Stay Blm or give up and go Smn?

[Renryuu]

Hello, I've been wondering since I've been browsing the topics here and in other forums if I should stick to my Blm or just give up on it and go Smn? I originally swapped from Smn to Blm back around 2.2 or 2.3 since I had grown tired of the dots and preferred the more direct damage and feel of Blm. To this day I still greatly love my Blm and even like the concept of Enochian with Fire/Blizz 4 (though it seems it kicks Thunder and Flare out of single target). I do like the changes made to Smn and the new abilities, but Blm still has my heart, but with all the talk of Blm being useless because of movement and Smn being way better, it has me questioning.

I would greatly appreciate some honest answers to help me better understand and decide on if I stay with my beloved Blm or if I should suck it up and go back to Smn.

[Elky]

Why not both? They practically share gear aside from weapons and you can see what you prefer. My blm is 60 and my summoner is 56, I'm just going to play both.

[Jikillia]

I believe the "Player>Class" that I read somewhere is valid. Plus if you like more direct damage, BLM would be the go-to.

[pandabearcat]

It really depends on what you want to play. You can also level both and swap everything but the weapon. I haven't seen any talk about BLM being useless.

[Garash]

Flare is still usefull on single target. You can do, with a full mana pool, F4 > F4 > F1 > F4 > F4 > SwiftCast, Flare, Convert > F4

My opener looks like this
Ley lines > B3 > T1 > Sharpcast&R.Strikes > F3 > Enochian > F1 > F4 > F4 > F3(proc) > F4 > F4 > SwiftCast, Flare, Convert > F4 > B3

We indeed barely have time for thunder procs anymore though, they almost always fade.

[SovereignAegis]

BLM is strong at present, you may be unsatisfied with the 500 damage ruin 3 spam and summon only hitting 500 as well without being buffed. Cause at i179 that is what I do.

Yes the damage adds up, but it's like throwing 10,000wet rubber noodles at an enemy that adds up. But it isn't even that much more than what a BLM does when all summated.

Grass is always greener on the other side.

[Renryuu]

Hmm, well the reason I don't really consider playing both, isn't so much that I don't want to play both, but rather that I just end up focusing on one while the other sorta gets left behind and I end up feeling like I'm too far behind with one so I focus on mastering the one I had been gearing up and playing it well. I guess it comes from playing WoW where I had both a warlock and a mage, but gave up the warlock for the mage since I enjoyed it's mechanics more and loved the idea of having to learn to optimize damage output while minimizing movement and became quite adept at doing so within the raids of WoW. I'm still just not use to the idea of swapping jobs on the fly and don't know if I could ever get to a point where I actively played more than one job. In all jrpgs and rpgs I've played, I've always just picked one class/job and stuck with it unless I needed to level other classes/jobs for relevant abilities or skills (e.g. FF5 and it's job system).

[Kona_Nightwind]

I leveled both. I'd recommend doing the same. Ask yourself, which job do I enjoy most, then play that one. We don't know much as far as what job is better, but they seem very viable. I myself am having much more fun playing SMN. Since procs have taken a back seat in the BLM rotation, it's not that fun anymore.

[Edellis]

Its FFXIV, just level both and stick with what feels better.

[Jamez82]

On dummies BLM dps is still up there, on actual fights though we have taken a nose dive.

Just imagine if moving to dodge aoes or position or for any reason at all stopped a dragoons Blood of the Dragon ability. Pretty much how it feels.