BLM skill suggestion for movement heavy dungeons

I love to play BLM but lately I heard too often that a group will only pick one BLM or some groups don’t want a BLM at all and prefer bards because they do “better damage”.

The difficulty in FF14AAR endgame is determined by two factors as far as I see it: being able to dodge and being able to move quickly. A win factor is to do all that while still doing reasonable damage.

While these two factors can be considered as a matter of experience and as a learning curve you have to go through, it bugs me that the role I am playing is designed to be almost useless damage wise when a fight demands a lot of movement.

Second fight in Haukke for example is a fight I really like because it is funny. But I am moving almost all of the time and I am happy if I am able to make some damage besides pulling out a few collapses while running. Don’t get me wrong, the fight is no problem to beat but it doesn’t feel right from a BML’s perspective. The biggest joke for a BLM is the Ultima fight. There are no 10 seconds where I am allowed to stand still and make damage besides the beginning of the fight.

Lowlight of the fight is the phase where the ads appear and the laser show begins. I can’t cast even a single Fire spell. When I see the lasers and move somewhere to where I am not getting hit, before I can cast a single attack (besides the good ole barely any damage doing collapse), a new laser pattern appears and I again have to get out of its way.

Is this what certain dungeons expect a BLM to be? The guy running around while doing almost no damage? A plain damage dealer with barely any support functions becomes a silent runner?

SE has designed the BLM in a way that he is only able to compete with bards and melee DD’s when he is able to keep his stacks up. Without Fire 3, BLM damage is inferior compared to other DD classes. Some of the endgame dungeons this Game offers do not allow me to even build that stack up, not to speak of allowing me to keep it up.

So far for the reason of the rant, here is a suggestion to make things better:

Get rid of the ether manipulation skill (have not seen a single BLM using it since the Game is out) and instead, give the BLM a cast friendly skill for movement heavy fights.

Allow a BLM to cast while moving for a 20-30 second phase and put a 90 second cool down on it so players cannot over use it but can use it as a part of their strategy for certain phases during fights.

TLDR? BLM not worth anything in movement heavy fights, add new skill that allows moving while casting for a limited period of time.

Titan extreme only fight where blm isn't the best to bring in & probably Pharos.

Edit:

hmmm or Scythe-->Scythe 2 Proc

I rather have something like Freeze being like Flaming Arrow.

I happen to use and enjoy Aetherial Manipulation. It's pretty easy to use with a mouseover macro.

Make Surecast prevent loss of cast by moving & being pushed back.

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Originally Posted by Zaels

I happen to use and enjoy Aetherial Manipulation. It's pretty easy to use with a mouseover macro.

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No fight really in this game that its needed for. Kinda a waste of a action slot so I dont equip it. Aetherial Manipulation puts you at the side of another person when most of the time you want it over laping the person your targeted.

To be honest I feel BLM are really powerful with their huge burst of damage. In return the balancing fact is they have to stand and channel to cast.

I think you really need lots of practice in understanding boss mechanics, when it is best to dodge and deal damage at same time. Titan EM likewise battles are difficult because u practically have to stand with the group for WOTL and dodge it being unable to cast your spell. However, this only covers for WOTL, i think other phases Landslide, try not to stand with the group so that you are not targeted.

What I am trying to say is, try to find a way in between the boss mechanics to avoid yourself being targeted and you will be able to cast your spell.

In the case of always being targeted, then it's hard for me to figure out too because I have not played BLM yet, but this is one of my general opinion.

I often question if this is the kind of price we have to pay for high burst AOE.

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Originally Posted by SilverRhythm

To be honest I feel BLM are really powerful with their huge burst of damage.

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blm isnt really that good for burst damage in some fights. Its still required to bring them to some fights mainly just for limit and aoes. blms can make short work on garuda extreme. If timing good can lb3 the garuda & sisters as they spawn in the middle of the arena. Do something like 60k dmg. WHich is like -13% garuda hp, -55% on both sisters.

I somewhat disagree with the original poster.
There are ways that a BLM can nuke effectively in movement heavy fights by making use of your CDs and using spells like Scathe when you're moving.
As a BLM I haven't seen my dmg drop significantly on fights that you used as an example. Then again, even if we suffer on those fights, physical DPS suffer in some other fights.

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Originally Posted by RegnumMagik

I often question if this is the kind of price we have to pay for high burst AOE.

