Black magic...kinda sucks

[GunksFoy]

Snip

I thought chopping up posts was just attention seeking?

Ad hominem aside -


Could those skills use a rework, sure. Most black mages would like to see them made useful, myself included, but they do not NEED reworked. BLM is just fine where it is. And they definitely don't need to be movement based or part of the main rotation, we already have a good rotation and good movement for a job that's meant to stand still.

Once again, part of knowing the fight. However, swiftcast and triplecast are very easy to use. When progging, you need to hold them a bit and use them as necessary, and as you progress further you will know when and how to use them best for DPS and movement. Just like Dragoon with Geirskogul, popping life of the dragon right as an AoE comes out means potentailly losing a Nastrond, or Monk with Tornado Kick, potentially not having GL3 for a DPS check. EVERY job needs to know the fight to do peak DPS, and good black mages make it work.

Macros. I have AM macro'd to allow me to get out of danger in nearly every situation with little to no issue. You can also just use <mo> and select a healer, because a healer will always be in safe spot (typically). And if you're in static, you can choose a specific person, bard perhaps, to teleport to as they are very mobile. Many options, not that hard.

It works BEST when you know the fight, but a good black mage will make do with whatever they need. And she said black mage isn't punishing for mistakes because the rotation is VERY easy to get back to. Unless you fuck up twice and lose Enochian twice within ~17s, you will never really be out of your rotation except maybe losing an almost-finished foul. Dragoon, should you happen to lose BotD at a bad time, could lose potentially 60s of rotation build up. Summoner could lose nearly 2 minutes of work. There are less punishing jobs like Red Mage, but certainly more punishing ones as well. You need to know the JOB to be good, knowing the fight just allows to be great.

And she's mostly right here. You still need to keep an eye on the timer in the event of downtime or an incoming boss jump, but for the most part you will not be looking at the timer. I only ever look at my own gauge when an AoE or something is going out. And most jobs can ignore the gauge for the most part as it's just part of the rotation, unless they're moving or during downtime.

EDIT: you edited another point in right after I posted this. To that point, as we have all said, there are issues. Like the useless spells. But BLM is in a great spot for DPS (thought i could agree to a ~2% further increase to push us out ahead of Summoner and their rDPS) and for it's rotation. The rotation flows almost perfectly. Foul almost always lands during your UI rotation, 6 F4s is easy to attain, plenty of time to do 3x F4 and 1x F1. Black Mage doesn't NEED anything, but it could use a few QoL changes. Like the ones coming next week. The problem everyone has with you, is that you want the entire job scrapped and rebuilt, and nobody else wants that.

[zuzu-bq]

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.

So, to you the issue is that you don't like how it plays? Gotcha.

[Popotato]

Gonna keep this kinda short heopfully because I'm low on time. EDIT: It wasn't short at all lol

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.

In the same vein, just because it has useless skills doesn't mean it needs a rework either.The second half is purely hypothetical. It could be better, but what more does BLM need right now? It would especially be hard to add those onto low level AoE skills. If you can propose something intuitive and interesting I'd be all for it.

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.

It might be better to refer to Firestarter and Thundercloud collectively as "Sharpcast" then. Every 60s you get a guaranteed proc GCD of free movement, that can be held for 18s.

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, this is pretty hypothetical. Looking at the spell, it COULD happen, but it rarely does. Good usage is effective. Bad usage is costly. This is just like any other blink. The alternative type of blink that still considers BLM's range would be a system like Shukuchi, which is very finicky especially on controller, or like Elusive Jump, which is once again finicky. There's of course dashing to the targeted enemy, but that compromises the range that BLM has, and it doesn't make much sense either considering the jobs with that kind of blink are typically melee DPS trying to keep uptime.

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.

This is to get the most out of the job. If a BLM drops his timer, he can just recast Enochian and just pick up where he left of having taken a small hit to DPS. The challenge with BLM is not letting this happen to maximise damage.

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.

Those are necessary things to keep track of, but no healer has their eyes glued to a tank's health bar looking at their Regen slowly tick down. It's just a glance to check the duration. Same thing with BLM and any job really (besides WHM). The better you get at a job, the less you need to look at the timer. It's not like BLM requires an absurd amount of time looking at the gauge in relation to other jobs. I won't deny that the gauge itself is more integral to BLM than some other jobs like PLD and WHM though.

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.

I'm just saying that those people should be decently experienced BLM player, that made threads recently. Not popularity polls conducted during ARR.

