Black Mage

[Llugen]

....but to get back to things addressing BLM, I personally believe that no jobs should have ZERO utility. Some should have more than others (RDM, BRD, MCH) but "pure DPS" will never be stronger than utility. Utility is d a m a g e. Battle Litany, Embolden, Devotion, Radiant Shield, they provide damage for the party. Party play is centered around utility and the optimization of such.

There may always be "a meta" but there's no need to make it so that a class has literally nothing to offer and no synergy with other classes, see also: BLM.

[TsuKoj]

As long as vercure still procced Dualcast so I could use it mid-phase transition...the way that vercure is mainly used as in actual content.

Vercure should've always been useable in combat, they made bard songs useable mid combat, its bad design to force a pause/break in the rotation for defensive utility. They removed cast time of mp/tp song, and even moved shield swipe to ogcd. Raise is the only defensive utility that should interrupt a rotation significantly since it's such a game changer.

See this is the paragraph I have the most issue with because you claim Summoner to be a pure-dps type dps...when it's not. It brings more added damage utility in more forms than RDM does, retains a rez, and has more utility than RDM does. At the moment it's one of if not the absolute zeniths of dps jobs, because in personal dps it matches SAM in almost every fight and passes it when it's not riding it's butt, and it brings rDPS alongside healing buffs.

SMN is every bit the support you claim to want to nerf but you act like SMN is meant to be on top because...why? And I know you don't want SMN touched in this way because your divide is quite clearly stated as "rdm/mch/nin/brd" as supports and "smn/blm/sam/drg" as true dds.

SMN would need heavy nerfs to Contagion, Radiant Shield, and Devotion to be considered a pure dps. BLM needs damage buffs to beat SMN anyway, as it should be the job matching or surpassing SAM as it is the "SAM of Casting".

Yes, I agree smns would need adjustment, I drew the line between support and pure dps more from what people went into the job expecting. I doubt drg/smns went into the job thinking, hey I'm going to be a support job, while a lot of people probably went into brd/mch/rdm knowing it'd be more support oriented. Nins on the other hand, I think they are just too far gone into the support territory to bring them out of it.

TBH, if they were to do this I'd prefer them to add a new role, "Support", that way people knew what they were getting into; dungeons could be changed to be 5 man (Tank/Heal/DPS/DPS/Support) and re-balanced a bit perhaps.

This would be ideal, but I think SE and other game companies are still afraid of the population imbalance of the title of support attached to a job. Bard in ff11 was necessary in all groups, but no one wanted to play it, support is possibly less attractive than even tank and healer. The answer to that was they gave damage to everyone, support, tank, healer. And that's what makes them afraid to give pure dps real dps, since it would overshadow tanks/healers/supports.

[The rest of the stuff]

I was on mobile, but yeah, I meant bring mch/nin down to rdm/brd, and bring mnk/drg up to smn and gut all 3 of their utilities a bit, then bring blm up to sam, and give both sam and blm a little more. That way there are essentially 3 tiers of dps, 100% being sam/blm, 90%+minor utility being mnk/drg/smn, and 75%+significant utility being rdm/nin/brd/mch. People don't like dps nerfs, so this way the least amount of people are pissed off by straight potency nerfs, and having a clear cut tiering would make balance easier on their end.

*edit* looking at smns, yeah nvm they are a little ridiculous, so maybe bring smn and drg to mnk levels would be better.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

snip

Not to be snarky but didn't you just make this point like 1 or 2 pages ago?

[Llugen]

We've been rehashing the same kinds of points over and over again, I won't deny it, but this thread is supposed to be about BLM fixes at endgame not RDM.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

snip

Oh I wasn't trying to derail or anything. I just wanted to pop in and give a take on RDM situation at endgame since it came up. Do go back to your discussion and I agree with most of your proposed fixes. Not that I know a ton about BLM endgame other than what friends tell me.

[Dualgunner]

-MASSIVE CLIP-
*edit* looking at smns, yeah nvm they are a little ridiculous, so maybe bring smn and drg to mnk levels would be better.

First: Someone made a good point about this being a BLM thread not a caster balance thread; I apologize for assisting in the derail.

Second, to the poster I quoted: I apologize if I came off as abrasive in the post you quoted. On re-reading I didn't really like my own tone.

Third: You do make a good point regarding what the player is expecting upon going into the job being the job's stated intent. Llugen makes a good point on why Caster comps are inherently weak, but I stand by if they made Embolden affect all damage, then it would make SMN/BLM/RDM a bit more palatable than it currently is. I don't want SMN to be nerfed into the ground, either; like you said on your edit, it is just a bit ridiculous as is right now. BLM definitely needs some potency buffs; I'm not an expert on the job, so I'm not sure if anything like Llugen's suggested Indulgence buff is necessary though. Reduce its CD and HP cost, maybe increase recovered HP, I would say, but otherwise leave it untouched.

