Black Mage

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Originally Posted by kennyamr

I have not much time to reply but I will say this. I've been playing as BLM since the game started.
It's an amazing class and I love it.
Having said that I am totally in favor of emergency buffs compared to the other casters.
I agree completely with OP and just as them, I think that our "caster tower" role should mean noticeable more DPS power than the other casters at least.

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Exactly. Especially with SMN offering more mobility as well as now offering higher personal dps not even taking into account Devotion, a party wide buff. As much as I love BLM, it's suffering from the same issue as it was in 4.0 release. It is not worth it to learn for the amount of damage that it brings the group or any of the utility. I'm OK with RDM being one of the bottom DPS's because I have cleared runs I have 0 business clearing just because of dualcast verraise, swiftcast verraise, but SMN out dpsing a "selfish" dps while also bringing devotion and radiant shield? As well as being able to shift better and apoc better? As well as being able to raise? It's honestly absurd.

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Originally Posted by VitalSuit

+1 weapon damage, 340 weapon wins.

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thats imo in case of this 335 weapon not so clear.., that SS boost is really nice

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

thats imo in case of this 335 weapon not so clear.., that SS boost is really nice

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The weapon damage wins any secondary amounts.

Wow, the post limit here is really short. 1000 characters is like 7 tweets.

I do not have experience playing BLM because well, as mentioned, it doesn't have enough damage to make up for its drawbacks.
I want to play it one day, but it's currently unappealing.

But I think there's an extremely simple buff that'd bring BLM up to par: increase damage dealt while in the center square of Ley Lines by another 15%, to 30% total.
This is a 5% total average DPS increase if it's always used off CD and if BLM can stay in that square. Bit higher average DPS increase when timed with other cooldowns.
Ley Lines doesn't seem rewarding enough to me against bosses that really move you around a lot. Granted, it's very easy to stay in it against some bosses, I think that change would reward timing ley lines correctly during a phase where you can stay in it best.

Though ultimately, I don't know. Same design changes would be nice. As much as SMN DPS is higher now on top of offering utility, it's also harder and more annoying to play. The burst windows are really more ~2 minutes, not 1, as well.
Another idea would be if BLM had an ability to do a counter-spell attack to negate something hitting BLM for high damage and returning very high damage in return, that'd be a higher skill and cool ability. You'd both need to know what hits are going to do a high amount of damage (lets say more than half your health), and to stand in it only when that counter-spell is up. Potentially this could be cast on an ally, like a super-Apocatastasis.
The BLM kit seems kind of.. too straight forward to me. Many different buttons pretty much do the same thing. Though, somehow, I see some BLMs seeming to do very poor damage, less than I know BLM is capable of.

But yeah... BLM is the big one I'm looking at playing next, but it currently looks very unappealing to me.

the 1000 character limit can be circumvented by editing after posting.

Also yes, the class is very strong in dungeons, in the new 24 man, etc, but this raid tier favors in many ways SMN, particularly as it relates to movement. This is why most of my proposed suggestions for the class would help it with movement rather than damage, its damage is definitely high it just can't optimize said damage effectively, like, say, SAM can.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

the 1000 character limit can be circumvented by editing after posting.

Also yes, the class is very strong in dungeons, in the new 24 man, etc, but this raid tier favors in many ways SMN, particularly as it relates to movement. This is why most of my proposed suggestions for the class would help it with movement rather than damage, its damage is definitely high it just can't optimize said damage effectively, like, say, SAM can.

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Nah, its damage with full uptime (100% turret) is still way too low for what the job is.

Even full damage uptime getting catered by your team and never having to move you're still doing less than other jobs.

BLM is kind of unapealing for new players because even with the Enochian change new people will still drop Astral Fire then drop the job right after. On top of that the job popularity goes on a downhill since 3.2. The job itself is fun but it rewards you poorly for doing the right decision making towards boosting your own damage and punishes you for playing safe, so I can see why people doesn't want to pick it up.

I mained BLM from when I started the game in February all the way through ARR and HW content until SB, and have since switched to RDM. OP hit the nail on the head - the unique aspects of BLM have been homogenized across other caster roles, and all BLM now brings to the table is higher damage AOE casts at the cost of longer cast times, and lags painfully behind the incredible utility of a class like RDM.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Even full damage uptime getting catered by your team and never having to move you're still doing less than other jobs.

