Black Mage

[Kabooa]

Side note: How difficult does it sound to add the remaining timer of Thunder III upon successful Thundercloud usage as damage to the NEW Thundercloud? So if there are 18 seconds worth of Thunder III remaining on the target and I use another Thundercloud, it adds the remaining 240 potency to the Thundercloud hit AND reapplies at 24 seconds. Does that sound horribly difficult to script/program? It feels like it to me, but that might be one good potency solution on top of increasing Thunder III DoT to 30 seconds.

We want to lock as little of our damage ceiling behind RNG as possible.

[Llugen]

We want to lock as little of our damage ceiling behind RNG as possible.

Oh? And why is that? All the other ranged classes' damage/gauge relies pretty meaningfully on procs (Bard is obvious, MCH is pretty obvious, gauge on RDM is a big deal, and if you can avoid Ruin II on SMN and instead use Ruin IV when you get it, it's quite lovely).

I see no reason for the RNG not to lie in our favor. Plus if consistency is what we're after then things like Thunder Ready and an added trait that grants a Firestarter after three consecutive Umbral Heart-using Fire IV would fit well.

[zuzu-bq]

The idea of granting a firestarter is lovely. Lowers rng dependancy, eases movement while letting us use thunderclouds more reliably and killing the duality of sharp Fire vs Thunder. There are other ways they could make it too, but I also had that same idea to tie this effect to Hearts. Remember.... BLM deals with a lot more rng than people commonly think...

[Tzain]

Or letting Firestarter and Thunderstorm stack their procs? Like having up to 5 firestarter procs waiting to go?
This way Sharpcast adds 1 to the stack. And double procs don't hurt as much?
Plus you could store them up for burst moments or when forced to move.

[zuzu-bq]

There were many ideas about this but most resolve around easing the keeping of stacks to help into Thundercloud use. Its a mix of QoL with a damage increase while shaving off the rng implications of BLM procs. The nature of Thundercloud and Firestarter can make Sharpcast to become a bad choise after you already used it for the proc of your choice, so fixing that while giving BLM a damage boost would be too good to be real. So good that I doubt it will happen.

[Tzain]

I'll say it again: EVEN IF they increased BLM's damage by a flat 20% that would mean NOTHING if the job cannot maintain uptime which is ABSOLUTELY the case in unending and it is pretty standard in most endgame raids as well. Mechanics drastically hinder BLM to the point where no reasonable amount of damage increase will suffice. The "turret DPS" needs to go, rather, the turret needs to gain some legs.

What if Aetherial Manipulation was altered to a trait.
Now if you hit a movement key during a cast, you move yourself 5 yalms in that direction instantly, but don't interrupt your cast. If a ley line is active under you when you do this, the leyline moves as well. This effect can only be used once per cast time.
On top of being useful, I think it would look pretty cool to go bopping around like that.
I would say that it should have a 'safety feature' though, that it stops at the edge of a cliff, so that you cant toss yourself off titan just because your controller decided to be overly sensitive.

[Llugen]

I like the way Aetherial Manipulation currently works because it's great to move to healers and such, but I could see that being another skill entirely. Aetherial Snap, or something. It'd be great if manipulation/BtL worked during casts, but alas.





At this point all we can really do is continue to raise awareness of the issue (promoting in particular that, of the 16 recorded groups (on everyone's favorite website) having cleared unending coil, NOT A SINGLE ONE has brought a BLM and furthermore BLM is the ONLY job that has not cleared unending coil) and pray they address it in the next live letter/patch pending. Someone brought up that there IS a precedent for overhauling skills that desperately needed work mid expansion by referencing shield swipe, I forgot about that. We can only pray, it would seem.


It would just be really fabulous if we could get some direct dev feedback. Also, I want to take a moment to say that I don't think all of my ideas are perfect, I just think having more ideas breeds having even MORE ideas, and stumbling through some bad ones can lead to some great ones. The more we collectively brainstorm the better, even if none of them are used.


Oh, to add insult to injury, someone in my FC pointed out to me yesterday that "the most iconic class of the entire FF series is laughably gimped in this game." Not sure if I should be laughing or crying.

[Karshan]

I would say that it should have a 'safety feature' though, that it stops at the edge of a cliff, so that you cant toss yourself off titan just because your controller decided to be overly sensitive.

And why would that be ? Other jobs with dashes can fall, so no safeties

[Remedi]

At this point all we can really do is continue to raise awareness of the issue (promoting in particular that, of the 16 recorded groups (on everyone's favorite website) having cleared unending coil, NOT A SINGLE ONE has brought a BLM and furthermore BLM is the ONLY job that has not cleared unending coil) and pray they address it in the next live letter/patch pending

However It needs to be said that, from watching the compositions, it's mostly paranoia that forbades BLm from clearing the fight since a group without NIN has cleared it, I mean the point of it probably missing the dps to clear the fight really doesn't seems to stand at this point

edit: Ofc I'm not saying that BLM is fine yadda yadda yadda or anything mind you but at this point considering all the comps that killed ultimate the only reason some1 has not killed it as a BLM is also a problem of how they are perceived by the community just like DRG and the floor tanking of them

[Llugen]

I suppose I feel like that doesn't actually make it better. If the community doesn't like the class then they aren't going to play the class, and the result is the same. It still needs addressing.

Do YOU want to try to play BLM in that movement mechanical nightmare? Just about everything comes up perfectly for SMN, why would anyone give themselves the headache?