Quote Originally Posted by Sora_Oathkeeper View Post
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.