BLM is kind of unapealing for new players because even with the Enochian change new people will still drop Astral Fire then drop the job right after. On top of that the job popularity goes on a downhill since 3.2. The job itself is fun but it rewards you poorly for doing the right decision making towards boosting your own damage and punishes you for playing safe, so I can see why people doesn't want to pick it up.

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I actually wish they had left the HW Enochian mechanic untouched. It was far more fun to me than it is now. Basically press the button once per fight then forget about it, kinda lame. But I really liked HW feel of Blm, so that might be the reason. Also losing half our skills with the class redesign kinda killed it for me.

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Originally Posted by Lelila38

I actually wish they had left the HW Enochian mechanic untouched. It was far more fun to me than it is now. Basically press the button once per fight then forget about it, kinda lame. But I really liked HW feel of Blm, so that might be the reason. Also losing half our skills with the class redesign kinda killed it for me.

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At least we can still shout "APOCATASTASIS" into voice chats. Just wish that ass swordmage across the way couldn't do the same.

What skills did we actually loose?
T2, one shield that was more of a niche than anything else

Although I agree, more use to enochian would be nice. An instant refresh on AF or UI could prove useful when you can't cast F1

What if...

ACT was right all along and BLM DPS is 250 higher than reported in fflogs?

:O

/conspiracy

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

What skills did we actually loose?
T2, one shield that was more of a niche than anything else

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Manawall used to legit be amazing, especially when it had its long duration and nullified 2 physical hits completely, including knockback. It was up for Titan's first two landslides, negating them completely, for instance.

actually I prefer they keep black mage as a pure dps job with no utility , thats what makes them different from the other two mages , I dont think that every job in the game needs to have raid utility , pure damage is what makes blm fun for me

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

What skills did we actually loose?
T2, one shield that was more of a niche than anything else

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What hurt us most is the loss of cross classed raging strikes, imo. We were left with zero possibility to buff ourselves.
Also Manawall was great, the distinction between physical and magical shield made it fun and gave each their own niche. You had to actually figure out which one to use.
We also lost Apoc, our only utility. Don't say we still have it, it went from Blm only to all casters, so we effectively lost it and have to spend a slot to get it back.
But we still have freeze, idk about pvp but completely useless in pve, never even put it on my bar.

I didn't choose BLM for utility, i chose it for the huge damage it can deal.
so, please, no Raise or any other crap abilities. Just bring back high figures !

I'm well aware you don't/shouldn't use Triple while mobs are gathering. My point was that SMN has 1m CDs just like BLM, and if you wanted to use them to DPS on the move, you could. The downtime advantage for SMN in dungeons doesn't really exist compared to BLM.

The biggest advantage SMN has in dungeons is Bane is 8y radius, do their DoTs(the biggest individual contribution to their damage in aoe trash) will never not hit everything like Flare/Foul can in Skalla/Kugane because of mob hit box size and tanks not gathering them tightly.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

Although I agree, more use to enochian would be nice. An instant refresh on AF or UI could prove useful when you can't cast F1

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This kind of buff is pointless though. BLM isn't going to become more desirable just in virtue of being easier to play, which is what this type of "magic button to keep AF/UI" does.
It'll make BLM marginally less punishing at progression, but this isn't going to up our dps, or gives us offensive utility or do anything that actually makes BLM more attractive.
Many "solutions" people propose fall in this category- if you look at the bigger picture, there are already plenty of BLMs playing perfectly with ridiculous uptime, and that's not enough.
The magic Fire-hammer either needs to hit harder, or dent the armour so others hit it harder.

I still think flat potency increase would be a mistake. The implied gains from a buff to the thunder dot timer and Astral/Umbral timer as well as a Blizzard IV and Convert overhaul would be sufficient.

Perhaps they could consider making Foul double potency if it only hits one target (that’s the issue with buffing it, since BLM is already pretty crazy AOE damage, same thing with buffing Convert).

I love blm and after stalking this thread a while I will share my thoughts. I think that problem with blm is plain class design. It's dps isn't bad but it has no synergy or burst with anything. It does its thing alone regardless of what's happening around it.

Talking about changes is pointless but in my opinion, I think what would benefit most is reduced potency and 2.5 gcd fire 4s so that triple and swift cast aren't dps gains but utility while also balancing our dmg sources a bit. And yes I say reduce to 200 potency and add it elsewhere.

