BLM skill suggestion for movement heavy dungeons

[KyteStones]

BLM here since 1.0 and I have to say I have not really had an issue with movement heavy fights. Ultimate is pretty easy when you know the adds are coming. just make sure your Astral Fire III is active, swiftcast Flare on the first set of adds, convert and switch between Blizzard III and Fire III since its a 1 second cast. Use Scathe while dodging lasers, (seems to crit for 500 quite often on my character).

As for Haukke HM, memorizing the floor AOE patterns is very simple. Know and anticipate when they will come, move to correct location and continue casting. That's a pretty easy fight and for a geared BLM who knows the AOE rotation, its fun and he goes down very fast.

Same thing goes for anything else really, if you're on the run, you can alternate between Fire III and Blizzard III. Sure you deal less damage while moving, point is you're still casting and staying on the DPS meters.

The BLM isn't just a "stand ancd cast" class. There are numerous mechanics at your disposal to prevent you losing full DPS in an instance.

Did I mention manawall for Titan HM/EX punches? Don't need to move for 2 hits. Cast again when the CD timer is up and its no problem

I could go on and on about what you can do but if you wanna play the BLM, you gotta figure the character out and play it to your liking and whats easiest for you, and most beneficial for the team.

[Odett]

I've never had a problem with this. Part of being a successful BLM is anticipating certain AoEs and planning ahead. Even in fights like Ultima, I'm constantly top or 2nd highest DPS. As you repeat fights, you tend to notice where to position yourself best in order to avoid AoEs and never move a step more than you have to.

[SeraviEdalborez]

Get practice moving before the cast bar finishes. Casters think their feet have to be rooted to the ground forever; they don't. The issue of movement is only a problem for non-stop or very rapid movement (like say, Titan EX double plumes). In most other cases you only knock off .5 to 1 second of dodging from your casting routine.

Anyone saying BLM is the "worst" DPS to bring to any content is either a terrible BLM themselves or has only ever played with subpar BLMs.

[NeoAmon]

Hitome covered a good portion and there is little more to add.

I will just post this here from 5 days ago:

http://imgur.com/wHy1Qdu

^ Was not even trying, just a random one shot pug. Heck, I was tanking one of the adds, cause you know Tanks sometimes like to share the pain.

[Synapse]

They should fix the interrupt BS when mob run away from front of you.

That is just BS.

[Woggers]

Yeah as stated before BLM needs to know the phases for the fights to be able to deal the most amount of damage. The only fight I have seen so far that I'm continually being on the bottom is Titan EX. Just actually started fighting this as well so it could be down to lack of practice. Every other fight I'm usually 1-2 in damage dealt. My suggestion, take time to study the fight. Know when to use manaward/wall. Use AM to get to a safe area quickly without having to run. AM is a very useful skill if you know when you use it. All in all I think BLM is set up great. Just learn the fights and learn how and when to use your CDs better.

[Woggers]

They should fix the interrupt BS when mob run away from front of you.

That is just BS.

Learn to Pivot its your friend lol...
I.e. turn camera and your characters body so front is always facing mob. This works even if the positioning of the mob starts north of you and travels south. Keep it in your LoS and you'll never be interrupted.

[NyneAlexander]

Get rid of the ether manipulation skill (have not seen a single BLM using it since the Game is out) and instead, give the BLM a cast friendly skill for movement heavy fights.

/ac "Aether Manipulation" <mo>

This is a mouseover macro for AM. I use it all the time. I try and convince other BLMs to use it. Not only is it an awesome move, but in addition to helping you maintain good dps, it makes you look pretty bad a** when you use it mid-fight all the time.

Just cause players don't use all the tools they have available doesn't mean the tools are bad.


edit: after reading through this, I was thinking in my head about instances where i've used AE. Just gonna list a few in the last week alone:

-Turn 2. My static DOES NOT use the popular enrage method. Instead, we pass the rot along 5 healers and rpds, me being the 5th. When its time to go from #5 to #1, I use AE to cover that distance quickly.

-Titan EX. I was out of position on the first set of row bombs that dropped. After dodging landslide, I popped AE to slide to the right position as other team members were moving to a safe location. Granted, I shouldn't have been out of position to begin with, but AE helped me fix my own mistake.

-Garuda HM. To maximize my casts, I stayed put while the pt started to rotate with garuda and the feathers during the tornado phase. I used AE to catch up to the pt (and threw a fighterstarter proc down as soon as I ended the teleport. /flex)

-Wandering Palace. Used AE to get out of goobue sneeze.

