Suggestion: Upcoming BLM skills

We all know all classes have their share of likes and dislikes for various reasons, BLM is certainly no different. One thing is for sure though, in the future there will be more levels added and thus more skills, so instead of screaming "Change my class entierly!" I thought maybe the solution to some of the issues raised can be mended through future skills?

For me BLM is not only about big number, but the feel and look of the class is very important. It is the mage job that meddle with dark magic and thus, while potentially dangerous is also very powerful. Now as I said powerful does not just mean big number, it does not mean being OP, it means feeling like you have this innherent magical power flowing within you to be released at your whim.

Here are some suggestions of upcoming BLM skills that would give the job a more satisfying feel at least for my personal taste. Feel free to critique and come with your own ideas.

These spella are more of a visual nature than anything else, they are not your typical DPS skills you need to constantly spam. By the looks of it, SE can cover those types of spells just fine themselves. These are the types of spell I feel lacking or even nonexistant.

• Float Useable by DoM, learned by THM (MartaDemireux just had to point out that BLM can't sub CNJ.).
  10s levitate, CD 3m.
  Allows you to cast spells while moving, also nullifies ground based attacks. (some extra violent earthshattering attacks like earthen fury will still hit you).
  I would see this as a CNJ spell as it's wind based, however it would mean BLM can't use it and that would ruin it's functionality for us, so let's put it on THM at the moment?
  
  Why this spell is needed: While it can be argued that mages must learn their positioning in difficult battles it can also be argued that a floating mage looks awesome and that this would actually be a utility spell we would have use for. Plus it will make BLM more wanted in mobility fights. Yes I know, BLM is good if you know how to play them but we are talking future updates, all jobs should be improved someway so why not make it look epic?
  
  
• Flame Cloak
  Sustainable buff, overwrites any previous cloak spell. CD 2min.
  Fire spells deal 15% more damage. Every Fire spell deals an additional DoT for 3s, unstackable.
  Visuals: Burst into flames when activated. Once sustained it leaves fiery foorprints, eyes and mouth will burn a bright flame.
  
  
• Frost Cloak
  Sustainable buff, overwrites any previous cloak spell. CD 2min.
  20% of damage recieved goes to MP, any mob that hits you in melee will be slowed for 3s and take slight damage.
  Visuals: A creeping mist enters the player when activated. Once sustained a cold mist stays around your feet, your eyes will glow white and release icy smoke.
  
  
• Lightning Cloak
  Sustainable buff, overwrites any previous cloak spell. CD 2min.
  +10% Crit chance, -10% Enmity. Every nearby enemy will be hit by a lightning strike from above roughly every 5s.
  Visuals: Electric sparks jumps between parts of your body such as between your fingers and between you and the ground. Your eyes remain normal :p Lightning eyes just looks weird imo.
  
  *Clarification if you fight one enemy this enemy will be hit by a lightning strike roughly every 5s, if two enemies then the first one will be hit and roughly 2,5s after that the other will be hit etc. The more enemimes you have, the more damage you do. If you have five enemies then there will be one strike every second.
  
  
• Attune to Darkness
  20s duration, overwrites any previous cloak spell. CD 5min.
  PRO:All spells have 50% chance to crit as well as no MP cost assuming you have the mp required to cast it in the first place (Flare will still set you at 0mp).
  CON:While in effect you recieve double damage and create more enmity than usual.
  Visuals: A rumbling sound as black/purple smoke start to engulf your body and red sparks can be seen coming from your body demonstrating the chaotic nature of dark magic.

I have not written specific numbers on all skills due to it being a balance matter, basically what I want is for Flame Cloak to be suitable for Single Target, Frost Cloak for Solo Play, Lightning Cloak for AOE and Attune to Darkness for risk reward Burst damage, mainly for bosses. This way all will be useable without the need to constantly switch between them like Fire and Ice currently works (Hence the 2m cooldown).

These are examples of what I want to see, while I do not expect SE to take these right off. More spells of this nature would indeed be interesting.

I completely agree with your thought process here. I've been looking for a more "black-mage" feel to the job, which includes greater variety of spells and abilities. I think the cloak self-buff is a great idea, but it would need some balancing for sure. In general, there needs to be more elemental or "dark magic" affinity going on. A channeled spell would be nice.

Only problem is BLM can't use CNJ spells. They're locked in with ACN and ARC. No floating for them.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

Only problem is BLM can't use CNJ spells. They're locked in with ACN and ARC. No floating for them.

