Black Mage

[Llugen]

Discussing ideas and THEN presenting them, I feel like that's not contradictory, but it's a fair shot.


There's still definitely something to be said for the "weights" of opinion. Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with AFKing in Limsa with your Shisui armor on, but it is absurd to think that the opinion of someone that participates only in that content somehow deserves a say in balance at endgame. This isn't difficult to grasp, I hope.


The "overvaluing" of Raise is irrelevant in that whether or not people "overvalue" it, it is still valued significantly. As Remedi said, it's the "ultimate" progression tool. Not sure it's even possible to "overvalue" it. It's somewhat staggering that this apparently needs to be stated.

[Sfia]

This is so true, I mean, if you need more raise than what your healer can dish, you've already lost the dps check. (unless you highly overgear the fight, then one can ask why you keep dying)
Beside making healer save mana, having a RDM/SMN over a BLM would have no impact so that'd be one thing.

As a side note, when people tell me RDM/SMN can rez healer if they're both dead. Oh boy the boss better be dead soon if both you're healer died

I'm sorry but this is horrendously untrue. Progressing a fight means seeing more of it, and practicing each part until you can perform the whole. Even if the pull is not a clear, you can learn a lot from every wipe and increase the value of your time many times over simply by the ability to remove stress from healers, or revive them.

DPS checks in this game are currently so lax there is no relevant fight that cannot be beaten with multiple deaths even in progression level gearing, and if your team is failing DPS checks in Deltascape due to res sickness then you need to look at your perfomance honestly and critically.

I mean this with as much courtesy as possible but you simply don't have the understanding of raiding required to realize how potent raising is in this game

Regarding the meta, unless they add a proper magic weakness (which would just create a special caster meta with a NIN), there's no way they'll ever balance job as long as there is damage type debuff. It's just impossibel. I know Piercing has been nerfed from 10 to 5%, but still, 5% dps increased on 1 or 2 players (I do not consider the dragon since it's kind of part of its own toolkit you know, a bit like the monk), is just insane. It's like if these two player have a permanent balance on.
And the worst, if only these 2 jobs were "selfish" dps like SAM or BLM, but no, they're those amazing buffing range with a ton of utility.

There are many changes they can make to achieve a balance, currently disembowel synergy is the benchmark for how powerful something would need to be to overcome what is now meta.

[Ceallach]

Indeed, but even IN progression, survival is still pretty important on its own on top of learning the mechanics. But we're also left a bit of a dilemma.

As it stands, Raise is so overvalued that Black Mage is underutilized until after progression, on top of BLM's myriad issues. However, this leaves the job that has the easiest Raise, Red Mage being significantly undervalued for its lack of usefulness beyond rezzing.

Both need to be addressed, to be honest.

This. So much this.

You are right that it is nigh on impossible for it to be balance competitively, however, when a class has been out of the meta since the start of 3.0 (Although it took a few patches for it to solidify, with the triple melee comp eventually losing out to the current double ranged comp that has dominated since Patch 3.3), its unacceptable. The only real change to the meta is Red Mage being used in progression because of its raise utility.

I don't think giving BLM a raise will fix the class at all. Its got inherent DPS issues which will mean its going to always be outside of the meta, and compared to RDM has a steeper learning curve - you can take a RDM into a fight blind and do a lot better than with a BLM.

Once the DPS issues are fixed on BLM though, they still need to address the chunkiness of the class. There's a lot of QoL needed.

I don't expect SE to do it perfectly, but I at least expect them to try and break up this awful meta comp that has stuck around for so long. SMN was a good try at that, but its still outshone by NIN/BRD/MCH/DRG. I think SE should certainly ask players who play the game their advice and take it into account - it would be a good idea.

I'm going to pretty much agree with this post as well. Back when I played trading card games, I got really tired of three-deck metas. However, it's worth noting that the meta in FINAL FANTASY XIV really doesn't matter unless you're going for world firsts. After that, maybe people should just not be selfish and learn how to play with black mages.

[Remedi]

Discussing ideas and THEN presenting them, I feel like that's not contradictory, but it's a fair shot.


There's still definitely something to be said for the "weights" of opinion. Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with AFKing in Limsa with your Shisui armor on, but it is absurd to think that the opinion of someone that participates only in that content somehow deserves a say in balance at endgame. This isn't difficult to grasp, I hope.

The thing is that guy could be some1 that played the meta game enough to still understand how things are.
What you do to spend your time is irrilevant if you played at a certain level you can still recognize problems in the balance at a glance or with few researches.

