Why Black Mage Needs (a teensy bit of) Help

[Jonnycbad]

BLM also desperately needs som QoL adjustments. One more second on AF/UI duration, and roughly 800 more mana at cap. It's not fair that I have to fight the server tick rate as well as the content.

You'll get more mana from gear that has piety on it in future patches, I'm sure.

[Age_of_Oblivion]

I refuse to continue playing RDM out of spite at this point.

Same here. It just feels... dirty.

[EllieShadeflare]

So a friend I trust, with a parser, parsed out the damage for Black Mage and apparently yes, Black Mage hits harder with the old rotation.

Good job, YoshiP. You messed up your own favorite class.

Hell, it's not like the job NEEDS that much to fix!

Maybe give us a proper haste buff when we cast Blizzard IV, to make the additional Fire IVs worth our while.

Maybe eliminate the recast time for Thunder/Thunder II/Thunder III/Thunder IV when we get Thundercloud, so we can weave it like a true oGCD.

Maybe increase our potency back to 280 or even 300.

Literally do ANYTHING to emphasize our need for big booms without punishing us beyond our cast bars!

[Thela]

You'll get more mana from gear that has piety on it in future patches, I'm sure.

Since when does caster gear come with piety on it? Correct answer is never

But yes you know something went wrong in the design when the 3.x and even 2.x pending firestarter luck yields more dps than the 4.0 rotation in movement situations (which is every encounter not a dummy)

[Waliel]

I should add in an actual fight. On paper 4.0 should be better, more F4=more dps, however if you cannot fit in 6 F4 for each B4, which in an actual fight you can't, it's a dps loss.

I once did a 10min test of both rotations. 6xF4: 93 F4 casts, 4xF4: 87 F4 casts.

I refuse to continue playing RDM out of spite at this point.

I find RDM extremely boring. I'd rather put SCH on /follow and watch the fairy solo heal bore-rak.

[Sacerdos]

I think the simplest way to explain it, is that right now B4 is only optimal for extending one AF phase every ~90s to sync the foul clock with your UI phase. Once UI and Foul are in sync, B4 is a dps loss - you cast Foul in UI and your mana is capped to go back to AF without needing to B4.