Growing Nervous As I Approach 70...

[VileIves]

I am also a shameless, selfish BLMain.

Don't be nervous. Explode it.
Don't worry about people being dumb. Explode them.
Don't sweat the small stuff. Explode those too.

Only three things are important above all:
Keybind an Aetherial Manipulation macro.
Keybind a Mana Shift macro.
Explode everything without exploding yourself.

Performance can only go up unless you die, and when you first start a fight, you will be miserable. After you learn the fight and timing of everything, you will feel like a God among puny little insects.

Oh, and pretty much cast Diversion at the start and any time you can after that, while having Lucid Dreaming ready for when you inevitably outpace any tank in DPS stance's enmity.

[Sylvina]

How to make and use an aetherial manipulation macro? a macro to do what exactly with it? and how is it better than manually targeting the person you need to teleport to?

[Seraphor]

How to make and use an aetherial manipulation macro? a macro to do what exactly with it? and how is it better than manually targeting the person you need to teleport to?

Because by the time you've selected a target, especially when using a controller, it'll be too late.

/ac "aetherial manipulation" <t>
/ac "aetherial manipulation" <1>
/ac "aetherial manipulation" <2>

Is usually good enough, as the tank/s/healer will tend to be on the ball, or you can select a target yourself.

[Zerathor]

Because by the time you've selected a target, especially when using a controller, it'll be too late.

/ac "aetherial manipulation" <t>
/ac "aetherial manipulation" <1>
/ac "aetherial manipulation" <2>

Is usually good enough, as the tank/s/healer will tend to be on the ball, or you can select a target yourself.

actually, i find controller AM targeting is pretty nice if you just use soft targeting. You're always 4 quick taps away from a party member you want, and typically it'll be to a tank, or to a range dps so up 2 or down 2, AM. and you can get your target ready before you finish your current spell cast to go off immediately after its finished. With a little practice its much faster to select than your gcd timing.

macros can be good, but remember that macros do not queue up properly like normal actions, which can result in either not going off, or a minor delay in triggering after you are able to perform the action.

[Ramesses]

Hello all! New FF14er but long time MMO player. I've decided to main BLM and I've been grinding out the levels hoping to reach 70 and start raiding before too terribly long. However, I've been reading quite a few posts in which people tend to be pretty negative about the viability of a BLM for raid progression. What are your thoughts on this? Do you bring along BLMs in your groups?

I know I could always end up leveling another class if I find it difficult to play the BLM--just wanted to get some opinions.

Thanks!

You will be completely fine, don't worry. In fact, as cliché as it sounds, when you become great enough at the job you will want to Always Bet on Black. Like Vileives, I'm also another very shameless, selfish and explosive BLM "Nukist" (its been one of my mains since 1.0).

Here's the deal... a while back, a small handful of full time raiders made a few comments about how they would prefer certain DPS jobs over BLM in just a few of the savage raids. The premise was that they were trying to utilize the party buffs that those DPS jobs would bring to the raid... and in so doing changed their line ups to reflect this.

As always with the plebs and masses; when this information finally trickled down, the story evolved into how BLMs could never be used in raids. To compound matters, there was an influx of newer players who did no know how to play the job... which of course just ended up fueling the impression that BLM was no good. Hence the current stigma.

In reality, they couldn't be further than the truth... and I cannot count the numerous times that I've been told in Duty Finder "OMG!!! Your damage is insane!!!". In fact, just yesterday in my Duty Finder, a new player (the tank) made a comment that the Summoner was doing some incredible critical damage with his Fire IVs and Flares. I smiled at my screen and didn't even venture the slightest quibble... I'm a huge subscriber to the notion that silence is the best response for a fool. He made the comment yet again, obviously impressed and even added that he hoped the BLM (myself) could keep up because he had heard it was a job with poor DPS.

At this point, both the healer and Summoner corrected him. I still said nothing... there was no point; besides, I'm arrogant like that.

Fact is, as said above, be proud of the job but also get really great at it so that your pride is sustained. Practice on the dummies and find your inner demi-god. A few things to remember:

• Learn how to maintain your Enochian --this is the foundation of the BLM job.
• Learn how to slide cast... I repeat, learn how to slide cast properly. Its all in the timing.
• Be confident, rage those bursts but don't be too excited to unleash your Fire IVs and Flares so that you can adapt with mechanics and recover as needed
• Know the rotation for single and AoE targets (don't forget to cast your Thunder for good DoT)
• Invest in Spell Speed gear as you advance in your BLM career
• Keybind Aetherial Manipulation and Mana Shift macros

And as said above, don't sweat the stupid small stuff. Explode everything, Padawan... everything.

[Sylvain]

Regarding controller, I play without macro and I have no issue targeting anyone for EM. If I have to EM to a very specific person, sometime I suppose a macro would be useful, but more often than not anyone works fine (like when we have to stack for instance, I pretty much EM to a random person in the stacked pool of players

[Ramesses]

Ahhh... one more thing. Also eat great HQ food when going into end-game battles... they are a great investment as you become a signature Nukist. And as you get better with timing your bursts on mega bosses, you'll also want to stock up on INT potions.

[Neela]

actually what the others say - if you like the core of blackmage playstyle just stay with it. the time u reach endgame, u might have found friends and various LSs, maybe even a fc – all before getting in touch with an endgame-static. at that point its more about friendships and grp progress with people you already know. My first static had 2 drks and 2 smns back in the days at Midas and we had still a lot of fun out of the bs "meta".

dw just do ya thing :P