Ideas to Improve The Black Mage (for 4.2 and beyond!)

[EllieShadeflare]

I know, I know. Yet ANOTHER BLM thread. Don't worry, this won't be too angry.

Honestly though, I have been irritated and finding BLM to be more and more unsatisfying ever since Heavensward. However, I hadn't been able to find the missing... keys to the problem until I examined its design. As far as I can tell, these are what I can think of:

• The Enochian Economy: Enochian... just doesn't work. It hasn't worked since 3.x, but 4.x solved half of the problem but causing new ones. Foul is essentially a return to all the problems associated with the original Enochian but now with the stipulation that A. Enochian now has an indefinite duration if done right and B. Enochian is easier to lose. Enochian is easier to lose due to the design of Fire IV and Astral Fire, since Fire IV does not refresh Astral Fire but both Fire IV and Enochian require Astral Fire or Umbral Ice in order to build up Foul. Actually, this is the old Enochian mechanic, with a "reward," a lack of degenerating duration and actually being easier to lose... Somehow, Black Mage became more complex in the team's attempt to not make the game more complex. Hm.
  
• Gambler or Black Mage? Two of Black Mage's most important tools, Firestarter and Thundercloud, are locked behind RNG. Firestarter to some might not be so bad, since it's just a Fire III you get randomly (or by using Sharpcast) on Fire. However, its purpose to a Black Mage belies its simple usage, as it's neccessary to extend Astral Fire when doing the opener, or moving. Having it as RNG is honestly a massive hindrance to the class. Thundercloud is borderline unacceptable, however. This is our third highest single target spell and it's locked behind RNG. Granted, this is also a problem with Bard and Refugulent Arrow and Pitch Perfect, and both should be solved.
  
• If it looks and quacks like a duck... Let's be blunt: in order to do well, Black Mage has to be a sitting duck. This is emphasized by the previously mentioned Fire IV cast time and Leylines, a Haste buff that only works if you stand in it. Between the Lines is just a scotch tape solution to the problem, however and Quadcast isn't a mobility option due to Fire IV's longer cast time than other DPSes. Note: This was made using some... not so good perspectives, primarily, the fact that not much content requires mobility beyond Ultimate Bahamut, so unless the Deve Team has plans on adding even more movement, this might not be as important.
  
• "Where's the Kaboom? There's supposed to be an earthshattering Kaboom!" A long time ago, Black Mage had damage without peer. Our raw potencies when merged with Astral Fire beat out Fell Cleave as a standard rotation spell. Unfortunately, this all changed with the changes to Stormblood. We lost Raging Strikes, a whopping 20% damage boost for 20s and Fire IV reduced to 260 potency. It seemed that the only way to make up this loss in potency would be with Foul... if the game didn't make it also disappointing with only 650 potency. Sure, we gained 14 potency per second... but that's still a pretty low improvement, and especially considering it took 10 levels just to get there. Compare this to other classes, who have gained net gains (such as the Tanks, who have either gained a powerful 'Fell Cleave' equivalent (Holy Spirit and Bloodspiller) or have gained a better economy (Beast Gauge and Inner Release), Healers who all gain a new tool for their healing, damage and support, and every other DPS other than MAYBE Monk who all feel objectively more powerful at 70 than at 60. With that also said, unlike other DPSes, even though our rotation is "simple" on paper, it's also rather... forceful in its tunnel vision.

So, what would be some solutions I'd suggest? Not all of the solutions need to be taken, but something has to be done.

