How to Fix Black Mage for Good

[Rathael]

How about making scathe OGCD? Turn it into an action that you weave between instant and faster casts.

Sleep is fine. It's a crowd control spell. A freaking AoE one at that. We just don't use crowd control in raid content. If they want sleep to be relevant, it's on them to create a situation where crowd control is important. It's still good in situations where crowd control is relevant, as is bind. If anything it could use a very clear visual effect to indicate when enemies are sleeping... to aid in preventing group members from breaking the sleep. You don't miss a polymorph in World of Warcraft because it's so visually apparent.

Blizard 2 being self-centric is really really strange for a primarily ranged caster that does not want to be standing at melee range most of the time... but then freeze is basically a better version. It would be nice to be able to weave freeze or blizzard 2 in to the AoE rotation somehow. Our AoE requires several seconds of setup to even start, whereas most classes seem to be able to begin their AoE rotation immediately as they please. BLM AoE is impossible on low-hp or fast-dying targets.

I have no other issues with the rest of the kit. I am enjoying my BLM far more than any other class and the DPS numbers are insanely strong... if a little too strong. I'd like to lose a bit of that personal DPS in exchange for some agressive BLM-themed utility such as a vulnerability debuff or something similar.