Easy Black Mage improvements!!!

[Kenji1134]

Well Monks just got a duration and 2.36% net damage increase... So I do not see why it would be so unreasonable for BLM to get a buff duration increase to the same 15s?

Some argue that the reason Monks got the increase was that the buff is applied at the start of the gcd, so it is "effectively" reduced by the duration of 1 gcd... BLM would LOVE to have that problem. =P
BLM has the reverse problem. Buffs are applied at the end of the gcd/cast, and IF you fail to finish the cast before the buff falls off, you are screwed, we are all aware of this.

You know, back in the day Yoshida said that BLM was his main... I get the feeling he switched over to DRG for HW. =)

[Aphotic]

You know, back in the day Yoshida said that BLM was his main... I get the feeling he switched over to DRG for HW. =)

I do agree with you there, I believe he did, similar to many who also did this expansion. Still he could really show us some love, since he use to wear the black.

[StouterTaru]

Some argue that the reason Monks got the increase was that the buff is applied at the start of the gcd, so it is "effectively" reduced by the duration of 1 gcd... BLM would LOVE to have that problem. =P

Start of the GCD or end of it comes out the same either way. The reason is that monks take 9 GCD to build their buff and 3 to refresh it. BLM takes 1.4 GCD to build it and 1 GCD to refresh it.

[Hattorii]

Well Monks just got a duration and 2.36% net damage increase... So I do not see why it would be so unreasonable for BLM to get a buff duration increase to the same 15s?

Some argue that the reason Monks got the increase was that the buff is applied at the start of the gcd, so it is "effectively" reduced by the duration of 1 gcd... BLM would LOVE to have that problem. =P
BLM has the reverse problem. Buffs are applied at the end of the gcd/cast, and IF you fail to finish the cast before the buff falls off, you are screwed, we are all aware of this.

You know, back in the day Yoshida said that BLM was his main... I get the feeling he switched over to DRG for HW. =)

Alex, could you explain quantum physics in great detail? lol guess who?!

[Ferth]

You misunderstand the fix they applied to enochian. It applies to the ability itself, not the time increase from blizzard 4.

Before the fix if you used enochian while it was still up it would only refresh the duration to the next tier. So if you used enochian, refreshed the timer with blizzard to 25 then again with blizzard to 20 then again with blizzard to 15, then with enochian you'd be stuck at 10 seconds on enochian but a full minute in the recast.

Now in that same situation enochian will renew to 30 seconds whenever the actual ability is used, but when refreshed with blizzard 4 the duration reduces as expected. If every blizzard 4 refreshed it to 30 seconds blms would be nerfed pretty quick.

That being said, I would like to see fire iv activate firestarter, and freeze repurposed to be a strong single target ice attack with a cool down if we have a lot of time on enochian but no more mp for fire spells.

I agree that the nerf to flare was poorly thought out, especially when paired with all the buffs to aoe damage that summoner got. I think the real answer to blm's aoe is to drastically reduce the tp cost of aoe skills on other classes. Drg in certain situations can pump out a ridiculous amount of aoe damage they are just severely penalized afterward if they don't have time to recover. Same for
Monks. And their aoe abilities are not strong enough to warrant the restrictive cost of use.

I don't want them to change atherial manipulation, though I'd like to see the nerf to mana wall reverted, even if it just absorbed one hit it would be more useful than it is now.

I'd like to see lethargy be more useful, sleep also, but I think that would require a drastic shift in the development dynamic. Right now they clearly don't want to balance difficult content for debuffs. Until they do these abilities will largely be useless beyond open world content.

[Mindclaw]

1. As already mentioned, it's working as intended.
2. It would be too OP.
3. Should the timer be increased to 12 sec or more you could juggle the stacks with transpose, could help the class, could make it OP, not sure.
4. Can't have highest ranged single target AND aoe.
5. All classes have useless skills. And just because you can't use some of them doesn't mean nobody can, Atherial Manipulation is great utility, for example it allows you to ignore some aoe and just teleport to you group. And both shields absorb what they should (Manawall can save you ass in A1S).

[wicked-one]

Extend AF/UI to 12-14 seconds, nothing more needed.

Everything else suggestet gets back to OP

[Egnasya]

Extend AF/UI to 12-14 seconds, nothing more needed.

Far too complicated. AF/UI timers serve a purpose which they would partially lose if too long. Would need further adjustments.

