Black Mage What Need to be Changed and Improved [Discussion & Feedback]

[Louro999]

What use ? There is no reason to pick Freeze over Sleep.
Freeze is useless, its only use is to bind enemies when they resist sleep.
But well most of the time if they resist sleep, they most likely resist bind too...

[Chrysania]

Blm in pvp its going go such so bad. We can do exactly nothing worth mentioning without immobilizing cast chains. Melee is going to annihilate us. Bards are going to annihilate us. Maybe we'll be able to burn through a whm trying to heal themselves?

With a class thismobility penalized, blm will be utterly rubbish to pvp with. We don't do so much more damage that it makes up for it either. Not...even...close.

Bard uber alles.

[MorteNovella]

Blm is pvp if played properly will more than likely be a force to reckon with. AoE CC is, and always will be, the MOST powerful thing you can bring to a group in pvp. Swiftcasted Sleeps/Freezes for insta aoe cc, Blizzard 1/Lethargy for Slows. We might not be the chain-casting dps turret of doom you imagined but BLM will be amazing in a group.

[charlemagne]

Only time I've tried using apocastasis is while playing scrabble, didn't do me any good there either.

[SchalaZeal]

I think there should be a bar, somewhere in the lower-left/middle-left of the screen which has each monster's name on it, plus a visible indicator - perhaps a colored shape - that directly tells the player how much enmity they have to the target they are attacking.

It exists already. It's called enemy list.

[Teloc]

It would be nice if it was just an aoe that stayed on the ground and did dmg and slowed/bound anyone inside of it.

I thought the same, it really should be a ground aoe for the crap damage it does.

Flare has its moments, its really good for the AOE damage it on group packs at the end of an aoe burn phase. (ie. turn 4)

[CyrilLucifer]

All I can say is that Apocastasis should not be a BLM skill, maybe a THM skill but a BLM, no way... Silence would be better. Black mages have always had Silence in FF...

Er, what? Silence is tends to fall under White Magic in Final Fantasy.

[Chrysania]

Blm is pvp if played properly will more than likely be a force to reckon with. AoE CC is, and always will be, the MOST powerful thing you can bring to a group in pvp. Swiftcasted Sleeps/Freezes for insta aoe cc, Blizzard 1/Lethargy for Slows. We might not be the chain-casting dps turret of doom you imagined but BLM will be amazing in a group.

If you think CC will work the same against other players as it does enemies (read: as effectively), you're silly. If you imagine for half a second that sleep will be even half as effective versus players as PvE mobs, you're in for a nasty, rude reality check. If you think the Bliz1 slow won't at least wind up halved in efficacy and likely made much easier to resist, you're living in a dreamworld.

'Amazing in a group'. Bahahahahahahahahaha.

No. Prolly not. 'Alive for longer than 6 seconds', sure. Certainly. I have no doubt that an adequate group could carry a BLM in pvp for a while, if things shake out as they invariably and inexorably do in MMO PVP, especially in WoW-clone pvp. CC will be rendered marginal, if not immediately than in very, very swift fashion.

Here's why: A single BLM, at present, with no changes, could chain-sleep a group of enemy players. THAT'LL MAKE IT IN, YEAHRIGHTHURRHURRHURR.

No. They're going to have to nerf CC, and they're going to have to change the way mechanics act upon other players from how they act upon PvE mobs.

Unfortunately, that's going to INVARIABLY leave BLM in a rather unpleasant position on its own; we use sleep a lot. Pst, look over at muh class, you'll see why and how I know dis to be true!

And then there's the mobility issue. The mobility issue might not be such an issue if MMO PVP wasn't basically guaranteed to have to happen to CC (not just BLM CC either) because then it'd be more of a gamble; if the BLM can get Sleep off, kids are screwed 'cause here comes the turtle-speed world of hurt! Then it would be an 'AHMAGAHD, BLACK MAGE! DON'T LET IT CAST ANYTHING! BURN IT DOWN, BURN IT DOOOOOOWN!' matter to see a BLM in the enemy lineup.

In short, if they don't change the way CC works, you might be right. But that's not how its going to go. I've got a magic 8-ball, you see, and it tells me "Every single MMO in the history of all MMO's that ever even half cloned WoW does not and realistically cannot allow PvE CC to work in PvP like it does in PvE".

CC will need to be heavily and drastically nerfed for PvP applications. The power to lock down opposing players for 30 seconds is one half-click shy of being a one-click kill button in terms of how broken the results of that would almost immediately prove themselves to be.

So, they have to change CC. A lot. Drastic reduction in efficacy in PvP incoming; this is all but assured unless SE is too stupid to put its shoes on the correct feet.

They might be; we'll see. But assuming they're not so stupid as to miss that glaring fact, the equally obvious consequence is thus: BLM without its CC is fodder for anything that can also dish out good damage. BLM damage output is dramatically reduced if the BLM cannot sit still.

Now, throw a melee dps in a BLM's face and tell me what's going to happen if the BLM cannot CC said melee for very long or very reliably at all? BLM is gonna die, horribly and quickly. The Dragoon will take some damage, but honestly, probably not that much, even if the BLM pops instant cast and tries to mana dump the dragoon to death.

BLM's just don't do that kind've crazy damage. We sure do take crazy high damage 'cause hey, we're clothies. Our defensive clicky is two hits, which will be gone in the time it took to click it and will, with careful timing, save us from pretty much nothing that we'd ever need saving from to begin with.

We will not be given the luxury of being able to carefully position and lob lots of damage before something forces us to move. We will, before any even vaguely competent player or pvp premade, be LoS'd into irrelevance, and when we can't be LoS'd to irrelevance, very easy to kill.

And if they give us Sleep as it is, unchanged, to use in PvP? We'll own everything and everyone. They didn't leave a lot of slope and bend in their mechanics here. If our CC works reliably and well enough for BLM's to be as good in PvP as in PvE, it's going to be horribly exploitable, chainable and abuseable in terribad ways.

If they don't let our CC work pretty much as well as it does in PvE, g'night. we're done. If we ever get a chance to rip out good damage in PvP, it'll be because we were fighting the truly stupid that, for some reason, decided not to take the nearly free kill and evaporate us. The competent will never be threatened by us and no premade group in their right mind will want us over a bard, or a WHM that can at least bring the heals in abundance along with respectable damage for all that shared lack of mobility, or melee dps that can soak more damage and bring some interrupt abilities that can actually do something about an enemy healer maybe sometimes.

BLM? One trick pony, and without its CC (which will absolutely need to be all but negated in order for it not to be grossly abuseable), is a pony bereft of its back legs.

That pony ain't got a very bright future.

[Nanga]

It exists already. It's called enemy list.

**WOOSH!**

[MorteNovella]

If you think CC will work the same against other players as it does enemies (read: as effectively), you're silly. If you imagine for half a second that sleep will be even half as effective versus players as PvE mobs, you're in for a nasty, rude reality check. If you think the Bliz1 slow won't at least wind up halved in efficacy and likely made much easier to resist, you're living in a dreamworld.

Even if sleep was reduced to 10s, slows to 10-20%, and binds to ~5s ranges, that is more than enough time to set up a spike/kite. As for living in dreamworld for CC durations, I've dealt with much harsher CC durarions before and it was never a problem if you actually played smart.