Ok I started out loving the black mage, but apparently was playing 'over geared' or something since now that I've hit mid-sixty range the job...just kind of sucks. The cast times I could live with, the need to switch between fire and ice is fine, but the timer...just kills it. With base gear you MAYBE can get three fire fours out before you need to toss a quick fire one or switch stances. But with the sheer amount of moving involved not only does the black mage have to work the hardest of all the classes to do damage but whether or not you do the mechanics you get screwed out of a lot of fights.

Take the ruby sea dungeon. The first boss isn't to bad, you just need to avoid the water drops from the add and placement can make it easy to take it out. But the second boss has two mechanics. One with he eruption that makes you have to run and thus probably lose your timer, and the second with seduce which again will probably make you lose your timer. The final boss is similar, with long phases where you can't attack anything, and thus lose your timer.

Frankly I don't even think you need major changes to make the job not feel so bad to play. First off the ley-lines could be a buff for going through a full ice-fire switch with full charges and every time you switch after that it resets. Second, having you lose complete charges feels to heavy handed. But having you lose a charge when the timer runs out every three seconds would give enough breathing room to the timer while better allowing the job to do mechanics without losing all momentum.

I like the job itself and the power it brings, but it isn't the top DPS and it's mechanics seem to but heads with the dungeon/raid design of the entire game. With those combined the question should be how to make the black mage better fit into the game, because right now the RDM is more fun to play even if it doesn't hit as hard simply because it feels better suited tot he game at large then the supposed heavy hitter black mage is.