BLM itemization in 5.4 is a problem.

Hi! I've made a couple posts here before (usually referring to BLM issues specifically) and I'm here to do it again.

Currently with the stats on the raid drop weapon (Edenmorn Rod) being crit/dh, it means the best weapon to use is in fact the tome weapon (Augmented Cryptlurker's Rod).

This raises a few issues.
Given that this is a patch cycle with an ultimate raid attached to it one of the largest issues is the 10 week requirement of tomestone capping required to achieve your best in slot. Most other jobs range from 4-6 weeks, which means when preparing for ultimates you are able to have 2-3 jobs ready in case of job buffs/nerfs or job suitability for the fight.

Another large issue is the fact that as we scale to our best in slot gear, we are automatically at a disadvantage due to being forced into lower ilvl gear compared to the competing jobs in our raid slot - this being the weapon is particularly bad.

I see every job in the game got it's best stats on the 535 weapon - crit/dh for dps and crit/det for healers and tanks, and truly feel this is an oversight when it comes to the BLM weapon as it is the only job which functions on a fundamentally different stat priority in the game.

The last issue is walking into ultimate missing VIT stat which will not be tuned for.

A reasonable way to fix this would be for the Edenmorn Rod stats to be changed to Spell Speed/DH (which has been the stats on every other raid weapon for BLM this expansion).

Thanks for reading!

[Deleted. My info was from 2019]

Homie........

The high speed BiS specifically lists the tome weapon.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

The Crypt rod does 131 physical damage and 177 magic damage.
The Eden rod does 134 physical damage and 180 magic damage.

Im 99% sure this increase trumps whatever might be happening with the substats.

To double check, I went to The Balance and all of their BiS lists unanimously recommend the Eden rod.

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Hello! I am the person who makes the BiS sets which the Balance uses.

You are incorrect. And then you double checked so you were incorrect twice.

There are group comps where the crit weapon is marginally better, but it traditionally has not been close.

It is a startling lack of consistency to have BLM be the only job that doesn't have optimal substats on their raid weapon, and it would be less egregious to change it after the fact than it was to change the weapon damage on the Diamond melee weapons in 3.4.

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Originally Posted by Xenitan

You are incorrect. And then you double checked so you were incorrect twice.

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Hahaha well shoot.
I really goofed up then.
I retract my post. Sorry for the misinformation, turns out I was looking at a guide from 2019.

As a BLM main I am factually forced to either go with a lower tier weapon or go crit/low sps. I personally had to choose crit because of a dancer in a static, along with that I had to change my opener and adjust for clunkiness of a low sps BLM that I havent played for more than a year. I hate it with passion and I dont see a reason to force black mages into the "crit meta" that seems prevalent. THe alternative tho seems even worse because at least with crit I can get lucky... This is not ideal and I fully support the change but HIGHLY doubt anything will be done until 6.0 rolls out. Actually maybe Ultimate weapon will be DH/sps but you have to get one first, so.

Hi,

First of all, congratulations on your world first!

As for the real subject:

In my opinion, itemization concerns all jobs.
MCH wants to have as little SKS as possible, I believe DRG prefer have no SKS at all either. Some other jobs aren't bothered with it, you can't simply meld sks to reach your comfy sks tier.
SKS is a bothersome stats, it directly impacts your gameplay and if you have SKS on a tome/raid ring you're forced to deal with it. It mainly comes from the fact that we have so little choice, always either raid or tomestome gear.

IMO, allowing points in stats should make a come back but only for SKS, Crit and DH. SKS should be entirely gone from gear and players able to freely choose where to allow their points in order to reach their most wanted SKS tier or to go full SKS memes.

As for the nerfs and such, I don't believe SQEX will nerf any jobs, your composition has always been the same DPS wise I believe. Tank and Healers share the same gear and SQEX doesn't like to nerf jobs, they didn't touched SMN at all before releasing TEA. Also don't believe that BLM will have any troubles finding a spot especially as Ultimate is more often toned on mechanics rather than DPS checks.
UCOB world first had a DRK as well and there was no specific reason other than "I like DRK", if BLM are not the king of DPS, you can stick to BLM for the same reason!

As for the weapon, I remember DRK's A12S weapon, not loved by a lot and never updated. There was no Ultimate back in HW, so it's a different situation.

