Dispensers of fiery explosions, light me up... with your ideas for BLM in 5.0

[Archwizard]

Alright, I'm going to be that guy and say it: I think BLMs should have some utility.

Now hear me out here, before you start pulling out your pitchforks: I know BLM is supposed to be the selfish caster who dominates the DPS charts by virtue of having nothing else to contribute to the team.
But, in the current meta, BLMs are incredibly close in damage output to SMNs, who not only are less restricted by movement due to their excessive instant casts, but bring Raises and a variety of useful debuffs to the table as well so others may share in the feast. All things being equal, overall raid damage will be higher with a SMN than a BLM -- so what does a BLM get out of being a "selfish caster"?

Furthermore, I'm not necessarily suggesting that all BLMs everywhere are constricted into sacrificing their own output in order to gain such utility. "Being selfish" and "helping the raid" need not be exclusive.

My first proposal is thus: either add a debuff effect to Foul as one of BLM's passives next expansion, or give BLMs a debuff they can throw out that consumes Polyglot as an alternative to Foul. A curse of some kind with an effect along the lines of "increases the target's vulnerability to critical hits" or some other vulnerability the BLM will benefit from.
In either case, the act of adding vulnerability to the target means the BLM is at worst sacrificing its personal damage for the party, and at best the raid is simply gaining fringe benefits from the BLM amplifying their own damage. It is, after all, perfectly in character for a Black Mage to cripple and overpower their target, even with curses.
In the latter scenario, you sacrifice only your own cast of Foul for the debuff, so it is entirely your choice whether to be selfish with it or not.

As for my second proposal: Add a passive to BLM that increases the radius of Ley Lines to (just for example) ~15y, and grants partial benefits to allies standing within.
This not only provides some utility to the raid, but more importantly gives the BLM greater mobility, allowing them to move further without losing their Ley Lines, while still allowing them to jump back to its center with Between the Lines.

[Mansion]

As for my second proposal: Add a passive to BLM that increases the radius of Ley Lines to (just for example) ~15y, and grants partial benefits to allies standing within.
This not only provides some utility to the raid, but more importantly gives the BLM greater mobility, allowing them to move further without losing their Ley Lines, while still allowing them to jump back to its center with Between the Lines.

Wouldn't that bait many AOEs in your comfort zone? hahaha.
I think it could go along SAM, have a small debuff that has a bit of utility for others (slashing debuff) and contributes even more to its potency. Like Thunder giving a passive magical defense debuff...

[Kurando]

What if one of your allies who comes in to your Leylines to mooch off the buff ends up dropping an aoe on it forcing everyone to evacuate, in the case no one can use it at all until the placement disappears. I'd be more for the BLM attaching a tether from the Leylines to an ally or themselves (akin to DRG's Dragon Eye) meaning the other player doesn't have to invade your space or sabotage you will nasty aoes, cause you know there will always be someone!

[Archwizard]

Wouldn't that bait many AOEs in your comfort zone? hahaha.

What if one of your allies who comes in to your Leylines to mooch off the buff ends up dropping an aoe on it forcing everyone to evacuate, in the case no one can use it at all until the placement disappears.

What's to stop them from unkindly doing so now? I've been in tons of duty roulettes where people just dropped their AoEs anywhere they wanted, including on top of some remote BLM. At least if everyone's already huddling around one buff spot, you can tell that person to get out of the group...

Besides, a 15y radius is kinda massive (while also matching the range of similar buffs like Embolden). Consider that, presently, Ley Lines is only 6y in diameter -- and we're talking about making it 5 times wider. Even if someone decided to mooch off you, if they aren't standing near the center of the circle (which in all likelihood, who would? They'd probably just get to the edge, assuming the BLM didn't just drop it right in the middle of the melee) and dropping AoEs of at least equal size, there will still be space for everyone.

[Seraphor]

Stick Scathe on a cooldown, maybe 30s, have it reduce the cooldown for Leylines by 10s. Similar to AST's Essential Dignity and Lightspeed.

Freeze now inflicts 'Frosted' debuff for 20s, the next fire spell cast on them will be a guaranteed crit. I know not entirely original from the comments in this topic, but it seems like the simplest and most effective way to give it utility, with it being most effective in AoE.

Burst, a thunder spell in the same tier as Flare/Freeze.
Deals damage and consolidates any thunder DoTs on that target similar to thundercloud, but proliferates those dots to any enemies within range at 50% potency, and proliferates again to any enemies within range of THOSE enemies at 25% potency. Basically has a much greater range than Thunder II/IV with decreasing returns the further out you go.
Bonus effect, if you manage to proliferate both times successfully (so you hit at least three enemies in success at different ranges) you get a free automatic Swiftcast.

[Archwizard]

I wonder how overpowered it would be if Scathe just got a passive benefit to the effect of "Refreshes the duration of your current Astral Fire or Umbral Ice".
I mean, that's really the only thing BLM's rotation is missing, a way to keep Enochian up while on the move without losing damage with Transpose.

As for Freeze gaining a use, my main concern with a lot of suggestions for it is that they may lead to it getting used in single-target. Something as simple as what Flare gets - putting you into Umbral Ice III if it hits a target, or maybe just giving you an Umbral Ice stack for each target hit - would probably be enough to make it useful in AoE, and will at least be easily balanced against Blizzard III in single-target.

[Lauront]

A 15y radius would certainly suffice to make it large enough not to be a dumping ground for AOEs. People can play badly and screw others over in general, but I don't think that's an insuperable problem. It's a pretty good spell to tie some utility to.

Regarding Freeze, I am not too worried if it gains a single target use, but that's on the proviso that it stops being a ground targeted spell. Still, as I mentioned in my own wishlist, you could carry over such single target uses to Blizzard V instead, or even IV, and restrict Freeze to its current (albeit unutilised) AOE role.

I'm in agreement regarding the role of utility and how this plays out on SMN.

That said, we'll see what they have planned with vuln down mechanics since they may be changing.

[Archwizard]

Regarding Freeze, I am not too worried if it gains a single target use, but that's on the proviso that it stops being a ground targeted spell.

If that's what bothers you, just put Freeze on a macro by itself.

/micon "Freeze"
/macroerror off
/ac "Freeze" <t>

It'll automatically cast centered on the target like any other AoE. Even friendly targets. Only downside is it'll cast it where the target was at the start of the cast rather than where it is at the end, but most of the time you'll be firing at stationary enemies or the tanks will probably be mad if you actually root them on the move anyway.

[Lauront]

I already make use of such a macro for it (and Shadowflare on SMN). But if it's being re-purposed, that aspect of it can be revisited, as it's less than ideal to rely on macros for spells on the GCD.

[Archwizard]

I honestly don't see the issue with that aspect of the current iteration, other than that it can be annoying to have to ground-target Freeze, especially if you're trying to mash it out every GCD.
Even then, to me the ground-targeting is just there because Freeze also Roots targets in place, so the visible intent is that they wanted to give us the freedom to drop it where we want to bottleneck enemies, with the option to simply macro it away if we didn't want it.

Of course, the confusing part then is why they didn't just make Freeze create a persistent root zone on the floor so that enemies would be snared inside it, to turn it into a real bottleneck we can throw anywhere. Or why CC effects are useless in most content anyway.