Is BLM truly simple?

I'm seeing a lot of threads and videos mentioning that BLM is the simplest of all the DPS classes (in terms of rotation and micromanagement).

I like to have one of each roles available at lvl 50, and I started with DRG for DPS, because I love the class, but frankly, the DRG rotation is a little overwhelming to me. (I don't have the best reaction times and get easily flustered when things get dangerous).

As much as I see other people complain about 'boring rotation' I would actually love a class that let's me be a decent asset to the part with only half a dozen keypresses.

Is BLM really that simple to play, or are people just being hyperbolic and comparing it to complicated classes like MNK?

The *real* BLM doesn't start until you begin running endgame raids and primal fights, rotations aren't all there is to it but I'll just wait until someone stops by to explain that in detail. Not a BLM main but I seriously considered it for a while.

I haven't played anything but Arcanist in a really long while. With that said, from my experience Black Mage has the least buttons to press and the simplest "rotation" out of all DPS, but Bard surpasses it in ease of use and player adaptability for the simple fact that it doesn't have cast time and is less prone to suffer a big dip in DPS if a bad decision is made.

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Originally Posted by BloodPact

I haven't played anything but Arcanist in a really long while. With that said, from my experience Black Mage has the least buttons to press and the simplest "rotation" out of all DPS, but Bard surpasses it in ease of use and player adaptability for the simple fact that it doesn't have cast time and is less prone to suffer a big dip in DPS if a bad decision is made.

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This. While BLM may be a "simple" job to play, it takes a lot of player skill to bring out its dps potential in a movement or mechanic heavy fight.

The rotation for the class seems fairly simple at a glance, but the end game is a step above itself. I'd define BLM as a "situational" based DPS as to bring out the best of it, you need to have some planning ahead and watching for certain things, like your remaining MP, mechanics and timing your MP Regeneration ticks or fillering them.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...332-Is-this-it

I laugh when I see BLMs complain about downtime from moving, melee have it far far worse.

Melees can still attack whilst moving unless they have to run away from it(they have gap closers), BLMs have to resort to a weak/RNG based attack that if used incorrectly can mess up their MP Management during Astral Fire.

Lol melee get very little movement punishment related downtime, you still auto attack, use skills and the reach of skills is rediculous, all while moving, Blm can't do this. On drg or mnk, i can hit the skill as I'm running away and before the gcd is back up I'm back in range. Blm you have to learn to cast and move. And thats ussualy the differance, also learning how to always face target while casting. But melee gets very little to none movement punishment especially when compaired to blm. Monk can suffer a bit more because of grease lighting and loss of auto attacks, but only a loldrg, not a real one, would not suffer.

As a Blm main i do find it simple relative to everything else. Attribute that to lack of muscle memory with other classes or what have you maybe. But don't let people/me calling it simple give you the impression you can just show up and cheese your way to respectable numbers. If you aren't comfortable with a fight's mechanics on BLM you are plain and simple not going to put up quality numbers relative to the jobs potential.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

I laugh when I see BLMs complain about downtime from moving, melee have it far far worse.

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As a main black mage, there is a lot going on that no one but a main black mage could understand. There is a 1.5-4 second cast on all your spells that do decent damage, and an insta cast damage spell that you incorporate based on the situation. Knowing what is coming is essential, but you can't always count on RNG, which is what Blm does. It's a very re-actional job that is easy to learn, but very hard to master. Simple mistakes, bad rng, and ignorance will lower your DPS so much, you'll be more of a paper weight to the party than a contributor.

Melee have it worse? My butt, you have auto attacks and gap closing moves with close to nil cool downs. Maybe if you had more than 3 jobs you would see the comment you made is both ignorant, and completely wrong.

**update** In my ignorance, i checked people's names on here and check their profiles to see if they have a job they are talking smack about, and only saw three. Only after checking my own profile did I see SE only posts three, although I know I have all of them at 50.**

Yes i play drg as well and while positioning is very important you can still be attacking so blm is about minimizing movement.

A Summoner's complexity comes from mastery of your mechanics. Your rotation, what buttons you press and when, and micromanaging your egi. A Summoner like almost every other dps class in this game rely on mechanical mastery in order to be "the best" at it.

A Black Mage is the exception. A beginner Black Mage will look upon the rotation, find it appealing how easy it seems, and then proceed to complain on Titan Ex about how they could barely cast anything because of the amount of movement. An experienced Black Mage will use the tools of his trade to minimize movement on the same fight, using manawall to preemptively counter landslide, shutter step to move out of the rest, and aetherial manipulation or manaward to dodge and render irrelevant a majority of weight of the lands and come out of the fight topping dps without a care in the world.

