Black Mage Job Changes Wishlist for 4.25 or 4.3

[Lina_Slayer]

Give us a skill that has 60 seconds cooldown and increases the damage the enemy takes by 10% for 10 seconds, because it looks like clicking a button every 60 seconds is the pinnacle of skill and only classes with this much skill needed should be allowed to be strong.

[FFgame]

Change AOE spells to be ground based or target enemy next to the one that I had targeted and just died WITHOUT CANCELLING MY AOE CAST. So effin annoying trying to finish off bunch of mobs with last AOE and the mob dying before cast finishes.

[zuzu-bq]

The problem with Blizzard IV is that if manaticks weren't a thing you could just never cast it and the spell would be close to completly useless. The problem of manaticks is that your UI rotation is really restrict to it because of the 3s wait and smaller than 3s Spell casts. You can't simply cast what you want on the order you want on UI and that makes some some really diminishing returns on many cases of party buffs or out of ordinary boss patterns.

[Acidblood]

Firstly, thank <insert deity here> for 8 second Transpose. Also, and maybe it's just me, but BLM actually feels playable now (as opposed to in 4.0), so, yay!

As for future changes:
- Sleep, delete or move to cross role. Replace with Focus: +30% direct hit chance, and +10% direct hit damage bonus for 20s, 90s cooldown.
Reason: Since losing Raging Strikes BLM has been seriously lacking a 'burst' buff; being direct hit makes it a bit more interesting than just straight damage.

- Freeze, add additional effect: Grants Umbral Ice III and removes Astral Fire
Reason: Freeze is next to useless, this would allow it to be used instead of Blizzard III for the AoE rotation.

- Scathe, replace with Double Cast: The next two spells will require no cast time. Becomes Triple Cast at Lv66.
Reason: Scathe is mostly useless anyway and Swiftcast was moved to cross-role; introducing a low level instant cast ability would make BLM flow better in pre lv66 content.

- Aetherial Manipulation, change so that if the BLM doesn't have a friendly target it moves the BLM forward 15y. Increase cooldown to 20s.
Reason: Any ability that requires you to switch targets in FFXIV is clunky to use... Removing the target requirement keeps the existing functionality while allowing AM to be used far more easily and in more situations.

- Enochian, lower cooldown to 15s.
Reason: Enochian is little more than an annoying formality at this point, and a 30s cooldown is little more than a punishment for players still learning the job.

- Blizzard IV, increase potency to 280.
Reasons.

- Lay Lines, lower cooldown to 60s. Lower duration to 24s. Now becomes Between the Lines when cast, reverts to Lay Lines when the Lay Lines effect expires.
Reason: QoL, slighty better mobility and overall damage.

- Thundercloud, changed to a stacking proc, max 3 stacks. Next Thunder spell will add 1/3 of it's full damage over time amount per stack to its initial damage, have no cast time, and cost no MP. Chance to proc increased to 25% for Thunder I / III and 8% for Thunder II / IV.
Reason: While the proc duration increase is nice in limited situations, Thundercloud procs are still very hit and miss, this is an attempt to smooth things out a bit by making procs more likely (for the instant cast, no MP) without increasing overall damage output.

- Sharpcast, when used with a Thunder spell it gives a full 3 stacks of Thundercloud.
Reason: Changes to Thundercloud.

- Empower Lay Lines (new ability); triples the radius of the next Lay Lines cast and allows it to affect any party member standing with-in the circle. 180s cooldown.
Reason: Caster meta?

NB. I know a number of these changes would increase BLM overall damage output, but they are 'pure' DPS after all, and potencies are easily adjusted if needed.

[Acidblood]

Change AOE spells to be ground based or target enemy next to the one that I had targeted and just died WITHOUT CANCELLING MY AOE CAST. So effin annoying trying to finish off bunch of mobs with last AOE and the mob dying before cast finishes.

Yeah, I think this needs to just be a generally QoL change in the engine where it allows casting on / attacking 'dead' targets for about 3 seconds after they die (which would be enough to at least finish any cast).

[HaroldSaxon]

Changelist

Sleep Changes - Why Direct Hit? Why give a sustained damage class burst damage? Just seems to be making it a clone of the other casters

Freeze Changes - I'd rather it give one umbral heart, or some AOE spell that does that.

Scathe - No thanks. All scathe needs is to be 0 mana cost so people use it as an on demand movement spell, and for a foul replacement pre-70.

Aetherial Manipulation - I don't have the same issues you have.

Enochian - No. The entire skill needs a rework. Right now you should only be using it once per encounter.

Blizzard IV - Needs a lot more than that to prevent it being skipped

Ley Lines - I can agree with that, although the duration should go down to 20 seconds so it wouldn't be an outright buff.

Thundercloud - I don't disagree with the stacking proc, but it would be a big nerf to make it 1/3 of its full damage over time per stack.

Sharpcast - No

Empower Ley Lines - No. Haste is not a good thing for other casters. BLM is not about buffing is party members offensively. BLM needs to keep its identity

[Super_Smiley]

I see a lot of interesting ideas here! But I must say some of these probably won't be addressed until 5.0 expansion it rework some of the existing skills. Remember some skills will probably be a trait in 5.0. I am not 100 percent positive but I truly believe Enochian is going to be a trait and not something you need to activate manually in 5.0. Please continue to show me more of your ideas and what you think could make BLM perfect until 5.0.

[Eli85]

My Wish List:

1) Transpose retains UF/UI stacks instead of setting the opposite to 1.

2) Firestarter can be proc'd by F4. It would be real nice not to use F1.

3) Enochian buff changing from duration based to when combat ends.

Obviously some of these would require some potency reworks, but the end result would be a more fluid rotation, imo.

[thebaaj666]

I would like to see the following changes to help Black Mage.

UI/AF timer: increased to 15 seconds

Transpose: reduced to 5 second recast

Enochian: Becomes a trait. 5% damage+ 10% SpS. Active as long as UI/AF are up

Ley Lines: CD 60 secs

Between the Lines: replaces ley lines while ley lines is active. QoL

Triple Cast: integrated into AF/UI orbs or job gauge. Give visual indication of how many stacks are left

Scathe: mp cost to 0. Proc chance to 40% same as firestarter

Fire 4 + Blizzard 4: Potency to 300

Focus (trait): each Umbral Heart used increases the potency of the next cast by 5% (doesn't stack)

Manaward: becomes raid wide buff. Nullify knockback and reduce damage by 5% of health for all party members in range. 120s cooldown.

Upgrade blizz 2 to Freeze at Level 35. 50 potency per target, AOE damage like fire 2. Grants 1 umbral heart per cast.

F1 + B1 bigger animations! Feels wack to cast them after flashy explosions

[Acidblood]

...

Sleep Changes - A well timed burst window just feels good (and is something I miss from 3.X BLM)... Direct Hit is more interesting than straight +damage.

Freeze Changes - Good idea, but only one Umbra Heart? Why not three?

Scathe - Could go with that... would still be only marginally useful though.

Aetherial Manipulation - Good for you... I'm just not a fan of having to macro things to make them useable (re-targeting on a controller can be very slow, which is very bad for an 'escape' ability), or of abilities that a useless while solo.

Enochian - Agreed that it needs a re-work; but a lower cooldown is a simple change that doesn't hurt anyone and will help those still learning (or having a bad day).

Empower Ley Lines - Fair enough, and I'm all for identity, but SE has proven time and again that they simply can't stomach having a 'pure' DPS do enough damage to keep them desirable... so I'd rather see every class get at least something unique (and useful) that they can contribute to a group... altering Lay Lines was just a thought as it's one of BLMs more unique spells.