BLM needs some love and RDM needs a nerf

[soslinky]

Stop asking for nerfs to RDM, ask for BLM buffs instead.

They won't nerf RDM and simultaneously buff BLM because it will look like this:
RDM: "Utility AND Deeps?! Thanks SE!"
BLM: "I'm turret! I should have MOAR Deeps to compensate for my lack of utility!"
Yoshi-P: "You're right BLM, I SHOULD buff your Deeps since you have no utility!"
RDM: "Alright! Now we can raid as duo-cas---"
*Yoshi-P extends his index finger and touches RDM's lips with a soft shhhh*
Yoshi-P: "I'm taking away your DPS and giving it to BLM."

[Krisom]

I think when we come to balance the DPS classes most would agree that those with less utility and are hampered by mechanics should naturally be doing more damage.
If we were to throw the casters into their utility and their mobility(for mechanics) we should be seeing a ranking like this:

BLM > SMN > RDM.

I main melee but I leveled RDM as an alt for melee heavy groups where Embolden would be more useful, I'm disappointed with how simple it is but it's fun to be a highly mobile caster. - However I was shocked by how much damage I was doing, while I do more damage on my Dragoon partially because of the gear and experience I feel like I have more freedom with RDM and in some cases, while it may not actually be true I think the utility I have is way better to boost the party's damage and quite frankly I have way more to look out for with positions, botd and dragon eyes than weighing the balance between the two manas which has come to the point where I only flick my eyes to see if they've reached 40 or 80 yet and judging by that alone I can tell what to use out of Verflare/Verholy.

I know this may just be a rant about how easy RDM is but the matter of fact is that BLM should be doing the same numbers as SAM, maybe a little bit lower depending on how things play out. It's basically the SAM of the casters with how little utility it has.

If I were personally designing this game I'd probably make DPS look like this:

SAM =/= BLM > MNK > SMN=/=DRG > NIN=/=RDM > MCH > BRD

[Bhearil]

On dummies, blm>smn>rdm. Is up to the player and the encounter to hold his/her own. There are better and worst suited fights and players that make the best of the encounter while some who dont.

Sometimes on Susano i have saw blms dealing more damage than sam and rdm but depends on the skill on the player and on that case a bit of luck at not being targeted by too many Susano mechanics, but Susano es a heavy movement fight is logical blms will struggle there, if they didnt they would be crazy on less movement ones

Things wont change aside very small changes, and some people make it looks like the sky is falling on the poor blm

[Neela]

On dummies, blm>smn>rdm. Is up to the player and the encounter to hold his/her own. There are better and worst suited fights and players that make the best of the encounter while some who dont.

Sometimes on Susano i have saw blms dealing more damage than sam and rdm but depends on the skill on the player and on that case a bit of luck at not being targeted by too many Susano mechanics, but Susano es a heavy movement fight is logical blms will struggle there, if they didnt they would be crazy on less movement ones

unlogical argument somehow - its true that a skilled blm might outdamge an unskilled rdm but if the same skilled player would be as skilled on rdm cls he will outdamage his own blm parse on rdm. different playerskill-level shouldn't be an argument to point which cls is better in a real fight - now dummy parse is still don't worth anything... rdm > blm in movement this fact gives a shit on dummy numbers.

but yeah blms at all are not that poor that they deserve a buff... there are others cls which are messed up way harder than them.

[Galvuu]

snip

Alright, real talk, these dummy arguments are seriously so completely dishonest.
BLM is the job that loses the most dps between a dummy fight and a real fight.
And a dummy doesn't account for some of the most powerful utility tools in the game.
Trick Attack doesn't mean much in a dummy at all, but in a party you get a huge bonus in raid dps when it's up.
An AST hitting a dummy won't get much off a Balance, but we all know how much a Celestial Opposition'd aoe Balance is worth (it's actually overcentralizing right now, as far as healers are concerned).

Further, the fact that you say this one BLM outdps that other SAM doesn't mean much. I can outdps a SAM too, if he plays poorly. That doesn't inherently say anything about the jobs.
We have a large body of data that highlights the issues some of the jobs are facing. This isn't our imagination and personal experience speaking. This is data over thousands of different people in hundreds of different clears.
These are (statistical) trends.