Make umbral hearts increase fire 4 dmg by 50%, so 3 300 potency and then 3 200 potency at 2.5s cast. Overall about a 300 dps buff comparing current 6 fire 4s but it gives us a slight burst window. And a side note to increase foul a bit and ffs increase thunder dot dmg. Our dps gain in using thunder relies on proc and that's retarded and no other job can lose dps by dotting.

Enochian trait would be changed and umbral hearts would half mp cost instead of what it does now. Quadra flares would be a thing so obviously potency nerf and 2.5s gcd also to keep it in check. One interesting trait to make enhanced Enochian would be to give us the ability to use buffs and ogcds while casting.

Convert is just bad so let's not even go there lol. All in all we are still the root of what makes us blm, but qol and dmg tweaks is what we needs. We don't need raises or party utility. We need to be black mages and kill stuff. Anyway let me know what you guys think. I like reading about everyone's thoughts on this and I'm happy I'm not alone with my undeniable love suffering

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Originally Posted by itti18

actually I prefer they keep black mage as a pure dps job with no utility , thats what makes them different from the other two mages , I dont think that every job in the game needs to have raid utility , pure damage is what makes blm fun for me

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I agree with the sentiment. I don't want to have to worry about raid buff alignment or what our MNK is doing derping around or not having piercing as a brd/mch. I think that a lot of people also share your sentiment that doing the big deeps numbers and being able to turret is what makes BLM fun. The issue that has been coming up ever since the tail end of HW is that BLM does NOT pull better numbers than something like MCH/DRG sometimes even in pure dps numbers not even including the raid buffs that these jobs bring to the party (littany, tether, hypercharge). This was an issue before 4.1 and then MCH/DRG get buffed? (Hypercharge by 20% and DRG gets easier to play and less punishing) It's honestly ridiculous. I just wanna throw explosions and do the "sick deeps" but that's kind of hard when I have a difficult time finding a PF accepting BLM much less a raid group.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

This kind of buff is pointless though. BLM isn't going to become more desirable just in virtue of being easier to play, which is what this type of "magic button to keep AF/UI" does.
It'll make BLM marginally less punishing at progression, but this isn't going to up our dps, or gives us offensive utility or do anything that actually makes BLM more attractive.
Many "solutions" people propose fall in this category- if you look at the bigger picture, there are already plenty of BLMs playing perfectly with ridiculous uptime, and that's not enough.
The magic Fire-hammer either needs to hit harder, or dent the armour so others hit it harder.

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I really like how they showed this in the MSQ with the thaumaterge guild. Having it be a refresh would be really awesome since it would basically change the rotation from 6F4 to 7F4, which is definitely a step in the right direction. Taking a closer look at the numbers though, BLM would need to be doing approximately 6k dps or so to be roughly on par with utility dps jobs (NIN/DRG/BRD/MCH). It's not been talked about here because it is the BLM discussion, but SAM will also likely need a (smaller) buff as well, since it suffers from similar problems that BLM does; it just doesn't bring as much damage as a "pure damage dealer" as other classes do.

At least Sam has a slashing debuff, so can increase its own dps. We Blm can't even do this much.

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Originally Posted by Lelila38

At least Sam has a slashing debuff, so can increase its own dps. We Blm can't even do this much.

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So would, as others have previously suggested, attaching something of a 15% Fire Vulnerability debuff to B4 work?
Makes B4 useful, boosts F1, F3, and F4 damage which together are about 60% of our dps (0.6*1.15+0.4 = 1.09, 9% "simple" dps boost), without buffing SMN, and providing a small buff to RDM (Verfire, Verflare).

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

So would, as others have previously suggested, attaching something of a 15% Fire Vulnerability debuff to B4 work?
Makes B4 useful, boosts F1, F3, and F4 damage which together are about 60% of our dps (0.6*1.15+0.4 = 1.09, 9% "simple" dps boost), without buffing SMN, and providing a small buff to RDM (Verfire, Verflare).

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I'm generally of the opinion that permanent vulnerabilities belong to the tanks. Though the prospect of hitting 15% harder makes me happy in inappropriate ways.

