BLM Buffs Inc!

[Aikaal]

I'd never reallocate 2 Intellect for 2 Piety, that's a DPS lost. SE could add a really small amount of Piety in casting gear to fix that issue. Summoners sometimes have mana issues and BLMs won't say no to that piety like Healers don't say no to few accuracy when they can DPS.

[Vallhallix]

Summoners sometimes have mana issues

I don't see how. SMN spells dont hit mp as hard as the other casters do.

SMNS skills do not take up much mp at all. Even in heavy fights they should have a lot. The only time a SMN should ever run low on MP is if they're doing nothing but spamming ruin II or constantly having to rez people who keep dying as Rez is really the only mp heavy spell SMN has. Fester, the pet abilities etc require no mp at all. So really the main mp hogs during fights are the dots and all of them barely move the mp bar when casted. Keep in mind this is SMN and not BLM. A SMN should not be casting dots again right after they just applied them. Seeing as fester takes no mp to use, much of the smns mp loss from applying the dots the first time would have returned by the time he has to reapply them especially if contagion was used.

Even IF a SMN is having to rez people over and over they should still be able to get a large chunk of it back. Aetherflow's cd is not long at all. Aetherflow and a few energy drains instead of fester their bar should be full again or at 75% atleast. Ive had to rez people simultaneously during primals and still had enough mp. This was also while switching between ruin 1 & 2 and even using both at the same time to shoot two ruins at once.

Neither of the classes should have mana issues because the caster dps in this game are COMPLETELY OP.

You have BLM who can essentially sit in a spot spam heavy spells and get all his mp back by switching to umbra. Then you have SMN able to do 2000+ damage with an ability THREE TIMES that does not even require mp at all lol.

[Kenji1134]

They could just add piety to the job stats that go with the BLM crystal.
As a Highlander, I have THE lowest piety of any race... At 50 I have 239, so I would need an extra 12 from my job crystal to be set for any situation.

[Orophin]

Realistically all I really see happening is increased potency for Astral/Umbral forms. BLM is great when stationary but when it has to move that's when it has problems. They raised DRG and MNK's damage by 10% across the board, they probably has something similar planned for BLM. I don't think they're going to make any widespread changes until the level cap is raised.

[Maero]

I agree with many of the points and also would add that our lb's should deal more devastation. Look at what black mage's are and no reason why we should not.
I recall when using lb for the very first time (1 bar lb) and even a 2 bar lb and was rather disappointed about the damage, lol
Everyone else went into specifics i would of posted so no point in repeating them

[Kenji1134]

LB is a different topic.
IIRC, each LB has a certain potency, think caster lvl 3 is 4000 or 4500 per mob. BUT, the potency is determined entirely by the "average" WEAPON level of the group.

So, no, buffing LB's just because is not really a good topic for discussion... Though I would like to get rid of the massive flash at the end of the lvl 3 caster LB... The one that essentially blinds the party for 2 seconds and leads to wipes on Titan EX... Lets get rid of that.

As far as the "simplest/laziest" way to buff BLM. Um...
1. Make AF3's Fire potency bonus +100% instead of the current +80%. That will be an 11% buff to the entire fire cycle, maybe 6% to overall dps.
2. Add an extra effect to Thunder that adds 10% damage RECEIVED FROM CASTER. This would give us a reason to better maintain Thunder, give us a good ST dps boost without really touching AoE dps, and this "should" stack with Foe's.
3. A variation of 2, 15% damage bonus to the caster, does not stack with Foe's.

I would avoid adding any "Maim" like effects, where a buff is put on the caster that affects ALL outgoing damage. Though it would be a SUPER simple way to buff overall dps, it would also affect AoE dps, which would become grounds for either weakening that buff, OR just nerfing BLM aoe... Which nobody in their right mind would want.

[Grandpere]

Change to blm in my opinion will need to be a boost to our single stationnary dps (dummy target style) without AoE dps get any benefit from it. If they give something, i expect them to take back some other thing to balance everything. So I'm not so much excited with this annoncement.

What i would like:
- No gcd on Firestarter/thundercloud proc
- Cost of fire 1 spell reduced
- Boost time before Astral fire/Umbral ice buff fall down
- Not blm specific but would be nice; Finish your cast when target move behind you... on Keyboard and mouse its not so bad, but with controler (legacy mode) this is terrible!

