Black Mage

[Galvuu]

snip

I play almost exclusively Bard for progression and let me tell you- it would've been way harder to clear O4S the first few times with Black Mage.
It's not even close. The Minuet Troubadour for the Almagest right after Omega, the Paeon Troubadour for Neverwhere at 6 stacks and the refreshes+raid dps increases are incredibly clutch.
Someone got hit by emptiness before Light and Darkness? Have a Palisade and he'll live. Scholar is gonna deploy Adlo for an Almagest and something happened and we're not topped off? Let me Mine the Warrior. Someone with weakness for meteors? I'm at 5k MP, let me Foe real quick.
I have an unending love for Black Mage, but realistically I know I'm setting us all back if I play it most of the time, and I can't do it. I can't drag 7 people I consider my friends into failure for two more weeks because of the fact I love Black Mage.
And that feels bad (especially because I hate the swingy, rng nature of Bard). I can't just "not give a shit" about the friends I play with :/

[Neela]

thats why I said "random grps" - if you play with a static or friends communication about a setup is just natural. but even there everybody should always play the class he/she enjoys the most and not what any "world firsts" grp set up as meta. you won't get used to your Blm if you take the easy way shifting to a no brainer cls. How so ever its kinda ironic that Blms seems to be near the next "lockout" and Smns are gaining there comeback... strange world - after everybody said Blm is the 2nd best DD after Sam for sure... ^^'

[popotaro]

I just hope BLM gets some buffs at some point in time. BLM is BAE.

I mean, if even Yoshida recognized that BLM are gonna have a hard time with the upcoming content, maybe we can hope to get something soon..

[Neela]

I just hope BLM gets some buffs at some point in time. BLM is BAE.

what do you want them to do exactly? RDM is mobile by his dualcasts, Smn by aetherskills, dots & egi - but what do u expect SE to do with BLM? There aren't that much possibilities to buff the Blm aside in turning up his raw power... if you make him kinda mobile how would you do that?... its not that he would lockout both of the other caster (again...). : /

[popotaro]

what do you want them to do exactly? RDM is mobile by his dualcasts, Smn by aetherskills, dots & egi - but what do u expect SE to do with BLM? There aren't that much possibilities to buff the Blm aside in turning up his raw power... if you make him kinda mobile how would you do that?... its not that he would lockout both of the other caster (again...). : /

me want MOAR RAW POWER! Some already explained the reason why better than I would.

[Llugen]

Everyone needs to stop using the excuses "it can clear the content" and "the majority does fine" and "the meta doesn't matter" in this thread immediately.

These excuses might be true, but it does not change the issue that SE's logic of "raw damage is the class's utility" is not only of poor quality (parties will always favor getting utility over a class that is selfish), but just plain WRONG when you consider that a summoner can do MORE raw damage AND has more utility.

There is no argument to this. Classes are to be balanced at their maximum potential, not "average player skill."

[Sylvain]

Scath could get a rework with an added effect.
"increase the damage of your next fire or ice spell by 50% and increase AF/UI duratio' by 6sec"
This would garantee BLM some dps while moving without actually changing the rotation.
It would also raise the dps floor by making AF easier to keep up when u move.

Also, while this would be more qol change, I would love if SE could fuse the two ley line skills as well as fIV and iceIV

[Llugen]

I wrote a thread a while back of proposed changes that would be more intricate than flat potency increases, here are some of the highlights:

convert changed to "indulge", 60 second recast, no HP reduction
thundercloud is additive to the current dot up to 60 seconds rather than refreshes timer
thundercloud/firestarter procs have 30 second duration to match SMN/RDM's proc duration
Thunder III timer increased to 27 or even 30 seconds and Thunder increased to 24
Umbral hearts give +5% damage on the spell that uses the heart
Fire used with an umbral heart is instant cast guaranteed, or guarantees a firestarter proc
reduce aetherial manipulation recast to 15s

Some other interesting suggestions to consider:
give BLM no MP 180s recast raise off-gcd (shut up about the lore, it's the only DoM class that doesn't have a raise, and that's shitty)
give BLM 180s recast skill that expands ley lines and lets it be used by the whole party (again, raw damage will never ever be stronger than party utility)
allow option to firestart Fire IV or Fire III, alternatively, any time a firestarter III is used, the next fire IV costs zero MP and is instant cast
Thundercloud proc adds 5 seconds to the Polyglot timer

[zuzu-bq]

Yeah, it's not fun to be a raw damage job while other jobs can just do more than you.

Scathe could yes get a rework but the main issue it doesn't get used is its MP cost which makes you lose a whole Fire IV when cast in Astral Fire. So that kind of rework won't do, you're gaining 50% at the cost of a whole fire spell.

Giving raise doesn't solve BLM's issues. It already does more than RDM in terms of raid DPS but if you're replacing your RDM for raid damage you'll just pick SMN or MCH because they're too much better. Just raising Black Mage's damage to those two and making it even bigger would do it. I don't want the job to be overpowered, I just want it to be good enough so people stop not wanting to play with someone because they are a BLM. And that issue is not for BLM alone.

As for Umbral Hearts, yes it needs a massive reworkd. The resource just straight sucks and the biggest reasons we use that is because MP ticks are not reliable and Foul takes too long to charge for a no UH rotation. All UH offers is a tighter timing to refresh Astral Fire and a bandaid to our new mechanic. And yeah, I've been talking to some BLM friends on Discord and we prettu much realized either a raw damage buff per heart spent (something like ammo) or making a Fire in it proc Firestarter would probably be the best non gamebreaking solutions. Another issue is also how arbitrary Convert is on the amount of MP you give. Your spells cost 1200 so multiples of that number should be the amount that Convert give us just like DRK skills do and not a weird random 4644 just because that is 20% of our MP pool.

Umbral Hearts is a weird mechanic that rewards you so little and honestly, before you get Foul it doesn't even reward you with two full Fire IVs because MP ticks can screw you over. It just feels Hearts are here to patch up the rotation to fit our only real new Spell because MP ticks wouldn't let it happen. Making all Spells cost 0 on Umbral Ice would be one of the solutions while making Scathe viable since you actually have MP to Scathe at least once on AF if you went inside it with near full MP. Forcing MP ticks to happen is also not a bad solution. Being tied to MP ticks always been caused BLM issues and if they removed the ricking down from DRK why can't they give up a form to avoid the ticking up.

[Llugen]

I suggested that umbral ice just immediately give you back MP in full over relying on server ticks wayyyy back in 2.0. Not only would this make the class much less annoying to play for having to deal with server ticks, it would make spell speed that much more valuable because you don't have to have a potential loss on a late tick.