Black Mage

[Lelila38]

The thing is though, SMN and MCH didn't want more damage, they just wanted their job to be less clunky. SMN looks better, but putting 1% on Hypercharge is... I dunno what they were thinking.

All we can ask for is more dmg though, SE decided that's what defines our role. Blm is actually not that clunky with enough spell speed, but our identity is raw damage, which we don't bring anymore.
We either need a buff or some synergy with the other classes, a magic buff would be nice, since everything that ups magical dps was pretty much removed.

[Jukebox12]

Kill it fire not that cheap verfire or ruin

[nugglets]

I'm not going to quote that huge wall of text above, but here's the thing: The "top 1%" or whatever you want to call those who do make their raid data publicly available are typically the ones who have maximized the potential of a job. You can agree with that, yes?

So if the maximum potential of all jobs shows your favorite job to be completely unfavorable compared to nearly(literally?) every other option, why shouldn't that bother you? As someone who is admittedly not a top 1% player, it still sucks to know every time I go into savage that I could be helping the group more by playing something else that I don't like. And as someone who is pretty damned hyped about a (hopefully) truly punishing challenge in Unending Coil this is even more relevant because a) finding a group who will even take a BLM is going to be difficult at best; and b) the entire time myself and my group are going to be thinking about how we would probably be progressing faster if I were playing something else.

No one is saying BLM is totally garbage and anyone who plays it at any level is a baddy and needs to feel bad. What we're saying is that there's no reason *not* to improve it's standing in the highest-tier of play, when things which are already favorable are being propped up further. And it appears that SE only listens when people complain, so if we don't say something, nothing will change. So it's time to say something. =)

[BlackcatChen]

People have been complaining about this exact same issue since 3.3, it's just that people have kind of... accepted it's imbalanced as hell by now. And that MNK players were the most vocal at the time. Remember the whole "delete mnk" bullshit that people were spouting during that time? It was this exact same issue, BLM/SMN/MNK were way behind, despite having the highest personal damage. Casters weren't complaining as much because surely the expansion would fix this?! The fanfest announcement was even directly announcing MNK was getting a raid buff (which would then become Brotherhood), and we thought BLM and SMN would be included here. This couldn't go on for much longer, right? This double ranged comp has been going on for years now because of the buffs received to MCH in 3.2 and BRD in 3.3. Because BRD/MCH players early in 3.x's lifespan were complaining a lot from doing low personal damage by design. By the end of 3.4 BRD/MCH were doing almost BLM numbers, while having even greater raid buffs than they have now. The reason you didn't hear much about it in 4.0 is because the BRD/MCH jobs got fairly substantial reworks, as well as Machinist getting slightly reworked through multiple patches. People had to relearn their jobs. There is a very obvious reason more speed kill groups use DRG/NIN/BRD/MCH as their comp, with the fourth spot rarely having a ranged replaced by a SMN or MNK in 4.05. It's that stacking raid damage buffs are insanely potent, and they don't do that much lower personal damage to rationalize using anything else. And those are the best jobs to do it. But it gets worse... in terms of defense/resource utility Dismantle > Addle (even post 4.1), double refresh > mana shift, Apoc = Palisade (magical tankbusters and physical ones), and then there's still troub and minne on top of that for BRD.

SMN is a similar case in 4.05. While it didn't receive any real buffs other than the DoT buff (which is still a pretty big deal), the issue was that many players good and bad were put off by the clunky, unintuitive, design of the job. So it took a while for the people using it well to really come into the spotlight, and for other players to catch up and see how much damage it's really doing. There's the other issue, that many, MANY caster players during prog were not playing and learning the fights on BLM or SMN. They were playing RDM for its easy resses, and non-punishing design during early prog, regardless of it doing much lower damage. So it took a while for us to see that SMN was actually matching BLM. So now they're matching BLM, have radiant shield as a 2% physical buff that's up for 33% of the fight, and now have devotion which is a 2% buff for 12.5% of the fight. So this isn't even a personal damage vs raid buffs thing, it has the same damage and buffs. Strictly better in every way. Meanwhile, MCH that wasn't too far behind BLM/SMN in personal damage got their raid buff... buffed. People got pissed that one of the strongest jobs in the game got buffed. Same with DRG and the 3 eyes thing. It's a problem now, and it's getting worse. People want to stop it.

As for BLM, people WERE complaining in 4.0. The job's design was broken. The MP requirements meant not getting refunded MP between B4 and F3 meant not getting 6xF4, or even being left at 0MP, not even enough for a B3. And the only way around that was waiting on MP ticks, making your damage even worse. Not only that, there was a very tight timer for astral fire, because they added another 3s F4 to the rotation, while only increasing the timer by 1s. They were also doing barely more personal damage than RDM, with none of the utility. And yes, people did complain, including myself. (Reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nnoyances_401/ ) People weren't talking about optimal viability at that point, people were talking about a wrecked, broken design of a class! And yet... people were saying the same things you guys are now. "BLM is just fine, you're just not playing it right." "Huh, you should just use 4 f4s, skip b4 and misalign your foul timer and wait on mp ticks" "But look how much damage these PF BLM are doing!" "Why does it even matter, it won't make a difference in casual play" What do I see weeks later in 4.05? Every single one of those points addressed. Who would have thought?!??! BLM feels fine to play now. It's fun now. Their quality of life is great. But their damage just isn't in the right place.

