Black magic...kinda sucks

[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.