I would not be surprised if the current E12S scepter was tuned this way for a way to nerf BLM or make them try other builds.

TL;DR:
I don't think it's necessary to bring these changes, BLM is already doing very well since the beginning of the expansion and not ready to get down from its throne. But DPS won't matter until and during world race so it wouldn't hurt to make the change.
Ultimate is far enough and I believe you'll have plenty times to gear up RDM or SMN if you won't have a DPS using one of these two jobs for the next update.
But I agree that current stats and the poor choice of equipment is a problem, especially for rings and weapons.

This is a change that needs to happen, I don't know why they'd just change the weapon like that for this tier

While I may have already bought my tome weapon, making the suggested change to the raid weapon would be great. It was really weird to find out that after 2 tiers of same stat setup to suddenly change on the last one.

Just want to add my two cents in that this kind of itemization issue is why I wish se would add more horizontal progression and/or job specific gear.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Ultimate is far enough and I believe you'll have plenty times to gear up RDM or SMN if you won't have a DPS using one of these two jobs for the next update.
But I agree that current stats and the poor choice of equipment is a problem, especially for rings and weapons.

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I don't think a game advertising itself with slogans like "You can do everything on one character" (loosely paraphrased) should bring players into a position wherein they have to consider a job change based on itemization. But it's a major problem and we don't even need to leave the categories of casters here. It is something that's been bugging me for quite a while now. I am a player, who enjoys RDM and BLM and while I agree with the fact that the current Sub-Stats of the ilvl535 Rod are questionable, it is just the tip of the iceberg.
I enjoy playing RDM -especially for progression-, but the second I choose to make RDM my way to go for the beginning of a tier, I automatically put BLM in a position where it is sort of ditched and it takes forever to get it on the same level (gear-wise) as RDM.

A) I either have to collect for the HighSpS-Set (Another set of weeks and weeks of tomestones this tier after I got the pieces needed for RDM BiS) or
B) I play some sort of hybrid set as they are created on the Balance Discord, which is just not a -personal option for me- because having SpS on RDM just hurts my feelings, as it just an (almost) dead stat for the job or
C) I re-meld items back and forth depending on what I want to play or
D) I collect some items twice and run the horror of switching them out with retainers, as you are not allowed to have certain items in possession multiple times.

None of these sound like an option that is sufficient from my PoV, so I agree with Sarynth:

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Originally Posted by Sarynth

Just want to add my two cents in that this kind of itemization issue is why I wish se would add more horizontal progression and/or job specific gear.

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I doubt they will change the weapon but will probably take it into consideration for the next ultimate weapons.

What's the DPS % difference between a BLM max ilvl with no BiS and a BLM full BiS? Are we talking about a 1% difference or like a 30% difference?

the big thing i'm wondering is what will the final relic look like. if we get another relic with customizable substats (as we have for every other relic), then relics will trump any other weapon as BiS. maybe they don't like JP opener and are trying to steer people away from 3600 SpS, but i'm betting we'll all be doing relic grinds for BiS weapons for the final ultimate

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Originally Posted by ChocoFeru

What's the DPS % difference between a BLM max ilvl with no BiS and a BLM full BiS? Are we talking about a 1% difference or like a 30% difference?

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I have been digging for an answer to this, and either the math isn't in yet or I can't find it.
Judging by this thread though, it sounds like the problem isn't with potential DPS differences, but the BiS is forcing an awkward spell speed that's causing the rotation to be less fun?

If the lack of spell speed was an issue on the weap, wouldn't it be better to still take the 535 but swap other pieces of gear to have your SS requirement ?

I mean isn't SS a stat that is rather "comfortable with my rotation" so that you may want it pretty high sometimes but not actually maxing the shit out of it like other DPS will do with crit ? So maybe there are pices of body that you didn't choose even with SS but that you would now to compensate ? For instance by taking this accessory or this piece in tomes instead of savage or vice / versa you could reach your desired cap with the 535 weapon ?

I am by no mean an expert BLM, and I know it sucks that the best weap is not actually the sweetest weap, but I know if that happens, I still try and take the max ilvl weap and try to adjust with the other pieces (even if it means leaving a ring in 520 to take both tomes for instance).