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I know it is a part of the design philosophy and I respect that. But seeing what kind of content they added in 2.1, I doubt future fights will be less movement heavy and "fear" they will continue following that road. Hence the suggestion to adjust the BLM although I see it kinda breaks the original design philosophy. But when the Game came out, the only movement heavy fight was Titan HM. Things have changed since then and I hope the characters will be adjusted accordingly. Maybe when they raise the level limit and introduce new skills we get a chance to be moving while making decent damage - at least from time to time. ;)

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Originally Posted by Zaels

I happen to use and enjoy Aetherial Manipulation. It's pretty easy to use with a mouseover macro.

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You are actually the first person I know lol. Only time I use it is when we stand in Wineport or somewhere else in a group and I have fun with teleporting back and forth :P

I wouldn't even know how to use it in a fight. It is an evade skill. But when shit hits the fan I (PS3 with Gamepad here) I do not have the time to check who stands on a safe spot, choose that player and activate the skill. By that time I would be already dead lol. If I use a macro and always port to player xx it could be my quick end as well.

I've never had a problem in Ultima or Haukke Hard. There's plenty time for casting in Ultima and for the Haukke boss you should make a lot of use of sprint, a tool melees can't use. I pretty much carried a first time MNK through that fight last week who couldn't stay alive.

Titan EM has a high learning curve for BLM but you can achieve high DPS if you know where to be when. You don't have to stack as soon as the weight goes off, stand there until you get a fire or thunder proc then move back. Know when the bombs are coming in phase 2 so that after the weights that come before you might already be in place for them if they drop in the right place. Use Scathe, Manawall and Sprint to your advantage. BLM is also highly useful in the fight for the caster LB3, it makes things much smoother in the latter part of the fight.

I have no problems on my main as blm, if you know the encounters 100%. You will know exactly where to stand and cast while moving. Yes you can cast while moving. It takes practice just like anything else but I can promise you that a blm that's gear capped can do just as much damage as any other class.

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Originally Posted by Beetle

Titan extreme only fight where blm isn't the best to bring in & probably Pharos.

Edit:

hmmm or Scythe-->Scythe 2 Proc

I rather have something like Freeze being like Flaming Arrow.

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I use two black mages in my fc static in Titan em and I gotta say that they do pretty well. A flare proc can reduce a jail to less than half. Less time on jails more time on Titan. It really is a matter of experience with the class and the fight mechanics imo.

Simple Solution: give Surecast move-and-cast for 10 seconds.

Also people underestimate you can weave in a Scathe cast as you finish a cast & begin to move, and soon after.

Yes please! As of right now, Surecast is pretty useless. I was really hoping that "cast without interruption" included movement interrupting a cast.

The thing with BLM is there is a huge difference between a mediocre BLM and a good BLM.

Let's take Titan Ex for example where many in this thread say BLM is terrible.

A good BLM does the following:

-Stays away from grouping near people pre-heart to avoid landslide which causes you to interrupt casts
-Uses aetherial manipulation to get to the group when Titan jumps
-Immediately switches to the far gaol as soon as the first one dies which is a DPS increase for only the ranged class since melee have to wait for upheavel to touch it
-Uses manawall to negate the need to move on tri-landslide
-Uses aetherial manipulation to get out of the half arena bomb so little movement is needed (cast till bombs are about to blow up > AM to party member > dodge landslide and keep casting
-Saves procs when he knows he needs to move
-Uses 'slide' to maximize damage for appropriate positioning and so that you work with the GCD timer (meaning you are always casting even if it looks like you're moving)
-Uses manaward on tumults or bombs or geocrushes
-Uses raging strikes at the appropriate time during heart phase. The appropriate time is the lull in the battle you have till Titan summons his circular bombs
-Delivers insane burst damage to the two adds via flare
-Gets a firestarter proc before the two gaols are set up so that he may flare the first gaol on Titan and fire 3 the other that the healer is often in in the back
-Uses sprint every chance he gets on plumes so that you can instantly get to a safe spot and start casting while your GCD timer is ticking
-Uses manawall to negate the X bomb landslide (and possibly manaward to negate the bomb damage) so that you can constantly damage the adds without interruption
-Uses quelling when adds spawn
-Multidots thunder when appropriate to increase probability of thundercloud procs (this has useful applications outside of Titan Ex like on Caduceus)
-Abuses the hell out of sprint + manaward/manawall to get into position before anyone else in the group can while taking minimum damage

And, of course, using eye and virus when appropriate.

