Black Mage

[zuzu-bq]

BLM has some of its own clunkyness in it. Most are tied to the fact we lose too much damage to move, convert being arbitrarily 20% MP instead of a fix number like literally everything else on jobs that rely on exact amount of MP for rotation and Transpose cd makes no sense to be 12s aymore, and literally thunder procs duration... why so short.

[Llugen]

Pretty much all we can do is pray. I've submitted numerous times about this, and had previous threads about it here, where no one seemed to understand what I was saying.

As if it wasn't already RIP enough.

Pray to the SE gods that they realize that summoner is about to be insane.

Attention, Square Enix: The logic that pure damage can somehow outweigh party utility/buffs MUST STOP. Also, check yourselves because SMN (supposedly "lower damage" than BLM) is ALREADY doing higher damage than most BLMs, and you're about to buff them further.

[BlackcatChen]

>I don't see SMN doing identical personal damage to SAM or BLM even after it's soon to be buffs, I just can't wrap my head around that.

Doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Look up some statistics, it's absolutely true. This isn't a "my personal opinion" thing.

>but I don't think there's anything to worry about regarding SAM/BLM.

Yeah, there is. They're simply not doing enough raid dps, and all they bring to the party is personal damage in the first place. I don't care what you're seeing in groups where people don't know how to press buttons, that's completely irrelevant. There is only a very small difference in personal damage between MCH/BRD, and BLM, and almost no difference between BLM and SMN right now. And that's really screwed up, since when you add in the contribution of their party buffs, BLM falls far behind. The design of BLM and SAM makes sense when their personal damage outweighs the fact that they have no raid buffs. Right now it absolutely does not, that's why this thread happened in the first place, because this problem is directly opposed to the design of the job. BLM is pretty much the least useful DPS in the game right now, you don't find anything wrong with that?

>instead of players just improving their personal performance and not worrying about what they "could" be doing

There are BLM that have full uptime or as close as possible to it on these fights already, we're not talking about situations where there is room to improve. We're talking about what the job is capable of doing at its full potential.

[zuzu-bq]

For BLM and SAM to be worthy in a group the group has to be significally worse than the SAM/BLM player. The SAM/BLM player will be outputing great damage no matter of bad usage of utility from others. But if you're good why aren't you in a better group. And if you're in a better group why aren't you a NIN/DRG or MCH/SMN. Thats the pure damage DPS' dilenma right now, to me.

Also about players improving their performances. BLM is right now the bottom 3rd on popularity. Only SMN and MCH are player less than BLM by statistics everyone can have access to. And surprisingly most BLM players that are playing it right now are really good compared to the other two on low popularity and they're all slowly shifting to better jobs. By the way you've two of them actively posting on this thread right now, one of them being the OP. SAM is hella more popular for being new and weeb and wanted for the community for much longer and DRG/NIN are so much more absurd in power than SAM that good SAM players just play those instead. Usually DRG because of shared accessories.

[Jukebox12]

Kill it fire not that cheap verfire or ruin

[Huntington]

>I don't see SMN doing identical personal damage to SAM or BLM even after it's soon to be buffs, I just can't wrap my head around that.

Doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Look up some statistics, it's absolutely true. This isn't a "my personal opinion" thing.

>but I don't think there's anything to worry about regarding SAM/BLM.

Yeah, there is. They're simply not doing enough raid dps, and all they bring to the party is personal damage in the first place. I don't care what you're seeing in groups where people don't know how to press buttons, that's completely irrelevant. There is only a very small difference in personal damage between MCH/BRD, and BLM, and almost no difference between BLM and SMN right now. And that's really screwed up, since when you add in the contribution of their party buffs, BLM falls far behind. The design of BLM and SAM makes sense when their personal damage outweighs the fact that they have no raid buffs. Right now it absolutely does not, that's why this thread happened in the first place, because this problem is directly opposed to the design of the job. BLM is pretty much the least useful DPS in the game right now, you don't find anything wrong with that?