In every instance, you could argue that AE wasn't necessary. And it isn't. But you could make the same argument that sprint isn't necessary for things like getting out of plumes. But while something isn't totally necessary, sometimes using it sure does help.

[Arkghyom]

BLMs are just fine. They just need more iconic AoEs! (Burst, Flood, Quake, Tornado, Ultima)

[Maye]

Let me talk about the pros and cons of blackmage right now, since 2.1 changed them quite a bit.

PROS

1. Excellent AOE Damage.

I don't think anyone will try to argue this point. In some situations (4 or 5 mobs with raging strikes/contagion dots) summoner MIGHT be able to net more aoe damage, but the fact of the matter is that most aoe encounters right now end rather quickly, making BLM's burst much more desirable.

Current Endgame Examples: Turn 4 Spiders(phases 1 and 4), Garuda extreme plume phases

2. DPS is very high over one fire phase.

This makes meeting specific DPS checks very easy so long as the BLM is in fire phase and has full mp. You can maximize DPS over upwards of 20-25 seconds by just using Fire I and Fire III and ending in swiftcast flare at the "end" of the DPS check. Dragoon is probably the next best class at hitting these DPS benchmarks.

Current Endgame Examples: Turn 5 Conflags(~15-20 seconds for long conflags, ~8-10 seconds for short conflags), Extreme Titan Gaols(save your swiftcast for the upheaval knockback and/or manawall so you dont have to move out of the landslide)

3. No expendable resource.

BLM damage comes in on and off phases, but a BLM doesn't run out of mana or tp the same way a Summoner/Monk/Dragoon/Bard might. In general with proper Aetherflow/Invigorate management TP and MP should not be a huge issue, it can still arise. In addition these classes often rely on a BLM to output much of the AOE damage so as to conserve on TP and MP in these situations.

4. Simple/Durable

Aside from strategically placing your fire phases to match with DPS checks, BLM is very easy to auto pilot rotations. This frees up your attention to pay more mind to mechanics etc. while still achieving your optimal dps. In addition, BLM is actually quite durable(contrary to the popular opinion/mage archetype) -- Mana Wall and Mana Ward are very strong defensive cooldowns that can be used to pick up healer slack on unavoidable damage.

I've set this as a con because while it isn't too important to "farm" content it can be a big winner on "progression" content.

CONS

1. Target dummy single target damage is actually rather low/RNG based.

In a fight with no mechanics or AOE phase, BLM will inevitably parse just above bards(possibly just below bards if Disembowel from a dragoon is considered). However BLM DPS is still respectable and plenty sufficient to complete all of the content with 4 BLMs (I can't say I actually have done it, but in the current content I would not advise ever stacking BLM. 1 BLM can dish out all of the AOE damage necessary, and help meet the short term DPS checks sufficiently.

2. Hurt more by moving than other classes.

Pretty self explanatory, other classes can attack while moving or have a larger amount of their DPS allocated to DOTs. Occasionally RNG will favor you and you'll have a proc to use while moving or you can plan your use of swiftcast around certain movements. BLM does have some abilities to allow them to stay in the same place while other classes need to move (mostly mana wall, arguably aetherial manipulation).

3. Utility provided is mostly useless right now.

I don't want to say BLM is lacking in utility, because we do have two AOE binds, an AOE sleep, a (fire/lightning/ice)resistance buff, a slow+heavy(Lethargy), and a large heavy(Blizzard I). In current endgame content MOST of these are useless. The main exception being blizzard I + lethargy being very powerful against Dreadknights in Turn 5. In general most enemies at endgame are immune to slepe and bind. And there are no significant encounters that currently deal lightning/ice damage. The way resistance works is also very peculiar, I've heard of groups wiping to Fireballs in T5 because the BLM Apocatastasis an ally and the ally "resisted" the fireball, causing the other 3 people in the stack to take 3 stack damage instead of 4 stack.



At the moment I think BLM is actually a fairly strong DPS class as a whole, but it doesn't really fill the BLM archetype people expected it to fill, and certainly isn't the parse topper it was in 2.0 (minor nerfs while other classes received major buffs, aside from summoner which is just getting parsed more correctly now)

While I think some nerfing was definitely in order(especially in regards to blizzard 3 > flare > flare > repeat), I do feel that the BLM class became significantly less interesting without the nuances that were removed with patch 2.1. I don't think there are presently any balance issues with the class, although I do feel as if I've lost interest in it out of boredom.

EDIT: as an aside, while balanced, I think BLM as a class feels like it should be a "raw damage dealer" but it has a lot of little perks and would be very imbalanced if they did the damage of Monks/Summoners/Dragoons in the form that they are now and would need some major tweaking...