Black magic...kinda sucks

[Shiroe]

for Aether, tabing thru the partylist is imo way to slow with a pad, needs to be instant..

use the partylist for things like rez (when playing smn), but Aethermanipulation usally needs to be executed instantly to dogde aoe or stack up fast

[Dualgunner]

for Aether, tabing thru the partylist is imo way to slow with a pad, needs to be instant..

use the partylist for things like rez (when playing smn), but Aethermanipulation usally needs to be executed instantly to dogde aoe or stack up fast

Really kind of goes with the whole "Need to know what's coming and when" for Black Mage. Know when these aoes and stacks are going to happen and plan ahead, including softlocking the party member you want to hop to during the casting animation beforehand.

[Zerathor]

for Aether, tabing thru the partylist is imo way to slow with a pad, needs to be instant..

use the partylist for things like rez (when playing smn), but Aethermanipulation usally needs to be executed instantly to dogde aoe or stack up fast

it really is faster than you think. you can often quick tap a d-pad 2-5 times a little faster than mouse targeting your desired target, while completely eliminating the entire macro queuing issue of this game. often for fights where AM is a useful tool, you can see ahead on where you'll need to use it and plan for it. getting your target hovered while in the middle of casting your f4 is pretty easy. getting down using it without clipping, like during instant casts will take a little practice though. remember, 99% of the time, you'll either be going to a ranged party member, or one of the tanks, so most of the time you only need to tap up twice, or down twice. I don't think this is really too difficult, but maybe i'm just used to equipment quick swapping in dark souls as practice.

[Waliel]

Well off the bat, the people who don't lead off with "you just don't understand the nuances of the job"...because yes I get that it's a turret job. That was NEVER in question.

The concept of the BLM isn't actually to BE a turret, that is how most people PLAY it. The concept, the CORE concept, is momentum. Keeping up the cycle to put out as much damage as possible while on the cycle between fire and ice.

Wait...

11 hours.

[Malkria]

Wait...

11 hours.

Because I realized what actually was going on beyond the mentality of BLM being a 'turret'. If you had a mechanic where the BLM simply did more damage the longer it stayed in an area vs the current cast times, the effect would still be a turret game style. But the point is to keep up the cycle of switching between fire and ice on a timer, that isn't a turret based job it's a momentum based job. Further highlighted that any interruption is a DPS loss. If the mechanics as a whole rooted the BLM in one spot it would be a true turret DPS playstyle, but the actual mechanic is draining your MP on heavy hitting spells and switching stances to refill for another barrage. Ergo, momentum.

Really kind of goes with the whole "Need to know what's coming and when" for Black Mage. Know when these aoes and stacks are going to happen and plan ahead, including softlocking the party member you want to hop to during the casting animation beforehand.

Except this can be a problem for two reasons. You still need to keep track of said target to know when moving would actually get you out of danger, and it assumes that said person doesn't screw up themselves. Because if they do, then you now have two people who either the healer has to focus on getting back up or getting off the floor. This against the NIN's shadowstep which is essentially 'blink' in every other game for the magic user. Tying it to another party member not only increases it's risk to use, but complicates what would be a simple blink spell in any other game.

It's adorable that you keep threatening that you can get me banned, but don't (you can't).

Actually all I 'threatened' was that I could report you, and make a good case for why when your statements have been that I need to provide personal DPS proof (via parser) to provide an argument. Except the longer you kept accusing me of having no experience with the job, the more I actually gained. You don't need to get to savage level to see the issues with the job since the difference between cutting edge content and older content is essentially how much margin of error you get for screw ups. Ergo demanding parser data, which you yourself said is against the rules to harass other players over, could be argued as something even in the forums that could get you banned. YOU started that fight, and I honestly have nothing to lose. In fact, I personally don't believe the moderators can do anything, but we can always test it. But that to me would be like handing someone a gun you think is empty and insisting they pull the trigger with it pointed at you. You could be right and nothing happen, or you could end up banned. I however assume no risk...so why are you pushing this?