I think it's quite concerning that, as someone else pointed out (was it CecMiller? Can't recall, sorry helpful person ), the top 50 fastest Lak and Susie kills have a single BLM participating.
That means there's a consensus that our job just isn't worth investing into compared to the rest of the lot.

"But you can clear content!"
Yea, sure I can. But neither as easily, nor as quickly and, worst of all, not as consistently or effectively as the rest.
Sure, make my job have a lot of variance and be hard to do consistently well with, but at least me give me some reward for it.
This is added on top the number of minor nuisances that made the flow of the job feel quite a bit clunkier in 4.0 (AF leniency and mana tick reliance being the top two).

[Bhearil]

Remember that after a certain skill level, rdm dps is heavily dependant on the 50% procs, blms also have procs but they are not so dependant on them. Blm dps is like climbing a mountain then going down then climb again while rdm is like a surfer that tries to remain over the wave as much as he/she can.

Also rdm support cuts the dps done plus it eats far more mp than any other spells, and that having the worst mp regen (they do have decent mp costs though but if you die with lucid dream on cd you are screwed in around 30 seconds of dps). Meanwhile blm aoe is far far better.

Different classes different strenghts albeit i do admit that the current ex primals are on rdm favor due to being heavy movements fights, but you cant expect blms to do great when the fights are against them, otherwise they would be ridiculously strong on those fights with less movements. Unless SE wants us to from dancing on every fight like rabbits on heat as the bare minimum to playing a bullet hell game on hardest ones. If thats become the norm, then i would agree that blm would need buffs

[Galvuu]

snip

This has always been the norm, what x)
What are these wonderful fights without movement people sometimes mention?
This is a honest question, too- the fight in my recent memory with less movement has been A7S (outside the hearts) and maaaybe A12S...? And even then, you had periods of considerably movement in A12S, I just had a wonderful, sweet MCH in my party that helped me Aetherial around a lot.
Heck, Sophia tilted the arena herself, you'd move whether you wanted to or not.

[Maero]

Movement: This has always up until now been issues that may hold blm behind, no other jobs are really affected by mechanics as much as blm has always been.
Red Mage brings great damage, it has movement so mechanics effect it far less and also great Utility.
I only find to have mp issues if i am raising multiple players in the group, Lucid Dreaming seems fine thus far. It still should have it's own mp regeneration though
Sure i may not be right but i do predict groups will not be taking in blm or smn but Red Mage instead

[Llugen]

The whole thread is tl;dr, but my suggestion after thinking about it and toying with it would be let the umbral hearts function similar to MCH ammunition where the fire spells used with it are given +25 potency.

Also, consider giving Triplecast increased potency for the three spells that it casts, like +50% or double if you please.

If you're really interested in more of my unique thoughts, between the lines should reset the recast timer on aetherial manipulation, which would not be broken at all since flying back and forth would mean not being able to cast in the downtime.

Also, there is no reason that Surecast doesn't allow you to move while casting the spell. Furthermore, the "nullifies draw in and knockback" completely doesn't work, or I haven't encountered a moment where it does.

Also, if you'd like to apply some kind of cooldown reduction by 10 seconds on Convert for every umbral heart spent or for every Blizzard IV cast, I'd be down with that. Almost every other job that I've looked at has some kind of cooldown timer lowering feat now. Would be dope.

[Krisom]

Furthermore, the "nullifies draw in and knockback" completely doesn't work, or I haven't encountered a moment where it does.

The problem with this is two-fold and it comes with bad design.

The first problem is that many mechanics for some reason do not let you take advantage of these abilities, for example on DRG I had an idea that if I were to be targeted by Susano's knock-back and have a bomb on me I'd use Arm's Length so I don't have to sprint back to the group. - However I should have known that it knocks me back regardless.
Arm's Length and Surecast are in no way game breaking in that fight because most of the time you will be targeted by a stormcloud, the very rare moments (once where it matters in the fight) you're not targeted it'd be perfect and would reward players who utilize these abilities wisely.

The second problem with Surecast is that when you begin to cast a spell, the effect wears off. I am unsure if this affects the knock-back or not but it's very likely it does in a way that it wouldn't work any longer.
Would it be game breaking for Surecast to be a buff that lasts 10 seconds for every cast during then? Probably not, but I don't see any reason why it's in the state it is. Increase its CD, reduce the duration of the buff but atleast make it more useful than it is now.