Black Mage Job Changes Wishlist for 4.25 or 4.3

[EllieShadeflare]

1. There is effectively no difference in Enochian's duration being tied to AF/UI. You get screwed in both scenarios where it is its own timer, or tied to AF/UI.

...There is a fundamental difference, especially if you actually played both expansions. Losing Astral Fire/Umbral Ice only meant losing Astral Fire/Umbral Ice. You still had the effects of Enochian, you could still recover, and you could keep your damage. Here? It's all or nothing. If you lose Astral Fire and Umbral Ice, not only do you lose Enochian, but you also lose a Foul in your rotation (which ironically brings back the original failure problems of Enochian!). While Enochian's problems back then were problems faced by any temporary "burst" phases (BotD, DWT, Berserk, etc), it wasn't a problem that actively punished your active playing of the class or trying to deal with mechanics. Speaking of which.

Playing Black Mage optimally, even in bad situations, removes any concern from Enochian.

Playing any class optimally removes concern to the flaws of those classes for the optimized players, but does not remove the flaws from being there. And no, not all weaknesses are flaws but weaknesses that do not fit the mechanics are flaws. The thing that any player who uses "optimization" to silence discussion about similar design flaws of their jobs don't under stand is that not everyone can or will play optimally, and even those who can, can't do so all the time. Just because you have gotten used to the flaws does not mean that they stop existing or aren't flaws.

2. Blizzard 4 would be more effective if it made the Fire Spells free, but then it's just a mandatory spell in the rotation. Effectively only a minor change despite having a major impact. (No MP cost effectively means you get 8 FIre4s in a B4 set up, 10 in a convert window)

Well, five Fire IVs are still effective if you can't fit in the casts and still move, especially since it would be difficult to place 8 Fire IVs in a rotation, much less 10. And it doesn't matter if I'm talking about my proposal of reducing cast times or not. There will always be a time where trying to fit that many Fire IVs would cause a detriment to movement.

3. Another base spell cast time reduction is probably going to see potency reductions. At 2.8 casting speed, F4 is currently 180 200 potency / second. Reducing it to 2.5 bumps it up to something like 200 225. After applying spelllspeed (We'll use 10% as a number), you can effectively do 5 Fire4s (13 - 11.25) into a B3 (1.57), with enough MP left over to move straight in T3. This brings your rotation time to approximately 18-21 seconds.

((Author's note: I did a bit of math to update the actual potency per second, rounding up to the nearest 5.))

Then where was the cast time increase when we returned the base potency to 280? Realistically speaking, while the potency per second would increase PPS, the actual damage from BLM mostly comes from the number of casts that you can use in a phase.

Also, as a side note, wasn't the original complaint by many players that the damage was too low for BLM? This would be a change that wouldn't drastically overpower Black Mage, but would instead make the rotation much more streamlined. If BLM could do the full 5 Fire IVs for situations that didn't call for Umbral Hearts? Good for them if it increases their damage to do that, and heck, make Thunder III reliable.

4. Black Mages MP adjustment was due to a few scenarios that made adhering to the server MP tick more critical than currently (And it's still pretty important now). One of those scenarios had to deal with Blizzard 4.

Perhaps, though it feels pretty much the same as in HW, so fair enough.