To put more simply, a Black Mage's complexity comes from their dynamics and reactive nature. In a strange sort of way a Black Mage plays almost more like a White Mage healer than another DPSer. Instead of methodically throwing out our abilities, we focus on planning and reacting because not only do we have the time for such forethought (as again our "rotation" at it's core is fairly simplistic) but also because without that forethought we are at the mercy of basically every mechanic in the game.

As a current example (as I would hardly consider Titan EX relevant in the game anymore after clearing it for story purposes) just in T6 alone while progressing back when 2.2 launched my dps according to others went from a paltry 250 to a reasonable for ilvl 90 gear, 300+ just while progressing and without any gear upgrades. This is because as I learned the fight I learned how to manage things like when I have the honey, breaking chains, etc without having to stay on the move much. To conclude, the Black Mage is likely the best example FFXIV has of a job that is easy to learn, but hard to master. If it seems easy now, don't worry it's where you're supposed to be when you first start toying with the playstyle. Eventually, as you start doing some of the harder fights, you'll start noticing the little things, and that's when you start making the connections I've stated above, and really get into the meat of the class

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Originally Posted by TheTen

Is BLM truly simple?

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I play all 9 jobs, and BLM is so ridiculously over powered that its very very easy to push high dps with little effort. When you understand a fight and have a decent blm rotation its exceptionally easy to be the top dps in your party.

in my opinion blm is by far the easiest job to achieve your "role's" requirement.

Monk, Dragoon, even Paladin are more difficult to be successful at.

(the reason black mage is so over powered is because most dps players who play blm have complained that they cant dps in ifrit hard mode in 1.0, because fire is their most potent attack so SE removed elemental weaknesses, and then in 2.0 they complained about having to move, turning the class simply into a very easy very over powered job.)

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

(the reason black mage is so over powered is because most dps players who play blm have complained that they cant dps in ifrit hard mode in 1.0, because fire is their most potent attack so SE removed elemental weaknesses, and then in 2.0 they complained about having to move, turning the class simply into a very easy very over powered job.)

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You are either mistaken or trolling. After the job revamps THM/BLM were the DPS everyone wanted for Ifrit because they tore him and the nails apart. Also Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga was the BLM single target combo in 1.0.

My main is SMN. Did Turn 8 for the first time as a BLM, did more DPS (431) than my SMN (usually 400-420). Granted SMN is pretty bad on T8 its just depressing putting WAY more work into it conserving mp etc and i can faceroll on BLM and do more damage

Folks, folks. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

I'm not asking if I can top DPS charts in endgame fights without work. I'm just asking if BLM is the right DPS class for someone who gets easily overwhelmed by too many skills/too much micromanagement. I don't really want to be top DPS. I just want to not be useless.

(So far, the most helpful answer has been that BRD would be better for my needs, though I heard they have a lot of DOTs to manage at 50?)

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Originally Posted by Estellios

You are either mistaken or trolling. After the job revamps THM/BLM were the DPS everyone wanted for Ifrit because they tore him and the nails apart. Also Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga was the BLM single target combo in 1.0.

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I never actually did ifrit in 1.0 as blm since it was the last job i leveled. What was the reasoning they removed the elemental weakness then? Their exact statement was "we dont want players to exclude jobs due to the elemental wheel from certain fights."

BLM is very simple to do well as, and easier to master than the other dps classes. There are a lot of little simple things that I always notice other BLMs not doing that are very useful:
-using sprint during fights (all mages in general, I rarely see this)
-running to the tank after pulling hate, or better yet before or during the GCD after a firestarter fire3
-using lethargy
-using apocatasasis/virus/eye for an eye (I'm guilty of this one)
-using raging/quelling/convert effectively on AoE nukes

You Know Many Times I've gone into endgame fights on drg or smn and slept through the whole thing and topped dps? All the time. Why? Because all you have to do is your rotation. You can read the countless threads if on t8 you blm is doing more then your smn then your a bad smn, it has nothing to do wit blm being strong. 80% of the time I get df with another blm, I decimate their dps, why? Because they don't know how to move, to me and others blm is easy because we know how to move, majority of players get on blm, have no idea how to move, how to choose which spell to fit which situation and they are awful. Same goes with any job in this game. Drg, brd, and smn are stupid easy as you rarely ever deviate from what youdo

Haha. BLM rotation is easy but the real question is : Why so many players failed to play BLM? This is the same reason why some players fail as PLD. It's easy to spam 1-2-3 right?

