Black Mage

[Llugen]

If the reward was legitimately amazing, though, it would be an interesting concept. Like imagine seriously BLM being able to do extremely high damage, maybe even close to double what it currently is, but you have to really think ahead and figure out how to minimize losses, and if you don't you are sorely in trouble.

Again I'm not really saying I agree with this, it's just an idea to toss around after all the other discussions we've had in these threads.

[Llugen]

The shots, they've been fired.

But seriously, if there are still things to discuss about the job, which I'm QUITE sure we can dig more up, then why would it ever be a good idea to stop talking about it...?

You can't even have Black Mage being too far ahead of Summoner...

I mean, you kinda can if it required high skill/planning to execute (and was also capable of being executed). This would put the "decision" under the category of "strength of the player on the class" rather than strength of the class. I think that's a little more meaningful than it is currently, even; consider how faceroll easy it is to play RDM. It took me literally no deliberation of "difficulty of the job" to decide to prog on it; ANYONE who has half a clue how the game works could excel at RDM. However I'm still not saying I'm sold on the idea of "high punishment high reward", yet, I'm just saying there's something to be discussed here.




As for the rest of your comment, I'm an avid fan of synergy, it's just that currently the "synergy" in this game is SUPER locked-in, and unnecessarily so.

Give RDM piercing down and SMN blunt down. It's straight up awful design that only DRG and only MNK have piercing and blunt respectively (and that now NO ONE benefits from blunt down save for MNK). The resistance down skills COULD make for a layer of strategy but they don't, purely because they are LOCKED into one single class (ranged can ONLY benefit from DRG because piercing, rather than being able to put it up themselves or have RDM do it, etc).

This is what makes the resistances down so stupid; the fact that they are so sparse, making for less potential "synergistic combinations", and why poor MNK is STILL on the outskirts after all this time. It doesn't need to be this way, we just can't seem to get this concept through to the developers (note how they tried to "nerf" disembowel to 5% instead of just removing it, or adding it to other jobs, which had absolutely no affect on its usage in the meta lol).


By the way, that is part of the reason that the whole "raw damage no utility" mentality BS has to go ASAP. Parties don't want "raw damage" jobs that require feeding, they want to be themselves buffed. If this isn't the no-brainerest of no-brainers, then I don't know what is.

[Remedi]

They actually nerfed hypercharge too, but I guess they didn't calculate correctly how the freedom of movements would impact the dps of ranged jobs plus ofc ranged complained about one beign better than the other, drg complained to no end and we are back to square one.

Myabe they could remove refresh from the rangeds and give it to casters. This would change something imho, wouldn't really fix BLM problems, but BLM problems are also in part a weakness in the role.

Then again nothing forbids BLM in having an hypergcharge like effect or bringing a magical weakness to the targets.
Fact is atm there are 2 kinds of support which are active and passive. Passive support can be considered selfish in a way if you think about it

[Llugen]

I've said this several times across many of the threads, I'm a big fan of Enhanced Enochian "radiating out" power (maybe 2% damage increase in Astral, 1% in Umbral) in a similar manner to BRD's songs. Literally nothing changes about BLM's playstyle/rotation/raw damage "presentation", but parties already inherently would be more interested in bringing it on that stipulation alone.


Talk about good "party utility", you don't even have to press a button! (save for once, when you turn it on at the start) The very fact that you have a BLM in your party means you're doing increased damage, and I think that fits the job well.




I see no reason for them to remove Refresh from the ranged role, it's kinda their thing, they just need to make Mana Shift significantly more meaningful. Make it cost no MP for the user and give 60% of MP back to one player, maybe.


Lastly, I'll repeat again that synergy is not bad, in fact I think it's a really good thing and desirable for your game's strategy. It's just that it's waaaayyyyy too limited right now. Seriously, it's straight up dumb that only DRG has piercing and only MNK has blunt while like a full 5 classes have slashing. (WAR NIN SAM.... ok well 3 classes have it and 5 can benefit from it, DRK PLD).


Parties should be able to be like: "Ok so if we bring MNK and SMN, then ifrit can give the MNK blunt down and the BRD can do his combo to apply piercing, or we could bring the RDM for piercing instead and the MNK can play SAM to give our PLD/DRK slashing, or our dancer can do both blunt AND slashing with its whip and then we can bring MNK DRG so the DRG can give piercing to the MCH, or we could go pure caster comp and do PLD/Rune Knight/SMN/BLM/RDM since Embolden buffs all damage now (plz) and BLM has 10% magic vuln..."