>instead of players just improving their personal performance and not worrying about what they "could" be doing

There are BLM that have full uptime or as close as possible to it on these fights already, we're not talking about situations where there is room to improve. We're talking about what the job is capable of doing at its full potential.

So are you basing your numbers off the top 1% of players who speed run and pad FFlogs with AST/DRG/BRD buffs or are you getting aggregate numbers from players that are in lower than the top 99 percentile? Because it's a big difference to be claiming there's an issue and that the statistics prove it when there are only 3 SMNs in the top 50 of all recorded parses at this moment in "standard comps", the bulk of that 50 being MNK/BLM/SAM. All being lead to be believed that they are padded and boosted as much as possible to show those numbers.

Checking the statistics for all percentiles up to max and down to the 10th I'm actually honestly surprised that I'm seeing what I am, did that potency buff to SMN's DoTs really make that much of a difference? What else could have changed the numbers so drastically? Last I checked it, SMN was in the bottom tiers near BRD/MCH and BLM/SAM were blowing everything else out of the water. Did people figure out it's DPS was still decent it was just a little clunky, or did gear make that much of a difference for it's numbers to improve that much?
I'm checking parses of top-tier players I know on my server, I'll shorten their names, on respective jobs and while I don't have anyone off the top of my head for SMN players, I have two great results for BLM/BRD.
A.T. is a BLM main, always has been, his numbers go as follows.
Alte Roite: 5,373.8
Catastrophe: 5,482.0
Halicarnassus: 5,883.1
Exdeath: 4,883.8
Neo Exdeath: 4,866.0

S.B. is a BRD/MCH main, his numbers are as follows:
Alte Roite: 5,188.5
Catastrophe: 5,040.6
Halicarnassus: 5,125.0
Exdeath: 4,328.5
Neo Exdeath: 4,407.3
These are the two best BLM/BRD results I have on hand from my server, and the numbers are pretty shocking. I've been playing BLM primarily for months now since we got Deltascape Savage, and there have been a few way too powerful buffs to BRD, very decent changes to BLM, and some minor potency buffs to SMN, what could have made the numbers we saw on SB's launch and a few weeks into Savage after we got it, that show completely different numbers all this time later? The patches don't account for it, player skill improving with gear seems to be the only possibility. But if that's the case and people are improving on SMN to the point where they're outperforming BLM's who should be doing higher Raid DPS because of their lack of utility, then why has this only been getting around as an issue the last month or so? Before the Live Letter came out, none of this was being talked about anywhere by what I saw, not on Reddit nor GameFAQs or on here. Suddenly we have a huge issue with BLM being mediocre trite garbage compared to SMN/BRD/MCH, and I can't fathom what's caused it besides people just figuring out how the job works now.

Despite the statistics and parses from FFlogs, there are still thousands of great players on all aforementioned jobs, that do not parse or post logs anywhere yet still do great personal DPS. You can't account for every player's performance at all times because we don't have the numbers or data to crunch to analyze. So when I said " For those top 1% of groups that do take proper usage of those moments, you can likely look through logs to see how much Raid DPS is being contributed, for everything under that, it's not going to make a large difference in groups. If your personal DPS is great and high, you're doing what the job is designed or oriented for, and that's not an issue in of itself." You ignored that and replied with "I don't care what you're seeing in groups where people don't know how to press buttons, that's completely irrelevant" which is the furthest thing from the truth.
The playerbase is larger than the top players in the game, they make up the smallest constitution of the playerbase, which means the numbers SE sees from that majority of players, is going to tell them a lot more than what the parses from those top echelon players do. The significance of this shouldn't be lost on you but with your reply it feels like you tossed everyone that isn't posting to FFlogs or isn't in a top-tier static to the wind. Just because people that aren't in those high percentiles don't sync their damage CDs or utilities up properly, does not mean that their feedback and numbers amount to jack and s***. Those, are the numbers that SE looks at. Those are the numbers they see first. The top raiding statics in JP may be listened to very largely by them, but the top raiding JP statics do not make up the entire JP community. So when they by and large, Hardcore to Casual to Semi-Hardcore and so on, complain or gripe about something, that is when SE listens. And as of yet I haven't seen anything from the JP side that says this SMN/BLM predicament is as huge as one or two threads on the DPS roles forums have said it is.

