Monk needs to be nerfed hard. Change my mind.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

eh... that's why a 50% Blm currently still overshadows a 99% range/caster?... because only good Blms will pull huge numbers?....
Blm should be on top... but the argument "only the good ones push numbers"... is a joke... : /

What made BLM ridiculously punishing has been alleviated so much since SB and ShB. There's honestly no reason anymore for BLM to be viewed as some god of all dps that must be top because it's hard to play, the truth is that, while in some aspects it can be hard to get the timings right, after a few wipes and adjusting when to use procs, triple, swift, xeno etc... it's one of the most mobile casters for on demand movement without as much punishment and/or dps loss. This isn't like HW where it meant the slightest bit of m9ovement meant you were forced into dropping enochian, or SB with it's ridiculously tight timers to begin with. BLM is in a super comfy place with a lot of movement options. The arguement that it's a turret so it must be at the top is lost when it's got so many morvement options; Firestarter, thundercloud, Xenoglossy (stackable up to 2x), Triple-cast, Swiftcast, Sharpcast, Aetherial Manipulation, Between the lines. So many options for movement it's insane. BLM is every bit as mobile as any other caster and deserves to be balanced alongside them.

[Mahrze]

What made BLM ridiculously punishing has been alleviated so much since SB and ShB. There's honestly no reason anymore for BLM to be viewed as some god of all dps that must be top because it's hard to play, the truth is that, while in some aspects it can be hard to get the timings right, after a few wipes and adjusting when to use procs, triple, swift, xeno etc... it's one of the most mobile casters for on demand movement without as much punishment and/or dps loss. This isn't like HW where it meant the slightest bit of m9ovement meant you were forced into dropping enochian, or SB with it's ridiculously tight timers to begin with. BLM is in a super comfy place with a lot of movement options. The arguement that it's a turret so it must be at the top is lost when it's got so many morvement options; Firestarter, thundercloud, Xenoglossy (stackable up to 2x), Triple-cast, Swiftcast, Sharpcast, Aetherial Manipulation, Between the lines. So many options for movement it's insane. BLM is every bit as mobile as any other caster and deserves to be balanced alongside them.

And this is all really thanks to at least someone on the dev team who actually seems to play the class. I have my gripes on the job but its one of the few jobs that usually gets stuff going in the right direction in terms of abilities.


Where as the job being asked to be nerfed.... Yup.

[Neela]

BLM is in a super comfy place with a lot of movement options. The arguement that it's a turret so it must be at the top is lost when it's got so many morvement options; Firestarter, thundercloud, Xenoglossy (stackable up to 2x), Triple-cast, Swiftcast, Sharpcast, Aetherial Manipulation, Between the lines. So many options for movement it's insane. BLM is every bit as mobile as any other caster and deserves to be balanced alongside them.

actually that's what I personally think as well for a while now but since I already got the "BLM-Hater" image just because i played Smn for 4 years... im kinda careful with statements like that... but nice to see that others start to think similar about Blm.

[Kabooa]

BLM is every bit as mobile as any other caster and deserves to be balanced alongside them.

Lose the raise.

[Rika007]

Lose the raise.

Pretty sure the majority of upper level summoner and red mage players would happily drop caster Rez or let black mage have their own version of it if it meant proper balancing. Hell I know I would love to drop mine.

[Kabooa]

Pretty sure the majority of upper level summoner and red mage players would happily drop caster Rez or let black mage have their own version of it if it meant proper balancing. Hell I know I would love to drop mine.

And the thing is, most of us know that's the real problem, and wouldn't care if you were with us or above us as long as that stupid problem is solved.

[Taranok]

What made BLM ridiculously punishing has been alleviated so much since SB and ShB. There's honestly no reason anymore for BLM to be viewed as some god of all dps that must be top because it's hard to play, the truth is that, while in some aspects it can be hard to get the timings right, after a few wipes and adjusting when to use procs, triple, swift, xeno etc... it's one of the most mobile casters for on demand movement without as much punishment and/or dps loss. This isn't like HW where it meant the slightest bit of m9ovement meant you were forced into dropping enochian, or SB with it's ridiculously tight timers to begin with. BLM is in a super comfy place with a lot of movement options. The arguement that it's a turret so it must be at the top is lost when it's got so many morvement options; Firestarter, thundercloud, Xenoglossy (stackable up to 2x), Triple-cast, Swiftcast, Sharpcast, Aetherial Manipulation, Between the lines. So many options for movement it's insane. BLM is every bit as mobile as any other caster and deserves to be balanced alongside them.

