Blm - Issues I have seen with the class (4v4)

[Maddonious]

As a Blm main trying my best in pvp and getting better day by day but I have hit a wall. I am finally starting to realize why I never seen any other blms in the 4v4 that I have done and it is irritating me. I feel I have become a burden to each team with the current way we have to play in order to do any actual dps in the mode. I was hoping that 3.25 would help us a bit more but it turned out to be a major joke of a balance patch as everyone is aware. Here are some major points/complaints.

Gear - Out of all the classes we are the only dps that is REQUIRED to wear full vit accessories. We lose a lot of int as well as all our useful secondary stats like crit and spell speed. Without the vit we get interrupted constantly, not as much as before 3.22, but still way to much when the enemy team sees your a blm they wanna smash your face in knowing its your weakness.

Mobility - Out of all the "turret" classes such as bard/mch/smn the blm class doesn't have the option of decent dps while on the go. We are forced to stand still if we want any hope of good dps to be used with our main attacks while risking the full force of the enemy team beating on us. Scathe is not a viable option for dps due to its low potency with only a 20% chance that it becomes decent enough for something (double its damage). Unless we get a thunder/Fire 3 proc then we are just not doing anything at all to the enemy. Every single other ranged can burst more and dps more then a blm currently when it comes to mobility and overall dps at the end due to this.

Being stationary - While our classes main way of dpsing is long cast times I find that it is incredibly easy for enemies to lure your team away from you outside of your range very quickly and therefore having to run back up to the team. It is also a huge problem with LoS as people will worry more about negating blm dps rather then slowing melee dps and will just hop back and forth around walls only paying attention to your cast bars. While the arena had walls removed it is still an issue for us as a dps class. Being stationary also allows the enemies to do even more damage to blm knowing they wont move if they are trying desperately to dps with all them vit accessories. Either way we lose all our dps. Our shields are not strong enough with only 20% physical based on our life (another issue of having to stack vit on us to make it useful) and has a very long CD so we cant rely on it more then once in a long fight. If we did manage to take a few vit accessories off us for more dps our surecast and equilibrium can not be use enough to allow us to dps properly. Its either we get interrupted with chance at good dps or we never get interrupted with bad dps, pick your poison.

CC - I find our cc is broken or removed way to simply with DRs being up way to long to allow us to properly use CC. Healers remove any cc we do if they are good and it becomes a joke if blm should CC at all. CC the enemy and the healer will esuna it, cc the healer they use purify. Purify is on to short a CD to allow such a potent and viable CC breaker to be used. DR is 1 min long and this allows purify to be almost back up by that time its over. In most cases you have no way of knowing the DR is up. I find with purify healers dont have to really worry about nothing, they just break anything strong like first sleep or holmgang and laugh it off with no threat to them what so ever. If we truly want this feast to be about [b]skill and competition[b/] you need to increase the purify CD closer to what it was before it got lowered to 90s, make it so teams need to save them for their healer instead of using it w/e its up. Make breaking CC a teamwork thing, not just a healer/DR thing.
Smns feel the pain of purify just as badly as blm with all their dots being wiped away.

Dps - While the blm can be potent with burst damage with fire 4s I find that due to our casts being so slow that any damage we end up doing just gets healed right back up inbetween casts. Unless the whole team is bursting our dps just seems to get negated very quickly with half our dps going down the drain when we need to regen MP with ice taking us out of the fight with any good attacks for a long time. Unlike other classes that can burst it requires blms use fire 3>enochian>fire 4 with all that casting taking up 7 secs or more. That's not even taking into account if the enemy managed to move out of range or LoS you while the blm is building it up. Then we cant even keep up enochian with all the LoS going on and the slow cast of ice 4 in most cases and stuns/interrupts. Every other class in the game has the potential to get their dps buff to stay up while blms get shafted and have to wait 1 min for a potential burst again that may get negated. If blm somehow managed to get fire 4 set up just fine chances are we get 2 attacks and that's it cause if we get interrupted there goes our astal/umbral and we no longer have access to our fire 4. If they allowed fire 4 to build astral stacks in pvp this would help reduce our enochian falloff and losing our dps buff.

Basically the blm is to the ranged dps as what the DRK/SCH is to the other classes. Someone who doesn't have a proper place due to the current system or is considered the weaker class of the group.

I would like to hear what you guys think about the blm current situation in the 4v4 feast arena. Do you think they need a buff or they are fine as is and im just being a drama queen? One way or the other I know for a fact blm can use some help still in 4v4.

[Excalipoor]

I think the concept you have to accept is that you are a glass cannon/scary monster on the pvp field.

I die all the time. And a lot.

I get ganged up by 3+. It is inevitable.