[Shiroe]

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.

even when you know when its about to come, blm are often in the mid of casting, and need to move asap..

softlocking sucks on ps4, end up losing your enemy target at times, even when focus targeting rhe boss..

its just way too slow and clunky if you don't use a macro with pre target player in the macro

as smn lose enough time when rezing and using the party list tab...

it would be easy to reduce the amount of buttons needed for blm, so there is more room for macros or other moves on the keysets for ps4 players (like LL and BtL could use the same action); without blm losing its fun / gameplay

... ether way, im looking forward to the blm changes, hope it will allow less casttime loses when using AM or BtL

[GunksFoy]

snip

I don't really understand when controller players complain about action space. As a former controller player, the only jobs I ever felt limited on were Scholar and Summoner, and I solved that by macroing pet spells to the summon spells and placing summon spells on a shared hotbar. Black Mage probably has the least number of necessary actions to put on a hotbar. On PC, all of my essential skills fit on 2 hotbars, 24 slots, which is 1 XHBR and the expanded sets. I played for years using 2 job hotbars and a single shared hotbar and never felt hindered or cramped. Is keyboard a tad easier? sure, but controller is totally viable and does not need special concessions made for it.

[Malkria]

Gonna keep this kinda short heopfully because I'm low on time. EDIT: It wasn't short at all lol

In the same vein, just because it has useless skills doesn't mean it needs a rework either.The second half is purely hypothetical. It could be better, but what more does BLM need right now? It would especially be hard to add those onto low level AoE skills. If you can propose something intuitive and interesting I'd be all for it.

Well for one lightining is supposed to be a major aspect of the thurmaturge and thus BLM, so simply removing all the redundant fire and ice aoe and simply have an aoe lighing spell that gets stronger as you level could be good. Furthermore you could have a mechanic that could work with ice spells to make ice spells aoe. Or in short you could have it where you use the lightning spell to 'mark' targets while doing damage and then use ice spells to 'flechette' the damage much like a standard aoe, which then leaves fire for single target damage as it primarily is now. This way you have diversity of play without to major a rework, and much better aoe capability on the BLM then it currently has.

Furthermore you could also have an ability that can be used off GCD to 'bank' damage in a similar fashion to teh MCH's wyldfire. But in this case simply lets you keep casting and do no damage, with no bonus damage. Basically simply lets you keep up dps during boss invulnerability phases, keep up the timer a little easier, and also would have the utility to be able to with coordination get a big kick off on damage once you can do it again. It also could be used for a big opener perhaps on bosses.

It might be better to refer to Firestarter and Thundercloud collectively as "Sharpcast" then. Every 60s you get a guaranteed proc GCD of free movement, that can be held for 18s.

Which highlights the issue right there. 40 seconds where at worst case you DON'T have that movement option, which from the guides I have read you basically want to use sharp cast as often as possible so therefore will be quite frequent you will not have that guarantee of movement. So while it is an option, it is by no means reliable and thus can't really be counted as 'free movement'.

Once again, this is pretty hypothetical. Looking at the spell, it COULD happen, but it rarely does.

If it 'rarely does' it isn't hypothetical. If everything goes smoothly then yes it works fine. But the point is that if it doesn't then it isn't just one person who is going to pay the price. It really isn't a good feeling to get killed by a movement ability because someone else messed up.

This is to get the most out of the job. If a BLM drops his timer, he can just recast Enochian and just pick up where he left of having taken a small hit to DPS. The challenge with BLM is not letting this happen to maximize damage.

Not always, and depending on how events go you could very well find yourself where both instant cast abilities are down, and where lag kept transpose from going off. Depending on where enochian is on CD you could have quite a bit of time where the BLM can't put out nearly the kind of DPS it should be.

I won't deny that the gauge itself is more integral to BLM than some other jobs like PLD and WHM though.

The closest I would put it to would be the MCH, but even then you have a fair amount of leeway and it doesn't just 'drop off' as the heat comes off. Again I personally feel it should be when the timer falls off you should start loosing orbs, but one every three seconds at that point rather then all at once. It would give some leeway without being a brick wall.

I'm just saying that those people should be decently experienced BLM player, that made threads recently. Not popularity polls conducted during ARR.

