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

[Llugen]

Planning ahead and movement should be "punishing" on BLM but not so punishing that the class sucks at progression so bad that it's ignored in favor of SMN, a movement god, and RDM, which can move every other cast as well as swiftcast into dualcast (as well as corps and displacement and the melee combos are instant cast).

This discrepancy is MASSIVE and should be lowered.

I might also suggest they increase Foul base potency to 700 and decrease Flare falloff from -15% to -10%.

To be frank, I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea of BLM raise either, but if you consider that statics balance composition around roles not actual classes, the caster role is off-balance. Refer to the "SMN/RDM should lose raise or BLM should get raise" thread for comprehensive thoughts on this, but tl;dr, BLM not having raise translates directly into BLM being less viable for progression over rez dispenser and SMN, and it should be able to meaningfully compete for the role slot. Without this consideration, the logic becomes "Ok play RDM/SMN for prog and go back to BLM later", and that's exactly what we as a community want to avoid.

[LeeraSorlan]

Planning ahead and movement should be "punishing" on BLM but not so punishing that the class sucks at progression so bad that it's ignored in favor of SMN, a movement god, and RDM, which can move every other cast as well as swiftcast into dualcast (as well as corps and displacement and the melee combos are instant cast).

This discrepancy is MASSIVE and should be lowered.

i think you are overestimating how bad BLM is in prog compared to other jobs, and maybe think that groups exclude them often, its not often, its a rather small minority of raiders that demand meta.
But lets not get into that, and we shall agree to disagree, i personally think BLM could do with a few minor QoL tweaks, but as it stands, its find (to me) as it is right now

[Llugen]

@Leera, we can indeed agree to disagree, but I'd like to say gently that classes should be balanced around top tier play not around midcore/casual play, and if something doesn't affect the latter then it shouldn't even be a concern to you, as you won't be the one being forced/bullied into changing jobs. Out of 44 groups, exactly TWO BLMs have cleared unending right now, and with significantly lower stats than their SMN counterparts (and roughly " the same" stats as their significantly easier to use RDM counterparts).

The job is slightly stronger single target damage than SMN on a dummy right now, but a dummy check is not a meaningful measure of if the class is balanced. SMN utilizes burst windows far better than BLM does, and it has two minute synergy where BLM has none. This requires a little more careful consideration than "a few minor QoL tweaks", to be frank, but literally ANY meaningful tweak would be welcome at this point.

The final question simply becomes: Will they make it strong enough to justify taking over how powerful/capable SMN is and how useful/capable RDM is? (this is another reason why I grind my teeth and say give it a raise ability)

If the answer is no, then I can "look forward" to playing SMN for another 8 months until they fix it again.

If the answer is yes, hallelujah I can finally go back to my main and not feel like shit/be made to feel like shit.

[zuzu-bq]

I like that you pointed out the gabling part of BLM. Many people love to complain of their own job's rng, MNKs been doing that a lot lately, but BLM's rng is a gamble that fundamentally changes the rotation and how they'll move and fit spells into party buffs. Even sharpcasting becomes a gamble because of the nature of Thunder and many don't really realize that.

As for mobility, while mobility is mostly fine for experienced BLMs, its a massive factor holding people from accepting them into parties because many many players have a hard time with it, so it just have become a stigma for the job and making mobility easier would help with the job's viability on low skilled parties and welcome more players to it. Though this will not fix BLM's real issues.

In the other BLM threads people always talk of majorly the same two things: BLM is not welcomed in low skilled groups because its a job that low skilled players mostly do bad with; BLM is not accepted in high skilled groups because it doesn't deal enough damage. Both should be adressed. On top of that BLM has a few useless buttons like Freeze and Blizzard II (you can kind of consider Fire II into it past lv68) and I wonder if SE will do something with those like they did with Tri-Bind.

BLM has so many issues that I don't even know what they will or should adress.