• Fire IV Solution A: Increase Fire IV and Blizzard IV potency to 300. Why? We lost an incredible amount of damage, so much so that all it'd take to make Black Mage close to its old potency is to give us back our old potency. Buuuuut. Even old Black Mage had problems in 3.x and we also lost Raging Strikes on top of that. As a result, 300 should allow Black Mage to inflict serious hurt without being too deeply hampered by death or losing Enochian... and would make it almost match what we had when we used Raging Strikes due to the change to Enochian. If Black Mage is gonna commit to being a turret with seriously high damage, then we go full hog.
• Fire IV Solution B: Decrease cast time for Fire IV to 2.5s. If this is done instead of A, this would solve the problem of lining Fire IV with Enochian, while also solving our mobility issue. It'd especially work well with the reduction of RNG.
• Reduce the RNG. The insulting part is that it was already done for PVP, through Thunder III ready. Essentially, you build up Thunder III Ready by inflicting 5000 damage upon a foe whilst under the affect of Thunder. Then, perhaps for Firestarter, we can create a new mechanic, Astral Hearts, that works under a similar principle. With each cast of Fire IV, you gain an Astral Heart, and upon gaining 3, you guarantee Firestarter upon casting of Fire. In addition, each Astral Heart buffs the potency of Fire, with 1 Astral Heart making it 200, 2 Astral Hearts making it 220, and 3 making it 240. Thundercloud can also work under the same mechanic, through Aether Static. Each tic of Thunder I/II/III/IV causes your Aether Static to go up. I/III will make it go up by 15% per tic, whilst each tic of Thunder II/IV would make the gauge go up by 5%. Upon reaching full Aether Static, this is when you proc Thundercloud, which would no longer have a time limit to casting. However, RNG could still be there but would not affect Aether Static nor Astral Hearts... though Sharpcast would need a new purpose. Or replacement.
• Grant some mitigation or mobility. For the former, Quadcast (Triplecast + Swiftcast) does some of the work, but due to the way Fire IV works, it works more as a pseudo haste than as a true mobility. As such, a solution granted by the Black Mage thread gives this:
  
  

  Yoshi could even include it as ab extension of the Enochian language to spell the word for "fast" using Umbral hearts/Foul.
  
  Foul would hold the first 2 phonetics for Fast
  Blizzard 4 would hold the last 2
  By the time 2 fouls occur it will spell fast in enochian resulting in instant casts X number of umbral hearts or just 3 solid insta casts per 2 fouls and 2 b4s.
  Tie the activation to hitting the Enochian button while its already active to activate OrUnFamGisg.
  
  Or IPZI.
  While Quadcast may still be neccessary for the opener, IPZI would mitigate its neccessity for it in further procs of Leylines until you get Convert again.
  
  If mobility is not in the question, give us better mitigation. Lower the cooldown of Manaward. Done. Maybe give us a damage taken reduction cooldown? I'unno.

Misc player suggestions!

Lv. 35 Freeze (Spell): Deals Ice damage with a potency of 100 (or adjust as you feel necessary), grants a full stack of Umbral Ice (so Umbral II at level 35, III at 40 and beyond). Now a targeted spell like Fire II (just remove the bind for non-pvp if it's going to continue to be useless).
Lv. 50 Sub-Zero (Trait): Upon reaching Zero MP (i.e. after Flare), the next Freeze will cost no MP (and be instant cast, if you wish)
Lv. 68 Enhanced Umbral Heart (Trait): Upon successful use of Sub-Zero proc, grants three Umbral Hearts (as well as the rest of the current effects of Enhanced Umbral Heart). Edit: or even just ONE Umbral Heart to guarantee that it is not used single target.

These are just my thoughts. What do you think?

[LeeraSorlan]

Blm mobility is perfect as it is to me, i do not want to be able to run around like a redmage or SMN, the difference between a bad BLM and a good BLM is largely dependant on movement, and i like that. it tells me "hey, that BLM really knows his job and the fight and can optomize around it"Pls do not add more mobility to blm.