That was the only poll I could find, but you can find quite a few threads just going back a few pages on this forum alone. What they feel the issue varies, but a lot of it either comes down to how the BLM plays, the mobility, or how simplistic the playstyle is. Which the more I think on it I feel I agree that the BLM should be a little deeper. Hence the thought of making ice and lightning be the AoE side of things and ice and fire for single target as it is now. I feel it would add much needed depth while also feeling pretty natural as the BLM does feel up to when you are trying to beat a timer while casting spells that don't reset it.

If your point is that the BLM is currently functional, I will agree. It 100% is functional. But that being said doesn't mean there isn't significant room for improvement to how the job plays. I also strongly feel that the job is more about momentum then about being a turret, and just because the cast times don't encourage movement hat doesn't mean that the job shouldn't have better mobility to call upon in some fashion. Finally the biggest issue I feel is how badly you hit a brick wall should the timer run out, and yes an 'experienced player won' have that happen often' but that doesn't mean it won't happen nor does it not feel overly punishing if it does. You and others can claim all you want that 'experienced players won't have these issues', but that negates the fact that they will be a turnoff for newer players as well as glossing over the fact that mistakes happen. If that wasn't the case, then we wouldn't have in-combat raising for example.

[SkyEdge1]

That was the only poll I could find, but you can find quite a few threads just going back a few pages on this forum alone. What they feel the issue varies, but a lot of it either comes down to how the BLM plays, the mobility, or how simplistic the playstyle is. Which the more I think on it I feel I agree that the BLM should be a little deeper. Hence the thought of making ice and lightning be the AoE side of things and ice and fire for single target as it is now.

Just my 2c there were 5 post going back 7 pages only 1 of them was about BLM job suggestions rather than just a "wouldn\\'t it be cool if" post it also died after a few pages not sure how relevant that is. Also every element on BLM has Aoe because BLM cycles through fire ice and lightning on its standard rotation giving you the option to AoE at different points in the fight for varying degrees of effectiveness. TBH all your beef seems to be "I dont like this job and neither should you"

[Malkria]

I thought chopping up posts was just attention seeking?

Mostly when you chop up a single paragraph into line by line. That is beyond silly at that point.

Just my 2c there were 5 post going back 7 pages only 1 of them was about BLM job suggestions rather than just a "wouldn\\'t it be cool if" post it also died after a few pages not sure how relevant that is. Also every element on BLM has Aoe because BLM cycles through fire ice and lightning on its standard rotation giving you the option to AoE at different points in the fight for varying degrees of effectiveness. TBH all your beef seems to be "I dont like this job and neither should you"

First off freeze, blizzard 2, and fire 2 are all redundant. The point wasn't that the BLM doesn't have access to AoE the point is that these are vastly under powered and largely ignored once you hit end game. You can use them, but they certainly wouldn't hurt from either having their function merged into a new AoE ability that would make room for other spells and/or abilities.

Second, yes I hate the BLM so much I have continued to play it. I mean I must hate healing so much as that I continue to play an AST even though i'm not fond of the speed run mentality that is so prevalent in tank community. Or being in melee that I am also trying to level a tank. This idea that you can't like things about a job without being able to criticize it is beyond silly. The good things I like about the BLM is that it is the only DPS I really feel like I matter since I can visibly see chunks of health, even on raid bosses, falling off and it is blatantly obvious when I am contributing to the DPS or not. I also in mmos in general just prefer the magic archetypes, so outside of not seeing any particularly cool staffs that match my outfit the aesthetics are cool too.

So no I don't think people should stop playing the BLM, and I have never EVER said that. Period. But just because a job is functional does NOT mean there are not significant ways it can be improved, and when you have several abilities going all but ignored and taking up space on a hotbar is a clear cut indication that the job could use improvement. Furthermore when you have a job being called a turret when only ONE ability on a decent CD promotes that; when the guides all focus on spell speed to try to increase said mobility, then maybe the job could use more base mobility.

The job simply feels clunky after level 50 once you start trying to squeeze in the ice/fire 4 spells. The job also feels clunky when you use the AM spell in how you either have to macro it or just trust that whoever you have pre-selected doesn't screw up. Third in that if your 'movement procs' and/or swift/triple cast are on CD your going to take good DPS hits as well as risk running out our timer which can lead to more issues. It isn't that all of these break the job outright, it's that they all add up to a job that feels like it could use some tuning. Which even the 'career BLMs" have admitted to.

[EllieShadeflare]

Mostly when you chop up a single paragraph into line by line. That is beyond silly at that point.

It's good to be concise as possible, though. That's why people split up their paragraphs and look at them carefully. I mean, the better to actually see the point of the person you're refuting, right?