I agree that the statistics I looked through do show a shockingly close gap between SMN/BLM, but as those numbers are gained from any number of comps setups and language communities, until we see more raw numbers and feedback from that side of the pond, this could still just be an issue being blown up 15 sizes by the small sample size of Western and European posts I've thus far seen, since I doubt many people speak fluent Japanese to interpret or translate if they're talking about it.

I ask this question again: What changed in the last month and a half for this DPS disparity to be such a huge concern? Because from my own small hyperbolic example, until the Live Letter went out I saw no complaining or griping about SMN and BLM. We all knew they were going to make more adjustments and changes to WAR/SMN, ever since they announced those changes would be pushed back to 4.1. We all knew it was coming, but it wasn't this huge concern until people saw preliminary notes and started buggering out about it, because I've seen no such forum post exemplifying this problem until the last two weeks. If you can source anything to the contrary by all means show me some to educate me. But as it stands now for me personally, until we get 4.1 and really run things through some more and have more numbers and data to crunch, this could be much less of an issue than it actually is. Sure the parses we can see now show how small the gap is for SAM/BLM being top compared to SMN/BRD&MCH, but we don't have the data that Square does. And while they've been wholly inept and tuning jobs so far in this game up till this point, they do still see the actual raw data that the playerbase never does until they give us official census numbers.

[nugglets]

I'm not going to quote that huge wall of text above, but here's the thing: The "top 1%" or whatever you want to call those who do make their raid data publicly available are typically the ones who have maximized the potential of a job. You can agree with that, yes?

So if the maximum potential of all jobs shows your favorite job to be completely unfavorable compared to nearly(literally?) every other option, why shouldn't that bother you? As someone who is admittedly not a top 1% player, it still sucks to know every time I go into savage that I could be helping the group more by playing something else that I don't like. And as someone who is pretty damned hyped about a (hopefully) truly punishing challenge in Unending Coil this is even more relevant because a) finding a group who will even take a BLM is going to be difficult at best; and b) the entire time myself and my group are going to be thinking about how we would probably be progressing faster if I were playing something else.

No one is saying BLM is totally garbage and anyone who plays it at any level is a baddy and needs to feel bad. What we're saying is that there's no reason *not* to improve it's standing in the highest-tier of play, when things which are already favorable are being propped up further. And it appears that SE only listens when people complain, so if we don't say something, nothing will change. So it's time to say something. =)

[BlackcatChen]

People have been complaining about this exact same issue since 3.3, it's just that people have kind of... accepted it's imbalanced as hell by now. And that MNK players were the most vocal at the time. Remember the whole "delete mnk" bullshit that people were spouting during that time? It was this exact same issue, BLM/SMN/MNK were way behind, despite having the highest personal damage. Casters weren't complaining as much because surely the expansion would fix this?! The fanfest announcement was even directly announcing MNK was getting a raid buff (which would then become Brotherhood), and we thought BLM and SMN would be included here. This couldn't go on for much longer, right? This double ranged comp has been going on for years now because of the buffs received to MCH in 3.2 and BRD in 3.3. Because BRD/MCH players early in 3.x's lifespan were complaining a lot from doing low personal damage by design. By the end of 3.4 BRD/MCH were doing almost BLM numbers, while having even greater raid buffs than they have now. The reason you didn't hear much about it in 4.0 is because the BRD/MCH jobs got fairly substantial reworks, as well as Machinist getting slightly reworked through multiple patches. People had to relearn their jobs. There is a very obvious reason more speed kill groups use DRG/NIN/BRD/MCH as their comp, with the fourth spot rarely having a ranged replaced by a SMN or MNK in 4.05. It's that stacking raid damage buffs are insanely potent, and they don't do that much lower personal damage to rationalize using anything else. And those are the best jobs to do it. But it gets worse... in terms of defense/resource utility Dismantle > Addle (even post 4.1), double refresh > mana shift, Apoc = Palisade (magical tankbusters and physical ones), and then there's still troub and minne on top of that for BRD.

