Black Mage Job Changes Wishlist for 4.25 or 4.3

[HaroldSaxon]

More standard Ellie drivel...

Honestly, I haven't really seen anyone really skip Blizzard IV and its Umbral Hearts ever since the cast time buff. It's usually a bit of a DPS loss, since you'd be losing out on at least two Fire IV casts if you try that. That said, Umbral Hearts should have some level of "helping" to the spells. So long as they only affect spells during Astral Fire, and maintain the ability to reduce the costs by half, it'll be fine.

That is incorrect. In certain situations its optimal to skip because you only lose one Fire IV cast. You should read up on it.

Please dear Hydaelyn no. There's a lot of people who are trying to advocate for this, and it's honestly the scariest suggestion I've seen because it shows an utter lack of regard for balance (which is funny, because everyone complaining about Warrior's new version of Inner Release + Fell Cleave are essentially stating we should have THAT as a rotation).

Essentially? the practical potency of Fire IV (594) would be a mere 64 less than a fully buffed Fell Cleave (660), minus the confirmed Direct Crits. Combine this with the previous ideas to give Umbral Hearts the ability to buff Fire spells by 5%, then you get a whopping 623. As it already stands, Black Mage is already dealing 555 potency per Fire IV, which is 5 more potency than Verflare... and only about 100 potency less than the base potency of Foul (but just 160 less than a similarly buffed Foul). Honestly, a much more valuable buff would probably making Fire IV GCD, and not require 2.8~ seconds.

While you are correct that the combination of this + the Umbral hearts idea is probably too much, you really are not objective when looking at the classes design and evaluating what it needs and what it doesn't. Please stop peddling your awful idea of reducing the cast time of F4 further? Its completely against the classes identity. If you want GCD length cast times, play RDM or SMN. A potency increase is far more consistent with BLM than a cast time decrease.

Furthermore, comparing spell potency between RDM and BLM is an awful idea because RDM has a lot more OGCD damage.

BLM already can get a nullification to knockback, though. It's called Surecast, and it's a really useful ability.

I don't think you read the guys idea.