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You know what, I did not even think of that.
You are right of course. Which sucks because float is so obviously a wind spell. Hmmm, needs some tweaking to be sure.

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Originally Posted by Raiseplease

I completely agree with your thought process here. I've been looking for a more "black-mage" feel to the job, which includes greater variety of spells and abilities. I think the cloak self-buff is a great idea, but it would need some balancing for sure. In general, there needs to be more elemental or "dark magic" affinity going on. A channeled spell would be nice.

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Now that you meantion it, is there any channeling spells at all in this game? The con of channel spells is of course that you can do nothing else while they take place. However I could see maybe a 5s channel spell that increase potency the longer it stays.

I don't believe there are any channeled spells in the game. An idea for one, building on your cloak idea, would be a channeled "lightning storm" that, while channeled, causes thunder to randomly strike enemies every second or so within a set range of your character. These are the kind of unique spells that add flavor to the class.

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Originally Posted by Marveth

[LIST][*]Float Useable by DoM, learned by THM (MartaDemireux just had to point out that BLM can't sub CNJ.).
10s levitate, CD 3m.
Allows you to cast spells while moving, also nullifies ground based attacks. (some extra violent earthshattering attacks like earthen fury will still hit you).
I would see this as a CNJ spell as it's wind based, however it would mean BLM can't use it and that would ruin it's functionality for us, so let's put it on THM at the moment?

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This is a fantastic proposal and I support this 100%

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Originally Posted by Raiseplease

I don't believe there are any channeled spells in the game. An idea for one, building on your cloak idea, would be a channeled "lightning storm" that, while channeled, causes thunder to randomly strike enemies every second or so within a set range of your character. These are the kind of unique spells that add flavor to the class.

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I think I'd almost prefer to see this type of ability used with Geomancer. BLM could get some too of course but GEO being all terrainy and whatnot might get some really cool spells out of this channeling concept.

Edit: for clarification:
Earthy zone could channel a sandstorm or levitational rock storm effect.
Watery zone could channel a rainstorm or tidal effect.
Snowy zone could channel a blizzard or hail storm effect.
Hot zone could channel firenado or meteor shower effects.
Breezy zone could channel wind storms or tornado effects.
Stormy zone could do a lightning storm much like you proposed.

That's why I think it would go pretty nicely with GEO. BLM could get a constant firestream hitting conal monsters, ice shards that come up from the ground like stalagmites that grow bigger the longer the channeling and then the bigger they get the more damage they do when they explode, and a thunder effect that works kind of like fire's but with a single target?

You could always make Float an ACN skill, seeing as we don't really provide any worth while cooldowns for cross class abilities. This way all DoM's would get it.

Honestly don't like these ideas at all. In fact I think some are verging on completely over powered. The idea of a shroud or "cloak" has been done before and I am not against that as it was in XI. For example Flames & Lightning, so if you got struck in combat you would deal damage back to them. I think the Lightning based one was called "Shock Spikes". I think these would be a good idea to add.

I would also remove the current AoE and go back to the old school XI style and have 'Ga spells. Maybe they could use some of the similar effects of the spells we currently have. Eg the Astral stances and the Thundercloud abilities. But not allowing procs for more AoE but for single target spells. Because being able to cast Thundaga III instantly would be OP.

I hope that wasn't to negative, I like that you are thinking ahead and trying to improve the class, but I don't feel this is the right step. But naturally I would feel my ideas are more the right step. Ha-ha.

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Originally Posted by Kurauk

Honestly don't like these ideas at all.

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While you are speaking more of an entire overhaul of the class I am trying to be realistic and see ways to improve the class simply by adding more spells. We already know more skills will be added in the future as level cap rises, we just don't know which ones.
For me at least core of a BLM is that it looks and feels poweful and that is where these spells help out.

And I too was indeed very sad the day I saw they changed Fira -ga etc to I, II, III

It would be nice to get more dark spells considering we do use dark magic and our powers are connected to the void. I think the dark magic aspect of the class is how we cast our spells. As a thaumaturge we use our inner aetheric energy as a black mage we suck the aether out of the air to cast spells hence why we do more damage. So our magic is not environmentally friendly compared to other classes.

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Originally Posted by shinros

It would be nice to get more dark spells considering we do use dark magic and our powers are connected to the void. I think the dark magic aspect of the class is how we cast our spells. As a thaumaturge we use our inner aetheric energy as a black mage we suck the aether out of the air to cast spells hence why we do more damage. So our magic is not environmentally friendly compared to other classes.

