All this BLM negativity. ...

[Jeckyl_Tesla]

Snip.

From what you said to begin with, that mindset will always, always be prevalent. There will always be come classes that simply will pull ahead and will be favored.
That's not particularly the classes fault, but the mindset of the players fault.

As to why you would want a BLM over a SMN, because on some fights that have very little movement aspects, a BLM will outDPS the SMN, even with the current changes. The DPS swings differently however when there are phases with heavy movements. SMNs and BLKs scale completely differently too, and alongside with everything else, excel at different points too. It used to be BLM used to excel at AoE and ST when they stood still and SMN did more ST dmg when it was movement heavy. Now, it's the same with ST but the AoE has switched, which can be a pain, I admit.

As I said, it's too early to see how BLMs truly fare. Let Savage Alex come out, and see how the fights truly are there. If there are insane and glaring problems, they will be fixed. But for the current fights in the game, apart from a few QoL tweaks, BLM dmg is parsing fine and can pull ahead on some areas.

As for optimizing and having to do more to get ahead, welcome to SMN in ARR. Look, if you are not enjoying having to put in a lot of effort into a class to get the most out of it, then by all means, there are other classes out there that may server you better. Let's take a look at DRG pre-buff. Even an average DRG could pull decent DPS, but the truly good ones excelled. And now? Now that it became more complicated, the difference between bad DRGs and good DRGs are even more glaring. If anything it's the same with many of the classes now and BLM is one of them.

I don't think BLM is dead or in a horrible state, like some BLM users claim. I think all classes that need QoL tweaks and bug fixes need to have them to smooth out the experience in playing those classes. But I think that BLM takes a lot more skill and forethought now than it did before.

As for small adds, if the boss is still DPSable, then the BLM and SMN are in the same point really. Let the melee kill the adds and just focus the boss, which I'm guessing is where a BLM will gain a decent DPS boost. Ruin II one of the only choices and but it hits like a wet mop. With adds with more HP, yes, SMN burst is insane right now, and with multi target fights with high HP adds, SMN will always pull ahead in DPS. But that was even the same back in ARR.

Also: If that was your friend who messaged me last night, with horrible English I may add, and decided to just spew random shit at my FC and told me his BLM in his FC does 1.4k in Alex T4 and that I should fuck off, tell him that as much as I appreciate his comments (as much of it as I could decipher), I think his friend is completely capable of having his own arguments without his input.

If it wasn't someone you knew, then I apologize for the assumption.