Black Mage

[Llugen]

I still think flat potency increase would be a mistake. The implied gains from a buff to the thunder dot timer and Astral/Umbral timer as well as a Blizzard IV and Convert overhaul would be sufficient.

Perhaps they could consider making Foul double potency if it only hits one target (that’s the issue with buffing it, since BLM is already pretty crazy AOE damage, same thing with buffing Convert).

[KumiKuzumi]

I love blm and after stalking this thread a while I will share my thoughts. I think that problem with blm is plain class design. It's dps isn't bad but it has no synergy or burst with anything. It does its thing alone regardless of what's happening around it.

Talking about changes is pointless but in my opinion, I think what would benefit most is reduced potency and 2.5 gcd fire 4s so that triple and swift cast aren't dps gains but utility while also balancing our dmg sources a bit. And yes I say reduce to 200 potency and add it elsewhere.

Make umbral hearts increase fire 4 dmg by 50%, so 3 300 potency and then 3 200 potency at 2.5s cast. Overall about a 300 dps buff comparing current 6 fire 4s but it gives us a slight burst window. And a side note to increase foul a bit and ffs increase thunder dot dmg. Our dps gain in using thunder relies on proc and that's retarded and no other job can lose dps by dotting.

[KumiKuzumi]

Enochian trait would be changed and umbral hearts would half mp cost instead of what it does now. Quadra flares would be a thing so obviously potency nerf and 2.5s gcd also to keep it in check. One interesting trait to make enhanced Enochian would be to give us the ability to use buffs and ogcds while casting.

Convert is just bad so let's not even go there lol. All in all we are still the root of what makes us blm, but qol and dmg tweaks is what we needs. We don't need raises or party utility. We need to be black mages and kill stuff. Anyway let me know what you guys think. I like reading about everyone's thoughts on this and I'm happy I'm not alone with my undeniable love suffering

[Solyra]

actually I prefer they keep black mage as a pure dps job with no utility , thats what makes them different from the other two mages , I dont think that every job in the game needs to have raid utility , pure damage is what makes blm fun for me

I agree with the sentiment. I don't want to have to worry about raid buff alignment or what our MNK is doing derping around or not having piercing as a brd/mch. I think that a lot of people also share your sentiment that doing the big deeps numbers and being able to turret is what makes BLM fun. The issue that has been coming up ever since the tail end of HW is that BLM does NOT pull better numbers than something like MCH/DRG sometimes even in pure dps numbers not even including the raid buffs that these jobs bring to the party (littany, tether, hypercharge). This was an issue before 4.1 and then MCH/DRG get buffed? (Hypercharge by 20% and DRG gets easier to play and less punishing) It's honestly ridiculous. I just wanna throw explosions and do the "sick deeps" but that's kind of hard when I have a difficult time finding a PF accepting BLM much less a raid group.

[Solyra]

This kind of buff is pointless though. BLM isn't going to become more desirable just in virtue of being easier to play, which is what this type of "magic button to keep AF/UI" does.
It'll make BLM marginally less punishing at progression, but this isn't going to up our dps, or gives us offensive utility or do anything that actually makes BLM more attractive.
Many "solutions" people propose fall in this category- if you look at the bigger picture, there are already plenty of BLMs playing perfectly with ridiculous uptime, and that's not enough.
The magic Fire-hammer either needs to hit harder, or dent the armour so others hit it harder.

I really like how they showed this in the MSQ with the thaumaterge guild. Having it be a refresh would be really awesome since it would basically change the rotation from 6F4 to 7F4, which is definitely a step in the right direction. Taking a closer look at the numbers though, BLM would need to be doing approximately 6k dps or so to be roughly on par with utility dps jobs (NIN/DRG/BRD/MCH). It's not been talked about here because it is the BLM discussion, but SAM will also likely need a (smaller) buff as well, since it suffers from similar problems that BLM does; it just doesn't bring as much damage as a "pure damage dealer" as other classes do.

[Lelila38]

At least Sam has a slashing debuff, so can increase its own dps. We Blm can't even do this much.

[Kenji1134]

At least Sam has a slashing debuff, so can increase its own dps. We Blm can't even do this much.

So would, as others have previously suggested, attaching something of a 15% Fire Vulnerability debuff to B4 work?
Makes B4 useful, boosts F1, F3, and F4 damage which together are about 60% of our dps (0.6*1.15+0.4 = 1.09, 9% "simple" dps boost), without buffing SMN, and providing a small buff to RDM (Verfire, Verflare).

[Kabooa]

So would, as others have previously suggested, attaching something of a 15% Fire Vulnerability debuff to B4 work?
Makes B4 useful, boosts F1, F3, and F4 damage which together are about 60% of our dps (0.6*1.15+0.4 = 1.09, 9% "simple" dps boost), without buffing SMN, and providing a small buff to RDM (Verfire, Verflare).

I'm generally of the opinion that permanent vulnerabilities belong to the tanks. Though the prospect of hitting 15% harder makes me happy in inappropriate ways.

In terms of what we could hope for in a patch or raid balance patch, it'd probably be a potency boost to be honest, but there is another thing that's been nugging me in the head. We're the only job that gets heavily hampered by Server MP ticks, which in turn causes Spell Speed to have stunted progression, even back when it was our undisputed best stat.

So as a preliminary fix to that, Blizzard 3 should restore 1800 MP upon casting it. There are several scenarios in Black Mages ending MP from a Fire Phase and it's almost entirely based on server MP ticks. There is one glaring scenario (Sub 13k) that occurs if your T3 doesn't quite finish before the MP tick and that one sucks in particular. This change both eliminates that scenario, removes our dependency on the server tick moving into Ice phase (allowing us to at a minimum always cast B4 moving into the phase, but also always cast T3 in our more favorable positions), and removes the stranglehold the server has on our magesicles.

[Pondera]

What about the fact that, because of how mana shift and umbral ice work, you can grant healers additional MP pretty much every time its off cool down? I'd say thats pretty valuable.

[Kabooa]

What about the fact that, because of how mana shift and umbral ice work, you can grant healers additional MP pretty much every time its off cool down? I'd say thats pretty valuable.

Mana Song.