Buff MCH? BRD? DRG? At this point?! Why?

That's why we're mad.

[Waliel]

I don't see SMN doing identical personal damage to SAM or BLM even after it's soon to be buffs, I just can't wrap my head around that.

Let's see...

Alte Roite: SMN above BLM on every percentile.
Catastrophe: BLM above SMN on every percentile.
Halicarnassus: SMN above BLM on every percentile except 99% and up, and above SAM on 95% and up.
Exdeath: SMN above BLM on every percentile, and above SAM on 80% and up.
Neo: SMN above BLM on every percentile.

[Lelila38]

Let's see...

Alte Roite: SMN above BLM on every percentile.
Catastrophe: BLM above SMN on every percentile.
Halicarnassus: SMN above BLM on every percentile except 99% and up, and above SAM on 95% and up.
Exdeath: SMN above BLM on every percentile, and above SAM on 80% and up.
Neo: SMN above BLM on every percentile.

Basically on every fight that requires extensive movement. No surprise, there's no class that gets more heavily punished for having to move. Somehow also the fight design changed. I feel like in Omega there's far more movement required on all fights but Catastrophe. Might be my imagination, but I'm having a hard time lining up my rotation with most mechanics, it feels like they were either designed with complete disregard to Blm or just meant to interrupt every rotation.

[zuzu-bq]

Let us sort a few things.
@Huntington: Yes jobs with party buffs beat BLMs on high end play because utility is too strong and BLM can't keep up with their realistically low raw damage. But then if you want to look at low skill play, BLMs are performing bad too because they're a harder job to play and do well than rangeds in general. So you've BRD and MCH doing better at low skill groups because of free mobility and the ability to keep uptime and "ride on the GCD". Same goes for RDM on low skill group. They keep better uptime and can perform better with more ease. So what's the point of BLM then? You get outperformed by other jobs at high skill because they're stronger as jobs. And players on low skill ratio get outperformed by other jobs because they're relatively easier to play.

I expect SMN and MCH to start beating SAM's personal at high level play after these buffs in a few fights (might not happen though). The Hypercharge's 1% seems small but that multiplied by all the other stuff MCH has up for them without even needing much coordination (like Disembowel's 5% and their own Overheat's 20%) makes up for an actual decent self and party damage increase too. As for SMN, if the Devotion applies to themselves it will be very strong for their personal on top of buffing everyone on a 120s base which is a multiple of 60 which means it naturally aligns on Trick Attack even on unplanned situations.

@Lelila38: I probably move as much during uptime on Exdeath as I do on catastrophe and Sharp, Swift, Triple all line up for the movement parts of both fights. The fact BLM is better at Catastrophe is the extensive amount of boss uptime it gets without interruptions while being a low movement fight. Fights like Exdeath where the BLM can move less but the boss jumps is bad for them since other jobs can wait for low recast skills to come back on uptime and unload another burst when the Boss is back and all BLM does is spam transpose to charge one skill that is a GCD and part of the base rotation anyways. As for my point Alte Roite is also a low mobility high uptime fight but SMN beats BLM because fflogs counts for Radiant on SMN personal damage and Alte Roite's skills are consistent enough to keep the Radiant to damage it again and again. You can check the tables and see that Radiant damage on O1S is really high.

•Ride the GCD means just pressing buttons as GCD comes back without really needing to do the correct rotation

[Kabooa]

I'm having a hard time lining up my rotation with most mechanics, it feels like they were either designed with complete disregard to Blm or just meant to interrupt every rotation.

With sparing use of your instant procs, Alte Roite allows for a nearly constant amount of uptime with your primary spells. There are a few spots, but not many, and the shorter the fight lasts, the better.

Halicarnassus is practically made for Black mages in the first half, though the second half would require your team catering to you in order to maintain the high uptime. (Trusting someone for A-Manips, taking over someone's book spot, Bard doing the LB instead so you can scumbag on the ninja and giants, etc)

I don't have enough Neo/Exdeath experience to comment there. Only that it feels more than manageable once the mechanics are learned.

[Lelila38]

Exdeath bugs me personally a lot cause I'm really annoyed at how melee can fit in a gcd while waiting for the knockback, but I cannot. Even with 1900+ Ss I can't fit in a spell and pop Surecast in time to avoid the knockback. Just standing there twidling my thumbs waiting for the mechanic...just another example of boss timings that seem designed without giving a thought about us Blm.

[Kabooa]

Exdeath bugs me personally a lot cause I'm really annoyed at how melee can fit in a gcd while waiting for the knockback, but I cannot. Even with 1900+ Ss I can't fit in a spell and pop Surecast in time to avoid the knockback. Just standing there twidling my thumbs waiting for the mechanic...just another example of boss timings that seem designed without giving a thought about us Blm.

Well at least it'll be 'fixed' with this patch.

Until then, you can time A-Manip, place leylines early, or abuse instant casts to bypass the Surecast removal.