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

[Tamaerl]

Ï see people saying 'go SMN' for prog, but is actually really interesting to prog as a BLM. Yes, you will lose a lot of damage by figuring out when to move, or where to apply your movement tools, drop Enochian sometimes, but that's okay - actual dps isn't very important before you comfortably hit enrage anyway. Besides, if you do change from the 'easy' casters to BLM after you get your clear, you basically have to semi re-prog again, because you'll still need to figure out all the BLM spots.

I'm really into the caster role, but sadly neither SMN or RDM are mechanically fun enough for me, so I ended up insisting on learning BLM and found out it was really fun and not - that - hard if you take in consideration the above points. I have huge expectations for PIC tho', and hopefully it won't disappoint, as ever since ShB, the two dpsers we got (DNC and RPR) are really regarded as well designed.

With BLM, the only points of dissatisfaction for me, right now are:

a) Thundercloud mechanic - it essentially became near obsolete after the Sharpcast improvements. You get many procs through your rotation but if you use any of them, you may mess the next T3 refresh. If Sharpcast instead would put the next T3 under the effects of Thundercloud, then we suddenly get an use for the organic Thundercloud procs.

b) Despair should be a Flare upgrade (both are the fire finisher and applicable both in ST or AoE) - it's the conundrum of Shoha / Shoha II right there.

c) Absolutely no reason for the Enochian clock not to be on 'pause' out of combat. Spamming Umbral Soul while you're running in non raid content is really not an interesting challenge for a player.

d) Give Sharpcast+Scathe a reason to be. Not sure what, but maybe a new mechanic for Dawntrail?

e) Ley Lines turns into Between the Lines. Apparently they did this QoL pass in many jobs' actions but forgot another bunch... maybe they ran out of developer budget? lol.

I can understand progging with a different caster job if you're not comfortable with BLM rotation, but for those who are used to the way BLM plays I don't think there's really a reason not to prog with BLM. If people out there are insisting that BLMs prog as SMN instead, it makes me wonder if they've simply had bad experiences with BLMs?

I can agree with the suggestion points, except D; I don't think scathe should have any association with sharpcast. I think it'd be better to just give scathe some kind of additional effect besides damage; maybe if scathe allowed the next spell to be instant cast, to make prolonged movement phases a little bit easier for BLM to handle especially at lower levels?