Think easier: let Fire IV refresh current AF without applying stacks itself, thus Fire IV fully replaces Fire only during Enochian, as it should be. A change like that would be on the same level of acceptable as the most recent Quick Reload fix for MCH; a simple yet effective method that results in vastly smoother gameplay and makes bad RNG more bearable.

5. I would also like to see some modification of our other talents/spells. We rarely utilize or have need for most of our other spells. Sleep?! when and why to use it now, and if used, it has no effect on any or most 3.0 creatures. Apocatastasis, other than coil, why?! Lethergy and Atherial Manipulation??? What about surecast?! Oh and please tell me when as a lvl 60, have we used Freeze?? For the majority of these new 3.x fights Manawall/ Manaward doesn't do that great, and doesn't negate what it should!!! These talents/spells have minimal use, and they do define us as a class, but why pile our bars with in other words useless spells? We could repurpose them, similar to the repurpose of the spell tri disaster / tri bind that the SMN's received. Most other classes have a minimal of these "useless spells" but we have way too many.

Please don't wake up sleeping wolves, would you. Personally I'm kinda happy we have these commonly unused abilities. Why? Well look at classes that use 95% of their abilities... IMO it's not really fun to try and weave in even the last of them, keeping track of a bazillion timers and buffs and debuffs. BLM is still quite generous in that regard. MMOs like WoW or FFXIV should allow you to play your class blind for at least a few seconds so that you can actually pay attention to fight mechanics, yet this is not very well executed in FFXIV currently. No need to make it even worse.

BTW these abilities still have some purpose. Atherial Manipulation can be really handy if you look for situations in which you can use it to cut short multiple seconds of movement. And then there's still PvP; you might not play it but that doesn't mean others don't. Sleep, Freeze, Lethargy, Surecast, Apocatastasis, Manawall, Manaward, all have their place there. It's not just PvE group content out there.

[Shurrikhan]

Far too complicated. AF/UI timers serve a purpose which they would partially lose if too long. Would need further adjustments.

Think easier: let Fire IV refresh current AF without applying stacks itself, thus Fire IV fully replaces Fire only during Enochian, as it should be. A change like that would be on the same level of acceptable as the most recent Quick Reload fix for MCH; a simple yet effective method that results in vastly smoother gameplay and makes bad RNG more bearable.

Either that or the 12-14s AF/UI seem equally useful, and simple, to me. I also don't see UI or AF as losing their purpose if too long.

There is rarely a fight break so long that 2 extra seconds' AF/UI duration would have made any gameplay element irrelevant without having already been impossible to retain AF3/UI3 for (usually transformed instead to UI1). What would we do outside of AF/UI-generating abilities aside from F4, to which you've added AF generation? Scathe?

Either one should have a fairly similar effect, minus some chain-pull QoL adjustments for BLM. Fewer Fire I casts during Enochian Fire phase. With F4 refreshing AF, there'd be none. With 12-14 seconds of AF, there'd be one or none. Either way, that's a slight, slight dps bonus atop smoothing. If you don't want to be looking for your AF timer at all during F4 spam, then AF-reset-via-F4 seems great. If you would like to keep the element of maxing out how many F4s you can cast before incoming movement and/or would like a small QoL adjustment before level cap gameplay as well, then the other. Heck, because theoretical dps cap does seem to be SE's main concern in all this, you could have both, since the second wouldn't be anything but a QoL change...

[Greywolfamakir]

Far too complicated. AF/UI timers serve a purpose which they would partially lose if too long. Would need further adjustments.

Think easier: let Fire IV refresh current AF without applying stacks itself, thus Fire IV fully replaces Fire only during Enochian, as it should be. A change like that would be on the same level of acceptable as the most recent Quick Reload fix for MCH; a simple yet effective method that results in vastly smoother gameplay and makes bad RNG more bearable.

This post is not searching for "QoL" fixes...You are searching for BLM easy and powerful...You wanna spam Fire 4 non stop, or You wanna take 0 punish if You fail the rotation...
Currently every job has punish when You fail rotation, MNK - GL, DRG - BotD...etc but some BLM's players request for fakes"QoL" changes, when they are requesting for a easier and powerful BLM...
"Enochian should be passive..."
"Fire 4 should refresh Astral Fire..."
"Astral Fire duration should be 15 seconds..."
"Flare should be reverted to Pre-Heavensward..."
"Fire 4 cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds...."

You are not requesting QoL, you are asking for "make my job easy pls...and make it Overpower like hell..."