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

[Pacifyer]

I am leveling BLM now and almost finished it. And guess what - I did not equip BLM crystal at all during that. Why?

Yes, why? There are no actually useful spells until maybe Flare which is at 50. Yes, Manawall is a decent one but really - can do without it. But what gets worse - I lose ability to cross-class Conjurer. WTF? Never thought the job is making you worse than your parent class. So I lose ability to Raise, Protect, Stoneskin... Yes, those are not my primary duties but they are so useful!

Compared to WHM every single skill that WHM gets is "Oh shit how I like that" - BLM skills are like "WTF is that?"

Getting to exact points.
1. Convert. It has a pretty limited use but it is generally fine. Can live with that one but can liv ejust fine without.
2. Freeze. It is so bad! It would have use if it had something from below:
- High damage. It is typical for a vortex-like spells to deal very high damage if the enemy stays within area. It would definitely have it's use in PvE for that purpose.
- Debuff increasing incoming damage. Would also be great. 15% would be fine.
- Much less cast time
- Replacing bind with heavy snare that does not break on damage.
3. Apocatastasis. It has such a limited use! Maybe a raid boss and protecting a tank... But that really is relevant to a small portion of people that actually raid AND it is an off-profile spell making BLM's hard life even harder forcing to monitor boss casts in addition to mana management and positioning. Make it a THM spell (and cross class it to healers) and give us something about destruction. Say some burst or... just something.
4. Manawall is a very useful spell. I can't argue it has many uses. The only spell which has unarguebly its place in BLM's inventory.
5. Flare. While the idea of the spell is ok, implementation fails. This one should be more straight about mana requirements. Also it should definitely have a much bigger radius!

And about radius. Again I am comparing BLM to WHM. Holy (while WHM can't spam it all the way) has such an enormous radius! Blizzard II is still ok but Fire II and Flare have such a small radius that I rarely manage to hit even 2 targets with them (and Cure III btw but that's a different story). When tank pulls a pack I expect all my AOE nukes hit all the pack but that is not the matter. Please increase AOE radius in PvE for Fire II and Flare!!

[HinaCake]

I am leveling BLM now and almost finished it. And guess what - I did not equip BLM crystal at all during that. Why?

Yes, why? There are no actually useful spells until maybe Flare which is at 50. Yes, Manawall is a decent one but really - can do without it. But what gets worse - I lose ability to cross-class Conjurer. WTF? Never thought the job is making you worse than your parent class. So I lose ability to Raise, Protect, Stoneskin... Yes, those are not my primary duties but they are so useful!

Equipping your job crystal gives you a pretty decent stat boost.
Having Protect or Stoneskin in a party is really not necessary because your healer has either superior versions(WHM) or the same as you(SCH) and since you can't combat rez Raise also has a really limited use.
Jobs are intended for party play while classes are for exploring/playing alone, so I would advise you to equip your job crystal at least while in a dungeon.