Black Mage Idea - Meltdown

[Ferrinus]

F2 is already worth it at 6 or more mobs.

IIRC that’s if you don’t take T4 into account. Once you do, it ends up more economical to avoid F2 until you’ve got like eleven or twelve mobs.

All that said I’d like it to be worthwhile to go F2 F2 Flare in “standard” aoe situations, like if there’s just four or five targets. You know, whenever the total potency on Fire2 exceeds the total on Fire4.

[Llugen]

Even with 3 targets, F2 is almost as strong as F4, but the refresh of astral fire and "spread" of damage (rather than letting something die faster than other things) is "worth" it, to me. At 4 targets, it is stronger (320 base potency vs 260). Besides, when are you only going to pull 3 mobs..?

[Ferrinus]

The question isn’t how F2 compares to F4 but how it compares to Flare. If you have a group of enemies, should you go F2 F2 Flare Flare, or just skip straight to Flare? Turns out it’s mostly the latter, especially since you have Thunder 4 to fill some of Transpose’s cooldown.

[Llugen]

I'd say if you get the proc then yes and if you don't then no, but that makes sense and is valid, yeah.

[Ashenspire]

They have an identity: Caster turret. Giving them support skills just lets them steal SMNs identity.

Caster turret isn't their identity in raid environments, as that identity is detrimental as they bring nothing but raw dps that can easily be ruined due to mechanics.

With my proposed change, their identity is still caster turret, they just bring a little bit of raid identity by giving little phases of extra oomph to everyone because they're literally melting faces.

[Karshan]

My idea for Black Mage is pretty simple. Reward the party simply for having them in your party and doing what they already do - melt faces.

Meltdown is a spell that's been around since FFVI, and it's come in many incarnations. For FFXIV, I'm thinking it can be a bit like the FFVIII version, but still maintaining its Fire aspect.

Meltdown - Level 62 Trait

Fire IV inflicts target with a stack of Meltdown. Meltdown stacks increase damage taken by 1%. All Meltdown stacks are lost when target is hit by Blizzard I, II, III, and IV and Freeze.

It plays on the idea that you're literally melting the targets defenses. This gives BLMs much needed utility, and most importantly offensive utility. Over a typical F4x6 Rotation, it'd be a 2.17% party damage increase.

I like the idea, but too many stacks (2.17% permanent buff ? With a 24 000 group DPS it's 520 raid DPS, way too much for just one guy to bring).

What could be would be that Ice IV has two effects : 3 umbral hearts for you, and three umbral stacks on the boss, that would work kinda like embolden but in debuff and for all kind of damage.
3 stacks, each stack is a 1% vulne and one stack fades off every 3 seconds (3% > 2% > 1%), so it would be something like 2% average debuff on what, 30% uptime (9sec every 30), which is a 0,6% raid buff (2.5 times more than devotion)

Plus it would adress the problem of gong back to arr rotation, since it would be on Ice 4

[Dualgunner]

"BLM can't get any utilities or buffs, it'd steal SMN's identity!"

SMN stole BLM's identity as the SAM of casters tbh if you look at the numbers.
(using 75th percentiles)
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=42 <-SMN beats BLM at V1S
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=43 <-SMN beats BLM at V2S
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=44 <-SMN not only beats BLM, but beats SAM at V3S.
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=45 <-SMN not only beats BLM, but beats SAM at ExFaust.
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=46 <-SMN beats BLM at Neo "The One" Exdeath

There isn't a single fight in the 75th percentile of the logs where BLM beats SMN. There are two where SMN beats SAM. And on top of that SMN has utility it brings too.

So this imaginary OP super BLM that is SAM and utility...already exists. It's called SMN.

[Ashenspire]

I like the idea, but too many stacks (2.17% permanent buff ? With a 24 000 group DPS it's 520 raid DPS, way too much for just one guy to bring).

What could be would be that Ice IV has two effects : 3 umbral hearts for you, and three umbral stacks on the boss, that would work kinda like embolden but in debuff and for all kind of damage.
3 stacks, each stack is a 1% vulne and one stack fades off every 3 seconds (3% > 2% > 1%), so it would be something like 2% average debuff on what, 30% uptime (9sec every 30), which is a 0,6% raid buff (2.5 times more than devotion)

Plus it would adress the problem of gong back to arr rotation, since it would be on Ice 4

A ~2% raid increase isn't too much for one guy. Ninja brings more that with Trick Attack alone, not to mention the enmity tools and slash resist for the tanks to do more dps.

[Karshan]

What I meant was that it would be like an equivalent of +500 to BLM damage, while 500 is the whole span between jobs at 95% on O1S

[Shiroe]

Buff foul potency 700 - 800 and blm would be fine. Purpose of the job is EXPLOSION!

^ this might fix blm