Our dps is not THAT far behind so dont expect crazy stuff. This is clear that if SE give us stack of Firestarter for exemple, they will take it back a couple weeks after they see what ppl are able to achieve with that.

[Themis]

1) Firestarter should stack to 3.

If it wasn't for the randomness of getting a proc in the first place, this could be a thing that would be useful.

I don't typically end up wasting more than 1 Firestarter proc, so I don't know if I'd ever end up with 3. And you can't reliably build up and stock 3 Firestarters due to the random chance of it happening - I've gone a whole Fire cycle, several times, and not had a single proc.

Surecast should allow for certain spells to be cast while on the move for a short duration.

The problem with this is that we already have an ability that lets us do this - Swiftcast. That's exactly what that ability is designed to let you do. All this would be is a 2nd, albeit weaker due to having to go through cast time, version of Swiftcast and I don't see that happening.

Also, Surecast is far from useless in any part of the game. It let's you take a hit that would normally cancel your spell, without actually doing so. I've used it to finish of a mob (or mobs), and also to cast a Sleep whilst I sort myself out. It's a tool that has a place. Just because it isn't use in every facet of endgame doesn't mean it is useless.

Perhaps what is really needed, is more situations where Surecast has a bigger need/use. Or to be redesigned a new ability made in its place. What it doesn't need to be, is a 2nd Swiftcast (i.e. let you move whilst casting).

Finish your cast when target move behind you

This would be a nice thing that Surecast would let you do. It's not a very "sure cast" if it doesn't cast because of Line of Sight issues.

[saden]

The issue with this class is that it's inconsistent. It can be completely RNG as to what your DPS is and that's outside of crit-hit rate. Classes like Monk or Summoner can have consistently high DPS [depending on the mechanics of the fight] while BLM has to count on fire-starter and thunder-cloud procs for a larger percent of their DPS than should be RNG or luck based.

Not to mention those procs are on GCD. Also, they don't stack.

Honestly, I'm not sure letting them stack or taking them off GCD is going to fix much. I can go a whole minute where I get 5-6 fire-starters and a few thunderclouds, but the next minute I have nothing. I've gone the whole of turn 6 and gotten very few procs at all and then sometimes I get tons of them (and these are the attempts that go smoothly). I'd rather be consistent if anything...

[Kenji1134]

Well the "easy" way to address the RNG-ness of BLM is again... stacking mechanics.

Instead of a 40% chance and a 5% chance, have 2 internal stack counters, one for Firestarter and one for Thundercloud.

So every time you "successfully" cast Fire... meaning the cast goes off, doesnt have to land... Your FS Counter goes up by 1.
When your FS counter hits 2, you immediately get an FS proc... Yes this means we would "buff" FS to a 50% chance, sue me.

Similarly for TC, every time ANY mob takes damage from your Thunder dot, not the initial potency part, just the dot, you get a TC counter.
When the TC counter reaches 20, you get a TC proc.

There, no more RNG, very slight buff to dps.

Edit:
IDK, maybe its just me, but I wonder how things would go if SE tried moving away from RNG based design.
Would it be "bad" if we knew when procs would occur? We would end up treating them like dots...
A BLM rotation would be something like... *Start* B3-T2-F3-F1x2-(F3)-F1x2-(F3)-F1-|-B3-T2-F3-F1-(F3)-F1x2-(F3)-F1x2-(F3)-(TC)| *Back to Start*
...
Would that really be something bad? Now let us have 2 actual "stacks" of Firestarter, with the knowledge that IF we cast 4 Fires, we WILL have 2 Firestarter procs, and that will really help BLM's mobility issues.
We wont have Bard mobility, BUT we can control our stacks for movement, for concentrated bursting, or we can just fire them off as they become available.

Edit Again:
To parrot what Grandpere said, can we get Fire 1's cost reduced a little? Um.... I wanna say, without knowing the exact numbers, it would be nice if the cost of Fire 1 under AF3 as reduced by 22... So bring down the base MP cost at 50 to 308.
This should, I believe, allow someone to do the "current" 251 PIE rotation with 239 PIE, which is the lowest any lvl 50 BLM will have.