You don't need to parse to know that BLM has the highest dps. I can grab agro from the tank without any hassle while we have a samurai who has ilvl 370 full savage raid gear while i have ilvl 355 eureka gear. (unless i use diversion etc ofc, it is essential not to be a d*ck as a BLM) :3

And don't threaten people. It is a sign of toxicity and people can report toxic people as well. Be good, be good at your job and play the game because it is fun! Don't think too much about who has the highest dps. Just enjoy. And if you don't, please, don't talk about it.

First off I am not 'threatening' anyone, I mearly pointed out the facts. If you feel threatened by someone pointing out that demanding parser data could be seen as the same sort of harrasment that WILL get you banned in game...then simply don't do it. I also said I wasn't going to bother since to me unless you actually got banned in game reporting players on forums when you could just not read their posts is much easier and simple, and being banned from the forum to me comes across as a slap on the wrist.

As for threat, yes this is a decent way to tell DPS in a general sense. But as a WHM I have ripped aggro off tanks quite a bit. How good a tank is at keeping aggro varies a lot between them, and therefore isn't proof positive if you can take a mob's attention off them.

Malkria, lets pretend the last 15 pages hadnt happened for a minute. You were liking the class, but as you got into higher level content some of the mechanics that veteran BLMs have been used to/dealing with for a couple years now started to get in the way of your fun. Because of this, you feel the class is poorly designed for the setting of the combat system in this particular game. You could make similar arguments for a couple more classes(playing ninja with a poor connection is painful, getting top tier results from several of the classes requires really clunky feeling play). But hey, Im sure almost everyone here could name a couple quality of life improvements theyd like to see for the class(pretty much every class has some of these theyd like afterall). So even if we all "agreed" with you, whats your end game? A complete re-design would take months(theyd probly only be willing/able to implement something like that during an expansion patch) and might alienate the people who enjoy the class now - it feels different then a lot of the other classes and some of us like that. And even then, a re-design isnt guaranteed to be any better. So before this conversation turned, what were you hoping to get out of it? Im genuinely curious.

Sidenote: And did you really think the conversation wouldnt turn against you? The first thing you said was "Your class...kinda sucks", and that post had a couple factual errors that people have since corrected you on. Thats kinda a negative place to start from.

No I said "Black magic...kinda sucks". As for endgame, the ball has to start somewhere and I am willing to bet that with the job being 'dumbed down' in Stormblood there was a lot of bemoaning it despite the fact the job became easier to play for more people, correct? Furthermore the more I look across the web the more people have pointed out that BLM in fact really DOES need some serious reworks. For example all the AoE spells that are either redundant and/or under powered by the endgame such as the fire 2 and blizzard 2 and freeze. In fact you could simply make those 'neutral' spells such as giving lightning more of a presence as an AoE element to not only make the BLM feel more diverse as a caster but make AoE more effective. Maybe even add a haste ability proc to the lighting to allow the BLM to cast more frequently.

But even then, it doesn't change the fact that as has been pointed out that ANY misstep on the BLM's part is a massive DPS loss, which in turn highlights the counter argument that has been running in a lot of people's posts. If the BLM is strongest when you know the fight, then it is the counter point to RDM in that it is weakest in progression. Because until you know a fight to plan for it, then a BLM would naturally have greater difficulties keeping it's 'highest DPS' card in play. If the RDM's problem is that it isn't as useful once you learn the fights and it's utility becomes less useful, the opposite argument can be made for BLM.

To me the major issue is that the job is in the end all about momentum and keeping up the stream of DPS, and while I am all for the turret playstyle and even rewarding it the way the job is set up currently has more then a few noticeable flaws. The redundant spells that are next to ignored by end game, the movement that relies on keeping track of a party member and that they don't screw up or move out of range, the fact that the job loses so much DPS at the slightest hiccup, and a timer that keeps you watching it a lot more then the fight. All that combined leaves a lot of room for improvement and while it doesn't inherently need a complete rework as I play with it more, it DOES need a fair bit of retooling.