SMN is a similar case in 4.05. While it didn't receive any real buffs other than the DoT buff (which is still a pretty big deal), the issue was that many players good and bad were put off by the clunky, unintuitive, design of the job. So it took a while for the people using it well to really come into the spotlight, and for other players to catch up and see how much damage it's really doing. There's the other issue, that many, MANY caster players during prog were not playing and learning the fights on BLM or SMN. They were playing RDM for its easy resses, and non-punishing design during early prog, regardless of it doing much lower damage. So it took a while for us to see that SMN was actually matching BLM. So now they're matching BLM, have radiant shield as a 2% physical buff that's up for 33% of the fight, and now have devotion which is a 2% buff for 12.5% of the fight. So this isn't even a personal damage vs raid buffs thing, it has the same damage and buffs. Strictly better in every way. Meanwhile, MCH that wasn't too far behind BLM/SMN in personal damage got their raid buff... buffed. People got pissed that one of the strongest jobs in the game got buffed. Same with DRG and the 3 eyes thing. It's a problem now, and it's getting worse. People want to stop it.

As for BLM, people WERE complaining in 4.0. The job's design was broken. The MP requirements meant not getting refunded MP between B4 and F3 meant not getting 6xF4, or even being left at 0MP, not even enough for a B3. And the only way around that was waiting on MP ticks, making your damage even worse. Not only that, there was a very tight timer for astral fire, because they added another 3s F4 to the rotation, while only increasing the timer by 1s. They were also doing barely more personal damage than RDM, with none of the utility. And yes, people did complain, including myself. (Reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nnoyances_401/ ) People weren't talking about optimal viability at that point, people were talking about a wrecked, broken design of a class! And yet... people were saying the same things you guys are now. "BLM is just fine, you're just not playing it right." "Huh, you should just use 4 f4s, skip b4 and misalign your foul timer and wait on mp ticks" "But look how much damage these PF BLM are doing!" "Why does it even matter, it won't make a difference in casual play" What do I see weeks later in 4.05? Every single one of those points addressed. Who would have thought?!??! BLM feels fine to play now. It's fun now. Their quality of life is great. But their damage just isn't in the right place.

Buff MCH? BRD? DRG? At this point?! Why?

That's why we're mad.

[Waliel]

I don't see SMN doing identical personal damage to SAM or BLM even after it's soon to be buffs, I just can't wrap my head around that.

Let's see...

Alte Roite: SMN above BLM on every percentile.
Catastrophe: BLM above SMN on every percentile.
Halicarnassus: SMN above BLM on every percentile except 99% and up, and above SAM on 95% and up.
Exdeath: SMN above BLM on every percentile, and above SAM on 80% and up.
Neo: SMN above BLM on every percentile.

[Lelila38]

Let's see...

Alte Roite: SMN above BLM on every percentile.
Catastrophe: BLM above SMN on every percentile.
Halicarnassus: SMN above BLM on every percentile except 99% and up, and above SAM on 95% and up.
Exdeath: SMN above BLM on every percentile, and above SAM on 80% and up.
Neo: SMN above BLM on every percentile.

Basically on every fight that requires extensive movement. No surprise, there's no class that gets more heavily punished for having to move. Somehow also the fight design changed. I feel like in Omega there's far more movement required on all fights but Catastrophe. Might be my imagination, but I'm having a hard time lining up my rotation with most mechanics, it feels like they were either designed with complete disregard to Blm or just meant to interrupt every rotation.