Black Mage Job Spells are disappointing.

[Thundarian]

There is unavoidable damage in end game content where the barrier can, in theory, save your life if you make a mistake. Anything that makes your healer's job easier is great utility.

Some mobs are immune to sleep. Whether or not they are immune to sleep and bind I can't say, but bind definatly has its uses. Since when were nifty utility spells boring? I feel like you would be complaining if you got to end game and had none of the utility spells.

I agree that sometimes the spell choices can feel a bit boring, but if they start out giving you all the spells that you mentioned, your class would have literally nowhere to grow over the next 5 years.

[Reitrenner]

There is unavoidable ........... next 5 years.

I am not at end game yet, so I can't officially comment on the usefulness of any one Black Mage Job Spell. But the ones we're given are ultimately lackluster in the WOW COOL department. Being a BLACK Mage should equal RAW MAGICAL MIGHT. Not "You cast Barrier, so the next two auto attacks do 0 damage instead of 50." These spells SUCK. They might work in the numbers department, and that is perfectly fine, but they do nothing for me in the "This is a compelling and interesting Job" department. There is no reason we couldn't have gotten these spells at level 10, let alone them being the spells that define our entire JOB. NO ONE who has played a Final Fantasy game thinks "Barrier" and "Convert" when they think of Black Mage.