[Popotato]

No I said "Black magic...kinda sucks". As for endgame, the ball has to start somewhere and I am willing to bet that with the job being 'dumbed down' in Stormblood there was a lot of bemoaning it despite the fact the job became easier to play for more people, correct? Furthermore the more I look across the web the more people have pointed out that BLM in fact really DOES need some serious reworks. For example all the AoE spells that are either redundant and/or under powered by the endgame such as the fire 2 and blizzard 2 and freeze. In fact you could simply make those 'neutral' spells such as giving lightning more of a presence as an AoE element to not only make the BLM feel more diverse as a caster but make AoE more effective. Maybe even add a haste ability proc to the lighting to allow the BLM to cast more frequently.

That is definitely a good guess since a lot of jobs did get backlash, but oddly enough, BLM was actually pretty well received going into SB despite being dumbed down. There were definitely a few naysayers about the job, but BLM got so many great abilities going into Stormblood that people were initially excited. Then it became evident that BLM was really undertuned and that's when the complaints came in, and now it's been buffed to a good spot.

Once again, you just say there's a lot of people without actually showing these people. You don't take our word for things we can't prove, you can't expect us to just take your word for it either. Since your opinion is in the minority, the burden of proof is on you to show us these people. Until you show recent threads of high level BLM players taking issue with the current state of BLM, I can only reserve my judgement.

BLM, just like every other job, definitely has useless spells. Granted, having spells that are rarely, if not never used definitely isn't ideal, but the good thing about those spells is that there's a very clear solution to them. Don't use them. It would definitely be nice to find a way to re-purpose those spells into something more useful and exciting, but if they're not useful, it doesn't impact the job's playstyle at all. So in saying that, re-purposing those spells doesn't fall under a "serious rework" because that would imply a change to BLM's core rotation. If they're not in the rotation outside of low level to begin with, then a core part of BLM isn't being changed at all.

But even then, it doesn't change the fact that as has been pointed out that ANY misstep on the BLM's part is a massive DPS loss, which in turn highlights the counter argument that has been running in a lot of people's posts. If the BLM is strongest when you know the fight, then it is the counter point to RDM in that it is weakest in progression. Because until you know a fight to plan for it, then a BLM would naturally have greater difficulties keeping it's 'highest DPS' card in play. If the RDM's problem is that it isn't as useful once you learn the fights and it's utility becomes less useful, the opposite argument can be made for BLM.

It's been emphasised already by previous comments, such as my own that you chose to ignore, that this isn't true at all.

To me the major issue is that the job is in the end all about momentum and keeping up the stream of DPS, and while I am all for the turret playstyle and even rewarding it the way the job is set up currently has more then a few noticeable flaws. The redundant spells that are next to ignored by end game, the movement that relies on keeping track of a party member and that they don't screw up or move out of range, the fact that the job loses so much DPS at the slightest hiccup, and a timer that keeps you watching it a lot more then the fight. All that combined leaves a lot of room for improvement and while it doesn't inherently need a complete rework as I play with it more, it DOES need a fair bit of retooling.

I've already talked about redundant spells above.

Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines, the movement options you are referring to, are just part of BLM's options for mobility. You aren't taking into consideration Triplecast, Swiftcast, Thundercloud Procs, Firestarter procs, even Scathe, all of which are mobility options which allow for completely free movement. Furthermore, AM hypothetically can be really limiting, but that's only hypothetically. In practice, AM is rarely unusable. Of the 7 other party members, you would be really hard pressed to not find at least one person standing at the place you want to be. Also, I can't think of a single fight that forces you to be so spread out from other members that there's no one you can jump to with AM. If there does end up being a fight like that, AM might have limited uses, but even then, you have a plethora of other movement options.

Once again, the job isn't very punishing for mistakes.

I know you're tired of hearing this but in this case it's so evident, constantly looking at the timer is just a product of inexperience. With any job you play, the more experience you have with the job, the less you'll be looking at timers, gauges and hotbars. This is very much true with BLM, because the rotation is so static you can play the job without even looking at the timers.

[Kabooa]

Scathe is worthless, and the only part of that text wall I'll comment on is in the current state, never suggest using Scathe.

It's always better to try and greed another F4 or F1 than to settle for scathe.

[Popotato]

Scathe is worthless, and the only part of that text wall I'll comment on is in the current state, never suggest using Scathe.

It's always better to try and greed another F4 or F1 than to settle for scathe.