That said it's higly unlikely that ppl that have no interest in raiding are really using this section of the forum and frankly most of the ppl playing do not use the forum at all

Still you are entrusting to a single entity this job which is not the safest route, especially how notorious the forums are for creating echo chambers, which makes this all the more difficult to succed as such it's simply not good enough to even try.

However I'm not against the hearing of a larger group. I mean If they were to hear most of the groups in the high end a general idea will come out and they can work with it.

[Llugen]

"Hearing" but with consideration is the point of what I'm trying to say.

WHY are they saying it? Over the course of the other thread regarding Raise, we practically "proved" that most of the people who were so against raise were so because they weren't interested in the idea of BLM being part of the "teamwork" of the roles. Is THAT something to "consider" as heavily as those clearing unending where teamwork is the most valuable aspect of the fight..?

[Ceallach]

"Hearing" but with consideration is the point of what I'm trying to say.

We do this, which is why we reject a lot of what you say in defense of black mage getting a Raise variant on the other thread.

[HaroldSaxon]

A collation of my thoughts about BLM. I'm sure there's mistakes/other ideas and things I have missed.

What's wrong with BLM?

The issue with BLM is a complicated one. The major issue is the lack of raw dps - but there are issues with other classes/party comps as well as QoL issues that makes the class undesirable.

* Lack of Raid DPS
This can be solved in a number of ways - however, I feel that part of the buff should increase the power to umbral hearts as there are situations where using Blizzard 4 is a dps loss. At the end of the day, BLM needs to have enough DPS to justify it not having utility, and its not even close to achieving that. http://xivrdps.herokuapp.com/ (thanks to /u/blackcatchen) - this isn't 100% accurate, as it favors the damage dealing classes rather than the source of the utility (as you can read here: http://xivrdps.herokuapp.com/changelog). Even if you compare it to SAM (which has more DPS and doesn't have the uptime issues BLM has) - its inferior. And SAM also deserves buffs (along with RDM, but that's a whole different debate in my opinion as it has something absolutely unique).

* Disembowel.
Until Disembowel gets reworked, its going to take a completely broken class to break the Bard/Machinist/Dragoon/Ninja combo. It would be interesting if the disembowel buff was changed to be a personal buff only - or perhaps allow Dragoon to tailor the buff to different damage types by having an option of 3 spells (although I suspect that may lead to other issues).

* Synergy with Raid buffs
BLM used to be reliant of stacking buffs in your raging strike burst windows to do good damage, and because those burst windows were every 3 minutes, it did suffer. However now, we don't even have that. Our burst windows are every 90 seconds with a fairly small haste buff, and every 3 minutes we get convert - which is a very weak 3 minute OGCD that gives you two extra F4's when used correctly. Now, compared to raid DPS buffs that affect BLM - Trick attack is every 60 seconds, Foe's is usually around every 60 seconds, Contagion (not meta) is every 60 seconds. Furthermore, if our UI phase is inside a trick timing, its pretty bad for us because we don't have any on demand burst (it would be nice if Foul fit that role) - best case scenario is, we get Foul/F4/F4/F4/F3 proc out during our second AF window. This would lead us into problems with our Umbral Ice phase, but that is explained later. But we can't reliably ensure we have our best burst during that point in time because of procs - sometimes we may be at the start of our AF rotation, sometimes the start of our second AF, or sometimes at Umbral Ice - procs can force us to be at the wrong stage of our rotation. One solution of this could be to move the passive for Enochian to Astral Fire 4, and to change Enochian that is an OGCD that gives 3 Stacks of AF4 and 3 Umbral Hearts. I would also reduce the cooldown of Ley Lines to 60 seconds (from 90), but nerf the duration to 20 seconds (from 30).

**QoL issues with the class**

* Clipping
BLM is the only caster that does not have a reliable way of using OGCD's on demand without clipping, compounded by the tight timings for AF and UI. If you clip in order to use LeyLines, depending on your latency you can lose a decent amount of the gain you get from it. If you need to use Apoc or Addle at specific points, you end up having to clip if you aren't lucky with procs. Outside of procs, the windows you have to use an OGCD without punishment is your your Sharp/Triple/Swiftcast phases, or at the start of your fire/ice rotation. Given this, it would be nice if BLM's could use OGCD's while casting.

