Lets talk about the BLM job skills

[Xarathustra]

Also, Aetherial Manipulation? That's my level 50 spell? What am I possibly going to do with that? It's like, oh level 50! You made it! Here's a pile of useless crap!

[Tessman]

If you use black mage you drop the cross-class skill of blood for blood which is like 20 or 25 percent more damage and one of the other skills(Internal Release) that gives you plus 20 or 30 percent crit rate. In its place you get a set of skills that are practically worthless for a dps especially in a party. From what I heard you have to have at least 250mp to use Flare and the long cast time makes it not all that worth it, especially for your level 50 spell.

The system designers of the game are pretty bad. A lot of primal sins of system design in Hotbar/GCD MMOs have already shown up ("'dead' buttons" and "'normal advancement' being a potential detriment" being the big ones). What's worse is I think if we had damage formula for spells, we'd be seeing a lot of other problems. Once I hit 50, I'll start running some aggressive testing to see if I'm right, but I'm not so sure there isn't some problems with the rotation that are introduced because of bad system design. That however is in the 'to be determined' column.

I'd really like to have a conversation with the guys who are in charge of these kinds of decisions and would like to know what the plan is with the inclusion of things like Convert on a 3 minute cooldown, because nothing else in the THM/BLM package makes any sense at all with that. Unless Manawall is purely a PvP spell, (in which case, that's fine), what's the point of having an ability that nullifies damage if you can't drop threat? Ideas like that are really rough around the edges, and in Manawall's case, it's "...and reduces threat by 50% on current target" away from being a situational spell that isn't bad at all.

I don't know what to think. A lack of focus seems really evident with the class, like 3 people all designed 3 different parts of the BLM in separate rooms and smashed it all together and said "SHIP IT".

[-Snow]

So BLM is a complete dissapointment (ability-wise)? That makes me really sad.

Looks like im going to be an Bad Luck Mage.. D:

[NeoAmon]

I'm hoping end game gear makes up for the useless skill set .

I was planing to have BLM as my main but....sigh..

[-Snow]

I'm hoping end game gear makes up for the useless skill set .

I was planing to have BLM as my main but....sigh..

Yea me too, THM got some awesome abilites. But BLM is nothing i'm looking forward to :/

.. and besides all that, you look like a total retard compared to DoW classes. (1-30, except acolyte set und Jedi robe)

[Lenarr]

So why not just 50 THM and pick and choose the best skills from various other classes? BLM does look disappointing.

[Baldsalmon]

I dont think the black mage abilities are as bad as u guys think. Convert has the same CD as Raging Strikes and it gives me enough mana to be able to spam fire for the entire 20 sec. Flare may only be 260 with a 4.5 sec cast but its affected by the 30% increased base action damage from Magick and Mend 2 plus the extra damage from 3 stacks of astral fire. Its gonna hit like a fleet of trucks. I havent been able to find anywhere that confirms a minimum mana cost for Flare.

[Isirus]

I'd really like to have a conversation with the guys who are in charge of these kinds of decisions and would like to know what the plan is with the inclusion of things like Convert on a 3 minute cooldown, because nothing else in the THM/BLM package makes any sense at all with that.

Yea one of my main thoughts has well with the convert skill. Convert has potential to be a really amazing skill, its CD though is way to long. Say if it was on a 4-6 second CD it would make a lot more sense because we could potentially stay in Astral Fire for however long has we want, has long has our healer is ok with healing us. Would make it a lot more interesting and give us something fun to work around with, but with the current CD on the skill makes it almost pointless.

But i agree that our skills are all very lacking and not exciting at all, beside of course Flare. Flare is the one skill that actually looks like it wont collect a epic amount of dust on my action bar.

[Rain_Clouud]

Well so far i'm not finding it too bad, deep sleep is very good and i'm using it ALOT!

But as far as our other abilities go apocatastasis i have actually used a lot, i have used it on the Garuda fight and it seemed to make a different using it on our healer or tank.

Manawall i can see me using a lot, as a BLM we pull incredible DPS and damage numbers at level 45 criting with Fire III 1200+, you will pull hate from tanks in dungeons, i can pretty much guarantee, if your not close to pulling hate your doing it wrong . So pull hate big mob heading your way lets say a boss which is doing magic damage thats fine you can pop the magic version of Manawall (Forget its name ><) physical attacks, pop Manawall that should give your tank time to gain the hate back but also time for the healer to heal your ass and get you back into the fight! So i see these as pretty nice skills.

(Post split into three posts, last is on the next page!)

[Rain_Clouud]

The ice skill i have used maybe once? Deep sleep is good but I haven't used it twice or three times in a row, so diminishing returns may come into play (If theres such a thing here, I haven't noticed) in which case after sleep can't be cast and you still need to keep something at some range to finish it off or stop yourself getting overwhelmed you have Freeze as that little extra CC (Don't use it on casters though as it only binds, it wont stop them casting on you!)

Convert i haven't used at all, you could use it maybe like someone said to get that extra fire off to see if your proc your free Fire III but other than that i just swap to Umbral Ice. I think i read that someone also mentioned Blizzard III not giving the heavy effect, I'm not finding that an issue if i need to heavy something then use Blizzard I if not Blizzard III is your go to spell for Dungeons, Raids and Bosses