First off freeze, blizzard 2, and fire 2 are all redundant. The point wasn't that the BLM doesn't have access to AoE the point is that these are vastly under powered and largely ignored once you hit end game. You can use them, but they certainly wouldn't hurt from either having their function merged into a new AoE ability that would make room for other spells and/or abilities.

Firstly, I'm going to talk about the one that's not good for your argument, Fire II. Fire II maintains a purpose and function most of the time, especially up until 68/when you get Umbral Heart compatibility for Flare. And even then, Fire II is still useful on massive groups of foes because it doesn't have drop off in any shape or form. You can drop two Fire IIs before a Double Flare for maximum damage in these crowds.

You're right about Freeze and Blizzard II not having a point, but I feel the issue with Blizzard II is that it's designed not to be a spell you use beyond its necessity.

Freeze just needs two things. Umbral Heart compatibility (by making it give Umbral Hearts) and just normal targeting rather than a placed circle. Fix these two things and Freeze is fully viable.

Second, yes I hate the BLM so much I have continued to play it. I mean I must hate healing so much as that I continue to play an AST even though i'm not fond of the speed run mentality that is so prevalent in tank community. Or being in melee that I am also trying to level a tank. This idea that you can't like things about a job without being able to criticize it is beyond silly. The good things I like about the BLM is that it is the only DPS I really feel like I matter since I can visibly see chunks of health, even on raid bosses, falling off and it is blatantly obvious when I am contributing to the DPS or not. I also in mmos in general just prefer the magic archetypes, so outside of not seeing any particularly cool staffs that match my outfit the aesthetics are cool too.

When someone says "X class... kinda sucks" or similar, this makes people think that the first person is coming from a place of dislike. And considering you've explained through various posts that you basically dislike BLM from point A to B... I'm not entirely sure you're entirely honest on this front.

So no I don't think people should stop playing the BLM, and I have never EVER said that. Period. But just because a job is functional does NOT mean there are not significant ways it can be improved, and when you have several abilities going all but ignored and taking up space on a hotbar is a clear cut indication that the job could use improvement. Furthermore when you have a job being called a turret when only ONE ability on a decent CD promotes that; when the guides all focus on spell speed to try to increase said mobility, then maybe the job could use more base mobility.

Not... entirely? You're kind of not looking at the job's toolkit properly.

1.) To address the "BLM isn't a turret!" claim, all but one of the attack spells in Black Mage's arsenal are by default with a cast time. In fact, all of BLM's attack spells are on the GCD, with only buffs (Triplecast, Leylines, Sharpcast, Enochian (Swiftcast, Lucid Dreaming, Diversion, Surecast, Addle, Apocatastasis, Manashift and Erase in Cross Role)) and their mobility/survival tools (Aetherial Manipulation, Manaward and Between the Lines) being out of the GCD. To compare in the same role:

Summoner has mostly DoT and Pet based damage, and also utilize oGCDs heavily in their rotations (Painflare, Deathflare, Shadow Flare, Tri-Disaster, Fester, Energy Drain in emergencies), they have a competent mobility attack that only loses out on 20potency per cast and can randomly turn into a 200 potency attack, and have a phase that allows them to ignore cast times on their primary ST spell. There's no teleports, but the Summoner really isn't stuck to cast times like Black Mage is.

Red Mage is basically mobility mage incarnate. Their cast times for their "first" spells are faster than the GCD, and by doing this, they negate the cast time on their second spell. On top of this, they have two powerful oGCD abilities that don't have very long cooldowns. It's rare that a Red Mage is unable to move, save for their melee combo.

When comparing the BLM to these other casters, it becomes apparent that BLM is very much designed to be a turret. Our mobility mostly comes in the form of slidecasting and teleports that make us not actually waste too much time not casting, and we're even given a "skip some mechanics" button in the 30% max HP shield of Manaward. Yes, BLM is a turret.

2.) Every class has useless buttons in some way and are being fixed. However, most of the buttons that are useless on Black Mage aren't useless because they're literally pointless, they're useless because they're situational and we haven't been given much in the way of situations to use them. However, Sleep and Bind (Freeze and Blizzard II) are amazing for Eureka because of how deadly foes are there, and Sleep is the BLM's only interrupt when soloing. Scathe is good for leveling up but eventually finds new life in Eureka, since you can now tag monsters with it for chaining.

