Black Mage

[Remedi]

I think it's because you have a max amount of posts/day, that said while the possible dps comps are that much the reality of things are much different in which the double ranged comp is king, you could consider SMN + ranged and triple melee as competitive too if you wish but we are still far away from 126

[Galvuu]

Responding in a separate post because why are you worried about saving space on page 73 of a megathread.

I'm gonna have to heavily disagree with that suggestion. Under your model, you're strangling possible DPS compositions. The possible DPS comps without a repeat DPS drops to 24 from 126

These are numbers in a vacuum. In practice there are not that many viable comps for serious content because you need a Refresh and stuff like that.
The raw number of comps doesn't matter anyway. I'd rather have 5 roughly equally strong comps that feature every dps job than having 50 and 2 are much better than the rest and only include half the jobs (which is pretty much our current situation).

[Remedi]

because you need a Refresh and stuff like that.

Speaking of which don't we think that they should rework Mana shift into something comparable to refresh in some way?

[Galvuu]

Speaking of which don't we think that they should rework Mana shift into something comparable to refresh in some way?

Mana Shift would be much more interesting has a long cd (150 or 180s long) that could give someone like 60% or 90% of their mp or something.
This would give a niche compared to Refresh- Refresh would be something you use to naturally combat the exhaustion of resources over the course of a long fight (for the whole party, but primarily healers) and Mana Shift would be a key cd to recover from death (healer died without Lucid Dreaming or a ton of deaths and he ran outta mana? Give him the mana back). Don't think there's any point in Mana Shift costing mp for the user either (Refresh is free).
Also synergises well with dps raises (they can raise and recover the resources if needed).

BLM has no raise, so it's less of a boon for them, but still nice. It would also mean you don't need to wait for a mana tick to use it, which is helpful on its own.

[Dyvid]

When talking about the relative strength of the casters, people are saying SMN was "overbuffed". I strongly disagree, because with the most recent changes SMN is only now included in the discussion for whether or not it is worth taking in an optimal setup.
This speaks more to the weakness of the entire caster role, and I believe that anyone who considers SMN to be too strong is not looking at the larger picture outside of our role.
BLM damage contribution needs to exceed that of SMN (including it's personal damage and utility from radiant/contagion/devotion) due to SMN having access to raise and incredible mobility.
RDM does also face issues, but it's my personal opinion that if it has access to such powerful progression tools it's total damage contribution needs to be noticeably lower than the other casters.

But I didn't make this thread to talk about RDM tbh, whereas discussion of SMN's strength is useful as it serves as a benchmark which BLM should (at the bare minimum) be reaching.

As a SMN, I have to agree with this. BLM should be the SAM of casters, pure powerhouse DPS with no utility. RDM needs it's dps increase slightly, and SMN is fine where it's at. Raise and Verraise are bigger issues, for now anyway, since new raid content just came out but it'll diminish with time. I would be completely happy though if SE removed raise from casters all together and just gave it to Ranged DPS since they are suppose to be the support job.

[Komaru_Tatoro]

i manage to join a fresh ult baha practice this past weekend as blm and do find one of a previous poster mention to reduce aerial manipulation to 15s or 20s correct/or is right. sure, as a blm baiting liq hell is a nono, hell even i see rdm might have it rought compare to brd/mch/smn but anyway as blm doing any other mechanics during twintinia, with that lower cd for aerial mani, it will give the blm a qol change to be able to stack for fireball easier.
during the practice i was basically using aerial mani for the first twister>fireball stack then triplecast sprint for the 2nd as for the first portion of twin. the 2nd portion of phase of twin wasnt that hard, just boil down to saving triple for generate/twister (2nd generate). i didnt get to see the 3rd phase as ddos lag and every1 is fresh learning couldnt keep up with mechanics to survive til the last portion/phase of twin.

just asking those who have done ult baha as blm, what they think of the reduced aerial mani for that fight?

