Black Mage

[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.

[Lelila38]

snip

Im good on 1 and 2, but it took me a while to get comfortable enough with the fights to do higher numbers.
Halicarnassos strongly depends on which mechanics she throws at us in final phase. If there's a lot of briars and pizzaslices, namely stuff that require me to move a lot my dps drops so much
Also the fact that I need to Lb...

My party only caters to my needs if I can back it up with dps. Since other classes do more, they don't care. So I have to get along on my own. Also haven't gotten a balance just for myself since Sam got released.

Excuse the double post, can't edit posts on phone.

[TsuKoj]

For exdeath you can triplecast in opener which lets you dodge > btl the blizzard, then if you save your triplecast you can triplecast > f3 > surecast > f4 > sharp > f1 > f3p > LL and save swift for dodging blackholes/blizz or you can triplecast > f3 > f4 > surecast > f4 > > swift >f4 > LL if you don't think you'll have to dodge a black hole. Since surecast doesn't get consumed by instant casts.

Edit* if your on controller a good way to minimalize movement is to find a melee you trust and make a aetherial manip/focus target macro and use it to manip to that melee whenever you need to move far. If your on kb/m just make a mouse over macro for it.

Edit2* I honestly really like blms current playstyle, imo if they give us our 20 potency back on f4/b4 or make f4/b4 300 pot and change foul from 650 pot/30s to 1300 pot/60s to make it line up with raid buffs better and give it like a 10s of 2% chain stratagem on targets hit to make it synergies with brd would put blm in a good spot.(it also removes 2s of umbral ice time we have to sit through every other rotation.)

[Lelila38]

For exdeath you can triplecast in opener which lets you dodge > btl the blizzard, then if you save your triplecast you can triplecast > f3 > surecast > f4 > sharp > f1 > f3p > LL and save swift for dodging blackholes/blizz or you can triplecast > f3 > f4 > surecast > f4 > > swift >f4 > LL if you don't think you'll have to dodge a black hole. Since surecast doesn't get consumed by instant casts.

Edit* if your on controller a good way to minimalize movement is to find a melee you trust and make a aetherial manip/focus target macro and use it to manip to that melee whenever you need to move far. If your on kb/m just make a mouse over macro for it.

I'm not dodging the first black holes, our strategy allows me to turret during that phase, unless one spawns on top of me. I'm on PS4/controller and use a manip macro that ports me to our healer unless I target someone manually. I use my first Triplecast to dodge first blizzards and sprint during second. My main issue during that fight is the dps I lose during knockback. I either Surecast to cancel it out, but that makes me stand still for a pretty long time, while melee are able to keep hitting, or I take the knockback and manipulate back to group, which I think is even less favorable. I hope with the changes to Surecast this will get better, allowing me to cast without canceling Surecast. Honestly though its just trying to maximise at this point.
We're still working on Neo, so I'm still trying to figure out my rotation on him. My main issue is that i's very movement heavy and at the moment I keep dropping enochian too much.

SE really needs to take a good look at class balancing, without any class utility (I don't count Apoc, Manashift and Addle, as they're now on all casters) Blm needs to bring considerably more dps to the party to be worth bringing.Reply incoming

[TsuKoj]

Well it's rather irrelevant since they are changing it, but if you triplecast you retain the knockback prevention from surecast. Surecast doesn't get consumed by instants.

[Lelila38]

Well it's rather irrelevant since they are changing it, but if you triplecast you retain the knockback prevention from surecast. Surecast doesn't get consumed by instants.

That's interesting to know, thank you.

[RaizeGraymalkin]

"At the end of the day you have to ask yourself why should I bring a Black Mage over any other class to any content. Casual Progression? Hardcore Progression? Speed kills? "

Because you enjoy playing it and you find it fun? People care way too fucking much about meta man. Every job can do every piece of content. They all have their up periods and their down periods. It'll be fine.