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Originally Posted by Karshan

If the lack of spell speed was an issue on the weap, wouldn't it be better to still take the 535 but swap other pieces of gear to have your SS requirement ?

I mean isn't SS a stat that is rather "comfortable with my rotation" so that you may want it pretty high sometimes but not actually maxing the shit out of it like other DPS will do with crit ? So maybe there are pices of body that you didn't choose even with SS but that you would now to compensate ? For instance by taking this accessory or this piece in tomes instead of savage or vice / versa you could reach your desired cap with the 535 weapon ?

I am by no mean an expert BLM, and I know it sucks that the best weap is not actually the sweetest weap, but I know if that happens, I still try and take the max ilvl weap and try to adjust with the other pieces (even if it means leaving a ring in 520 to take both tomes for instance).

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you cannot reach 3600 SpS (minimum for the JP Opener which lets you open directly in fire phase without pre-placing Leylines) without the tome weapon, because there is not enough space to get the 526 SpS not using it throws on the ground. and it's raid ring that has SpS, not tome ring. Hopefully tome rings will never have SpS as long as SMN/RDM exist

Honestly I think this is a way to indirectly nerf the job since as it stands, after the smn nerf, it's the higher rdps caster by a not insignificant margin, at least according to fflogs data. The lower vit won't be a problem: -5 vit points won't kill you and BLM is the only caster with a self defensive skill that can be effectively and easily used during an enounter. So at the end of the day, it's just a very slight relative damage nerf to bring it closer to the other two casters I suppose. The devs probably thought it was the best way to do it. I agree that the amount of tomestones you have to spend for the sps bis is a bit excessive though.

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Originally Posted by SnowVix

you cannot reach 3600 SpS (minimum for the JP Opener which lets you open directly in fire phase without pre-placing Leylines) without the tome weapon, because there is not enough space to get the 526 SpS not using it throws on the ground. and it's raid ring that has SpS, not tome ring. Hopefullytome rings will never have SpS as long as SMN/RDM exist

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Oh ok thanks for the insight, haven't checked balance ressources for a while I'll go see that JP opener seems interesting.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Honestly I think this is a way to indirectly nerf the job since as it stands, after the smn nerf, it's the higher rdps caster by a not insignificant margin, at least according to fflogs data. The lower vit won't be a problem: -5 vit points won't kill you and BLM is the only caster with a self defensive skill that can be effectively and easily used during an enounter. So at the end of the day, it's just a very slight relative damage nerf to bring it closer to the other two casters I suppose. The devs probably thought it was the best way to do it. I agree that the amount of tomestones you have to spend for the sps bis is a bit excessive though.

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-5 vit is pretty huge in hc ultimate prog though.

The most spell speed achievable with the Edenmorn Black Mage weapon is around 3200 with HQ Zefir food. That means you have to start with the Blizzard III opener, which is slightly less optimal compared to the 3600 spell speed Fire III JP opener. I am not sure choosing the lower VIT weapon is advisable for Ultimate considering Lalafell already have lower VIT than other races. Lalafell are the coolest looking Black Mages though.

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Originally Posted by lulunami

I am not sure choosing the lower VIT weapon is advisable for Ultimate considering Lalafell already have lower VIT than other races.

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Wait, do racial stats matter all of a sudden?
I thought our numbers had gotten so big the few point differences between the races were unimportant.
Are they relevant just for BLM? Or are there more situations where +/- 5 points actually makes or breaks your character?

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Wait, do racial stats matter all of a sudden?
I thought our numbers had gotten so big the few point differences between the races were unimportant.
Are they relevant just for BLM? Or are there more situations where +/- 5 points actually makes or breaks your character?

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A world prog group is not going to want someone to be missing a small amount of hp, and potentially dying to something as a result.
Same reason some people choose to meld tenacity/det for prog. The small difference can occasionally make or break it, and when you're world progging, you aren't gonna want to break it.

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Originally Posted by oblivion238

A world prog group [...]

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Oh! Ok, so it's not something normal people need to worry about.

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Originally Posted by oblivion238

-5 vit is pretty huge in hc ultimate prog though.

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Is it? It should be around 100 hp if I'm not wrong...considering the actual pool of 120k+ hp for casters, I can't really see it being a relevant factor even for ultimate prog. It's kinda relevant for healers, but we're losing almost 40 vit because of the crafted ring.