In terms of what we could hope for in a patch or raid balance patch, it'd probably be a potency boost to be honest, but there is another thing that's been nugging me in the head. We're the only job that gets heavily hampered by Server MP ticks, which in turn causes Spell Speed to have stunted progression, even back when it was our undisputed best stat.

So as a preliminary fix to that, Blizzard 3 should restore 1800 MP upon casting it. There are several scenarios in Black Mages ending MP from a Fire Phase and it's almost entirely based on server MP ticks. There is one glaring scenario (Sub 13k) that occurs if your T3 doesn't quite finish before the MP tick and that one sucks in particular. This change both eliminates that scenario, removes our dependency on the server tick moving into Ice phase (allowing us to at a minimum always cast B4 moving into the phase, but also always cast T3 in our more favorable positions), and removes the stranglehold the server has on our magesicles.

What about the fact that, because of how mana shift and umbral ice work, you can grant healers additional MP pretty much every time its off cool down? I'd say thats pretty valuable.

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Originally Posted by Pondera

What about the fact that, because of how mana shift and umbral ice work, you can grant healers additional MP pretty much every time its off cool down? I'd say thats pretty valuable.

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Mana Song.

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Originally Posted by Pondera

What about the fact that, because of how mana shift and umbral ice work, you can grant healers additional MP pretty much every time its off cool down? I'd say thats pretty valuable.

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This would be more impactful if Mana Shift were A) more frequently necessary and B) more frequently available. No one is bringing a BLM over a different caster because of it.

Manashift is best used on Summoner now because their MP no longer directly translates to damage and running out via rotation is just about impossible, furthermore, BLM can only use it best when in ice, and while their MP is "infinite", this provides a lot less window of opportunity than you might think. If I was a designer I would give BLM a special "mana channeling" cooldown where the BLM tethers to a player and over 5-9 seconds channels MP straight to them. This would be a cool take on BLM utility while "staying true" to its mana manipulation-based lore.

A fire-aspected damage potency up debuff from Blizzard IV would be the perfect way to increase BLM's damage, make Blizzard IV completely relevant, and NOT buff other magic damage/PLD/healers, but I think we should be embracing "the utility" of magic vuln up if anything. The recurring theme of this thread is that raw damage on a class will NEVER even weigh the same as utility, let alone be even stronger, so if the issue is with BLM being in raid then utility is a must. I feel particularly obligated to hammer this home especially to anyone saying they "just want more explosions, man" and would point out that perhaps it holds true that, as someone earlier in the thread elegantly said, utility for high-end is basically a must, so if you don't play high-end, then please reconsider your sentiments.

Someone earlier also brought up that it has no synergy with 2 minute cooldowns. This is a big problem, admittedly, especially after taking summoner for a good test run (bahamut is pretty much up during every hypercharge and that is really well-synergized), so perhaps changing Ley Lines to be 120s recast but lasting for 45 seconds (or more, even) would be meaningful. This, with a change to Convert to be 60s or 120s would fix "the synergy problem".

I'm beginning to like more and more the idea of double Foul potency on a single target. I wish there was a more meaningful way to pitch ideas to the Devs.

@Kabooa, if all spells in Umbral cost no MP, that would go a very long way into solving the issue of reliance on server ticks for MP. This is one of the suggestions I plopped in the thread back on page like 13 or something. Another really important one of note would be if Thunder refreshed the Astral/Umbral timer, as that would mean no need to cast Fire I to refresh timer if you get a Thundercloud during fire, which would mean possibly another Fire IV for more potency, and it would also mean more meaningful movement so you don't have to worry about losing the timer or transposing.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

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You're gonna be hard-pressed to stay in place for 45s to make use of that lengthier Ley Lines though. 30s is already quite challenging.

It's not that pure dps doesn't work, it's that the balancing team seems scared to give it the proper numbers so that it actually works.
Even if the dps was equivalent to something with raid utility, the strategy would be inherently worse because it's "all eggs in one basket". Bad mechanic rng or an unlucky death would make the team with a selfish dps job lose more than the one based on pure raid aoe buffs and synergy, so even if the numbers were the same, the synergistic approach would be more consistent/resistant to failure. They just love to force this same meta on us for no good reason.

The Foul thing is a good idea though (it's the same as a potency adjustment, but it works and I guess there's some element of reward there for always using every Foul charge).


