Fire II

[Katie_Kitty]

The problem is Freeze only gives you one Umbral heart, meaning if you use Fire 2 you can't do 2 Flares. Fire II is so much weaker than Flare so I personally don't see the fun in that.

As I said you can do what you want, but you're really going to intentionally gimp yourself and then call people who don't bad...?

fire 2 isn't even fun to use. Fire 2 stinks. It's slow, expensive, and weak. And boring. Even freeze spam is more satisfying.

[Zantusken]

fire 2 isn't even fun to use. Fire 2 stinks. It's slow, expensive, and weak. And boring. Even freeze spam is more satisfying.

I guess not using Fire II makes us bad, though :/

[Grimoire-M]

I guess not using Fire II makes us bad, though :/

It doesn't because Fire II is bad. It needs to be buffed. Imo the best way is to make it replace Fire III in the AoE rotation.

[AC9Breaker]

I also mained mch in SB, im not sure how that answers the question?

I guess that analogy went over your head. Not motivated enough to explain it.

[ReiMakoto]

I guess that analogy went over your head. Not motivated enough to explain it.

That or your analogy doesnt actually make any sense and youre just trying to save face by being nonchalantly dismissive. Its okay dude, we all say stupid things every now and then.

[AC9Breaker]

Fine Ill take the bait.

do you find hitting buttons that are strictly worse than other buttons fun?

The general consensus was that Machinst was the worse physical ranged DD in 4.0. Damage ceiling was lower and required more effort to play effectively compared to Bard. Its cumbersome implementation of resources and abilities is one of the reasons. It also offered none of the utility that Bard did. In this sense, the analogy is that MCH is a strictly worse version of bard. It was my "button" that I enjoyed playing and had fun with even though bard was superior to it.

I get it though. Critical thinking isn't many peoples strong suit.

[Roeshel]

The one problem here is that Transpose is not instant. It takes time from the end of the cast, to use transpose, then to start casting again. I don't know exactly how long it takes to use transpose, however, if we take it as half a second, the it is 618 potency in 14.5 seconds, which is a potency per second of 42.62.

We can even work out the break point, where if transpose takes X time to cast, the 2 would be equal. That time is 0.05 seconds (0.045454545454....... to be exact). Transpose definitely takes more time to cast, therefore it will always be less potency per second.

Instant ogcds require 1 second to execute for the animation. So it would be 15 secs.

In the example which Tint gave, using transpose after thunder and then proceeding to fire 2 spam would be beneficial only if the thunder that was cast beforehand was instant. It gives you 2,5sec room to execute transpose.

[ReiMakoto]

Fine Ill take the bait.


The general consensus was that Machinst was the worse physical ranged DD in 4.0. Damage ceiling was lower and required more effort to play effectively compared to Bard. Its cumbersome implementation of resources and abilities is one of the reasons. It also offered none of the utility that Bard did. In this sense, the analogy is that MCH is a strictly worse version of bard. It was my "button" that I enjoyed playing and had fun with even though bard was superior to it.

I get it though. Critical thinking isn't many peoples strong suit.

Oh so you were making a complete tangent not relevant to the discussion, cool. We were talking about the balance of black mage and the fact that it contains buttons within its own kit which are sub optimal to press and dont contribute to blms playstyle so pressing them is objectively bad. Your comparison of mch being a "bad button" when compared to bard doesnt logically track as as bawked as SB machinist was, its buttons all contributed to its kit, and for better or worse it was mostly balanced by the end (first ultimate clears used mch). Saying picking MCH over brd in SB is equivalent to a BLM choosing to use fire 2 is such mental gymnastics im not sure how anyone was supposed to dissect your thinking. This is not even getting into flavour/taste arguments.

To simplify further:
SB MCH:
Viable, Different Playstyle, More optimal than BRD in certain non-meta comps, dismantles lower CD and more immediate usefulness made it better defensive utility than troub at times

Fire 2:
Objectively Terrible beyond a certain level, Actively trolling your party/limiting effectiveness to use.

[Roeshel]

My impression from this thread is that you guys aren't really black mages. You're all really Calculators masquerading as black mages.

Actually about that.

Mages, in general, are always associated with knowledge and knowing which of your spells deal the highest amount of damage is the first step you ought to take as a black mage. We want to destroy stuff after all.

The word itself originates from Greek magos, a word used for the Persian learned and priestly class.

[Roeshel]

I assume that if people are bad enough at video games, they have to cling to things like this to at least even things out a little.

Yeah no. Refusing to check if you are actually right is willfully being ignorant. Only those who are insecure decide to do that.

There is nothing wrong with being bad. I was bad as well when I picked up the blm role. But taking the time to check what I am doing wrong gave me the opportunity to learn how to cast four flares in succession. It's always awesome, I love it and I am ever looking to do it again when I play blm. It feels powerful because of the screen shaking. It's super satisfying. I also contribute with DPS by a lot instead of getting carried.