You'll notice the good BLMs versus the terrible ones in Titan EX and T9. If they cancel a spell each 10 second, they are not good.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

I laugh when I see BLMs complain about downtime from moving, melee have it far far worse.

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I laugh when they think Melee can not Attack whilst on the move or 1 sec dodging AoE will massively affect their DpS overall :)

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Originally Posted by TheTen

Folks, folks. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

I'm not asking if I can top DPS charts in endgame fights without work. I'm just asking if BLM is the right DPS class for someone who gets easily overwhelmed by too many skills/too much micromanagement. I don't really want to be top DPS. I just want to not be useless.

(So far, the most helpful answer has been that BRD would be better for my needs, though I heard they have a lot of DOTs to manage at 50?)

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I know nothing of BLM so I won't speak of that class, as everyone else seems to have already beaten it to death.
Now let's answer this question of whether BRD would be better for you or not. Seeing as you already played DRG, if you can manage DRG's DoTs and Buffs/Debuffs fairly well, then BRD won't be any harder.
Compared to DRG, BRD has no positionals, the DoTs has a moderately long timer (16-18 secs I believe). BRD only has two DoTs and one buff you need to manage, thats a fairly small number.
Windbite and Venomous Bite are the two DoTs, and you have Straight Shot as your buff.
You have a load of oGCD skills in your arsenal so you will weave those in to your rotation as you see fit. BRD has a ton of offensive cooldowns from cross classes, You have Internal Release(MNK), Blood for Blood (DRG), Raging Strikes (BRD), Hawk's Eye (BRD), Barrage (BRD).
Your DoTs are affected by your buffs so you'd probably want to pop all of these at the beginning of any fight, and DoT immediately after. After that, pop them as necessary.
BRD is priority-based class, so here's the run down.
Straight Shot Active? Yes, then DoT, if not refresh Straight Shot.
Windbite still active? Yes, then move on to Venomous Bite, if not renew it.
Venomous Bite Still active? Yes, then move on to Heavy Shot, if not renew it.
All of the above conditions met? Spam Heavy Shot.
Straighter Shot proc?
Do DoTs need renewing? If not, use the Straighter Shot Proc.
and repeat as necessary.
Last, but not least, you have BRD's song. These are situational and you have to kind of learn when to use them. Foe's Requiem when you have casters in the team. Mage's Ballad when your healer need MP. Army's Paeon when your Melees need TP.
If there's a burn phase in the fight, save your MP til that phase and pop Foe's Requiem for your caster. If no burn phase, then pop whatever is necessary for the situation.
And that's your BRD in a nutshell.

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Originally Posted by sackm

My main is SMN. Did Turn 8 for the first time as a BLM, did more DPS (431) than my SMN (usually 400-420). Granted SMN is pretty bad on T8 its just depressing putting WAY more work into it conserving mp etc and i can faceroll on BLM and do more damage

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lol @ Summoner being bad on T8. Summoner can easily dish out 440-450 DPS if you have a decent enough bard. Granted, BLM is still better on T8 since a good BLM can do 460-500 DPS there but Summoner is by no means "bad" on T8.

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Originally Posted by OneWingedSora

lol @ Summoner being bad on T8. Summoner can easily dish out 440-450 DPS if you have a decent enough bard. Granted, BLM is still better on T8 since a good BLM can do 460-500 DPS there but Summoner is by no means "bad" on T8.

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Still, a career caster will have both leveled and thus there is no huge benefit to bringing SMN over BLM if you have the option of being both (except maybe having another Raise as SMN which is a more subjective benefit).

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

Haha. BLM rotation is easy but the real question is : Why so many players failed to play BLM? This is the same reason why some players fail as PLD. It's easy to spam 1-2-3 right?

You'll notice the good BLMs versus the terrible ones in Titan EX and T9. If they cancel a spell each 10 second, they are not good.

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Dodging static mechanics is 90% knowing the fight, and 10% reacting to it.

OP. Play BLM to see for sure but if your looking to just play something without to much other things going on to get flustered with or micromanagement, go for it.