3.) What guides are you even talking about? Sources would be nice. Most guides I've seen state that Spell Speed is obtained for taste, but having more Critical Hit is a better move for players who know how to play BLM since that increases their damage. That said, one guide by Laqi Thish states the following:

Optimizing substats gives the least return on DPS when compared to being proficient at your job, having high uptime, handling mechanics efficiently, having a good raid comp and kill time, being efficient with AOE cleaves, and many other “skill”-related factors.

BLM has no bad substats. Infinite resources and lack of damaging oGCDs makes Spell Speed (SS) a strong stat. More SS can make the job feel smoother to play, though too much leads to Foul not being ready in your opener and second rotation, depending on procs. Aim for higher iLvl gear and get SS to personal preference and comfort level. After that, worry about your performance rather than gear.

And frankly, the Laqi Thish guide is the most up to date and trusted guide that I know.

Sources cited: This one compares the DPS increase of specific gearsets, including max speed, max crit, and somewhere in between.
This is where I get my quote.

The job simply feels clunky after level 50 once you start trying to squeeze in the ice/fire 4 spells. The job also feels clunky when you use the AM spell in how you either have to macro it or just trust that whoever you have pre-selected doesn't screw up. Third in that if your 'movement procs' and/or swift/triple cast are on CD your going to take good DPS hits as well as risk running out our timer which can lead to more issues. It isn't that all of these break the job outright, it's that they all add up to a job that feels like it could use some tuning. Which even the 'career BLMs" have admitted to.

Since you don't source your "career" BLMs, I have to assume that you're using old posts that are now invalidated by buffs that we got. You're also taking career Black Mages out of context in many ways as well. Most career Black Mages will tell you that not only has Black Mage's mobility been mostly fine, but any problems we had were fixed in patches. All we really care about at this point is making certain spells not pointless (primarily Freeze) and making Umbral Hearts better for the single target rotation. But that's more of a nitpick than a fully common consensus.

With that said, you do realize you can easily pick people in your party using the function keys, right? Like F1 for self, F2 for the person below you in party comp, F3 for the one below that, all the way to F8. Then you use AM. Two keys.

And if BLM feels clunky after level 50... I really have to question your ability to play the class because it shifts from a rotation that uses only four/five buttons (Fire, Fire III, Thunder, Blizzard III and sometimes Transpose) dependent on how much MP you have (Basically, Fire III when you're at full MP so you get Astral Fire III, then spam Fire until you can't and then use Blizzard III to regain ice, use a Thunder and then use Fire III to go back into Astral Fire III) to a rotation with actual consideration and order (Thunder as a DoT, Blizzard IV, Fire III, Fire IV * 3, Fire, Fire IV * 3, Blizzard III, go back to Thunder unless you're level 70 and then you get Foul before you thunder, opener involves Swift+Triple to make four Fire IVs happen before a Sharpcasted Fire for two more Fire IVs, Convert, Fire III, Fire IV x 2, and then Blizzard III). I mean... THIS is Summoner's rotation, if you want a comparison:



Black Mage is easy peasy lemon squeezy by comparison.

[Legion88]

The job simply feels clunky after level 50 once you start trying to squeeze in the ice/fire 4 spells. The job also feels clunky when you use the AM spell in how you either have to macro it or just trust that whoever you have pre-selected doesn't screw up. Third in that if your 'movement procs' and/or swift/triple cast are on CD your going to take good DPS hits as well as risk running out our timer which can lead to more issues. It isn't that all of these break the job outright, it's that they all add up to a job that feels like it could use some tuning. Which even the 'career BLMs" have admitted to.

I don't know how this is clunky the basic rotation is easy as hell: B3>(Eno>)B4>T3>F3>F4>F4>F4>F1>F4>F4>F4>repeat
And this is not Spellspeed dependent.

AM can feel clunky, but this comes more from the huge prerequisites (locating a party member in a save zone, targeting the party member) for an emergency movment/teleport and the basic problem with macros. As long AM doesn't target automatically an partymember in range or in line of sight (player or character) it will always feel clunky for its intend.

Also if you have to move without your "cheating tools" you are never in risk that your timer runs out. Use Transpose to keep UI/AF-Timer running, as long UI/AF is running Enochian keeps active and your Foul charges.
The only drawback for BLM is that he can't attack while moving and has to restart his rotation from the beginning.

The only tunings/reworks I would like to see are:

1. UI/AF refresh with Thunder procs
2. Freeze rework (no free placing, AoE around the target, upgrade B2 into Freeze, always gives UI3, removing Bind)

But that is just my opinion.