but our identity is raw damage, which we don't bring anymore.
We either need a buff or some synergy with the other classes, a magic buff would be nice, since everything that ups magical dps was pretty much removed.

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Originally Posted by BlackcatChen

>I'd like to point that (imo) there is nothing wrong with BLM being a selfish dps akin to the SAM.
>BLM is the SAM of the casters, you're meta 2nd highest DPS, and because you have no specific utility that the others don't also share with you through cross role

To all the people saying this - SAM has the exact same problems BLM does, and is one of the weakest in terms of raid DPS in the game right now. This is a significant problem with the game's current design. Their personal DPS is no where close to being enough to offset that they do not have party damage buffs. Meanwhile, you can play SMN, do almost identical personal damage, AND have radiant shield + devotion now. Same argument for MCH, which will do very similar personal DPS, but have a 6% hypercharge.

Please, please start looking at the contribution to the raid's dps rather than the job's personal dps alone. If you do, you will see a very disturbing imbalance in this game that is only getting worse for BLM, and even SAM.

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You say they're problems but it's not an issue with game design, they made the direct choice to have both jobs play like that. Little to no party utility for higher personal DPS, party buffs matter very little if your group doesn't have the damage or awareness to capitalize on TA Hypercharge or otherwise. For those top 1% of groups that do take proper usage of those moments, you can likely look through logs to see how much Raid DPS is being contributed, for everything under that, it's not going to make a large difference in groups. If your personal DPS is great and high, you're doing what the job is designed or oriented for, and that's not an issue in of itself.

What is an issue is something like DRG getting steady buffs and changes that it has been getting, while providing a lot of party DPS. It's steadily catching up to the top damage because of how they're lessening positional misses and changing how "clunky" it is and being made to be easier to play. I still see tons of SAMs doing huge d*** DPS in groups and being 600-700+ higher than the 2nd DPS in groups, same with BLMs depending on how much the group is willing to cater to them to let them do that damage. I don't see SMN doing identical personal damage to SAM or BLM even after it's soon to be buffs, I just can't wrap my head around that. Been playing SMN/BLM since 2.0 way back in August of whatever year that was, even when they didn't have MP issues or otherwise, BLM has nearly always been higher DPS wise. NIN/DRG steadily getting stronger despite their utility is a different issue, but I don't think there's anything to worry about regarding SAM/BLM. I'd like the difficulty in playing BLM to stay because as soon as they notice picks on them decreasing and the job being used less because of the perceived weakness in comparison to other jobs with utility, then they will start nerfing and adjusting things instead of players just improving their personal performance and not worrying about what they "could" be doing and focusing on what they are doing.