Jobs: unconnected and now feeling flat

[Sigma-Astra]

The point of customization isn't to make one job into another, and it shouldn't ever be. The point is to either enhance the strengths of a class or to allow someone to diminish a weakness. Or simply to put training wheels on if needed, a trait that could extend effects on players could also maybe extend the timer black mages have for fire or ice spells. Not only would this make the class easier to learn for newbies, but also could diminish the weakness black mages have in their mobility.

I don't really feel as if we need an extended timer for the fire and ice spell regarding black mage. They're already set at 13 seconds each which is more than enough time to get a general idea for the rotation. And honestly speaking, thm/blm at lower levels is already pretty boring in terms of skill and fairly easy to understand. The only things that I've ever had to remind newbies of is that Thunder II works as a multi-target dot since that wasn't always the case beforehand. The class is fairly easy to learn already with a simple, if not strict, rotation to follow that you can't really deviate from.

The mobility issues, and there are some, however, are not the main cause for concern regarding black mage all of the time. It's the fact that a good BLM player has to put in 200% more effort in order to effectively get anywhere while a SMN can do a lot less and get a lot more out of the deal. An extended timer wouldn't ease anyone in playing BLM better because it's not the rotation that's hard to learn or handle, it's the idea that a good black mage needs to map out an entire fight ahead of time and plan accordingly. A good blm will know the mechanics intuitively like the back of their hand and treat most fights as second nature, knowing when to put Leylines down and where, when to hold back for phase transitions, and when to move and how to keep movement as minimal as possible, etc. Now, that could be said for any and all classes, however, it's more connected with black mage because when we move, it's a DPS loss no matter what. Some things like Behind the Lines, Transpose, Triplecast, and Aetherial do help, but, it's still not a perfect set-up and probably never will be.

Whenever I talk with or ask other people why they dislike or find playing black mage harder than other jobs, it's not because the timer isn't long enough or mobility, it's because they have to put in double the effort for a reward (high damage) when they can play something like Summoner and put in less, while still getting more. Hell, they've told me that they rather play Monk because the return is better.