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I could see Time Mage stemming from THM in that case. They could get their gravity/demi/ultima line of spells which are sort of "dark".

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

I could see Time Mage stemming from THM in that case. They could get their gravity/demi/ultima line of spells which are sort of "dark".

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We can't because lore wise ultima is the ulitmate black magic/dark art spell so it would make no sense for a time mage. Plus I highly doubt we will see a time mage because I recall yoshi does not like the class and he hates the haste spell.

Plus black mage would most likely kill all life around them to cast ultima considering how much aether you need to use to cast that spell considering the main story.

I won't say anymore because of main story spoilers.

Instead of buffing our attacks we could just get a passive that allows a reduced mana by whatever percent so we can cast fire longer...

To me that always made more sense as you get stronger as a mage you can cast more efficiently.

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Originally Posted by shinros

snip for space

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True I forgot its use in the story. I don't recall saying Yoshi hates TIM though o.O do you know when/where he said it? TIM wouldn't have to learn haste this time around though, they would get 5 abilities, one could make all spells in the next 10 seconds insta-cast on a 420s timer, one could be gravity to add weight to target, one could be gravity, one could be gravity II (aoe version), and one could be a slow that stacks with other forms of slow. It would be a good way to capitalize on THM's sleepga and make TIM a DPS that took THM's crowd control abilities to the next level.

Yeah sure, and maybe you also wanna be able to cast the LB3 instantly 10 times in a row ?

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Originally Posted by Macho

Instead of buffing our attacks we could just get a passive that allows a reduced mana by whatever percent so we can cast fire longer...

To me that always made more sense as you get stronger as a mage you can cast more efficiently.

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I've found that casting longer isn't always a buff for Blm. In fact the only time I ever really use convert is right after a flare. I do that so I can keep my astral III and go right into blizzard III. With the way fire III and blizzard III work mp shouldn't be a problem at all. I also find myself using blizzard III before my mp fully drains if thunder is about to wear. Now of course there are exceptions to that, but being able to cast fire for a longer period of time does not matter especially if you're going to ignore thunder.

It was in a producer letter.

Q: Will the "haste" spell be implemented? If not, are there effects similar to haste?

A: As explained earlier, certain abilities/weapon skills activate a haste effect as long as you meet the conditions. Additionally, there is equipment that will decrease the global cooldown. As for Disciples of Magic, thaumaturges have "Swiftcast" which makes the next spell an insta-cast spell, etc.

I searched on google and people also say he does not like the haste spell all that much either. Plus lets not forget that thaumaturge/black mage learns the slow spell. Its just got a different name. Plus we already have meteor as a LB 3, so time mage in my opinion looks kinda redundant.

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Originally Posted by shinros

It was in a producer letter.

Q: Will the "haste" spell be implemented? If not, are there effects similar to haste?

A: As explained earlier, certain abilities/weapon skills activate a haste effect as long as you meet the conditions. Additionally, there is equipment that will decrease the global cooldown. As for Disciples of Magic, thaumaturges have "Swiftcast" which makes the next spell an insta-cast spell, etc.

I searched on google and people also say he does not like the haste spell all that much either. Plus lets not forget that thaumaturge/black mage learns the slow spell. Its just got a different name. Plus we already have meteor as a LB 3, so time mage in my opinion looks kinda redundant.

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Easy to take Slow away from BLM and replace it with a damaging spell or an ability that increases damage. Also, all caster DPS have meteor. ACN and SMN can use that too so why not TIM as well? I made a thread of some job ideas including my TIM idea if you'd like to see it. If you'd rather discuss it there that's fine, as my TIM talk is deterring this thread from its topic. ><

probably should give Float to Arcanist and make it so BLM and WHM can use it

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Originally Posted by Kurauk

Honestly don't like these ideas at all. In fact I think some are verging on completely over powered. The idea of a shroud or "cloak" has been done before and I am not against that as it was in XI. For example Flames & Lightning, so if you got struck in combat you would deal damage back to them. I think the Lightning based one was called "Shock Spikes". I think these would be a good idea to add.

I would also remove the current AoE and go back to the old school XI style and have 'Ga spells. Maybe they could use some of the similar effects of the spells we currently have. Eg the Astral stances and the Thundercloud abilities. But not allowing procs for more AoE but for single target spells. Because being able to cast Thundaga III instantly would be OP.

I hope that wasn't to negative, I like that you are thinking ahead and trying to improve the class, but I don't feel this is the right step. But naturally I would feel my ideas are more the right step. Ha-ha.

