Black Mage Raise Ability

[Neela]

No one can ever rationally say that summoners are offensive mages only. But black mages are, and therefore any utility they do get should reflect that.

+1

its not just about heal & res... lorewise summoners also got a huge kit of support skills or summons with support effects like reflect or reraise (f.e. carbuncle) - they are indeed used to white/light magic even if most of them arent based on a job system or whm cls in there own games. : o

[PrismaticDaybreak]

+1

its not just about heal & res... lorewise summoners also got a huge kit of support skills or summons with support effects like reflect or reraise (f.e. carbuncle) - they are indeed used to white/light magic even if most of them arent based on a job system or whm cls in there own games. : o

Huge is a fairly vast overstatement, there's a smattering of support summons is more accurate.

[Lambdafish]

Huge is a fairly vast overstatement, there's a smattering of support summons is more accurate.

"Summoners use special magic that allows them to call forth summoned monsters. Summons usually cost more MP than the average spell, but are much more powerful. In some games, summoners also have the ability to cast either Black Magic or White Magic as well as to summon, thus making them more versatile." - http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Summoner_(job)

As for support summons themselves, we have (from FFVI alone):

Carbuncle (reflect on party)
Kirin (regen on party)
Phantom (invisible on party)
Unicorn (removes many debuffs)
Golem (blocks attacks)
Zona Seeker (shell on party)
Seraph (heals party)
Fenrir (grant "image" status)
Lakshmi (restores HP)
Phoenix (revives players)

Which I think is a bit more than a "smattering" (These are just the support summons that buff the player, there are more still that debuff the enemy without dealing damage such as Siren, Catoblepas, Cait Sith etc.)

[PrismaticDaybreak]

"Summoners use special magic that allows them to call forth summoned monsters. Summons usually cost more MP than the average spell, but are much more powerful. In some games, summoners also have the ability to cast either Black Magic or White Magic as well as to summon, thus making them more versatile."
...Which I think is a bit more than a "smattering" (These are just the support summons that buff the player, there are more still that debuff the enemy without dealing damage such as Siren, Catoblepas, Cait Sith etc.)

For your bolded quote, once you examine the actual evidence of Summoners innately using White or Black Magic, again 3 games with to 9 or so without and let me direct your attention to the beginning of that sentence "In some games" which as I just told you and went through and examined above is 3. I didn't mention the debuff ones since the summons XIV SMN already has do have debuffs attached and again has no bearing on how skilled at White Magic and/or Raising they would be. If we want to actually go off of former in game mechanics, SMN wouldn't be skilled in the slightest at White Magic since their pre requisite sub class was Thaumaturge.

Interesting that you would qualify that list "From VI alone" which is a misleading statement once you compare the number of support summons only from that game to the amount of support summons in the other games, the pool is small and one game is hardly enough to justify Summoners being a support machine. Not to mention summoning anything was available to any character in VI as well as any type of magic.

[Ceallach]

Perhaps next time you won't cherry pick

I'm sorry, did you even read my list? I didn't even include FINAL FANTASY VI (thanks to Lambdafish for his post), and in FINAL FANTASY XI summoners could order Blood Pact: Ward abilities that were literally all support.

Perhaps next time you won't cherry pick and just admit you're flat-out wrong.

And on the historical implications of past job combinations, why does it even matter in the context of XIV?

Because the lore of the entire series is a huge part of how jobs work in XIV. Let's say we get the beastmaster as a new job for XIV, but it has absolutely nothing to do with animals or monsters. It's literally just a reskinned warrior with fluffy armor. No one would be happy with that because that's not really a beastmaster. But if the beastmaster had a pet of its own or could turn enemies against one another, that would be more appropriate (and that's what they did in XI). In fact, Tactics Advance had a nu mou-exclusive job called the morpher that would capture enemy monsters in order to temporarily become them in battle. I could see that being attributed to the beastmaster job, even though it isn't technically correct.

For the thread's topic, it would be wholly incorrect to give a revival spell to black mages because it goes against everything black mages are and have been in the entire series. XIV is essentially a love letter to all FINAL FANTASY fans and players, and giving black mages revival spells inherent to them would be much more like a slap in the face.

Interesting that you would qualify that list "From VI alone" which is a misleading statement once you compare the number of support summons only from that game to the amount of support summons in the other games, the pool is small and one game is hardly enough to justify Summoners being a support machine.

This is wholly incorrect. For all your so-called "research," you failed to see many things. In FINAL FANTASY XIII, an eidolon will automatically and always cast Arise if the summoner falls in battle if you're not using its Gestalt Mode. In FINAL FANTASY XII, espers had several healing and support magicks, including but not limited to Belias' Cura. Summoners in FINAL FANTASY XI had a great deal of support abilities. Guardian Forces in FINAL FANTASY VIII included Carbuncle (grants Reflect to the party) and Cerberus (grants Double and Triple to the party), not to mention Phoenix and the way GFs worked as a whole. In FINAL FANTASY IV, one of Rydia's eidolons is Asura, who always heals or buffs the party; she also has Sylph, who does wind damage to enemies and heals the party. In FINAL FANTASY IX, Eiko's Carbuncle buffs the party.

You want to talk about how summoners aren't related to white or black magic, yet nearly every summoner named or otherwise throughout the entire series has at least one support function. These facts and examples, in addition to posts already made, demonstrate that you simply do not know what you're talking about.

[Opus]

Maybe like a BLM-raised player would be in Walking Dead (DRK) status with 1 HP for 10s.