That's why I said "even Scathe". I know it's pretty bad, but it's an option if you're really dire. It's better than nothing.

[Nhadaly]

Scathe is worthless, and the only part of that text wall I'll comment on is in the current state, never suggest using Scathe.

It's always better to try and greed another F4 or F1 than to settle for scathe.

Correction that Scathe is useful in situations where you can get no other cast in before a transition(Kefaust is the prime example of this).

But other than that its pretty underwhelming yeah.

[Malkria]

BLM, just like every other job, definitely has useless spells. Granted, having spells that are rarely, if not never used definitely isn't ideal, but the good thing about those spells is that there's a very clear solution to them. Don't use them. It would definitely be nice to find a way to re-purpose those spells into something more useful and exciting, but if they're not useful, it doesn't impact the job's playstyle at all. So in saying that, re-purposing those spells doesn't fall under a "serious rework" because that would imply a change to BLM's core rotation. If they're not in the rotation outside of low level to begin with, then a core part of BLM isn't being changed at all.

That is a fallacy, because the abilities that are not being used are not in the 'ideal rotation' does not mean that the BLM doesn't need a rework. with three useless abilities and two that are highly situational that puts it far ahead of other jobs who might have at worst one or two highly situational abilities. Especially when said abilities could be reworked to make the job both more interesting to play, and ease some off the need to 'memorize a fight' by having either more movement spells or utility in the BLM kit.

Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines, the movement options you are referring to, are just part of BLM's options for mobility. You aren't taking into consideration Triplecast, Swiftcast, Thundercloud Procs, Firestarter procs, even Scathe, all of which are mobility options which allow for completely free movement.

Except they are NOT free movement. Again, thundercloud is a RNG proc and while you can push firestarter with a sharpcast you either need to have anticipated the need to have it beforehand or use both it and switft/triple cast to push it so you can move. BEFORE you can actually move. Free movement is just that, FREE. You are talking about moving during GCD and/or using instant casts to move, which in turn wouldn't be as much of an issue except that you both have to either rely on random chance and/or a combo of abilities to move without worrying about your DPS coming to a screeching halt.

Of the 7 other party members, you would be really hard pressed to not find at least one person standing at the place you want to be. Also, I can't think of a single fight that forces you to be so spread out from other members that there's no one you can jump to with AM. If there does end up being a fight like that, AM might have limited uses, but even then, you have a plethora of other movement options.

Except again you have to find, select, and THEN use AM. Which again could mean TWO people get damaged in a mechanic if you happen to pick the wrong person vs just yourself if you screw up something like the shadowstep. Again, it's a needlessly made complication to an otherwise simple blink spell.

Once again, the job isn't very punishing for mistakes.

Except you and others keep telling me that the job works best when you know the fight. It's simple logic at that point, because if it works best when you know the fight it works at it's worst when you don't Which means in progressive situations the BLM then becomes more of a hindrance with no utility and no way to support the team outside of DPS; which again will take a hit since you won't know the optimal way to setup and use your abilities. You can't have it both ways if you continue to insist that the BLM is all about knowing the fight.

I know you're tired of hearing this but in this case it's so evident, constantly looking at the timer is just a product of inexperience. With any job you play, the more experience you have with the job, the less you'll be looking at timers, gauges and hotbars. This is very much true with BLM, because the rotation is so static you can play the job without even looking at the timers.

You can claim that, but frankly I don't know any healer who doesn't still have to watch out for the refresh timers on hots or if shields are still up; let alone if the tank needs healing or support vs getting another damage spell in. Furthermore in every guide i've seen so far has cited keeping an eye on the timer. So if you have internalized the timer so much fine but apparently watching the timer is still very much a thing.




As a side note, if you need me to dig up every single recent or relevant post on the BLM to understand that a good number of people find issue with the job in various ways...well I would point out to you that a lot of my 'reference material' in this regard is front page of google searches. Plenty of people other then me have said the same things, and some of what I am saying now is coming from them. Yes the job is playable, yes it it top DPS, but no that doesn't mean that it doesn't need a fair bit of work when it has the most useless abilities and one of the simplistic rotations of any the jobs; when you have a dev saying that all the jobs need to have depth and interesting gameplay.