(P.S.: I'm not "out to get you" btw. It's just that I often disagree with your suggestions- like the longer Ley Lines, which I think would be useless in practice due to mechanics- but they're not dumb, and your logic/what you're saying is sound, so I normally reply with counterarguments. I respectfully disagree with your position, even if I see merit in it. If someone says something stupid that I disagree with, I don't feel compelled to engage it in discussion)

What about a reverse on ley lines? 20 secs durations and 1 min CD? up for every contagion/trick attack

(I also agree with the foul proposal imho I think that overall it's potency is a bit lacking all things considered)

I think a longer ley lines would be fine if Between the Lines brought the circle to you rather than you to the circle. Or maybe they could implement another skill that does it so you can have both. Maybe Convert should give you infinite MP for 12 seconds like thin air does, but even in that case you'd have your phases out of sync and that really affects the synergy issue.

Your input is appreciated, and even after how many times I've said about the flat potency increase being a bad idea, I'd still TAKE it; no one is going to be angry about a buff, but I don't think that it's really getting at the heart of the issue. "Turret DPS" just is plain bad design for tiers with loads of movement, and fixes to movement issues would go further in increasing damage than just increasing the potency and hoping that you don't get picked or have to work it out, etc.

And about your last point, that is ultimately why I think there should be NO class that offers "purely raw damage as utility" but each should have at least something outside the role pool. As someone put, even SAM has slashing down if you're running PLD/DRK/DRG/SAM, which is still more utility than BLM can say it has. That one guy's Meltdown suggestion would be neat, or the magic vuln, and I would STILL argue the raise purely for balance and something involving MP recovery or speed buff to the party.

If they wanted to increase spell potency they could just change the “improved enochian” trait to give us 15 or 20 percent rather than ten. Whatever they do, I strongly believe that Flare should continue to have the highest or tied-for-highest potency of every spell that isn’t Foul.

I still think that hearts should halve fire spell cast times (not recast times) and that each time you spend any your Foul should get extra charge, so that Foul synergizes with spell speed, B4 is unambiguously good, etc.

I think at this point it's pretty much universally agreed upon that umbral hearts need love, and I would also assert that Thunder III could use some love (AF/UI timer refresh, additive rather than refresh dot up to 60 seconds, proc duration increased to 30 seconds), and between those two things, most of the "low damage" issues with the class would be fixed (consider another Fire IV per phase due to thundercloud and not needing Fire I, or not needing to cast thunder in ice because your dot timer is already high). Afterward, it would be largely whatever can be helped as far as movement/uptime is concerned (the Thunder refreshing timer suggestion would help with this as well).

I'll disclaim yet again that not all classes need to be "excellent" at progression (like rez dispenser is), but it's pretty obvious that BLM is a little too far below where it could be and still be "tough". These many factors all come together to establish that BLM is in a bad place, not any one of them independently.

If Thundercloud itself lasted longer would make easier to juggle it inside stack refreshing already.

I still kind of like my I had in another thread, so throwing it out here:

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Originally Posted by Waliel

I quite enjoy being the super selfish deeps that doesn't provide for the rest of the party, so how about something that reinforces that idea? An inverse raid buff of sorts. A trait that increases BLM damage by X% for every DoM (except other BLM) job in the party. You'd always have at least two healers so that would be the baseline. Call it Mana Battery and have the tooltip be "Leeching minute amounts of Aetherial energies from other magic users," or something.

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Could maybe also push caster comps to be more viable ever so slightly, though it would require some other changes too. It wouldn't also throw the 4 man dungeon balance out the window.

Hmm, that sounds intriguing but I don't think it would be extremely viable until there is a caster tank (hopefully BLU and hopefully in 5.0, cross your fingers).


To illustrate a different way, you're in a party and you want people who are going to help buff you and synergize with you. This is why everyone loves NINs and ASTs; people want to be fed, not to feed. Furthermore, what Galvuu said earlier about putting all your eggs in one basket with a "pure damage" class is very spot on; even if it WAS more damage in total, you're taking a much higher risk with a much higher potential for error.

Not all classes necessarily need to provide heaps and heaps of utility like BRD does, but every job should bring at least SOMETHING to the table that is meaningful for the party, even if it is as simple as SAM's slashing down. Asking extremely selfish classes to be desired and useful in party play is paradoxical when there are other jobs that are not selfish and still do as well if not better (see also: SMN)