Black Mage Job Spells are disappointing.

[Reitrenner]

Nothing you earn feels conducive to making you feel like a better version of the Thaumatage. Some of the spells are outright worthless or have such an absurd recast time that it's insulting to even have them on your cast bar at all. While the Barrier Spell might be pretty useful in a PVP situation, it has zero utility in a raid, where you're going to spend most of your time out of harm's way.


Freeze for example is completely useless once you get Deep Sleep. MAYBE if it didn't have a cast time. But even still, this spell has no purpose. There is no situation I can think of where casting sleep wouldn't give you superior results.

Of the five spells you earn as a Black Mage, only one of them has any direct effect on your rotation, which is frankly embarassing. These spells do nothing as far as I can see for your overall damage output, and for the most part are pretty God damn boring.

[Reitrenner]

Dragoon get all kinds of sweet jumps, and maneuvers that make his combat and rotation more flashy and fun.

Black Mage gets a spell that makes the tank take less magic damage. Is it useful? Maybe. I have not raided yet. But is it fun? No. It's hardly what I think of when I think of being a powerful wizard. The quest told me that being a Black Mage would "Allow me to top into the most destructive magics of the Aether" or whatever. But these skills are boring, useless, and just not in the spirit of this Job.

We should be casting Meteo, Ultima, Exit, Quake, all kinds of CRAZY AWESOME magic. Not "Convert." DULL.

Maybe I am being pessimistic? But I thought I was going to get spells that made me do CRAZY AWESOME stuff. Not this weird support crap that's better off in an actual support Job's hands.

All I have to say, is that I was really looking forward to playing a SWEET WIZARD. Disappointing doesn't even begin to describe this Job.

[Conkers]

But is it fun? No.

What is fun, is subjective, I rather like support spells, because to be blunt pure DPS (especially in PvE) is faceroll easy and gets dull because of it, having to weave in support ups the awareness (and the skillcap) required, which makes it more fun, at least for me.

[Inuakurei]

Ya the BLM skills suck. Even Freeze / Flare are next to useless.

[Zenaku]

Ya the BLM skills suck. Even Freeze / Flare are next to useless.

I feel you playing blm wrong if you don't know how to use flare. It's one of the big dps for blm. with Raging Strikes + good gear you can easy do 1.5+k dps and without it 1k+. Not sure why people think flare is useless if you think that then playing blm wrong.

[Selsix]

Ya the BLM skills suck. Even Freeze / Flare are next to useless.

I laughed really hard. If you think Flare is useless you're doing something wrong.

[Thundarian]

There is unavoidable damage in end game content where the barrier can, in theory, save your life if you make a mistake. Anything that makes your healer's job easier is great utility.

Some mobs are immune to sleep. Whether or not they are immune to sleep and bind I can't say, but bind definatly has its uses. Since when were nifty utility spells boring? I feel like you would be complaining if you got to end game and had none of the utility spells.

I agree that sometimes the spell choices can feel a bit boring, but if they start out giving you all the spells that you mentioned, your class would have literally nowhere to grow over the next 5 years.

[Reitrenner]

There is unavoidable ........... next 5 years.

I am not at end game yet, so I can't officially comment on the usefulness of any one Black Mage Job Spell. But the ones we're given are ultimately lackluster in the WOW COOL department. Being a BLACK Mage should equal RAW MAGICAL MIGHT. Not "You cast Barrier, so the next two auto attacks do 0 damage instead of 50." These spells SUCK. They might work in the numbers department, and that is perfectly fine, but they do nothing for me in the "This is a compelling and interesting Job" department. There is no reason we couldn't have gotten these spells at level 10, let alone them being the spells that define our entire JOB. NO ONE who has played a Final Fantasy game thinks "Barrier" and "Convert" when they think of Black Mage.

[NZ_Player]

D < 595 * 4.5 / (3.5 * 150 + 220) - 3.5 = 9.4%


just sayin...

[Dean86]

Personally i think the barriers durations are to short