Black magic...kinda sucks

[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.