Can we just take a moment to talk about Black Mage?

[Dyvid]

The actual rotation feels good on Black Mage and I like the idea they have with the big powerful spell at the end of the chain, but does anyone else feel like they need to have the ley line buff a built in speed boost just like monk and greased lightning? Their casts are just so slow that it turns everything into trying to do a mini-management game with the triple cast and it would be way better to just have a passive 15% speed boost to spell casting and have something more useful in the triple cast slot.

It's like they wanted to do everything to keep it this clunky slow and painful caster in a game that is completely not built for that.

Nope, plays fine to me. If you want to go faster try RDM or SMN.

And honestly if someone mained BLM and made it work all the power to them. If it was completely unplayable they'd have changed it a long time ago and yeah the job probably isn't for me. Just this is not a job that works well with the content they got and have seen enough of the gameplay with blms in a group to know it doesn't work well.

I mean, you could try to tell the Director that since all he plays is BLM. Honestly, of all the caster, BLM is in the best spot in terms of job mechanics.

[Colt47]

Nope, plays fine to me. If you want to go faster try RDM or SMN.

I mean, you could try to tell the Director that since all he plays is BLM. Honestly, of all the caster, BLM is in the best spot in terms of job mechanics.

Probably would tell the Yoshi P. that the job has issues compared to the other casters but given the direction they are taking with handling timing windows they probably got an idea already. At least I'd hope they would.

[Dahlinea]

Probably would tell the Yoshi P. that the job has issues compared to the other casters but given the direction they are taking with handling timing windows they probably got an idea already. At least I'd hope they would.

Well, what you call 'issue' is actually a defining feature of the job. Stretegize your slow casts with your movement tools around the fight is the core mechanics of the job. Proposing buffs to speed up spell casts is trying to trivialize a good part of BLM core mechanics.

[Colt47]

Well, what you call 'issue' is actually a defining feature of the job. Stretegize your slow casts with your movement tools around the fight is the core mechanics of the job. Proposing buffs to speed up spell casts is trying to trivialize a good part of BLM core mechanics.

The only thing I see them doing to BLM is having Fire III grant three charges for Fire IV and Fire IV renews the Echolochian timer so the BLM has time to cast Despair / Flare and possibly get in a second Despair / Flare on rotation. It just makes the job a lot less problematic for spell speed issues.

Just about everything else about the job fits the current design they got in the game. The reason I said earlier it feels like the spells need more speed is because of the drop off that happens when correcting on fights. That is something that both RDM and SMN can do and BLM simply was never updated to handle. The only option a BLM has outside of a instant cast under current design would be to use Fire IV x3 and Fire 1 x1 to refresh to give time to use despair, but if the player has to move than it's going to drop off anyway before fire 1 goes off unless the player only had to make a small adjustment, or has enough spell speed to self correct, or has an instant cast up.

[Dahlinea]

The only thing I see them doing to BLM is having Fire III grant three charges for Fire IV and Fire IV renews the Echolochian timer so the BLM has time to cast Despair / Flare and possibly get in a second Despair / Flare on rotation. It just makes the job a lot less problematic for spell speed issues.

If they do that why BLM would require spell speed in the first place? They will never do that unless they decide to delete Spell Speed stat from the game for good.

Just about everything else about the job fits the current design they got in the game. The reason I said earlier it feels like the spells need more speed is because of the drop off that happens when correcting on fights. That is something that both RDM and SMN can do and BLM simply was never updated to handle. The only option a BLM has outside of a instant cast under current design would be to use Fire IV x3 and Fire 1 x1 to refresh to give time to use despair, but if the player has to move than it's going to drop off anyway before fire 1 goes off unless the player only had to make a small adjustment, or has enough spell speed to self correct, or has an instant cast up.

Again, this is not a job problem but a player problem. BLM requires you to know the fight beforehand to be optimal and don't fall to what you're describing here as the 'job issue'.
People already said that here. It's one of the few jobs that require thought and dedication to play. It's already enough to have SMN turning into a braindead mage in this expansion, leave BLM alone ffs.

[butchersblock]

man will spend 43 hours explaining why the job should be made even more idiot proof rather than take an hour or two to learn each savage fight

[xAFROx]

man will spend 43 hours explaining why the job should be made even more idiot proof rather than take an hour or two to learn each savage fight

Is that exact reason the first thing I told OP was their complaint is a 'you' problem, not the job. The fact they're flip-flopping on what they think the problem is seems suspect, though.

End of the day, BLM has a bar set for play, and if a player fails to perform, it has a consequence. Wish more jobs still had that.

[Renathras]

There already exists casters that "cast" quickly if that's what they're looking for. Don't make BLM like jobs that already exist, that's just ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as your extreme example.

I think I agree with everything in your post - and I do find it funny there there are people asking for change like this (did they not see how "corrupt-a-wish" changes like this to MNK and etc have turned out?) - though I will point out you're slightly wrong with this statement. RDM is a melee/caster hybrid, not a true caster. They frequently have to engage in melee. While many people like this, it takes away from them being a true caster that maintains range from the enemy. SMN also has this issue, though far less (Ifrit's charge), and has three long casts per minute (2x in Ifrit, 1x in Garuda). While that's not massively HUGE and it is really mobile otherwise, this still leads us to the result that BLM is the only true ranged caster in the game other than AST (WHM, SCH, and SGE all have to go melee range for AOE and SGE has to for Phlegma as well)

That said, I do agree overall that we need more unique Jobs, not less. How we've gotten so much homogenization is exactly this; "grass is always greener" requests to give Jobs "QoL" type improvements that other Jobs have.

BLM already lost some of its hardcaster identity with its big instant casts and Triple Cast (now with TWO charges!) as it is.

[Colt47]

man will spend 43 hours explaining why the job should be made even more idiot proof rather than take an hour or two to learn each savage fight

Hours must mean something different here since by that standard I spent about 720+ hours playing BLM over the last week, which would be physically impossible.

If you really wanted to know what my experience has been seeing BLMs in savage... okay where to start on this one.

1) BLM joins group and decides they want to do a parse run. Ends up dying so much to mechanics during phase 2 of P4S we had to exit and get another player.
2) Watched BLM basically either do a lot of damage or barely any damage in more tiers than I care to count (Either moving around so much they barely get casts off except by the cooldowns they have, or get timings perfect and do it all right)
3) The meme of the blm that is willing to stay in a somewhat life threatening position to make sure they get a cast off is funny because it happens a lot, usually with leylines, for a lot of reasons.

[xAFROx]

Hours must mean something different here since by that standard I spent about 720+ hours playing BLM over the last week, which would be physically impossible.

If you really wanted to know what my experience has been seeing BLMs in savage... okay where to start on this one.

1) BLM joins group and decides they want to do a parse run. Ends up dying so much to mechanics during phase 2 of P4S we had to exit and get another player.
2) Watched BLM basically either do a lot of damage or barely any damage in more tiers than I care to count (Either moving around so much they barely get casts off except by the cooldowns they have, or get timings perfect and do it all right)
3) The meme of the blm that is willing to stay in a somewhat life threatening position to make sure they get a cast off is funny because it happens a lot, usually with leylines, for a lot of reasons.

But again, that's a player issue, not a job issue.

Where in this argument points to the job being the problem? If it casted quickly, they'd still get hit for face tanking avoidable damage. It's called greed.