Black Mage

[Lina_Slayer]

One thing that I think needs to be said is that our rotation is simple to do, BLM is one of the easiest job to achieve perfect damage in a dummy, what makes us hard (and IMO fun) to play is movement in a real fight and how it means we have to sometimes save our offensive CDs to achieve better DPS differently from most jobs that'll just use their CDs ASAP, if you boost our mobility too much the job will be just easy and boring and if the mobility buff comes with no damage or party utility buff we'll still be the worse DPS in the game since we are 3rd (and way behind SAM and SMN) in personal dps on Catastrophe, a super easy fight when it comes to movement.

Some QoL like 30 second procs, less cooldown on Transpose, some way to make sure we get a Firestarter proc (loved that idea of getting a proc after using all Umbral Hearts) are all fine and help with movement in their own way without making us some kind of mobility god.

What I think the class needs right now is more damage and some small utility for the party (magic vulnerability up give us both and is thus my favorite idea) and some kind of burst window so we have better sinergy with the other classes, my idea is to boost Convert hard and also give it a 120 seconds recast so it will be up during party buffs like Hypercharge for example.

[Galvuu]

One thing that I think needs to be said is that our rotation is simple to do, BLM is one of the easiest job to achieve perfect damage in a dummy

While I agree with this sentiment, I think this holds for many jobs. Bard and Red Mage also have a very simple rotation (the dps jobs I played in this tier).
The only "difficult" thing about bard is know when to delay a few key cds (like knowing if you should delay an Empyreal on or two gcds), knowing if you should clip your dots early, understanding when to Foe and when to go for 2 stack Pitch Perfects. Even then, the rotation isn't hard at all (and the job itself is super lenient). It just takes some thought to min/max (kinda like BLM too).
Just a thought. I think the BLM rotation is easy, but I also think most dps rotations are easy.

[zuzu-bq]

Snip

Agree on most of that. Stuff I been talking about for a long while around here. Good to see someone else getting it. I wouldn't say 30s procs though, I think having Thundercloud procs on the same duration as the Thunder debuff would be perfect on that regard. On the utility side, that isn't really needed if we just get more damage as we should, having onvert itself to be 120s would already be good enough to help fit stuff in some party-wide buffs without changing its effect. Though convert effect should get a small fix/rework.

[Remedi]

FFIV (the remake on DS, not sure on the original) had Palom an ability to double his intellect for the next spell.
I guess we could get a similar skill no? I mean SAM has kaiten

(Though I think if they want to add really new skills it'll be for the expansion, but I guess it's a start)

[Llugen]

....The forums are awful. They delete your composed reply if there is an error (session timeout/maximum posts per day exceeded) instead of saving it when you go back so you have to re-write EVERYTHING you wrote. R I P

I fully agree with you Galvuu on strategy on the class, but right now there just aren't enough tools for strategy, particularly simple movement dodging (other than "the caster slide" and pray). At that point the "strategy" becomes suffer damage loss and cry silently.

I'm also glad we agree on the Firestarter/Thunder Ready proc idea, but I still think having that on top of more RNG based Firestarters from Fire IV would be good. A stackable set of Firestarters would also go into movement strategy if you had several saved up etc.


btw, getting a Firestarter proc after using all three hearts could also work for AOE pulls and getting back into Astral faster rather than having to hardcast Fire III. This in tandem with the Freeze suggestion could really streamline the BLM AOE rotation. Furthermore a guaranteed Firestarter proc based on Umbral hearts might even mean no longer needing to cast Fire to refresh Astral during single target if you can squeeze all four based on remaining MP in after the proc

[Siccoroa]

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but if they make fire4/blizz4 2.5 second cast times, and make both 280 potency, gives us about a 10% pps boost. That should be enough of a DPS boost to put us on top of the meters.

Add in some qol changes and we might finally be good.

Qol changes:
instant caste foul
foul adds 3 seconds to current af/ui timer
‎30 second procs
‎thundercloud adds 3 seconds to af/ui time
‎blizz3 restores 1800mp on use

Of course none of these changes do anything about our lack of party buffs, or burst ability. I don't really have any good idea on how to fix those.

[Llugen]

I think they should just make all spells cost zero MP in Umbral, or they should fix it so the MP regeneration doesn't rely on the server tick. Also, 10% probably isn't enough unless there is a mobility adjustment as well.

[Tzain]

I think they should just make all spells cost zero MP in Umbral, or they should fix it so the MP regeneration doesn't rely on the server tick. Also, 10% probably isn't enough unless there is a mobility adjustment as well.

I read this and started to take a closer look at how the Umbral/Astral mechanic currently works and how it affects and is affected by MP costs.
Then I started to compare it, what I recall from 2.0, and how my Red Mage plays currently (in regards to mp usage) and realized that there are some very deep seated problems that need be addressed in a core mechanic of the job.
As a result, I'm stepping out of BLM theory crafting as I now think I have gone beyond 'Fixes' and into 'Fundamental Overhaul'.

[Remedi]

I get the feeling they would say that they made foul cost 0 MP exactly for that reason though, but as I said I think that a rework on resource generation would be good for everyone

[Silver-Strider]

Bad Idea
Turn Ley Lines into a toggle ability that reduces BLM damage by 10% (adjust number to whatever for balance) but front loads all their abilities to be instant cast while Ley Lines is active. That way, they can still attack on the move while losing a little bit of their damage.