[AxiomPITCH]

Can I just chime in and say that if Black Mage receives a resurrection ability, I'll never touch the current caster jobs again.

And on the historical implications of past job combinations, why does it even matter in the context of XIV? The game is separate from all of the others. Instead of RDM and SMN getting more interesting and engaging mechanics, they just shoehorn support abilities into kits because of past lore. Then again I'm not sure if I should even be complaining about it, it's not like this game hasn't been raw unclean fanservice in every possible way since day 1 of 2.2.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Even if BLM had raise it still wouldnt have the utility that the party wanted. Maybe if it gave Dreadspikes or Ice/Fire spikes then it would be on the right track.

[mikanana]

I think the class is good the way it is.

[Phoenicia]

As a caster main I hate it when healers expect me to raise. Please do NOT plague the BLM with the same issue.

And why do people expect us to have a swift raise all the time? All 3 casters "should be" burning Swiftcast for their DPS rotations anyways. Here's why casters burn Swiftcast almost on CD:

On BLM, you need it for burst movement when out of procs and Triple Cast is on CD. It is also used to fit in spells during specific windows (Squeeze 5 spells within Trick Attack instead of 4 with a Swift Cast after a proc). And finally "save" enochian after a mistimed Fire I or movement mess up.

On SMN you use Swiftcast to throw a Ruin IV during Summon Bahamut (as you don't want to hard cast anything when he's out to get more shock waves). You might want to use it to double weave certain spells during DWT. And sometimes you want to use it for changing summons if you're into that sort of "optimization" though that is too situational.

RDM SHOULD be forcing instant Aeros and Thunders with Swiftcast to fish for procs and/or manipulate the B/W mana bars.

If you think that a caster would have its Swiftcast available at whim for when both healers burn theirs raising baddies you're either a) just wrong, b) running with a baddie caster, c) running with a red mage.

Not to mention the heavy toll it already takes on SMN and RDM's MP bars. Specially SMN. They don't even have Piety as a stat unlike healers do so they have ~5k less MAX MP that's just about 2 raises. A raise from SMN means they lose mobility because no MP to spend on Ruin II and even worse: Potency loss because No Ruin 3. And before you say it "sucks", it's is still 50% more potency than Ruin.

Since we mentioned Ruin 3, let's talk GCD weight. A SMN may have the most leeway here because Ruin is a low potency GCD (100) and most of their damage comes from DoTs and instant oGCDs. SMN however tries to squeeze as many Ruin III's outside of DWT and raise kills the MP that they use for that. 3600 MP for raise means 4 Ruin 3's get replace with Ruin, that's 200 potency loss along with the GCD spent on it raise. Assuming it's replacing a Ruin, 300 potency AT LEAST.

A RDM will always trade off a 300 potency AND 11 b/w mana on the bar for Verraise. Doing simple napkin math to find out exactly how much the mana is worth, a melee combo is 160 (80/80) mana of black and white. A melee combo does 1520 potency over 7.7 seconds (3 GCDs worth), 11/160 = 6.9%. 6.9% of 1520 = 104.5. So by trading Veraero/Verthunder for a raise you lose 404.5 potency.

BLMs have a flipping 504 potency per GCD window while doing Fire IV and you do NOT want to mess with that. The fight is already doing it for you when mechanics seem to favor screwing ranged DPS.

On the other hand, a healer's GCD is either healing (probably prevents a death in the first place) or on a 240/250 Potency damage spell. With more mana to spare on the raise mind you. Hell WHM can raise for free.

Also what if the caster dies? Who's gonna raise them? Are we going to go to the tank forums next and ask for Paladins to have raise? I mean THEY make more sense to have it than black mages. Cecile had a raise. FFXI's PLD could raise too even though they didn't have the MP for it during combat, but that's besides the point. I mean it's not like PLD needs any more utility. And when PLD does get raise, shouldn't we go and say PLD has TOO much utility and DRK should get raise too? Because it would make sense the dark(edge) lord can raise with necromancy (if it made sense for BLM, it should for DRK too).... I KNOW! Let's give EVERYONE raise!

Yet again I've had a group blaming the wipes on me for playing BLMs when both healers died to the same mechanic at the same time..... every time! If THAT can happen, everything can happen I guess.

But quite honestly, a "static" that requires their caster to be throwing raises will never make enrages in fights that matter. People already jump off and wipe when a DPS dies too early in Savage V3 and V4. Raise is a DPS loss to both to the caster and the brought-back party member functions at 25% throughput. They die again, 50%. The "extra security" of having another raise causes people to be more lax and die more.

Even if a BLM did get a raise spell, the BLM will refuse to use it during Astral Fire for obvious reasons and you end up waiting on them to switch to blizzard, by then the healer might have gotten their swift back or just hard cast a raise. And quite honestly, a good SMN won't raise during DWT or while Bahamut is up. And one of those is up about 25~30% of the fight.

Please stop requesting silly changes when we have more important things like how physical dps synergy is far better than magical ones because tanks also deal physical (even though PLD's burst is magical). If you're worried about not being invited as a BLM, THIS is a real issue because statics are dropping casters altogether and the ones that take them put a "preference" to be able to also play MCH or BRD. I already changed my "off-spec" job from tank to MCH/BRD because of it to get loot. A decision I wouldn't have made if I didn't enjoy playing them, but I still prefer if my off-spec was a different role than DPS. But I had to weigh my options and learning BRD/MCH helps me more than getting a quick queue solo to expert roulette.

Cheers!
~ Phoenicia ~