ThunderII > Highest fire spell, Firespam till it won't cast anymore, transpose or highest ice spell to get mana back. Repeat. You won't be topping the charts but you will do DMG and might be more comfortable. Use any procs of thundercloud or firestarter you get. Who know's once you get comfortable with that you might start to make adjustments, and use things differently. You might be able to do things more often and learn them and when things are going to happen so you can be proactive about them.


(this is just written as a suggestion, taking out any and all factors we BLM's face during the course of a fight that encourage us to calculate whether we move or not, cast TII instead of scathe, blizzII, penta flare...etc.)

Enjoy your game!

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

Still, a career caster will have both leveled and thus there is no huge benefit to bringing SMN over BLM if you have the option of being both (except maybe having another Raise as SMN which is a more subjective benefit).

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Not to mention SMN can do a lot of this damage while moving, BLM has to manage when they move a lot more to maintain that dps.

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Originally Posted by Mister-Wonderful

Not to mention SMN can do a lot of this damage while moving, BLM has to manage when they move a lot more to maintain that dps.

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Good BLMs don't have problems with movement. It's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

SMN has to work a lot harder to get the same or slightly less DPS than BLM on most turns, and on T8 SMN has to deal with a limited resource (MP) where BLM does not.

Yeah, no. my SMN does 430 on T6 and 400 on T9 including downtime. I have yet to see a BLM pull those numbers. And T7 is pretty obvious since a good SMN will always outdps a BLM on the same level. There are too many adds that can be multi-dotted there. Not to mention your DoTs will be doing damage everytime you get a shriek or voice.

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Originally Posted by OneWingedSora

Yeah, no. my SMN does 430 on T6 and 400 on T9 including downtime. I have yet to see a BLM pull those numbers. And T7 is pretty obvious since a good SMN will always outdps a BLM on the same level. There are too many adds that can be multi-dotted there. Not to mention your DoTs will be doing damage everytime you get a shriek or voice.

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I pull between 430-460 on Turn 6 depending on Foe Requiem uptime and mechanics given to me.
Turn 7 isn't a DPS race unless your group is under-geared this late into the content.
Good BLMs are pulling 450+ on Turn 8 consistently. I think my highest is 470.
Turn 9 is slightly better for SMN due to the last phase, but it's not that big of a difference. I pull 350-360 consistently considering I have to mark divebomb locations and move.

Maybe you just need to find better BLMs.

I main BLM since 1.0, and sorta main BRD in ARR (only because I want Gridania to be my home, but won't allow class not belonged to Grid).

Both job are amongst easy one to play compared with others, but I still favor BLM because of the simplicity. Back in 1.0, BLM spell can be combo-ed just like other dps job, but this was removed in ARR and got it even easier.

One other thing I like because of it's minimize movement required, although I still miss the cast-while-moving we once have in 1.0. All you need is to familiarize your spell speed. Certain chain of casting can trigger a spell to be casted faster. One of my favourite is Bliz 3 then Thunder 3, spell casted after this will always benefit one time enhanced spell speed.

One of important spell BLM have is Sleep. On level 36, you will get enhanced trait that lets you do AOE-base sleep. Lethargy's also important for cases like coil turn 5 where you need to slow the add in last half of fight since it can one hit kill.

Mitigation spell like Apocatastasis, Manawall, & Manaward also very useful, but I personally didn't use them very often except for very heavy content based like second coil of Bahamut. BLM strength is in managing their spell while only moving as necessary as you need. I don't even need these on Titan extreme, once you master the fight. lol

Another thing that you need to familiarize with to help ease your survivability is what I call time-proccing. When you're casting, you can start moving when the cast are like 0.5 second from finished. Very useful for fights that requires to dodge alot like Titan. You can even start another cast even before previous cast finished by knowing when to time-proc this.

Overall, BLM is among those relaxed job to play for general content especially like dungeon raiding, but not to be underestimated. If you want, you can max out your DPS capability once you calculate your casting very efficiently. Each successive casting of one element will raise the spell damage until opposite umbral trait resets it.

Oh... and did I forgot to mention that BLM has virtually infinite MP? Just play your Umbral Ice trait right, and you're set! XD

BLM is a pretty easy class to get used to and do moderately well with. You use a fairly low number of skills regularly and essentially can't run out of mp (though a major screw up could leave you unable to attack for up to 10 seconds). Like others have said, it's a class that can be played in a very simple manner to get by and scales up a lot based on skill and experience. The 'rotation' is simple, the DPS gains are mostly from knowing when to break out of the rotation to do something slightly different, as well as knowing when you'll need to move, doing it pre-emptively (when possible), or negating the attack with manawall/ward.

