Ideas to Improve The Black Mage (for 4.2 and beyond!)

[Llugen]

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Reliable procs would be great, I suggest a free Thundercloud proc upon fitting in a certain number of GCDs on a target with Thunder applied (like Thunder Ready from PVP), and granting a free Firestarter when all three Umbral Hearts are consumed (Firestorm, affectionately named).

This menas not only more damage (7x Fire IV and Firestarter per Astral Fire, and more Thunder uptime) but also more opportunity for snap movement of ~2s during proc usage. With this in mind I'd also suggest Fire/Blizzard I become instant cast under Enhanced Enochian, so moving only costs you the difference in potency from Fire IV but not the Astral timer or quite as much difference as with Scathe (and there is a chance for Firestarter).



Outside of this, Fire IV should be 280 again (300 is really high, remember to multiply by 1.8 for Astral Fire III), double Foul potency when hitting single target, reducing Convert and Aetherial Manipulation recasts (or adjusting convert completely to grant full MP, refresh astral, grant 3 Umbral Hearts, a Firestarter, and a Thundercloud), increase proc timers to 30 seconds, increase Thunder III DoT timer to 30 seconds (I'd also like to see the remaining DoT potency of the previous Thunder added to the initial potency of the Thundercloud so no ticks are ever wasted), Each Umbral Heart consumed should result in +5% damage for the consumed spell (so 15% damge increase on a Flare that uses all three), and then we just about have ourselves a real class. A burst damage buff return would also really be great (or magic vuln up on Blizzard IV), and synergy with the Enochian timer and the RNG of procs (each thundercloud obtained grants 5 extra seconds to the Polyglot timer).

Utility-wise, I'd suggest a buff that "consumes" Ley Lines and expands it out to the whole party for its remaining duration. I'd also like to see Enhanced Enochian function like a reverse-BRD song; every party member in range of the BLM under Enochian grants it +2% increased damage, and in turn the party members within range are granted +2% speed (or crit or dh or det, I just think speed makes the most sense). And yes, to balance the role, BLM deserves access to some kind of raise, preferrably not rez dispenser style. Manaward mitigation is pretty strong, but it could be a slightly lower recast, or maybe something reduces the timer, and I might recommend BLM get its own special MP regeneration ability since it's the "recharge" class of this game (tether to one player to restore MP over 5-8 seconds but costs the BLM nothing, on 120s recast).


If they implemented EVERY ONE of these suggestions, the class might be OP, but to be honest, BLM is supposed to be the strongest damage in the game, and after the shunning it's been through, it deserves a patch where it's the strongest (see also: PLD and SMN), so I don't even really care.