Why Black Mage is the best designed job and what can be learned from it

[Supersnow845]

I may be punished for saying this but it is Yoshi-P's main job. Devs will take extra care designing it as they have the producer to please with each iteration of it. Whereas the likes of SMN/SCH, pet jobs are not his cup of tea.. But still the fight for pet jobs still viable continues.

Imagine if yoshi P and the 14 team actually hired designers for the other jobs that were as passionate as the current design team obviously is for melees+BLM

[Rongway]

I see that as more of a problem with the Sync system because when I sync down on other jobs it still feels like I have an incomplete rotation. I would prefer if outside or ultimates or synced savage raids that player's don't loose abilities during the level up experience because it feels like 1 step forward 2 steps back when ever you get sent to a lower dungeon especially one that crosses an expac capstone. That a whole 'nother can of worms though.

It's not just a sync problem though. The habits you develop on BLM at lower levels cannot be transfered to higher levels.

Example 1: From Lv42 through Lv59 you spend a lot more time throwing instant Thunders and Fire IIIs than at any higher level because instant Thunder is better than the spammable Fire, and in the process of spamming Fire you get a lot more Firestarter procs than you do from Lv60 onward. At Lv60 the number of times you cast Thunder and Fire III per MP cycle drops drastically. This inconsistency is impossible to avoid without dropping tier IV spells to a much lower level, which is not necessarily desirable.

Example 2: From Lv1 through Lv71, you can cast Fire or Fire IV all the way down to 0 MP, then switch to ice. From Lv72 onward, this is bad practice and you should only cast Fire or Fire IV down to 800 MP (the final cast being at no less than 2400 MP) because you need to Despair at the end. This inconsistency is easier to fix by making Despair (and Flare) consume all MP but have a minimum cost of 0 MP, applying a "no more Desflares" debuff (which Flare can avoid on the first cast if you have an Umbral Heart, and which can be removed with Manafont or an Ether).


Of the problems that are specifically a problem due to the sync system, which involve good habits you've developed at higher levels not being transferable to lower levels, perhaps the most irritating is that Foul reverts to having a cast time if you sync below Xenoglossy level, which removes a weave slot from an ability that you may have grown accustomed to using specifically for its weave slot. This is easily fixed by just making Foul instant cast from the beginning.

[rawker]

Imagine if yoshi P and the 14 team actually hired designers for the other jobs that were as passionate as the current design team obviously is for melees+BLM

i think the current design team is capable of doing so. I mean, we're going for yet another expansion. They have 10 years worth of experience to fine tune the jobs. Some voices are just heard more than others.

[Supersnow845]

i think the current design team is capable of doing so. I mean, we're going for yet another expansion. They have 10 years worth of experience to fine tune the jobs. Some voices are just heard more than others.

That’s my problem I don’t think they can, support and casters not named BLM have been a mess since ShB, they really don’t seem like they know what they are doing anymore

[Lyth]

...

I think the starting place to test more creative stat design would be in side content like Field Operations and Deep Dungeons. They've already created niche stats like Haste and Elemental Bonus specifically for that content. It would be interesting to have stats that actually changed the way that a job is played, such as influencing specific recasts or altering resource generation. The potential drawback of this approach is that it takes some focus away from performance being a function of the actual gameplay and moves it towards researching the setup of your character. Those sorts of changes do tend to widen the performance gap between players.

The materia system probably needs an overhaul for any of this to work, though. When Parry and Accuracy were removed, they became Tenacity and Direct Hit respectively. That may have been for convenience, but I wonder if it's a limitation of the system as well. Perhaps it isn't simply an issue of 'merging' Skill Speed and Spell Speed, because doing so may require you to rename the 'Skill Speed' variable to 'Haste' and then manually replace all instances of Spell Speed with the new Haste variable on every piece of Caster gear.

I think it's important to still look at play rates because they give you insights into where the design problems are. You would think that levelling considerations would be less of an issue for players doing Savage content (if you're a caster main, you should aim to become competent at all the caster jobs given the gear overlap). However, BLM is still less represented amongst casters despite offering an significant dps advantage over its competition. You don't see this sort of balance discrepancy in any other subrole category, and it's still not enough to boost the population. Raise is certainly an issue to consider but you'd expect more people to swap back for the extra damage this late in the tier.

While BLM has its share of dedicated supporters who are happy with the job as it is, I don't think many people find the job all that fun or interesting to play. If Pictomancer offers anywhere near the same level of rDPS that BLM does, BLM player counts will tank. My prediction is that this will precipitate a rework in the middle of next expansion if things don't change.

Variety is good because it ensures that there's something for everyone. It's nice that BLM exists in its current form, but I wouldn't use it as inspiration for altering the design of other jobs.

[ThorneDynasty]

i think the current design team is capable of doing so. I mean, we're going for yet another expansion. They have 10 years worth of experience to fine tune the jobs. Some voices are just heard more than others.

I'm not so sure anymore, it seems like a forest for the trees kind of situation. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out the few devs responsible for the job design have long since the "MMO devs who actually play their own game!"-hype actually quit playing or only play their main now. Some of the more baffling and reductive reworks we've seen really only make sense if you assume the people making the calls are looking at them through an excel sheet. Like yes, they consistently get them technically working on balance level. Do they understand what makes them fun to play? More often that not, no, I don't think so.

[rawker]

I'm not so sure anymore, it seems like a forest for the trees kind of situation. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out the few devs responsible for the job design have long since the "MMO devs who actually play their own game!"-hype actually quit playing or only play their main now. Some of the more baffling and reductive reworks we've seen really only make sense if you assume the people making the calls are looking at them through an excel sheet. Like yes, they consistently get them technically working on balance level. Do they understand what makes them fun to play? More often that not, no, I don't think so.

I probably am coping at the moment but seeing how they've made PLD somewhat playable and likeable compared to HW lol-PLD, who knows??

[Supersnow845]

I probably am coping at the moment but seeing how they've made PLD somewhat playable and likeable compared to HW lol-PLD, who knows??

I don’t think taking 3 expansions to make PLD universally loved only to then change it to diet GNB 3 patches later shows anything besides the job designers having no idea what they are doing TBH

[Arohk]

If we ignore the horrible gameplay on lower levels and only count in 80+ , yes the job is good when you have enough spellspeed, with 2.5 seconds cast time it feels terrible

[ThorneDynasty]

I probably am coping at the moment but seeing how they've made PLD somewhat playable and likeable compared to HW lol-PLD, who knows??

PLD is exactly the kind of horrid blind butcher job I'm talking about. Careful and unique DoT management and phase dancing replaced with the usual mindless 60s cooldowns, because hey that works so neatly on paper. Why take care understanding what makes a rotation flow on pure gameplay experience level, when you can make the numbers easily balanced by making every job have a spammy burst at 60/120 second intervals with nothing happening in between except shorter fire-and-forget oGCDs.