Black Mage Job Spells are disappointing.

[Fengor]

*continuation from this post*

The ranged limit break that everyone uses shouldn't look more like a Black Mage spell than what I can cast. Level 30 is when I should have started getting face melting spells like a Firaga, Blizzaga, or Thundaga. (You know, spells that mark a Black Mage as a Black Mage?)

That's another thing, the names of my spells are incredibly boring and sterile. Blizzard 1, Blizzard 2, Blizzard 3. Blizzard 3 is the upgrade to 1 that 2 should have been and 2 should have been a completely different named spell all on it's own. Actually it feels like when going from Blizzard 1 to Blizzard 3 and Fire 1 to Fire 3 I skipped a spell in there in terms of effect. If you insist on using these boring 1, 2, 3 naming conventions then at least use them correctly.

(limit reached again, see next)

[Fengor]

*part 1*

*continuation from this post*

• Blizzard 1: It's a small little burst of frozen moisture from the air, I'd call that appropriate for an entry level spell.
• Blizzard 2: This should have been a single target spell just like one and should have used an ice spike erupting from the ground. (essentially the air freezing suddenly from the ground up)
• Blizzard 3: This is perfect, don't change a thing. This feels like an end-game Black Mage spell. A giant, explosion of ice crystals as the air around an enemy freezes in an instant.

Yeah, the class works right now, it's a solid class that sadly has some crap spells that are considered the "actual" black mage spells. Where I currently sit at 50, however, does not feel like I'm playing a black mage.

[Purutzil]

Somewhat agree with this... to an extent. Does feel like it could use more 'umph' to its abilities in terms of its 'flash'. Damage though, hell no. Black Mages are quite fine an able on that end by a good deal.

[Jahaudant]

I fail to see why any THM would ever equip their BLM soul and lose some of the best cross class skills in the game to gain a Fire III½.

[Tanukki]

Mm..I do feel you, as a summoner I feel like most of the skills I'm learning are cool and appropriate. One thing to consider is that they plan on expanding on the game quite frequently with patches and expansions. I would assume that sometimes those will come with an increased level cap, new abilities, new classes or jobs. So they can't blow their load too soon and give us every possible ability to begin with.

What they could expand on sooner is the limit break system!! It's a very interesting and original mechanic that this game has, but its implementation is somewhat lazy.

[Coephoros]

Please tell us which crossclass skills you get on THM you feel are superior to the benefits of BLM. As a reminder, equipping BLM stone gives you:

1. Extra 20 INT (~8% MAP boost at 50)
2. Plus 10 to other stats (more MP, HP, etc.)
3. Placed AOE bind (Freeze)
4. Immunity to 2 physical attacks every other minute (Manaward)
5. Emergency mana battery when stuck in Astral (Convert)

My position is that BLM is a clearly superior choice over THM even considering the loss of Raise. It is one thing to say that BLM/THM is unerwhelming (I disagree) or boring (I could buy that). But I am really struggling with the position that THM is better than BLM.

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

keep leveling your blm.. because when mog king comes back.. you will save us all from impending doom and suffering

[Callaren]

Reading this thread has almost swayed me to change to another class...I am 25 THM 15 ARC nearly ready for my BLM transformation...but really? It's not high DPS and I can't utilize all of my 'stolen' spells from the arcanist class? What is the point of taking on a job if you can't customize the spells you want to use like you can before choosing a job...or am I misunderstanding what I've read here?

Please let me know a 'powerful' DPS job/class to play, as I was informed BLM is the best. I don't want slow killing. I want to squash mobs quickly.

I think I do good damage, especially over long fights. AE Sleep makes me feel safe and useful too.
Also, Physick alone from Arcanist makes me extremely useful. I've tanked FATE bosses and dungeon bosses when the tank died. Umbral Ice means I can chain Physick all day...as long as I can out heal the damage being done to me.

If you want burst damage... does any DPS class do great burst?

[Lyein]

Someone brought up a fourth stack of umbral/astral. It would make sense for Flare and Freeze to apply a fourth stack, and the skills already fall into that idea. Fourth Astral would be given after using up all your MP on a Flare, allowing you to use Conversion and lay one more horrific smack-down (keep firestarter primed before using the Flare to add even more) before switching to umbral to regen. Freeze does little damage and holds enemies at bay... while boosting your mana regen to it's highest level. Sounds pretty synergistic. And it would give BLM a lot more focus as the extension of THM.

Realistically for balance though such a change would probably need to see a slight reduction in overall power to make room for the addition (push astral DPS down to about 95% current levels and let a fourth astral push you to 105% etc)

[Kenji12]

I think BLM is okay. I agree freeze doesn't have much use end game, maybe in a few random fights. Flare is a neat finisher but cannot be used often. The manawall and manaward are very useful in raiding. To me my biggest let downs so far in raiding 8 mans is it seems easier to bring melee/bards to fights over a caster because the ease of being able to move and keep high dps. If/when you fight Titan you'll see to be-able to keep the dps nearly as high as others becomes very difficult, not impossible.

I feel like 2 things need to be addressed fairly quickly are which the fact our Crit rating is terrible with full DL and Relic we get about 5-9%. When i see a crit hit i usually am shocked. Most other classes are double ours. The 2nd thing that really bothers me is our sync with other sub class/job. We basically get 1 Cooldown at lvl 4 archer and honestly nothing else end game, with a good tank you wont need enmity reduction and no use for a dex/accuracy cool down as of yet. Eye for an Eye, 34 levels for one 2 min cool down that really isnt our job. We are dps/cc class. As for our rotation it is very basic which does help in raiding. But once 10 seconds of animation passes we have to start all over. And if that happens more than once a min we have to stand still for 3.5 seconds to cast a blizzard III which in most of these raids is a ridiculous amount of time to be standing still. Seems we just need a few small fixes and we should be having a bit more fun in raids. We can dps very very hard if we can standstill for extended periods of time.