...the synergy list could go on and on. But it doesn't, and that's the dilemma (in my opinion). That's what truly makes the resistances down poorly designed; they're too limited. There will still be a "strongest one", there will still be a Most Effective Tactic Available, but it gives a hell of a lot more clarity and sense for doing things like MNK/SAM and shitting on your BRD or PLD/DRK/MNK/DRG and shitting on your tanks. META isn't everything, but no-brainers are pretty no-brainer-y ("without piercing (which ONLY COMES from DRG) your ranged is gonna have a bad time")

[Remedi]

TBF I don't really like enochian radiating power I was more thinking abou foul maybe apllying some dmg buff on the target, besides 2% dmg would really be too strong.

As for my idea of refresh, well it's more to split the supportive power of BRD/MCH, maybe they hold too much power in the support role, besides RDM had refresh in FFXI if I'm not mistaken anyway

[Llugen]

They're supposed to be "the support" DPS though, and THAT (by the way) is a perfect example of what you've been saying this whole time regarding power creepage.

Their damage was low at the start of 4.0 and they complained and complained, and after several buff rollouts, here they are OP asf again. The playerbase didn't see the value of Refresh/Tactician and battlevoice/hypercharge on classes that didn't blow through the roof, so they complained. But now, they've broken it.




Side note: This is why I'm still wary of suggesting they buff RDM single target damage but instead buff its party utility. There is no reason that Devotion+Radiant Shield should be outweighing Embolden; Embolden should just work with all damage and have less diminishing, or start from 20%, or any number of things.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

Side note: This is why I'm still wary of suggesting they buff RDM single target damage but instead buff its party utility instead.

Buffing RDMs single target just puts its damage on par with its utility. We do less than Bard and have less utility, aside from Verraise but there's already a very long discussion about that. One of the few avenues they could take would be increasing Emboldens damage since our other utility tools are just recovery, but like I said earlier we don't want Embolden to become sparkly buff form TA because then there's no reason to bring either other caster really. You could make the argument then NIN wouldn't be mandatory but as you said, parties like to be fed, so why not just bring both NIN+RDM and then the last two slots are probably some combination of BRD and another melee DPS.

Or more fun, they could give RDM a magic vuln debuff somewhere and remove the damage type restriction on Embolden (caster comps plz)

[Llugen]

Doesn't need to be 2% damage, but something. It's super simple and wouldn't change the playstyle of the class at all, wouldn't require additional button-presses as off-GCDs to interrupt hardcasting, etc etc. It doesn't make the job more "interesting" certainly, but more compelling, definitely. A buff on spell speed/skill speed wouldn't be unwelcome, although it would be less desired than a passive damage/crit/det/dh buff certainly


The biggest problem in my opinion isn't that BLM doesn't do enough damage (although this is indeed also most certainly a problem), the biggest problem is that parties explicitly do not want BLMs because they are liabilities/less useful. See also: "raw damage" is a myth.

[Remedi]

And that is not true because ppl wanted SAM for his dmg at the start of SB and we said it countless times.

And frankly blackcat did said that in the end that is the problem of BLM because you play your perfect game and still you are not rewarded for the effort.
It is a mayor flaw.

That there are other flaws that is true, but if the turret caster that should be rewarded with high dmg by using his tools correcly doesn't do said dmg it's a mayor flaw that needs to be addressed in some ways.

[Kacho_Nacho]

That there are other flaws that is true, but if the turret caster that should be rewarded with high dmg by using his tools correctly doesn't do said dmg it's a major flaw that needs to be addressed in some ways.

Exactly! There is a place for pure damage jobs in this game. Their "utility" should be reflected in the fact that they bring a lot more damage to the party than a utility based job does. It is self-evident, that unless Square Enix desires to change the identity of Black Mages, our delving into the black arts friends deserve a major damage boost across the board for every fire, ice, lightning, and unaspected spell. Samurai and Black Mages should do equal damage with perfect play while being the heads of the pack and being 10% to 15% higher than the next job in the rankings.