The quicke I accepted that BLM is a true pawn on the chess board, the more awesome my gameplay became.

You see, I can sleep and bind groups of people for up to 30 seconds.

That's a lot.

As soon as I'm spent and they gank me, I slither back, and Fire4 cc someone's ass. They don't expect me to come back and bring pain. But I do--all the time.

You just need to use the system to your advantage, be fast, be sneaky, and accept mortality.

You never want to leave a BLM freecasting-----ever.

You will lose to a good one.,

[Excalipoor]

I'm surprised you think Scathe is so useless.

I use Sharpcast Scathe as a finisher a lot. If I use Raging Strikes I can get pretty bad ass hits off of it and kill runners with low hp.

I mean, Fire 4 is not a shitty spell.

If you use Eq, LL and RS, you can get in like 4khits. SC Fire 4 and your at 8k.

Thats not shitty burst damage to me.

BLM just gets a lotbof hate cuz it can sleep/bind and nuke----and shut a group down fast.

[Houston009]

Interrupt changes made Black Mage exceptionally good.

I wish I saved the screenshot, but i pulled off 175k damage, whilst CCing and in full vit.

[auron_seifer]

I'm sorry, but as a BLM main I can't agree with that, after the cast time interrupt changes BLM is in a great spot.

If you expect to stand and turret the whole match that's just not gonna happen, but you can influence the flow of the match and make a huge impact with CC followed by burst. You can almost single handedly shut down the enemy team.

BLM CC is arguably the best in the game, sleep the healer to burst someone down (bait purify first), sleep the tank that's harassing your healer, bind the melee that's about to kill one of your team mates.

Your focus shouldn't be burst, it should be control, especially in solo queue. But, even if we're talking about burst, a F4 buffed with RS is going to hurt someone and it will hurt a lot (hit them with Phantom Dart before for extra ouch points). If that player is already being focused by your team and you land a F4 on him he already has one foot in the grave.

Even with Enochian on cooldown, F1 spam to fish for F3 procs can net you so many kills, and ofc T3 procs hit like a truck. You have a lot of options.

In the end 4v4 BLM is all about knowing when to CC and when to stand and burst. BLM is really good at both which gives you a world of options, but knowing when to do what takes time and experience. It is not an easy job to play in 4v4.

[kisada]

OP is certainly welcome to their opinion, but the fact of the matter is that BLM is the most overpowered class in the game.

And it's these types of threads that the devs somehow prioritize and use to help model for future balance patches and changes. It's an oft-repeated theme but apparently not repeated enough, as the dev teams refuse to listen: the more disparity you create between jobs and the more adjustments you make for jobs that don't need them, the more imbalanced they get. And when strong players play imbalanced classes, it creates an even greater disparity on the battlefield where the top players completely outclass the middling and lower level players. And repeated instances of that are what will cause newer players to become frustrated, humiliated, and driven away from the game by their peers.

If the dev team is serious about trying to create a competitive atmosphere, they have to really stop and take a much deeper look and break down the dynamics of all that's going on. Listen to the players who have played thousands of games and you will have more insight. Otherwise, continuing on the current track is extremely unhealthy for the popularity of the game and puts this new mode at risk of dying out, the way wolves den died out.

[Koltik]

There is a very clear way to know if DR is up on sleep. There's a neat timer on the right hand side of your UI while in Feast. Look at it every time you sleep the healer, subtract 1 minute. When you're at that new number, you can sleep again.

[auron_seifer]

but the fact of the matter is that BLM is the most overpowered class in the game.

MCH says hi! If there is one OP job in pvp right now it has to be MCH.

I don't agree with OP, but I don't think BLM is the most OP job in the game either. It is incredibly strong when played right, but playing it right takes a lot of time and dedication. If you put that much time and dedication in any other job you will excel in pvp almost surely unless you're playing a severely underpowered job.

If you want to think of a OP job remember how SMN was before the nerf. A job that required all of 2 brain cells to kill absurd amounts of people. The average SMN was still a powerhouse back then, the average BLM right now is still meh. That's the difference in my opinion.

[Thorbot]

I think BLM is broken by design in pvp. You either two shot someone or you don't get any casts off. It's not fun for you if you can't cast anything and it's definitely not fun for someone to be killed in two casts out of nowhere.

[zuzu-bq]

BLM is a job of presence. You've constant damage but you're bound to turret mode to do so. When you're positioned the enemies have to be aware that if they get inside your are they will get Fire IV in their heads and sleeps too. The thing is that your allies have to work with this too. If they start chasing people that are running from you (the BLM) they'll make you powerless and eventually start losing damage output. At the same time, you as BLM must know how to change targets when someone flees instead of chasing back. Your base skill is a burst, changing targets oftenly is not bad.