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Just to put some info on the table, in every Final Fantasy game, except FFXI:
Fire 1 = Fire
Fire 2 = Fira
Fire 3 = Firaga
Fire 4 = Firaja
Ice/Blizzard 1 = Blizzard
Ice/Blizzard 2 = Blizzara
Ice/Blizzard 3 = Blizzaga
Ice/Blizzard 4 = Blizzaja
Thunder/Bolt 1 = Thunder
Thunder/Bolt 2 = Thundara
Thunder/Bolt 3 = Thundaga
Thunder/Bolt 4 = Thundaja

And so on. About the Spikes... Not sure if that is a good suggestion, while they might be good for soloing, that is totally not the case when partying. Ifrit-egi has Radiant Shield, that sux, since he almost never gets hit.
Thaumaturges already got a useless spell in Surecast, I don't really think they need another crap spell.
Black Mage should have access to Death, the tier 4 damage spells, and I guess that is it. It was always a pretty straightforward job from FF1 till today, magic damage, and that's it.

I like these ideas. Especially the float spell. I'd love if arcanist got this so I could use it as a white Mage. It would be cool to float and holy a mob to death lol.

For those who say it's unbalanced, even though I said it's a balancing factor you must remember that this is not for current game, it's for higher level content. This means all classes should have stronger than current skills to take on the new content for that level.

Personally I find the skills to be rather fair but there might have been overlooks. The point is still to make you feel like a mage with a lot of potent inherited power.
For example changing your crit chance to 50% for 20s is far from overpowered, considering all a crits does is to add 50% extra damage and if you have 50% chance to crit then it's simply a fancier way of saying 25% bonus damage for that duration. It does not even add 25% to your damage because you already have like 5-10% crit rate as BLM so it's more like it adds 20% damage. If you then take into consideration that BLM (Or THM rather) already have gotten passives that flat out increase all damage by 30%! just for gaining a level, then this is quite a small step if you compare.

Float spell is a bit different from the others but that is because I just had this idea that Float would really suit mage play in this game. IMO situational skills should tackle a problematic situation that you frequently meet during normal play. That way it feels so sweet when you get that skill that will help you so much.

So, I realize this is sort of a fringe desire, but I really miss how in FFXI black mages were able to use all 6 elements. Now, no one wants the old BLM spam one spell , but it would be nice if they could somehow work all 6 elements into the rotation. I think a cool way would be to have it so that instead of Astral Fire and Umbral Ice, you chose a specific element to be major (Astral) based on the elemental weakness of an enemy, and then the element that is weak to it in the cycle becomes Umbral. The Thunder spell then becomes something akin to Frost/Rasp/etc. from FFXI. You could switch between elements like elementalists in GW2. It might be a sort of cool mechanic that works enemy weaknesses into a rotation in an interesting way. Of course, the weaknesses shouldn't have such a strong effect that they render other classes skills totally useless.

Probably not too many people are as obsessed with pattern completion as I am, but it might be a cool idea. :)

I had a thought about this. In FFXI there was Ancient Magic for every element. FFXIV has Freeze (modified) and Flare (modified), but where's the Burst equivalent?

A simple nuke wouldn't be any good, because Fire is the nuke element in this game. So considering Thunder is our DOT my idea is this:

Name: Thunderstorm or Storm
MP: eh dunno. Maybe make it an ability though instead of a spell.
Target: Ground AOE like Freeze.
Duration: 30ish seconds
Effect: On every tick count (i.e. every 3 seconds) lightning stikes a random target in the area, basically casting Thunder-level initial potency on that target, giving the target a 9-12 second Thunder effect.

I figure the DOT duration should be short, but since it will be automatically applying Thunder to potentially many targets, the chances for a Thundercloud proc should be substantially higher. NOTE: can affect both enemies and allies (can't have it too overpowered afterall). Or, if there's few targets in the area, the same one may get hit several times.

Come to think of it, basically a FFXIV equivalent of Rafalak's spells from FFT, with the addition of adding the Thunder DOT on successful hits.

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Now, no one wants the old BLM spam one spell , but it would be nice if they could somehow work all 6 elements into the rotation.

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Heh, except that's exactly what FFXI BLM was. The only time any element other than Thunder is used, is if the enemy is strong to it.

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Originally Posted by point09micron

Heh, except that's exactly what FFXI BLM was. The only time any element other than Thunder is used, is if the enemy is strong to it.

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To be exact, The FFXI BLM mantra was, "Check day, check weather, check weakness, cast Thunder (5)"