[TsuKoj]

I didn't feel it was too abrasive at all, I was on mobile so I was just spitballing ideas.

Imo straight potency buffs plus return of a raging strikes like cooldown would be fine to fix blm(oh I also like the 20/60 leylines change, although I use swift + between the lines to negate knock backs(o1s) and to bait aoes(blizzard 3/delta attack) too much to want that to change). Unlike pre 4.1 smn, blm and rdm feel fine rotation wise. There doesn't need to be any dramatic changes to their rotations or mobility. Atm blm is very satisfying to play well, and however inadvertent it was, the decision making of whether or not to blizz 4 each rotation adds a little bit of depth and character to the rotation.

The current issues with blm are an issue with casters in general, including rdm.
They are still balancing casters the same way they balanced casters in 2.0.

The main issue with blm and rdm is that they suffer from having a caster tax, which should no longer exist.

In 2.0 blms had gcd cast times and instant procs as part of their rotation. Now cast times are longer and instant procs are unreliable.

In 2.0 the only jobs that benefited from synergistic raid buffs were brd and blm, (piercing and foe req). Now casters benefit the least from raid buffs, theres 1 magic only raid buff, and 2(essentially 3 with dragon sight) physical only raid buffs. In addition to that, blm benefit less from crit buffs(litany, songs, chain strat, spear) due to a mandatory minimum allocation into spell speed.

Fight design also changed dramatically. In 2.0 being ranged was an advantage since fights were mostly single targeted abilities, point blank aoes, and gimmicky adds. Fights are now designed using mostly cone attacks, stack markers, tethers, knock backs and raid wide aoes, that along with the fact that cure 3 and earthly star are such short range, the safest spot is often stacked on the boss with the melee. Beyond that, most bosses that have a boss centered aoe, has a dynamo styled aoe as well. (*edit* And almost forgot the introduction of run around like a headless chicken mechanics, void blizz 3 and ice storm.) Also fights have more forced downtime and phase changes which is free time for self burst buffs to cooldown, and blm lost raging strikes. And gaze attacks and caution type attacks(void fire 3, a10, and gc alpha dice thing) are bigger dps losses for casters.

And then there's the synergy issue, not with other dps, but with tanks. Even if blm/smn/rdm synergize well with each other, the fact that tanks are physical, doesn't have to sacrifice gcds to do their jobs, and do significantly more dps than healers, who do have to sacrifice gcds to heal, or sacrifice heals(mp) to dps. Means physical buffs will give more damage than magic buffs, and also help with enmity generation and control.

The way I see it, the way to make casters viable atm is to raise their potencies significantly, add a magic tank(blu/geo?), or reintroduce gimmicky magic damage required adds(please no).

[Remedi]

While this is a BLM balance thread, it's wrong to think that any change applied to a job won't affect other jobs at all, so I'd say other perspective should not be shunned

[Zojha]

[...] but "pure DPS" will never be stronger than utility. Utility is d a m a g e. [...]

Which means pure DPS can be stronger, weaker or equal to utility, depending on how it's tuned, as it essentially just translates to damage either way. If you say pure DPS will never be stronger, you're essentially just saying you have no faith in SE to tune it right.

Rightfully so, I should add, but I wanted to note that it's not a general necessity.

[loreleidiangelo]

Which means pure DPS can be stronger, weaker or equal to utility, depending on how it's tuned, as it essentially just translates to damage either way. If you say pure DPS will never be stronger, you're essentially just saying you have no faith in SE to tune it right.

Rightfully so, I should add, but I wanted to note that it's not a general necessity.

I won't jump into the BLM discussion too much, since mine is still 60, but I did want to point out that part of the danger of having a "pure DPS" job is that the OTHER jobs - ie, the ones with "damage-boosting utility" - basically serve as a prop for that job and nothing more. If you have, say, SAM and BLM as the "pure DPS" jobs and everyone else is designed to boost those two in some way, balance eventually gets distilled down into a few talking points such as "which one is overall stronger in their base damage?" and "which one benefits the most from the other jobs' buffs?". I recall how controversial the World of Warcraft buff removal was in...I think Mists of Pandaria?, but watching XIV struggle with juggling with making jobs have group buffs that fit thematically and aren't busted and don't marginalize jobs that DON'T have those buffs (*cough AST cough*), I'm starting to come around to Blizzard's way of thinking. Not to say they're right on every balance point (jesus god warlocks), but this is actually one that I think I agree with.