Black Mage

[Lina_Slayer]

The buff on ST is not confirmed, which probably means a nerf on akh morn/deathflare if they want consider buffing ST dmg to compensate

edit: We should not excludea 80 potency buff to F4, it's something they haven't done often but they did buff R3 from 120 to 200 with 3.2 so it's not something to exclude (albeit I'm not counting on it)

The problem is that all their actions and statements till now points to they viewing the class as having a mobility problem and just a small dps problem (which we know is bull), so it really feels much more likely that they will give a small potency increase to F4.

[Remedi]

@Harold: just a precedent nothing more I too think it's very unlikely but they did once so why not? And since they don't want to give BLM raid buffs then why not going for broken dmg?

@Lina: I'd say that a part of the community is more at fault of this since there have been many ppl claiming that what's really getting BLM out of raids is their mobility, I mean I was starting to feel that it was just my imagination that you could actually work with the tools you have to offset much of the mobility in the game considering how ppl kept saying it was the other way around

[Altera]

Has all BLMs pretty much given up like myself since this thread used to be the most active, now it has become pretty dead.

I am just curious now with only Fire4 getting a potency buff. Is it now worth using BLizzard4 just to get the Umbral Hearts at all or just go: B3 - T3 - Foul - F3, leaving out the time to cast B4 for more Astral Fire uptime etc.
Or does the Umbral Hearts' lower MP on first 3 F4 allow more Astral uptime?

I am pretty disappointed with BLM changes as mobility issues is not something I was struggling with as careful planning on saving proc and clever use of leylines Betweenthelines and AM was already good, and ofc triplecast.

[NovaUltimatum]

I'm curious to see how much the reduced Transpose cooldown will do for the AoE rotation, now that we can spam Flares a bit quicker.

As for the Fire4 buff, I think accounting for Astral Fire 3 the effective buff is about +34? Not sure on the exact number. I'm not going to dismiss BLM out of meta raiding just yet until we see what people can do with it. We also need to see how much AoE there is in the new raids.

[HaroldSaxon]

I'm not going to dismiss BLM out of meta raiding just yet until we see what people can do with it.

Don't waste your time. It won't be meta.

[Elix_Moarbase]

Don't waste your time. It won't be meta.

I really don't think people understand that we already did the calculations to know that nothing short of 300-320 would put BLM in meta.

But, 280? That's just undoing the nerf. It's not even a buff.

[NovaUltimatum]

I really don't think people understand that we already did the calculations to know that nothing short of 300-320 would put BLM in meta.

But, 280? That's just undoing the nerf. It's not even a buff.

However we still don't know how the new raids are designed yet. For all we know, we could be getting all sorts of forced mechanics insisting on magic or AoE damage.

[Elix_Moarbase]

However we still don't know how the new raids are designed yet. For all we know, we could be getting all sorts of forced mechanics insisting on magic or AoE damage.

No. That's not true. We know that one part of the raid is going to be aoe centric. It's most likely going to be one of the lower tiers. Therefore, it's not going to make BLM or SMN meta. It's going to make SMN niche, and BLM will remain the same.

[Ceallach]

Between the changes to Firestarter, Thundercloud, and Transpose, black mages should basically never lose Enochian ever and have an easier time staying in rotation. Aetherial Manipulation, at least in my opinion, was supposed to be the main dodging move all along, so the new ten-second recast is great. Fire IV's change is welcome, even if it's not as much as people hoped for.

[Lelila38]

Between the changes to Firestarter, Thundercloud, and Transpose, black mages should basically never lose Enochian ever and have an easier time staying in rotation. Aetherial Manipulation, at least in my opinion, was supposed to be the main dodging move all along, so the new ten-second recast is great. Fire IV's change is welcome, even if it's not as much as people hoped for.

Not saying the changes aren't welcome. Just, they don't address the core issue Blm has been having for a long while. That it's simply more beneficial to the party to bring something else.