Is BLM truly simple?

[Jican]

I laugh when I see BLMs complain about downtime from moving, melee have it far far worse.

As a main black mage, there is a lot going on that no one but a main black mage could understand. There is a 1.5-4 second cast on all your spells that do decent damage, and an insta cast damage spell that you incorporate based on the situation. Knowing what is coming is essential, but you can't always count on RNG, which is what Blm does. It's a very re-actional job that is easy to learn, but very hard to master. Simple mistakes, bad rng, and ignorance will lower your DPS so much, you'll be more of a paper weight to the party than a contributor.

Melee have it worse? My butt, you have auto attacks and gap closing moves with close to nil cool downs. Maybe if you had more than 3 jobs you would see the comment you made is both ignorant, and completely wrong.

**update** In my ignorance, i checked people's names on here and check their profiles to see if they have a job they are talking smack about, and only saw three. Only after checking my own profile did I see SE only posts three, although I know I have all of them at 50.**

[Maero]

Yes i play drg as well and while positioning is very important you can still be attacking so blm is about minimizing movement.

[Zencurse]

A Summoner's complexity comes from mastery of your mechanics. Your rotation, what buttons you press and when, and micromanaging your egi. A Summoner like almost every other dps class in this game rely on mechanical mastery in order to be "the best" at it.

A Black Mage is the exception. A beginner Black Mage will look upon the rotation, find it appealing how easy it seems, and then proceed to complain on Titan Ex about how they could barely cast anything because of the amount of movement. An experienced Black Mage will use the tools of his trade to minimize movement on the same fight, using manawall to preemptively counter landslide, shutter step to move out of the rest, and aetherial manipulation or manaward to dodge and render irrelevant a majority of weight of the lands and come out of the fight topping dps without a care in the world.

To put more simply, a Black Mage's complexity comes from their dynamics and reactive nature. In a strange sort of way a Black Mage plays almost more like a White Mage healer than another DPSer. Instead of methodically throwing out our abilities, we focus on planning and reacting because not only do we have the time for such forethought (as again our "rotation" at it's core is fairly simplistic) but also because without that forethought we are at the mercy of basically every mechanic in the game.

As a current example (as I would hardly consider Titan EX relevant in the game anymore after clearing it for story purposes) just in T6 alone while progressing back when 2.2 launched my dps according to others went from a paltry 250 to a reasonable for ilvl 90 gear, 300+ just while progressing and without any gear upgrades. This is because as I learned the fight I learned how to manage things like when I have the honey, breaking chains, etc without having to stay on the move much. To conclude, the Black Mage is likely the best example FFXIV has of a job that is easy to learn, but hard to master. If it seems easy now, don't worry it's where you're supposed to be when you first start toying with the playstyle. Eventually, as you start doing some of the harder fights, you'll start noticing the little things, and that's when you start making the connections I've stated above, and really get into the meat of the class

[Daniolaut]

Is BLM truly simple?

I play all 9 jobs, and BLM is so ridiculously over powered that its very very easy to push high dps with little effort. When you understand a fight and have a decent blm rotation its exceptionally easy to be the top dps in your party.

in my opinion blm is by far the easiest job to achieve your "role's" requirement.

Monk, Dragoon, even Paladin are more difficult to be successful at.

(the reason black mage is so over powered is because most dps players who play blm have complained that they cant dps in ifrit hard mode in 1.0, because fire is their most potent attack so SE removed elemental weaknesses, and then in 2.0 they complained about having to move, turning the class simply into a very easy very over powered job.)

[Estellios]

(the reason black mage is so over powered is because most dps players who play blm have complained that they cant dps in ifrit hard mode in 1.0, because fire is their most potent attack so SE removed elemental weaknesses, and then in 2.0 they complained about having to move, turning the class simply into a very easy very over powered job.)

You are either mistaken or trolling. After the job revamps THM/BLM were the DPS everyone wanted for Ifrit because they tore him and the nails apart. Also Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga was the BLM single target combo in 1.0.

[sackm]

My main is SMN. Did Turn 8 for the first time as a BLM, did more DPS (431) than my SMN (usually 400-420). Granted SMN is pretty bad on T8 its just depressing putting WAY more work into it conserving mp etc and i can faceroll on BLM and do more damage

[TheTen]

Folks, folks. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

I'm not asking if I can top DPS charts in endgame fights without work. I'm just asking if BLM is the right DPS class for someone who gets easily overwhelmed by too many skills/too much micromanagement. I don't really want to be top DPS. I just want to not be useless.

(So far, the most helpful answer has been that BRD would be better for my needs, though I heard they have a lot of DOTs to manage at 50?)

[Daniolaut]

You are either mistaken or trolling. After the job revamps THM/BLM were the DPS everyone wanted for Ifrit because they tore him and the nails apart. Also Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga was the BLM single target combo in 1.0.

I never actually did ifrit in 1.0 as blm since it was the last job i leveled. What was the reasoning they removed the elemental weakness then? Their exact statement was "we dont want players to exclude jobs due to the elemental wheel from certain fights."

[StouterTaru]

BLM is very simple to do well as, and easier to master than the other dps classes. There are a lot of little simple things that I always notice other BLMs not doing that are very useful:
-using sprint during fights (all mages in general, I rarely see this)
-running to the tank after pulling hate, or better yet before or during the GCD after a firestarter fire3
-using lethargy
-using apocatasasis/virus/eye for an eye (I'm guilty of this one)
-using raging/quelling/convert effectively on AoE nukes

[Urielparadox]

You Know Many Times I've gone into endgame fights on drg or smn and slept through the whole thing and topped dps? All the time. Why? Because all you have to do is your rotation. You can read the countless threads if on t8 you blm is doing more then your smn then your a bad smn, it has nothing to do wit blm being strong. 80% of the time I get df with another blm, I decimate their dps, why? Because they don't know how to move, to me and others blm is easy because we know how to move, majority of players get on blm, have no idea how to move, how to choose which spell to fit which situation and they are awful. Same goes with any job in this game. Drg, brd, and smn are stupid easy as you rarely ever deviate from what youdo