BLM needs some love and RDM needs a nerf

[OgruMogru]

Increase AF/UI 3 duration by 1-2 seconds, decrease cooldown of transpose by 1-2 seconds or have transpose retain AF/UI stacks [if they really wanna grant me all my brithdays at once ] Have Aetherial Manipulation on a drastically decreased cooldown [10-15 sec maybe even less would be amazing. Reward planning and actual use of mobility skills] Really don't think Blms even need much of a damage buff at all really, although I would never ever refuse one

[Symon17]

Increase AF/UI 3 duration by 1-2 seconds, decrease cooldown of transpose by 1-2 seconds or have transpose retain AF/UI stacks [if they really wanna grant me all my brithdays at once ] Have Aetherial Manipulation on a drastically decreased cooldown [10-15 sec maybe even less would be amazing. Reward planning and actual use of mobility skills] Really don't think Blms even need much of a damage buff at all really, although I would never ever refuse one

I agree this is the direction they should be moving in. The consensus seems to be that BLM should be putting out numbers comparable to samurai, and it can! If the problem is that those numbers aren't translating to practical fights, the thorough solution would be to loosen up the class so it isn't punished so heavily by mechanics when compared to other classes.

[NovaLevossida]

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.

It's stupid, but Surecast's knockback canceling effect ends the moment you begin to cancel a spell. You have to hit Surecast and eat the hit before you cast your next spell. You can cancel every single Vacuum Wave, for example, in the last floor of Omega with good timing. Instant procs also don't count as casts as far as I can tell, so you can fire those off and still be immune to knockback.

[Lelila38]

I agree this is the direction they should be moving in. The consensus seems to be that BLM should be putting out numbers comparable to samurai, and it can! If the problem is that those numbers aren't translating to practical fights, the thorough solution would be to loosen up the class so it isn't punished so heavily by mechanics when compared to other classes.

This.
In addition give us our F4 potency back! There was nothing wrong with it warranting that nerf.

[Pidooma]

I personally think that RDM is fine where it is. It's nice to have a solid dps that is easier to use. I finally can worry more about mechanics and things happening in a fight without staring at my bars. It also allows me to be able to keep an eye on my party members so I can throw a clutch heal or rez in quicker.

I don't know anything about Summoner, but it sounds like the concensus is that it should be equal to RDM if not slightly ahead. I'd be fine with that.

Black mage should definitely be buffed to do more dps than RDM.

I wouldn't stop playing RDM regardless of what happens to other jobs. I would just hate RDMs to get nerfed and take the chance that the community sees them as useless despite it probably not being that hard of a nerf anyway. Fix Black Mage and Summoner, then take another look at everything.

[Galvuu]

snip

I'm actually not so sure about it.
I've had a few very favourable Susie EX runs (no stuns or gaols or nonsense like that) in a no-AST, no-SMN party and I always end up around 3.6/3.7k at ilv308 (still haven't got the staff, 7 tokens...).
Last night, I had a MNK on that party (BLM/MNK/NIN/DRG, so no one getting more buffed than the other) and the MNK (ilv314) consistently outdps'd me by like 200+.
Movement might have shaved off like 100 dps, but I'm not seeing myself ever hitting SAM levels of dps as the job currently is.
Is it just the potencies themselves? Not sure... I'm not even sure if returning the 20 potency on Fire IV and Blizz IV would be enough.

That said, the AF/UI extension would be such a nice QoL change.
And give me bonus duration if I Fire with an Umbral Heart stack, because that crap happens a lot due to mechanics

I personally think that RDM is fine where it is. It's nice to have a solid dps that is easier to use. I finally can worry more about mechanics and things happening in a fight without staring at my bars. It also allows me to be able to keep an eye on my party members so I can throw a clutch heal or rez in quicker.

I don't know anything about Summoner, but it sounds like the concensus is that it should be equal to RDM if not slightly ahead. I'd be fine with that.

Black mage should definitely be buffed to do more dps than RDM.

I wouldn't stop playing RDM regardless of what happens to other jobs. I would just hate RDMs to get nerfed and take the chance that the community sees them as useless despite it probably not being that hard of a nerf anyway. Fix Black Mage and Summoner, then take another look at everything.

I think most people here don't actually want RDM nerfed. Just want it to stay the same and be used as a baseline to "fix" the other two casters, because things aren't looking so hot (I even see "no BLM/SMN" parties on the PF now >.>)

[Tman00]

Bump Fire/Blizz IV to 300(Overall 540) potency as we have no OGCDs to keep our damage up like SAM as well as Fire/Blizz IV being above the GCD. If not a potency buff to Fire/Blizz IV, get rid of the above the gcd cast of Fire/Blizz 4, no real reason to keep it anymore. Fire 1 brought up from 180 to 200, Fire III from 240 to 260.
Bump Enochian's Damage up from 5% to 10%.
Then Thunder III's dot potency from 40 to 55. Proc chance for Thundercloud from 10% to 15% and get rid of the duration of the thundercloud buff so we can plan to use.
UI/AF brought up by 2 seconds just like PVP UI/AF.
Triplecast/Leylines recast from 90 to 60.

As of right now, BLM needs to be brought up drastically in damage to make up for the fact that our DPS dies as mechanics happen, but a good BLM that reduces downtime as much as possible should be hitting SAM numbers. Now not all of these should be put in, but just throwing out what would help out BLM and what i think needs to be changed.

[Llugen]

BLM is putting out decent damage, but by SE's own logic, since it provides little utility, it should be the strongest damage caster, and it's not (single target), SMN is. That being said, giving Fire IV a flat potency buff would be unwise, I think, as it is definitely still strong (we don't want to break it in the other direction either).

This is why I think damage utility out of the umbral hearts or damage utility out of triplecast would be the best strategy; it rewards planning and thinking ahead but isn't just faceroll damage increase.

Edit: I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a "world class" BLM as I don't personally do a ton of straight number crunching, but I've raided all of coil/all of savage on it at a reasonably fast rate with various groups, so I think I can authoritatively say this. A BLM played properly is not quite hitting SAM numbers, but is very close. If a RDM is doing more dummy damage than a BLM something is wrong (although RDM is definitely strong)

[soslinky]

You can check out Galvuu's other thread. It sheds light on how the 4.0 skills and their proposed changes to our rotation is ultimately futile. It seems that SE did the "This piece gear is different because the colors are different" treatment on us. The PPS of the 3.0 rotation is almost the same as our 4.0 rotation. The only significantly good thing Stormblood gave us is the incredibly powerful AOE potential thanks to T4P and UH letting us Flare>Foul>Flare every AF window.

Feels bad man.

[Galvuu]

You can check out Galvuu's other thread. It sheds light on how the 4.0 skills and their proposed changes to our rotation is ultimately futile. It seems that SE did the "This piece gear is different because the colors are different" treatment on us. The PPS of the 3.0 rotation is almost the same as our 4.0 rotation. The only significantly good thing Stormblood gave us is the incredibly powerful AOE potential thanks to T4P and UH letting us Flare>Foul>Flare every AF window.

Feels bad man.

I edited it with a few propositions to solve the issue.
It's not much, and it doesn't change any of the rotations or how the job plays, but we'd get around a 10% dps buff VS what we have now, and the 4.0 rotation would actually be worth using, although it'd still be the hardest by far.