* Punishment for too many Thundercloud Procs
There are times where you can get punished for getting too many procs. You can work around it if you are in your Ley Lines or you are in your Sharpcast/Swiftcast/Triplecast window, but it is nevertheless frustrating outside of that. You have to choose between either using it and losing a F4, or holding onto it and using it in your second AF or your UI rotation - risking your proc being overwritten. You could fix this in a number of ways - either allow the procs to extend your AF/UI timer so you can use them instantly - or allow procs to stack similar to Bard so you can hold them on demand. You can even buff the duration so that procs priority is clear and it makes switching out a F4 for a proc always worth it (although I'd rather that be a last resort).

* Mana costs
Because of the strict nature of your mana costs for your fire rotation, you will sometimes not have enough mana to cast Blizzard 4 at the start of your UI rotation. This happens when you don't end your UI rotation on a 0 cost spell and don't get a mana tick after your final cast, or if you skip Blizzard 4 and don't get a mana tick. This means that Foul's position (excluding procs) will be at the start of your UI rotation. You can't finish off with a Thunder 3 cast because you won't have enough mana for your fire rotation, meaning you have 0 flexibility in your umbral ice phase. Its Foul > Thunder 3 > Blizzard 4. Furthermore, you must make sure you use Mana shift BEFORE your last mana tick or you'll go into AF not being able to do 6 x F4. Making all mana costs (including mana shift) 0 mana in Umbral ice would mean your UI phase is flexible.

* Increasing the Power of Umbral Hearts/B4
Currently, Blizzard 4 gives you 3 Umbral Hearts that reduce the mana cost of F4 by half. Without Umbral hearts, you can do a 2F4,F1,2F4 rotation. However, if you start AF with full mana (by finishing your previous UI with a Proc), you can actually do 5 F4's. The issue with it is you need to ensure you have a foul ready for your next AF because otherwise you are waiting on a mana tick afterwards. What this means is that for one GCD in UI, you get one extra F4 - which means that a new mechanic isn't getting used. From a personal standpoint, I don't like the mechanic anyway - I feel it should be interactive, but that isn't going to happen. You could increase the number of Umbral hearts, but that would require UI changes so I suspect SE won't go for anything like that. I'm honestly unsure what you can do with this. If you increase the mana reduction, you waste it because of our tight astral fire timing and increasing the AF timer just turns the rotation into F4 spam. I think either the trait needs to be reworked, or it needs to be removed.

* Other Notes
I'd like to see Convert being made useful - either reduce its cooldown down to 60 seconds, or increase its power drastically. I'd also like to see Freeze give One Umbral heart, and Fire 2 getting a small buff so they are both useful in an AOE rotation. I'd also like to see Foul changed so that stacks up for each spell cast to reward players that can keep pumping out spells.

* No Raise on BLM. Stop peddling this
I absolutely do not want to see BLM get raise. There's already enough classes with that utility. If you must give BLM some unique utility, then I would suggest reworking Manaward (perhaps so it is AOE?), or perhaps another skill that gives us unique defensive utility like many other classes have. But this could be problematic and lead to power creep from other classes and is not essential to make BLM meta. It would be interesting if we had personal limit breaks for a mega ability like this.

[EllieShadeflare]

With Thunder and Firestarter, I've suggested two ways of handling getting the proc buff.

For Thundercloud, I suggested Aether Static, which would generate from every tic of your Thunder/Thunder II/Thunder III/Thunder IV on targets. It'd be a gauge that filled to 100, and when it reaches 100, you get Thundercloud. Thunder III ticks would give 15 points whilst Thunder IV would give 7.

Firestarter would be built up using Astral Hearts, obtained by using Fire IV. Each Fire IV affected by Umbral Hearts would give a single Astral Heart, and having at least one will grant Black Mage a confirmed Firestarter at the cost of all Astral Hearts. However, each Astral Heart would also buff Fire's base potency by 20 per Heart, granting them 240 potency on a full Fire IV rotation.

[MysticDreamer]

I don't get how freeze,blizzard 2 sleep and scathe are still there...They are useful for low level dungeons but sleep could have been added to cross role or freeze and blizzard 2 could have had a upgrade or some kind of change.

[Ceallach]

* No Raise on BLM. Stop peddling this
I absolutely do not want to see BLM get raise. There's already enough classes with that utility. If you must give BLM some unique utility, then I would suggest reworking Manaward (perhaps so it is AOE?), or perhaps another skill that gives us unique defensive utility like many other classes have.

QUOTED. FOR. EMPHASIS.