BLM needs more damage

[EllieShadeflare]

You did not just mention SAM support capabilities for its slashing down resistance. Tell me it was not your intent.

To be fair? Samurai has more support than BLM for that slash down resist ALONE.

Granted, it's a utility that's lost when you have Warrior, but when you don't, it benefits both tanks and a Ninja who doesn't have to waste part of their rotation for Slash Down (and unlike Ninja, who can't use their full combo if they use Shadow Fang, you should already be using Yukikaze for its Sen whether you're converting it into Kenki, getting Higanbana or saving up for Midare).

also samurai can boost its own potencies to pretty disgusting levels and get faster as part of their normal rotations but black mages only get enochian and every 90s get Leylines so there's that

we initially had it as foe requim until hw as magic dmg buff?? now it has became universal dmg buff.
the only thing about making them having too much/huuuuge dmg margin is that it will sway the the comp to 4x blm, no?
thats why i prefer blm to get a raid utility instead a signaficant dps increase by a margin etc.

Black Mage will NEVER be able to DPS hard enough to shift the meta into 4x Black Mages, unless you make Fire IV's base potency higher than 355-400 (giving it at least 665-760 practical potency when under Enochian and Astral Fire IV for what basically amounts to a filler spell).

The main reason is simple. Other classes provide DPS boosts both directly (as flat damage buffs or vuln debuffs on bosses) or indirectly (increasing DH chance, Crit chance or attack speed). Not to mention, the game highly penalizes multiple party members of the same class in high level content.

Black Mage getting raid utility is a VERY BAD IDEA, even its current state because A. we'll turn out similar to Monk (because adding support would only lead to further bad decisions to remove BLM's identity) and B. it'll be Summoner all over again. SMN got a boost to both their support and their damage as of 4.1, and they're now higher than even Samurai on FFlogs. Not to mention, of 5 clears of Ultimate Bahamut, 4 of the groups had Summoners.