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Originally Posted by Adamantium

Maybe you just need to find better BLMs.

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I use BLM and the highest I did on T6 was 424 with one bard that only does foes at the start. And the Highest on T9 was 380. Summoner is still better in all of the T9 phases bar the first one. I guess If you triple flare the add+boss on heavens fall then it's 50/50 but we use mage LB so our BLM can only get one flare off on that part since I just use a Raging strikes+x int pot boosted bane and a spur+rouse buffed enkindle and then immediately LB.

And I never said Turn 7 was a DPS race, I just said Summoner will always outdps BLM there assuming equal skill level, which it does.

For those that are compairing Smn to BLm, just stop. The only things they have in common is the fact they cast, and do damage, otherwise, it's a completely different beast all together. Blm is burst damage, Smn is Damage over Time, with a single burst move that really doesn't hold a candle to a single three astral fire firestarter proc. Smn is also situational, you wouldn't want to a bunch of Smn's in a party during fights that have phases that have a DPS check, you'll lose every time. The only reason Smn push such high numbers is because any half competent at their job Smn will have their dots up at least 85% of the time and a pet that constantly attacks, even if you micro your pet or not.

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Originally Posted by Jican

For those that are compairing Smn to BLm, just stop. The only things they have in common is the fact they cast, and do damage, otherwise, it's a completely different beast all together. Blm is burst damage, Smn is Damage over Time, with a single burst move that really doesn't hold a candle to a single three astral fire firestarter proc. Smn is also situational, you wouldn't want to a bunch of Smn's in a party during fights that have phases that have a DPS check, you'll lose every time. The only reason Smn push such high numbers is because any half competent at their job Smn will have their dots up at least 85% of the time and a pet that constantly attacks, even if you micro your pet or not.

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SMN does good burst though if you have full atherflow stacks.

And no, that's not all there is to SMN. There are many tips a tricks that differentiate a good Summoner from your average one.

I laugh at the blm mains, that laugh at the melee mains and say melee is easier and then state their reason why (less down time lol).

Mostly because, a statement could also be made about why blm is or playing ranged in general is easier (maybe bar smn)

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Originally Posted by OneWingedSora

SMN does good burst though if you have full atherflow stacks.

And no, that's not all there is to SMN. There are many tips a tricks that differentiate a good Summoner from your average one.

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Yes, I know, and it's the same with Blm. There are bad, ugly, and great people at all jobs, but they're still different beasts.

Speaking from the perspective of a healer who rarely takes up the damage dealer role, Black Mage is definitely one of the easier jobs to pick up. In comparison to Summoner, the other day I decided to play around with it a bit and was quickly overwhelmed. I'm not entirely sure if Bard could be considered better or worse than Black Mage. Bard has a considerably high number of off cool down abilities that need to be managed, but as long as you can do that comfortably the play style becomes quite fluid. I actually find it interesting that you mention Monk as a complicated job. Personally I feel like Monk falls into a steady rotation fairly easily. They require some dancing around to maximize damage output, but the combos themselves aren't particularly complicated.

I notice I didn't actually talk much about Black Mage. To me Black Mage almost plays like a mind game. It is true that Black Mage has somewhat of a reactive nature. You often can't just sit there and do your rotation expecting everything to go fine and dandy. You will have to make heat of the moment decisions. You may look back and ask yourself if you could have or should have reacted differently. I feel like these are things that affect Black Mage more so than any other job which can lead to beginners second guessing themselves a lot. To master Black Mage it not only takes skill and experience, but confidence as well.

I don't disagree that Blm is easy to pick up. I personally don't find any job hard to "pick up" but mastering is a completely different thing. We are absolutely reactive in almost everything we do. Dealing with Firestarter procs during our astral phase, dealing with it at the end, dealing with our thundercloud procs throughout both phases, dealing with WHEN we tick our umbral phase, moving, scathing, AoEing. Everything we do is reactional, even when the rng gods bless us and we can turret our spells without moving, we are always prepairing for the unexpected. I personally find Smn fairly easy to maximize, and as a main Blm, I can't really compair Blm and Smn together because of how differently they play. I'm not knocking anyone else who's views are different IF they have experience in all the fields they are talking about, but I have no patience for people who want to talk crap about a job they don't at LEAST have to 50. Blm and Smn don't even open up till 50, hell, all jobs don't open up until 50.