Black Mage

[Sfia]

Other than that, SMN needs numbers nerfs and QoL buffs. BRD/MCH need the same 5% piercing debuff DRG has (to eliminate that dependency rather than because they need damage buffs), as well as reduced emnity for self instead of halving emnity on Tactician/Refresh. BLM needs a slight dps boost to make up for their lack of utility. Melee wise NIN needs a TA nerf, DRG is fine, MNK needs Brotherhood to affect casters, and SAM is fine cause I don't know if it needs anything given the rest happens. NIN's aggro advantages add the least potency over a fight, so they are fine as is.

Personally, I feel like none of these actually address the issue. BRD/MCH provide too much damage. saying they need to provide their own piercing debuff changes nothing, and you would STILL bring a bard and a machinist.They are too strong in their current form in terms of both offense AND defense. The same goes for ninja, trick attack needs significant changes, threat tools need to not be an exclusive utility. DRG also provides a lot, it's not on the same level of absurdity of NIN/BRD/MCH but it is very powerful and would still be desired even if ranged physical was very weak. Summoner is now approaching this level of strength as well with the recent buffs. And monk is not very far behind in terms of damage contribution while also being very strong in prog with fists/riddle of earth and mantra.

So we have 4 very strong jobs, and monk which depending on your composition can also be on this higher tier of contribution.

That leaves SAM/RDM/BLM.
Nerfing 5 of the 8 dps classes to create balance for 3 could be done, however it seems to me like bringing the contributions of the 3 to be in line with the others is a much more simple approach.

Having played a lot of RDM, I actually feel it does not need much in the way of changes. It is very good at what it does, and has a strong identity as a safe and easy prog slot.If any change was to be made, I would recommend bringing it's personal dps up a very small amount, but this would not make or break the class, nor change its viability in endgame. Perfect balance is unlikely to ever be achieved between 8 jobs, so having niche jobs which excel so clearly in areas is a great way to make the job of total balance easier.

Samurai needs more damage. Whether this is through personal dps, or raid utility it doesn't matter, the result would be the same - providing more DPS to your team. Currently it is very easy to perform to a decent level on, which goes to show how well the dev team has designed this class with their new philosophy (of bringing the skill floor down) in mind. Red mage is good in this regard also. Samurai is decent in prog because of it's low skill floor, however monk still outshines it in this regard. I'm not a melee main so I wouldn't want to suggest how to best fix these problems as I am not the best person to do so.

And that leaves Black Mage.
Damage is too low. With no contributions to other peoples damage, all you provide is what you hit the boss with, and that needs to go up SIGNIFICANTLY. It is a bad situation to be in when a 10% total damage increase would still not solidify your position in a team looking to optimize.
It is important to point out that from a pure damage perspective, BLM is below SAM yet provides no utility advantage over it and is more immobile. It is the WORST dps class - not just the worst caster and it is important to realize that the utility jobs (SMN/DRG/MNK/NIN/BRD/MCH) outpace black mage damage contributions often in raw dps ALONE, and if not then their utility pushes them to vastly exceed what a BLM can provide. The other DPS carry (SAM) is more mobile AND does more DPS - so even if NIN/BRD get nerfed, it would require every other DPS class to be nerfed in order for BLM to be competitive. This is the unique problem of a class who provides nothing to the team but damage.


Defensive and resource utility is non existent.

We can directly compare black mage to other roles competing for its slot right now. This is NOT to say these jobs should lose their ability in these regards, it is simply to show that BLM does not have nearly as much to offer as almost every other class in the game.
We are the worst caster to use manashift. We have 1 time in our rotation where we can use it (and only under a randomly generated proc) without a mild-significant dps loss. Compare this to SMN/RDM being able to freely weave this at no loss now.
Compare Manashift to Refresh, 3000MP to one target or over 6000MP to all party members. A complete no brainer.

Addle and apocatastasis now have to be either weaved with procs or instant cast abilities (of which we have limited and cannot be relied upon) or you lose dps. Compared to SMN/RDM, they can do this freely at any time with no loss.
Pallisade is the ranged equivalent to apocatastasis, providing equal utility to apoc, which can be used at no loss to the ranged user.
Dismantle is a significantly stronger addle. Troubadour has the benefit of not requiring a target, and Natures Minne is just icing on the cake.

And lastly is the issue of raising. I personally have no opinion on whether black mage should be able to have a raise, however after taking away a lot of unique utility (namely apoc) through the homogenization of the caster role, I find it very odd that no recompense was given to their power budget.

Now, this is completely disregarding other issues that BLMs face (mobility, punishment for error, the burden of cast bars etc.) and it is clear as day that the job simply... lacks. There isn't enough to it, and I am starting to sympathize with people who are simply locking the class out of party finder options.

In my initial post I shied away from talking about changes I would like to see and believe would be healthy for the class and balance as a whole, however I'll get a little bit into that now.

There are a few easy fixes which, when combined, could solve the problem of using apoc and addle specifically, with benefits to manashift usage (although not completely solved) without affecting the damage of the class.
Firstly is to make foul instant cast, giving us an actual on demand mobility/weaving spell at no cost to our own damage.
The problem with an instant cast foul used for weaving is that you will run into MP issues when in umbral ice (MUST blizzard4 first and then you risk not enough MP after a thunder 3 when returning to astral fire to complete your rotation). So to remedy this, I would like thunder 3 to be reduced to the MP cost of blizzard 4 in umbral ice3, or better yet, completely remove mp costs from blizzard4 and thunder 3 while in umbral ice 3.

Convert is currently an awful CD, an outdated remnant of pairing it with raging strikes. A 3 minute CD with an absurdly low value (compare this to Battle Litany, Battle Voice which also share this window) and cannot be reliably used due to the HP cost.
By making this skill useful, we can also address a key issue with BLM damage - unreliability during burst windows.
By making convert into a reliable bursting tool, we can fix the anti-synergy with other classes lowering the discrepancy in damage which we have no control over.
My personal idea for this ability is to put it on a 120s CD, refill MP to full and grant astral fire 3. This means trick atack/chain stratagem/hypercharge buff windows can be reliably hit with powerful spells, regardless of where you are in rotation, and would still align with BLM's current on-the-fly thinking playstyle.

These changes would be a start for a more usable black mage. They certainly wouldn't address all the issues they have and I believe further tweaking would be needed but these are a couple of huge problems existing with easy solutions.