Slide is actually the most important. This means that, when your spell goes off and you know you have to move, you are 'sliding' into a position where you intend to be after GCD has been invoked. This means the decrease in damage due to movement is minimized (quite a bit on Titan Ex, actually) because you can't cast a spell if the GCD timer hasn't run its full duration anyways.

Know how many BLMs I've come across who do any of this? 1. Betcha Amon could give you some more tips.

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Originally Posted by Ri_ri

Make Surecast prevent loss of cast by moving & being pushed back.

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Errr your own movement still interrupts your spell. I WISH I could keep casting while moving with Surecast. Stuns and silence also prevent you from casting.

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Originally Posted by DGMart

I have no problems on my main as blm, if you know the encounters 100%. You will know exactly where to stand and cast while moving. Yes you can cast while moving. It takes practice just like anything else but I can promise you that a blm that's gear capped can do just as much damage as any other class.

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Disagree... there are fights in which you can have bad luck and be target and will have to constantly move. Like in Ultima or Ifrit if you are one of the targets of the eruptions you will have to keep moving and moving and moving until those ends. Ultima is another fight where BLM cant DPS well because of all the movement it involves. You cant predict were to stand when you are being focus by the Boss abilities.

Well that's interesting, since my BLM is top dps, in 95% of all TitanX runs, and Ultima too...and every other fight in the game. Doesn't matter if ppl are higher ilv or not, or what jobs they have.
It's not BLM that sux, it's 99% of players that sux, and make BLM look bad. I even seen tanks do more damage than DRG/BRDs.
Only seen about a handful of ppl, out-dps my blm, more than 10%
ppl should just stop this stupid shit, of blaming gear or certain jobs.
It's PLAYER SKILL (except for coil, where you need certain accuracy, and even then player skill is the deciding factor)

About Ultima fight, you're just exaggerating.
Move pre-emptively, for everything except bits, and then you can alternate between Fire3 and Blizzard3, since Fire buff, gives faster cast for blizzard (to keep stacks up). Or scathe is fine, since it has a chance for 2x potency.
Just get ppl to focus-burn bits, to kill a few before ships drop. Then there's less lasers to dodge.
And if you wanna talk about stacks, try playing MNK, first. Mnk without stacks, is like BLM using only scathe.

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Originally Posted by Hitome

Snip.

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Good tips, i dont do most of that, and still do top damage most of the time, should be quite telling, how shitty most ppl are ^^

tldr: BLM is awesome, 99% of players, suck.

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Originally Posted by Ronyx

Disagree... there are fights in which you can have bad luck and be target and will have to constantly move. Like in Ultima or Ifrit if you are one of the targets of the eruptions you will have to keep moving and moving and moving until those ends. Ultima is another fight where BLM cant DPS well because of all the movement it involves. You cant predict were to stand when you are being focus by the Boss abilities.

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the same goes for anyone, that gets targeted by eruptions, gaols. Has NOTHING to do with BLM. Only one not affected by eruptions, is BRD. Everyone else will loose DPS/heals.

BLM here since 1.0 and I have to say I have not really had an issue with movement heavy fights. Ultimate is pretty easy when you know the adds are coming. just make sure your Astral Fire III is active, swiftcast Flare on the first set of adds, convert and switch between Blizzard III and Fire III since its a 1 second cast. Use Scathe while dodging lasers, (seems to crit for 500 quite often on my character).

As for Haukke HM, memorizing the floor AOE patterns is very simple. Know and anticipate when they will come, move to correct location and continue casting. That's a pretty easy fight and for a geared BLM who knows the AOE rotation, its fun and he goes down very fast.

Same thing goes for anything else really, if you're on the run, you can alternate between Fire III and Blizzard III. Sure you deal less damage while moving, point is you're still casting and staying on the DPS meters.

The BLM isn't just a "stand ancd cast" class. There are numerous mechanics at your disposal to prevent you losing full DPS in an instance.

Did I mention manawall for Titan HM/EX punches? Don't need to move for 2 hits. Cast again when the CD timer is up and its no problem :)

I could go on and on about what you can do but if you wanna play the BLM, you gotta figure the character out and play it to your liking and whats easiest for you, and most beneficial for the team.

