Black Mage - streamline the remaining spells

[Asdif_Laoeg]

Even with 600 Potency would Scathe do less Damage then Fire IV since it does not get the 80% Damage Boost from the Trait "Aspect Mastery III"

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Even with 600 Potency would Scathe do less Damage then Fire IV since it does not get the 80% Damage Boost from the Trait "Aspect Mastery III"

Fire IV is 300 potency, 80% of that is 240 potency (Astral Fire III), thats 540 potency.

600 is greater than 540. I have listed the Fire spell potencies in my diagram at Astral Fire III potencies (+80%), so there is no room for growth.

[Asdif_Laoeg]

Sorry, my bad. I did not check the Potency of Fire IV and had thought that you had postet the normal Potency of it.

[Voidmage]

Fire IV is 300 potency, 80% of that is 240 potency (Astral Fire III), thats 540 potency.

600 is greater than 540. I have listed the Fire spell potencies in my diagram at Astral Fire III potencies (+80%), so there is no room for growth.

I didn't crunch the math but wouldn't that still be a dps loss overall?
If it costs mana you loose out on flarestar.
If it doesn't cost mana you delay flarestar.

If it interacts with flarestar than it is straight up better than fire IV.
If it is stronger and costs no mana but is on a long cooldown then it's just another big hitter you save for the burst phase alignment like the 2 min meta.

Tbh I wouldn't change scathe in that direction but completely remove and reintroduce it with a completely different effect.
If 8.0 truly makes jobs more interesting again then I would like to see it more as an "effect" spell than a damage one.
Giving enemies the heavy status or bind (like freeze back in the past) or give them a status effect that makes them take more damage from for example ice spells or something else because I have long since held the believe that the ice phase itself could be way more interesting than being a pure "unwanted" thing to be into.

Either way I honestly see no way to make Scathe in it's current form any interesting.

[Carighan]

because I have long since held the believe that the ice phase itself could be way more interesting than being a pure "unwanted" thing to be into.

Oh I'd love that. It'd be kinda cool if each phase builds upon the other, without one being the bad one you spend as little in as possible. Like, it'd be cool if this relationship existed both ways? That for some reason, both being able to stay in Ice and in Fire would be cool, but mechanics more or less demand you swap eventually.

[Voidmage]

Oh I'd love that. It'd be kinda cool if each phase builds upon the other, without one being the bad one you spend as little in as possible. Like, it'd be cool if this relationship existed both ways? That for some reason, both being able to stay in Ice and in Fire would be cool, but mechanics more or less demand you swap eventually.

That would be awesome tbh.
As much as I love BLM, I always found it sad that almost an entire half of it's kit was basically "avoid as much as possible".

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Once again, no fixes to at very least (High) Fire/Blizzard II. Still 3s cast time, still awful potencies, Transpose clipping still better than using either of them for elemental swaps.

Yet they do adjust AOE numbers on Viper across the board somehow. Sigh.

[PyurBlue]

Let's be real here. Scathe, as it is, is an unused button. Black Mage has so many flexable movement options that needing to use it for movement means you've fucked up your resource allocation somewhere. It's 1 use case, an instant before the boss jumps, becomes untarget-able, is no longer relevant due to the changes to Dispair, Xeno, or an instant literally anything else.

The only thing that should be done to Scathe is it should be made a precursor to Xeno/Foul, so early BLM can step closer towards the endgame loop earlier.

For current content sure, but that's not what I was talking about. Scathe is the most convenient button for BLM to use when it can one shot things, ie unsynced. Yes you have triple/swift/Xeno too, but those aren't unlimited use and if there is anything with more than trivial HP to kill (like a boss) it might be better to hold them and use Scathe on under leveled mobs.

Scathe at this point is a convenience tool. If you're raiding you can freely remove it. But there is no reason to take it away when it has uses elsewhere.

You should never end up in a situation where you'd be pressing Scathe. You could remove it from your hotbar and go months of both high-end and casual content without ever noticing you took it off. It was useful and in fact necessary before movement options got mudflated, but now it no longer has a purpose.

Of course, this argument goes both ways: It would have a use if the various teleports and Triplecast got removed. But I get the feeling that most BLMs would far prefer to lose the (unnecessary) fallback Scathe over losing the (mainstay) Triplecast?

Why lose anything at all? If you don't need it you can remove it from your bars. I use Scathe quite often if I'm unsyncing content. Its removal would be felt without any doubt and it would be a loss.

[Voidmage]

Once again, no fixes to at very least (High) Fire/Blizzard II. Still 3s cast time, still awful potencies, Transpose clipping still better than using either of them for elemental swaps.

Yet they do adjust AOE numbers on Viper across the board somehow. Sigh.

They stopped caring for BLM since the rework, be it in pve or pvp and simply leave it where it is.

Given how they seemingly manage to get rid of even the tiniest bit of friction in job design and identity, I am honestly not sad if they don't touch it any further because next would probably be something like it regenerating mana without going into ice phase or something.
Flying under the radar is the only way for a job to be safe nowadays or at least for the corpse to be not violated any more by the job design team.