Anyway, blm can always choose the eden weap bis, it's almost identical to the sps bis damage wise...assuming the 100 hp loss scares their party so much.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Oh! Ok, so it's not something normal people need to worry about.

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If you're worried about 'normal people' then I'd recommend just getting your ilvl as high as it will go and not caring any more. If you have any arbitrary gear set and luck with crits, you'll do better than people who run average. Go forth.

You can arbitrarily define any subset of people in this game who won't care about a particular issue if you believe the presence of such people eradicates any meaning for an issue to be fixed. I'd be shocked if there were more Triple Triad players than people who do Ultimate raiding, for example. Yet we still, somehow, get cards every patch.

The issue is: traditionally the raid weapon has been BiS and in instances where it hasn't, we have historical precedent where SE will change the stats to make it BiS, see: Diamond Weapons in Stormblood.

Right now, for Black Mages (and Black Mages only) it is not BiS. This is exceptionally problematic for content beyond the current raid tier. However, beyond just the weapon, it's also endemic to caster itemization overall.

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Originally Posted by oblivion238

-5 vit is pretty huge in hc ultimate prog though.

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I know the calculations behind the vitality stat is a bit tricky, but if you use a vitality potion (12 vitality), you'll get around 265 Max HP.

1 vitality should be around 22 Max HP.

5 vitality should be 110 Max HP so a net 0.08% increase.

On the opposite if HP Materia were still a thing, one slot should give around 40 vitality, considering Vitality VI gave 25 vitality. 40 vitality should be around 880 Max HP. Per slots. Which would be a 10k HP increase on left side alone.

5 vitality is a drop in a lake, if your healers need that 110 Max HP, you may want to remap your group mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Xenitan

You can arbitrarily define any subset of people in this game who won't care about a particular issue if you believe the presence of such people eradicates any meaning for an issue to be fixed. I'd be shocked if there were more Triple Triad players than people who do Ultimate raiding, for example. Yet we still, somehow, get cards every patch.

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I'm not saying the itemization is or isn't a problem.
I'm saying "oh, ok. We don't need to worry about +/-5 Vit if not worlds first progging. So I don't need to phantasia from a Lala to be a viable BLM. Phew..."

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

I know the calculations behind the vitality stat is a bit tricky, but if you use a vitality potion (12 vitality), you'll get around 265 Max HP.

1 vitality should be around 22 Max HP.

5 vitality should be 110 Max HP so a net 0.08% increase.

On the opposite if HP Materia were still a thing, one slot should give around 40 vitality, considering Vitality VI gave 25 vitality. 40 vitality should be around 880 Max HP. Per slots. Which would be a 10k HP increase on left side alone.

5 vitality is a drop in a lake, if your healers need that 110 Max HP, you may want to remap your group mitigation.

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When you're world progging yes you need the 110 max hp. Having the small amount of extra health can let you survive and see further into a fight, which is huge, and also gives a bit of extra room for when the healers have not planned out the fight yet.

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Originally Posted by Xenitan

The issue is: traditionally the raid weapon has been BiS and in instances where it hasn't, we have historical precedent where SE will change the stats to make it BiS, see: Diamond Weapons in Stormblood.

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The situation in Stormblood was a little different. The raid weapons were a whole weapon damage point lower than intended resulting in them having the exact same weapon damage as upgraded tome weapons, quite a bit more serious than simply having the correct amount of less desirable substats. To my knowledge, they have never changed the stats on properly budgeted items to deliberately nudge them into best in slot status.

Frankly, I'm not convinced the devs actually 'know' what stats are desirable for each job and plan raid weapons accordingly. Depending on the complexity of the job, often which substats that job finds desirable can be somewhat emergent and only come to light after digging by the community. Having lurked around theorycrafting spaces in the past, I do not believe the developers are 'in the know' to that degree.

I agree it's not great for any job to find out their raid weapon isn't actually best in slot, but I don't believe they explicitly try to avoid this situation, it's just the luck of the draw. I've always assumed that the process was random and that they were banking on the weapon damage difference being enough to tip the scales (evidently not so this time).