I've never had a problem with this. Part of being a successful BLM is anticipating certain AoEs and planning ahead. Even in fights like Ultima, I'm constantly top or 2nd highest DPS. As you repeat fights, you tend to notice where to position yourself best in order to avoid AoEs and never move a step more than you have to.

Get practice moving before the cast bar finishes. Casters think their feet have to be rooted to the ground forever; they don't. The issue of movement is only a problem for non-stop or very rapid movement (like say, Titan EX double plumes). In most other cases you only knock off .5 to 1 second of dodging from your casting routine.

Anyone saying BLM is the "worst" DPS to bring to any content is either a terrible BLM themselves or has only ever played with subpar BLMs.

Hitome covered a good portion and there is little more to add.

I will just post this here from 5 days ago:

http://imgur.com/wHy1Qdu

^ Was not even trying, just a random one shot pug. Heck, I was tanking one of the adds, cause you know Tanks sometimes like to share the pain.

They should fix the interrupt BS when mob run away from front of you.

That is just BS.

Yeah as stated before BLM needs to know the phases for the fights to be able to deal the most amount of damage. The only fight I have seen so far that I'm continually being on the bottom is Titan EX. Just actually started fighting this as well so it could be down to lack of practice. Every other fight I'm usually 1-2 in damage dealt. My suggestion, take time to study the fight. Know when to use manaward/wall. Use AM to get to a safe area quickly without having to run. AM is a very useful skill if you know when you use it. All in all I think BLM is set up great. Just learn the fights and learn how and when to use your CDs better.

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Originally Posted by Synapse

They should fix the interrupt BS when mob run away from front of you.

That is just BS.

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Learn to Pivot its your friend lol...
I.e. turn camera and your characters body so front is always facing mob. This works even if the positioning of the mob starts north of you and travels south. Keep it in your LoS and you'll never be interrupted.

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Originally Posted by TomTom1968

Get rid of the ether manipulation skill (have not seen a single BLM using it since the Game is out) and instead, give the BLM a cast friendly skill for movement heavy fights.

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/ac "Aether Manipulation" <mo>

This is a mouseover macro for AM. I use it all the time. I try and convince other BLMs to use it. Not only is it an awesome move, but in addition to helping you maintain good dps, it makes you look pretty bad a** when you use it mid-fight all the time.

Just cause players don't use all the tools they have available doesn't mean the tools are bad.


edit: after reading through this, I was thinking in my head about instances where i've used AE. Just gonna list a few in the last week alone:

-Turn 2. My static DOES NOT use the popular enrage method. Instead, we pass the rot along 5 healers and rpds, me being the 5th. When its time to go from #5 to #1, I use AE to cover that distance quickly.

-Titan EX. I was out of position on the first set of row bombs that dropped. After dodging landslide, I popped AE to slide to the right position as other team members were moving to a safe location. Granted, I shouldn't have been out of position to begin with, but AE helped me fix my own mistake.

-Garuda HM. To maximize my casts, I stayed put while the pt started to rotate with garuda and the feathers during the tornado phase. I used AE to catch up to the pt (and threw a fighterstarter proc down as soon as I ended the teleport. /flex)

-Wandering Palace. Used AE to get out of goobue sneeze.

In every instance, you could argue that AE wasn't necessary. And it isn't. But you could make the same argument that sprint isn't necessary for things like getting out of plumes. But while something isn't totally necessary, sometimes using it sure does help.

BLMs are just fine. They just need more iconic AoEs! (Burst, Flood, Quake, Tornado, Ultima)

Let me talk about the pros and cons of blackmage right now, since 2.1 changed them quite a bit.

PROS

1. Excellent AOE Damage.

I don't think anyone will try to argue this point. In some situations (4 or 5 mobs with raging strikes/contagion dots) summoner MIGHT be able to net more aoe damage, but the fact of the matter is that most aoe encounters right now end rather quickly, making BLM's burst much more desirable.

Current Endgame Examples: Turn 4 Spiders(phases 1 and 4), Garuda extreme plume phases

2. DPS is very high over one fire phase.

This makes meeting specific DPS checks very easy so long as the BLM is in fire phase and has full mp. You can maximize DPS over upwards of 20-25 seconds by just using Fire I and Fire III and ending in swiftcast flare at the "end" of the DPS check. Dragoon is probably the next best class at hitting these DPS benchmarks.

