Black Mage

[Remedi]

They started homogenizing them in Wotlk actually when they made things like blessing of wisdom and mana spring totem beign the same.

Honestly I wouldn't like the game to get to that point, it would make for a dull game, we should ask SE to actually comply with their design philosophy more than anything and actually think more outside of the box. BLM beign in a weird spot in not just for the faults of the class alone, giving them a ress and a raid buff would only mean that.......you'd still take a double ranged meta or a triple melee combo (and maybe make RDM dwell even more on the bottom)

[Ryi]

Words of wisdom

Dang, I was thinking of making a post similiar to this but it seems that you saved me the effort. I didnt think there would be a post this long where I agreed with basically every point made, yet here it is.

In my opinion blm doesnt need any fundamental changes or raid utility or ress or anything like that. Gib Raging Strikes back and get rid of that old, nowadays obsolete ranged tax and all is well in the hood.

[Llugen]

If they did decide to give BLM back a magic damage buff, it had better be a 120 second recast, and then that means it doesn't line up with Ley Lines which would be super frustrating. Perhaps they could reduce Ley Lines to 20-25 seconds long and 60 seconds recast, but somehow I doubt that will happen.

Party damage utility gets better and better the more you have, so the idea of feeding one class that does high damage "puts all the eggs in one basket" as Galvuu said a few pages back; it's far more efficient and less risky to simply feed the party for higher damage and if something does go wrong, less is lost. This is a no-brainer: parties WANT party damage, not "selfish damage". If I on BLM could legitimately do about 6100 DPS, then it MIGHT be on par with me doing 5800 on SMN, but even still probably not because devotion and radiant shield buff my group still wants more.

The bottom line is this: party utility can and will always be better optimized than "selfish DPS" unless you completely overpower the class. Add to that its really poor movement, its lack of synergy with 2 minute cooldowns, and its requirement to be "planned around" by the group and you have yourself a class that no one wants in their raid party.


Also side note: minor spoilers, but whoever said GEO for potential tank, there is a pretty strong hint from the AST questline that GEO will be a healer, so yep. BLU is far more likely especially since getting hit is kinda the point of the lore of the job

[Alexalibur]

While this is a BLM balance thread, it's wrong to think that any change applied to a job won't affect other jobs at all, so I'd say other perspective should not be shunned

100% agree. That's the thing about balancing one class; you have to understand how these changes will affect everyone else. If we buffed Disembowel to 10% because DRG is underperforming, we can't just forget about BRD and MCH. We have to work on BLM as part of something, not as a sole entity. Giving BLM a 10~% magic vuln up will just buff SMN even higher who is at the top of the dps table now.

[Llugen]

In my opinion it is high time for a caster-friendly comp, so this doesn't really bother me. In theory Garuda + BLM should be strong but it's not as strong as Ifrit + everything that is melee, so I don't really see a ton of validity to that point. Furthermore, if it's put on Blizzard IV, then it doesn't overpower BLM's already very strong AOE damage, since it is applied to one target at a time. I can definitively say, as a current SMN "main" (or refugee, if you will), that it absolutely deserves a nerf, probably bringing the DoT IIIs back to 40 potency per tick would be sufficient, and then shortening radiant shield to last 15 seconds.

[Lelila38]

In my opinion it is high time for a caster-friendly comp, so this doesn't really bother me. In theory Garuda + BLM should be strong but it's not as strong as Ifrit + everything that is melee.

I'd really love a multiple caster meta for once. Last time I raided with another caster was in T7
I'd even share my loot with them ;P

[Llugen]

Well that'd be the beauty of BLM/RDM or BLM/SMN, BLM would want the speed spec pieces and the other two generally would want the ones that are not speed spec. So different tome gear and different raid drops would be allocated appropriately.

On top of this, I would like to see them introduce augmentations to the 24-man gear and a specially designed request-crafted gearset using lockout tomes that makes max item level equipment (HQ unavailable, advanced melding forbidden) that also uses the twine/roborant/glaze. Two permutations of max item level gear makes for too little customization, in my opinion. But I digress.


(****responding to the below comment to conserve forum posts/thread space****) To be quite frank I still don't care if RDM is "underperforming" because it still has its niche as being simple, versatile, movement-efficient, and emergency healer/Rez Dispenser (tm) (see also: EXTREMELY effective for progression and still very usable for post-progression). RDM SHOULD be the weakest of the casters, period. I might buff Embolden to be flat 5% to all damage over 10% diminishing to physical only, if they really want to help it.

[Remedi]

RDM is atm too weak for a caster comp to work however (fropm 50th percentile higher) it underperforms on average against BLM even with raid contribution considered.

Movements efficency is overrated on RDM especially on prolonged ones
You seem to forgot on your nagging about BLM movements that we do have 40 potency dot on the target + the very weak scathing and that's is without considering procs, swift, triple and sharpcasts,
It might now seem much but on prolonged movements it matters because outside of that dualcast RDM have virtually nothing not to mention that to maximise their dmg you need to use your movements abilities.

Also if you really think that caster balance matters giving BLM a ress would rob RDM of it's niche and utility because that way you would have 2 very strong personal dps jobs whose ress capabilitites do not interfere with their dps rotation (SMN beign MP infinite as you said and your BLM ress idea beign an OGCD thing, while ion RDM you sacrifice a 300 potency spell +11 black/white mana AND a possibility of a proc for a ress which may or may not be problematic depending on when you used lucid dream)
So tell me do you really think that If BLM gets a ress and a raid dps cd on top of a burst personal CD, do you really think that in an hypothetical double caster comp there's gonna be space for a RDM simply because they can ress 3 times and then be oom?

[Maero]

I could understand the point that Red Mage is rather easy but smn offers just as much support, is more complicated yes but is way above Red has movement and out damages blm yet again.... (The bs notion that blm gets all the love because Yoshi mains it is a joke)
SE really have to get their stuff together to balance jobs more and yes even increase output of Red some. No reason why as it stands blm should be so behind as it offers no group utility, smn should be behind it on damage.
No idea what they are thinking giving jobs with support+ do more damage.. it is rather un-balanced
Sam suffers from this i believe as well now, people were so quick to say it was OP but we now see otherwise.

[Llugen]

You're not wrong but the issue isn't because RDM is underbalanced, the issue is because no one at SE apparently has any idea what they're doing as far as SMN is concerned so they do ridiculous stuff like making devotion affect the whole party at 2% while forgetting that it will always be up with radiant shield, effectively making it a solid 4%. In other words, the problem isn't that RDM is underbalanced, it's that they broke SMN (again. again again, even.).

Perhaps the MOST ironic part about it is that the recent changes to SMN didn't even address the real issues with the clunk of the rotation (Ruin II/movement delaying Bahamut's WWs, the "dump" nature of the opener/setup, the wasted time on Rouse, etc). The Tri-Bind buff was warranted and making Devotion more intuitive was nice as well, but I just find it hilarious.

Meanwhile, BLM got nothing, which, after seeing nothing in the preliminary patch notes about it, this thread was begun/many pleading tickets were submitted. Sigh.


"I hate that every time I play the job that I want, I have it in the back of my mind that I'd be contributing more by picking almost anything else" - Blackcat Ofillomen