That reminds me, summoners and red mages are eyeing double tome rings as best in slot this tier too, due to the glut of spellspeed on the eden ring. There is a corresponding vitality loss there too as they are unique and one ring will have to be unaugmented. Not as big a concession as going down a tier on a weapon slot, but yeah it doesn't feel great all the same.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

The situation in Stormblood was a little different. The raid weapons were a whole weapon damage point lower than intended resulting in them having the exact same weapon damage as upgraded tome weapons, quite a bit more serious than simply having the correct amount of less desirable substats. To my knowledge, they have never changed the stats on properly budgeted items to deliberately nudge them into best in slot status.

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Half true. The stats are algorithmically determined. We knew going in that the weapon damage on those weapons would be the same, because that's what the weapon damage formulas for those weapon levels were. This was not a mistake, it was 100% intentional. The outcome was not intentional. Then they just added a weapon damage to those pieces and, shock and horror, melee ruled that tier about as much as you'd expect a group of people with an extra weapon damage to rule.

Similarly, in this case, we knew the weapon would only have one weapon damage and 2 int over the tome weapon going in. We talked about how this MIGHT be a problem, but how it was unlikely. Well, unlikely enough, this is a problem. It was 100% intentional. I hope the outcome, which is what we are currently experiencing, is not intentional as well. It certainly is less of a big deal to adjust secondary stats than it is to give a free bonus weapon damage.

Well, it's only intentional insofar as the algorithm can be assumed to have been designed perfectly, right? If, going by every other tier we can assume they want a weapon damage difference to exist between tome and raid weapons, I think it's fair game for them to fix it manually. Just one of those things where it would be in line with the spirit and not the letter of the law.

Whatever the case, I think we can agree the issue of having to massage item budgets is somewhat removed from the issue of them having the right amount of stats, but those stats being suboptimal for certain jobs in practice. Like, conversely, the speed stats get a bad rep on a lot of non-blm jobs, but that's really something stemming from the rigid cooldown based job design prevalent in this game and not something that's intrinsically true. Blm is a great case study for this considering their b4-skip rotation lines came out of a literal machine learning bot (to my knowledge anyway).

And that's really the interesting part to me because it ties into the question of just how well the devs understand their own jobs and how much oversight they actually exercise over itemization in that regard. Like I mentioned, I've always assumed it's simply a crapshoot at the whims of whatever algorithm they use to populate item stats. I don't recall them ever talking about it anywhere since it's a little too niche for your typical interview or fanfest, but I'd be interested to know if they have.

Bumping this as this severely affects BLM for the upcoming ultimate, putting it at a severe disadvantage compared to other DPS classes. Some other notes:

Unlike other classes that are mostly able to work around poor substats here and there - this patch there are 5 slots that have no spellspeed on them whatsoever. Weapon, Head, Gloves, Feet, Ring 2. Melding spellspeed can make up some of the difference - but when the respective caps are 531 (Weapon), 301 (Head/Gloves/Feet) and 226 (Accessory), we're missing out on over 1000 spellspeed (after melds are taken into account).

Not only is that our most favored stat, but missing out on that takes away a lot of the intricacy of the class - enabling you to do F1 skips more often for example, and being able to fit in more procs for movement. The class is just far more fun to play with lots of spellspeed. When another class gets a bunch of undesirable substats - the rotation doesn't change significantly like this.

Since 2.1 i've been asking SE for up-gradable 24 man gear. Would that be a good solution for Ultimate world prog? Absolutely not - unless they suddenly gave a weapon and accessories, didn't put a lockout on 24 man gear and delayed ultimate for a week. However what they can do as a short term fix is what OP has suggested - fix the weapon stats to at least bring us halfway to the stats we have lost.

And at least, modifying the weapon would not screw over the stats of shared role gear (ring 2 for instance SMN and RDM also have to settle to one 520 to not take the savage one). I'm all for everyone having their raid weapon the best weapon for their class.

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Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

Bumping this as this severely affects BLM for the upcoming ultimate, putting it at a severe disadvantage compared to other DPS classes.

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When people realized how overturned SMN, they were explicitly asked about debuffing SMN before TEA.
They said they understood the problem but were leaving it.