[BlackcatChen]

i manage to join a fresh ult baha practice this past weekend as blm and do find one of a previous poster mention to reduce aerial manipulation to 15s or 20s correct/or is right. sure, as a blm baiting liq hell is a nono, hell even i see rdm might have it rought compare to brd/mch/smn but anyway as blm doing any other mechanics during twintinia, with that lower cd for aerial mani, it will give the blm a qol change to be able to stack for fireball easier.
during the practice i was basically using aerial mani for the first twister>fireball stack then triplecast sprint for the 2nd as for the first portion of twin. the 2nd portion of phase of twin wasnt that hard, just boil down to saving triple for generate/twister (2nd generate). i didnt get to see the 3rd phase as ddos lag and every1 is fresh learning couldnt keep up with mechanics to survive til the last portion/phase of twin.

just asking those who have done ult baha as blm, what they think of the reduced aerial mani for that fight?

I use Triplecast on the first twister > fireball because it lines up naturally with your opener anyways. And I use Swiftcast and Between the Lines for the second. For example: (B3 > Eno > T3 > B4 > F3 > Triple > F4 > Pot > F4 > Sharp + Manaward > F4+Stack for Fireball+Ley Lines > F1 > F4x3 > F3P + Convert + Spread > F4 > F4 > Swift B3 + BtL/Stack for Fireball > Foul > T3 > B4), and you can have that Swiftcast in a slightly better place if you get a proc.

I use Sharpcast to get an instant for all Generate > Twister sets, you only need a single instant for those. And then I use Triplecast on the first Double Generate > Fireball, and Swiftcast on the second. Just in case I get the targeted Liquid Hells.

Aetherial Manipulation isn't actually needed on Twin or Nael at all really. Maybe in Nael for the last fire in if it was Raven's Dive > Chariot. I think I've been doing that sometimes.

For the first potential Chariot > Holy Puddle, I use Sharpcast, Swiftcast, and Between the Lines. For the second potential Chariot > Holy Puddle I have Triplecast back since I precast it some time in the middle of Heavensfall so that it's back up at that time, and so I don't have to hardcast B3 to get my astral/umbral 3 back. And Sharpcast + Swiftcast should come back up for Raven's Dive > Chariot. So most of pre-divebombs is covered by your CDs pretty well, the only issue is when you have multiple Holy Puddles to dodge, and the slidecast timing isn't quite right for it, you can lose uptime there. I really should map out post divebombs better, I kind of just wing it right now.

Trios phase is just use Triplecast/Swiftcast to get back your astral/umbral 3 easily since all mechanics are done untargetable anyways. We haven't had time to raid so I haven't really even seen trios phase much less past it. Twin+Nael is probably pretty similar to Twin's double generate rotation. And in Golden Bahamut you would probably be saving instants for Exaflare, I don't think anyone is brave enough to Aetherial Manipulation during Exaflare.

So no, I disagree. Aetherial Manipulation really doesn't do much in that fight, except for maybe stacking for Nael fire ins.

[Komaru_Tatoro]

snip.

ic, yea i thought about delaying my LL from the opener to use as another option for movement to stack but didnt get to try.

but yea, so far i dont see blm having really that much hardship outside of actually finding pug pf willing to accept blm for practice in ult baha.

[Llugen]

Friggen people up in here keep saying "BLM should be the SAM of casters" when really what they mean is that SAM should be the mfing Black Mage of the non-magic jobs /gg

But seriously though, looking at mechanics management alone, that is MORE than enough reason that BLM should be the highest single damage class in the game. This includes AOE damage which it is currently outweighted by SMN by quite a bit as well. Here, there should be a potency increase but also Freeze giving Umbral Hearts and damage increase for Flare that uses all three hearts.

[Dualgunner]

But seriously though, looking at mechanics management alone, that is MORE than enough reason that BLM should be the highest single damage class in the game. This includes AOE damage which it is currently outweighted by SMN by quite a bit as well. Here, there should be a potency increase but also Freeze giving Umbral Hearts and damage increase for Flare that uses all three hearts.

I still think the damage dropoff is dumb for Flare. I could understand that nerf for Holy, but Flare definitely didn't need that kind of nerf back in HW.