Current Endgame Examples: Turn 5 Conflags(~15-20 seconds for long conflags, ~8-10 seconds for short conflags), Extreme Titan Gaols(save your swiftcast for the upheaval knockback and/or manawall so you dont have to move out of the landslide)

3. No expendable resource.

BLM damage comes in on and off phases, but a BLM doesn't run out of mana or tp the same way a Summoner/Monk/Dragoon/Bard might. In general with proper Aetherflow/Invigorate management TP and MP should not be a huge issue, it can still arise. In addition these classes often rely on a BLM to output much of the AOE damage so as to conserve on TP and MP in these situations.

4. Simple/Durable

Aside from strategically placing your fire phases to match with DPS checks, BLM is very easy to auto pilot rotations. This frees up your attention to pay more mind to mechanics etc. while still achieving your optimal dps. In addition, BLM is actually quite durable(contrary to the popular opinion/mage archetype) -- Mana Wall and Mana Ward are very strong defensive cooldowns that can be used to pick up healer slack on unavoidable damage.

I've set this as a con because while it isn't too important to "farm" content it can be a big winner on "progression" content.

CONS

1. Target dummy single target damage is actually rather low/RNG based.

In a fight with no mechanics or AOE phase, BLM will inevitably parse just above bards(possibly just below bards if Disembowel from a dragoon is considered). However BLM DPS is still respectable and plenty sufficient to complete all of the content with 4 BLMs (I can't say I actually have done it, but in the current content I would not advise ever stacking BLM. 1 BLM can dish out all of the AOE damage necessary, and help meet the short term DPS checks sufficiently.

2. Hurt more by moving than other classes.

Pretty self explanatory, other classes can attack while moving or have a larger amount of their DPS allocated to DOTs. Occasionally RNG will favor you and you'll have a proc to use while moving or you can plan your use of swiftcast around certain movements. BLM does have some abilities to allow them to stay in the same place while other classes need to move (mostly mana wall, arguably aetherial manipulation).

3. Utility provided is mostly useless right now.

I don't want to say BLM is lacking in utility, because we do have two AOE binds, an AOE sleep, a (fire/lightning/ice)resistance buff, a slow+heavy(Lethargy), and a large heavy(Blizzard I). In current endgame content MOST of these are useless. The main exception being blizzard I + lethargy being very powerful against Dreadknights in Turn 5. In general most enemies at endgame are immune to slepe and bind. And there are no significant encounters that currently deal lightning/ice damage. The way resistance works is also very peculiar, I've heard of groups wiping to Fireballs in T5 because the BLM Apocatastasis an ally and the ally "resisted" the fireball, causing the other 3 people in the stack to take 3 stack damage instead of 4 stack.



At the moment I think BLM is actually a fairly strong DPS class as a whole, but it doesn't really fill the BLM archetype people expected it to fill, and certainly isn't the parse topper it was in 2.0 (minor nerfs while other classes received major buffs, aside from summoner which is just getting parsed more correctly now)

While I think some nerfing was definitely in order(especially in regards to blizzard 3 > flare > flare > repeat), I do feel that the BLM class became significantly less interesting without the nuances that were removed with patch 2.1. I don't think there are presently any balance issues with the class, although I do feel as if I've lost interest in it out of boredom.

EDIT: as an aside, while balanced, I think BLM as a class feels like it should be a "raw damage dealer" but it has a lot of little perks and would be very imbalanced if they did the damage of Monks/Summoners/Dragoons in the form that they are now and would need some major tweaking...

BLMs get manawall and aetherial manipulation, that's pretty good enough for them to be on top of the dps race.

blm is as good as it is now, study the mechanics from your experience and know what to do that suits you the best
knowing when and where to cast is a blm job

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Originally Posted by NyneAlexander

[...]/ac "Aether Manipulation" <mo>[...]

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what is the <mo> doing? Haven't seen this command yet, only know <me> or <t>.

It uses the skill on whoever your mouse icon is over on your screen. Also works if your mouse icon is over their name on the party list.

Very useful for healing classes

mmm PS3 player here..can't do that. And still not sure if it makes sense on consoles. I could make a macro that ports me to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th player. But I can never be sure that person is safe lol. And I can't check who's safe, click on that person and use the skill....too much time I don't have in a dangerous situation. Will toy around a bit more with the spell during the weekend since a lot of you seem to use it.