I'm not sure we can expect them to increase/rebalance the substats on BLM's weapon (or other gear) before the Ultimate then. Especially if there is any truth to thoughts like this:

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Honestly I think this is a way to indirectly nerf the job since as it stands, after the smn nerf, it's the higher rdps caster by a not insignificant margin, at least according to fflogs data. The lower vit won't be a problem: -5 vit points won't kill you and BLM is the only caster with a self defensive skill that can be effectively and easily used during an enounter. So at the end of the day, it's just a very slight relative damage nerf to bring it closer to the other two casters I suppose. The devs probably thought it was the best way to do it. I agree that the amount of tomestones you have to spend for the sps bis is a bit excessive though.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

When people realized how overturned SMN, they were explicitly asked about debuffing SMN before TEA.
They said they understood the problem but were leaving it.

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BLM is still a king (For now), but I wouldn't be surprised if Samurai would take the spotlight. Or NIN, depending on the downtimes.
Even so, the difference in DPS is going to be irrelevant if that's the case.
SMN was completely bonker before Alexander Ultimate release, SQEX knew about this problem and they didn't touched the job despite releasing content that includes multiple targets. I think it's safe to assume they don't care enough about that. And Ultimate will probably be heavier on the mechanic side rather than a tight DPS check.

If they tweak the "Golden phase" DPS requirement as the same as TEA, no problem about DPS either.

But I think the initial argument was to be able to gear up 2-3 jobs as the SpellSpeed BiS require 10 weeks worth of tomestone.
If the next ultimate requires a crazy amount of movement, I wouldn't be surprised most BLM would consider going SMN/RDM/Even Melee for the prog. But they wouldn't be able to if the tomestones requirement is too high to gear up 3 jobs.

If I'm not mistaken we're at the 8th week since 5.4 release, meaning BLM are 2 weeks away from the spellspeed BiS?

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Originally Posted by Karshan

And at least, modifying the weapon would not screw over the stats of shared role gear (ring 2 for instance SMN and RDM also have to settle to one 520 to not take the savage one). I'm all for everyone having their raid weapon the best weapon for their class.

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Absolutely - I would agree with that.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

When people realized how overturned SMN, they were explicitly asked about debuffing SMN before TEA.
They said they understood the problem but were leaving it.

I'm not sure we can expect them to buff BLM before the Ultimate then. Especially if there is any truth to thoughts like this:

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I'm not asking them to buff BLM before ultimate (although I think a SMN nerf is needed). I'm asking them to fix the stats of the BLM weapon. That is all that is needed. I'd also like a Spellspeed option on Gloves and/or Feet too, that also wouldn't affect SMN/RDM bis.

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Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

I'm not asking them to buff BLM before ultimate

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Sorry, I might not have been clear.
I meant increasing / rebalancing the substats for BLM's weapon (and maybe other gear), not buffing the job itself.
I just said "buff BLM" as awkward shorthand because enhancing the equipment would indirectly be buffing BLM itself, even if giving them more spellspeed is more of a "fix" to some.
I revised my post to clarify.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Sorry, I might not have been clear.
I meant increasing / rebalancing the substats for BLM's weapon (and maybe other gear), not buffing the job itself.
I just said "buff BLM" as awkward shorthand because enhancing the equipment would indirectly be buffing BLM itself, even if giving them more spellspeed is more of a "fix" to some.
I revised my post to clarify.

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They have previously adjusted weapon stats multiple times over the years. In fact, they actually did it with the BLM weapon way back in ARR. They've also changed weapon stats in Stormblood. Anyone that actually thinks that this was an intentional nerf to BLM and was needed... I'm sorry but they don't know what they are talking about. There have been plenty of weapons in the past that do not have Spellspeed (e.g. A12s, o4s), but the issue here is that in this expension, it is even more desired due to rotational changes, there is an ultimate patch incoming, there are a number of other slots with no spellspeed on (as I explained).

Furthermore, it isn't just a Vit nerf. Its a WD nerf, because in order to hit our needed Spellspeed to actually perform the optimal rotation, we need to drop WD. That's a pretty big DPS nerf to a class that is already outclassed by SMN in Progression content. BLM should outdps SMN to make up for all of the extra utility it has.

It is not a "buff" to give BLM that. Its a fix. Anyone saying otherwise does not know what they are talking about. In that that persons comment about Manaward shows that they do not understand how it is used and how important VIT is.