Latest and Greatest Information on Black Mage

[EzekielLuminous]

I've heard BLM are getting some kind of buff, despite the Thunderstorm proc's. If anyone knows anything could you point me in the direction of the source? Thanks!

[Cabalabob]

hopefully an adjustment so their AoE will work better with enochain

[EzekielLuminous]

I'm not caring too much on the AOE department, but a little mobility would be nice. Something little forgiving if you get stunned or have to move during a boss fight, nothing too drastic though.

[seorin]

BLM single target numbers are fine. They mostly need buffs to AoE and fun. Yeah, I know Enochian isn't that bad, but I did enjoy the 2.x gameplay more.

[Kenji1134]

BLM is fine until you have to move at the wrong time.
The moment a movement or target loss causes you to lose a buff refreshing cast, you go from "executing a high damage rotation" to "try to salvage this mess of buff timers we call a class".
Let me provide an example.

I am 181 on my BLM, Hive weapon, and did a run of Fractal today for my expert.

I did 1050 dps on Curator, where I was targeted for only 1 aoe and 1 tile, but I positioned myself so the tile was easily avoided. Pretty close to a dummy fight with me oneshotting the adds / F4.

I did about 940 dps on Minotaur because his charges broke 2 of my F4's. Aside from that minimal movement, I used FS and TC to reposition myself if I would be in range of the 360 cleave.

And on Phantom Ray... 477 dps.
Four Hundred Seventy Seven... That. Is. Pathetic.
So the question becomes why did I do literally half as much dps on Ray as I did on Minotaur?
Simple, every single time he did his aoe which divides the room in quarters, it was aimed such that I was at the center of a slice. Every. Single. Time... I counted...
I initially started close to him to minimize the amount of movement I would need for those cones... His regular melee aoe interrupted an F4. (wtf) I moved slightly out of aoe range, cone made me break F1 near the middle, had to Swift it, thats okay. Next cone, right smack dab at the start of the first B4 refresh, no Swift, no Enochian for 30s, FAIL.
Next cone finishing up the UI rotation to prepare for Enochian, used a TC proc to move through the cone. Next, F1 again, already used Swift to get off B4 due to a delayed mana tick during the transition. Had to hard cast F3 to get the last 2 F4's in. Next, AGAIN just before the B4 refresh, not enough time on UI to finish B4, not enough time on Enochian to refresh UI, had to switch into the old rotation after moving out of the cone AND the ground aoes.

And that my friends is the state of BLM.
On a dummy you are great. With knowledge of the fight and using procs to pre-position, you are mostly fine. If the game decides to plop an aoe on your head when you NEED to refresh UI, AF, or Enochian, and you do not have Swiftcast up... GG have fun recovering.
If you lose AF during Enochian, you typically have to use F3 to get back into AF3, otherwise you are out ~half your potency. If you lose UI when you need to (successfully) B4, you are screwed. If your target dies before the cast finished (not applicable to Phantom Ray but still), you are often screwed. The ONLY saving grace that a BLM has in those situations is Swiftcast, which you get to use once, ONCE per complete set. (~2.5 Enochian cycles allowing for a natural Enochian refresh).

PS. Someone may recall that I had personally done out the calculations to show that the new Enochian rotation is only about 15-17% more potency/sec than the 2.X rotation, so losing Enochian should not be THAT much of a dps loss.
Here is the problem with that. 2 of the buffs in the Enochian rotation are also required for the 2.X rotation.
When you "fail" the Enochian rotation, it is typically because you lost AF, UI, or Enochian itself. When you lose Enochian itself, your MP costs no longer match up and you can maybe squeeze out 2 F1's before having to switch to UI for mana, that is a dps loss. If you lose UI then I hope you are at full MP so you can at least go into the 2.X rotation of F3+4xF1, or 3xF1, dont recall. When you lose AF, then you can "kinda" salvage things by using F3, assuming you have enough time on Enochian to make it worthwhile. Otherwise you may be better off hard casting B3-B4-F3 to resume the rotation and cut your losses.

Basically what it comes down to is that this feels like unequal punishment.
I do not think any dps, besides maybe monk, is AS shafted as BLM when mechanics cause them to lose a rotation critical buff... Though TBH given how few Monks I see in experts and Savage, at least on Cactuar, they may in fact be even more punished by endgame mechanics than BLM.

[seorin]

That's why it's not fun for me. Firestarter, Thundercloud, and Swiftcast+Flare are fun to press because you deal good damage with instant feedback - a big, satisfying boom. Enochian is not fun to press. There's no feedback at all; it's just a buff. However, it feels awful when it falls off, making Enochian negative fun. Yet we often skip our most fun buttons for the sake of keeping this boring, fun sucking buff active because it's key to our rotation. Instead of feeling rewarded for doing well, we feel punished for doing poorly (or simply being unlucky).

Give F4 a bigger, louder boom and make it instant cast. Then it will be extremely fun to press. Give it a longer cooldown and balance BLM DPS around the change so we use more F1, Firestarter, and Thundercloud. With less overall DPS coming from F4, losing Enochian woule be less punishing, which would help swing our rotation towards fun and rewarding instead of unfun and punishing.

It'll never happen, but I can dream, right?

[Thorsparkle]

Anyway, let's not debate once again.

Is there an official source somewhere about changes coming to BLM ?
And what changes if so ?

[seorin]

There's been no new information. They're holding everything for three major info dumps, the first of which is during the 14 hour anniversary stream. Look for updates then.

[wicked-one]

And that my friends is the state of BLM.
On a dummy you are great. With knowledge of the fight and using procs to pre-position, you are mostly fine.

So... where is the news...

We were always the one to know the fight beforehand, and even with the Endboss on the other Expert Dungeon (don´t know the name, but the anoying snake charging around between tornadoes) i still outdps every teammate i ever got assigned with...

BLM got with 3.0 just the progression like 2.0... simple to play, hard to master...

[OmegaStrongtan]

wtb: QoL changes.