After having played as many classes as I have to 80, including all 3 casters to 80, no. Black Mage is not the most practically mobile caster and is actually still the least mobile caster. And given the new fight design of ShB, especially E3S, Black Mage is demonstrably the most heavily impacted class from mandatory movement. It definitely deserves its top spot. When looking at how mobile a caster is, you have to look at how much it sacrifices for clipping a GCD as well. A Summoner at worst can clip a Miasma, which stings, but most of the time it will be clipping a 200 potency Ruin 3 GCD. If BLM has to clip a GCD, it is most likely going to be Fire 4 which comes in swinging for 621 potency (assuming multiplicative stacking of enochian and astral fire). So if they both have to clip half a second worth of a GCD or worse, cancel a cast partway through, the Black Mage is going to lose vastly more DPS than a Summoner would. Even the best players will find they have to clip and cancel GCDs occasionally just because the fights are semi-random and you can't 100% plan for everything. Half a second to a BLM is ~110 potency actually lost, whereas for a SMN it's only 40 potency. So even if you have access to a panic swiftcast, a SMN might lose 100 potency where a BLM might lose 330 for being at the same relative point in the cast bar (half way), and needing to squeeze out a swiftcast will cost a BLM more whereas a SMN can just swap to ruin 2 and lose a much smaller amount. Yes, you can plan around expected movement, but not all movement is expected, and eventually, as E3S shows, you flat out will run out of movement options because the fight throws more movement than you can handle as a BLM, and the logs for E3S 100% support this.

But in reality, there's only 2 things that matter for class balance. How heavily impacted a class is by mechanics outside of its control, which is a rough order of Casters > Melee> Range, since casters get impacted the most, then melee, and ranged don't care, which then gets subdivided by how much an individual class is impacted by mechanics (E.G. a Ninja is less impacted than a Monk). And how much party DPS you add with buffs, which whoever has the least should offer the most personal DPS. Looking within the categories, you should have something roughly along the lines of Selfish > Caster > Melee > Ranged, with BLM, SAM, and MCH being top DPS outright, and then it breaks down from there with things like Summoner being above Red Mage but below Black Mage since it has weaker party utility.

Those are the only metrics for determining how a class should be balanced. And, well, Black Mage is put on top just from those alone. But this isn't an excuse for any class to be out of balance, and the logs show this quite heavily. A lot of classes are massively out of balance right now, but I'm reasonably certain Black Mage is not one of them, or is at worst marginal.

[Rasikko]

I agree, Monk was overtuned honestly

Yet it wasnt enough to make me jump from last place DNC.

[Myon88]

Black Mage is not the most practically mobile caster and is actually still the least mobile caster. And given the new fight design of ShB, especially E3S, Black Mage is demonstrably the most heavily impacted class from mandatory movement

Haha but no, black mage is indeed the most mobile caster when it counts. And on e3s of all fights? It's not like triplecast doesn't already line up with all the mechanics that require movement there, all the temporary currents after drenching pulse, even stormy horizon and black smoker baits. Whoever designed this tier really likes triplecast because just using it off cooldown will sync it to practically every movement heavy mechanic in every turn.

A smn in stormy horizon just sucks up the 40p loss every gcd, rdm has no choice but to align their melee combo with it as the start-stop nature of dualcast is useless for sustained movement mechanics. Not even getting into all the other ways blm benefits on e3s, like having gcd-based damage output that doesn't care about maelstrom downtime, while smn and rdm have to deal with having their cooldown-based rotations desynced.

as E3S shows, you flat out will run out of movement options because the fight throws more movement than you can handle as a BLM, and the logs for E3S 100% support this.

Are you sure about that? According to XIVAnalysis, my best e3s run had my casting uptime pegged at 97.5%. The blm in the current #1 e3s speedrun has 100% uptime meaning they did the entire fight with their gcd rolling continuously the whole time. I won't link to it here because of 3rd party tools, but you're welcome to run the logs through it yourself, it runs entirely in your browser. You don't run out of 'movement options' in e3s if you play properly. The closest to that happening this tier is crumbling down in e4s if you get bad rng and the car pattern first, then you get a small taste of what it's like to play summoner.

Also, as far as what factors make jobs 'punishing', the important thing to remember is that these only cover dps losses from lost gcds due to movement. While it is the most visible source of error, it is far from the only source of job difficulty. What about summoners who have a far more difficult rotation? You don't see people crying for them when they misalign their cooldowns or whiff a fester because they got distracted by mechanics. It's funny isn't it? When that happens on summoner it's because you're bad and deserve it, but when you drop a gcd on black mage somehow it's proof that the job has a 'high skill ceiling' and it justifies their high dps or something.

The reason? This community has a major blind spot when it comes to evaluating job difficulty. The difficulty of casting and maintaining melee uptime is severely overrated, while the difficulty coming from executing rotations that are complex (smn) or nonlinear (ranged) is highly underrated. It's easy to see why. On one hand, everyone notices when they drop a gcd due to how obvious and intuitive it is. Meanwhile, a job like summoner is complex enough that beginners won't even realize they've made any mistakes. They'll completely mangle their rotation while thinking they did everything right and wondering what the big deal about the job is, when the reality is they haven't even begun to grasp the big picture.

[UfoCoffee]

NIN below summoner? Absolutely crazy.