Rng is Rng, its whatever, i dont like it, but ive accepted that nearly every job nowdays has it, with few exceptions, if anything, instead of changing how thunder 3 RNG works, just default it to a 20/30s timer to use the proc instead of the short time its at now, as it is, theres alot of thunder 3 procs i dont use from time to time because im in my astral heart fire 4 phase/dont want to overwrite a buffed T3 tick when it still has over half its duration left


Blm dmg is great, you dont even notice the loss of raging strikes due to the expansion boosting our dps by default, but more dmg is always nice anyway, so i wont disagree

Dont really have an opinion on enochian, it does feel harder to keep up than 3.0 enochian, but at the same time its also easier? transpose keeps it up, and while its preffered you never have to use transpose, sometimes u just get those unlucky set of mechanics that refuse to let u cast. but the cooldown enochian itself is so short, youd have to mess up shortly after u used it for it to even matter nowdays, this is a non issue to me.


Im unsure how well you blm (hell even im not the best, far from it) but idk, BLM is more about knowing the fight rather than knowing the job, i feel like. minimizing movement and planning ahead is fun to me, thats what blm is to me, and i dont want that to be changed, and most of your issues seem to be fixed by doing just that, knowing the fight better

[EllieShadeflare]

Blm mobility is perfect as it is to me, i do not want to be able to run around like a redmage or SMN, the difference between a bad BLM and a good BLM is largely dependant on movement, and i like that. it tells me "hey, that BLM really knows his job and the fight and can optomize around it"Pls do not add more mobility to blm.

You might not have played in Savage, then. Particularly, Omega 3 Savage, where Black Mage's lack of mobility kills its ability to make much of a contribution. And besides the point, I'm not saying "let BLM run around and do whatever", my issue is "don't punish us for having to move when mechanics force us to."

Besides the point, there's a reason why the dev team highly suggested players not to play BLM in Ultimate Bahamut.


[QUOTE=LeeraSorlan;4517237]Rng is Rng, its whatever, i dont like it, but ive accepted that nearly every job nowdays has it, with few exceptions, if anything, instead of changing how thunder 3 RNG works, just default it to a 20/30s timer to use the proc instead of the short time its at now, as it is, theres alot of thunder 3 procs i dont use from time to time because im in my astral heart fire 4 phase/dont want to overwrite a buffed T3 tick when it still has over half its duration left

The timer is definitely the biggest trouble, but RNG in general is really bad design. To be honest, I would replace the RNG mechanics for Bard with something similar to Aether Static for the same reason. Red Mage's Verstone/Verfire, Summoner's Ruin IV and the Astrologian cards are basically fine though... and they're the only other jobs besides BLM, MCH and BRD that seriously rely on RNG but they use Positive RNG, rather than negative like BLM, MCH and BRD, which practically require RNG to function.

Blm dmg is great, you dont even notice the loss of raging strikes due to the expansion boosting our dps by default, but more dmg is always nice anyway, so i wont disagree

I noticed pretty quickly back while levelling BLM. And remember, it wasn't just the loss of Raging Strikes, we outright lost a whopping 20 base potency on Fire IV/Blizzard IV. 20 potency sounds like nothing, even on a base spell but Astral Fire + Enochian has a 1.85x modifier to the damage. What would been 518 in Heavensward (Through Fire IV's original 280 potency) turned into only 481, a whopping 37 potency less per cast. Granted, we get 13 potency back, but we're still down by 24 potency per cast. In addition, while every other class in the game has a burst phase, Black Mage's own burst phase was utterly removed due to the removal of Raging Strikes from the Cross Role bar, and the difference becomes even higher once you do factor in that loss. Heck, I didn't even touch on Flare's increased dropoff versus Heavensward, nor did I touch on Fire II's reduced potency!

Dont really have an opinion on enochian, it does feel harder to keep up than 3.0 enochian, but at the same time its also easier? transpose keeps it up, and while its preffered you never have to use transpose, sometimes u just get those unlucky set of mechanics that refuse to let u cast. but the cooldown enochian itself is so short, youd have to mess up shortly after u used it for it to even matter nowdays, this is a non issue to me.

Transpose is indeed an option, but it's still not the best and still fallible to server lag. As for the Enochian cooldown, it's actually really easy to mess up in Savage in your opener. Even the most BLM friendly Savage boss, Catastrophe will cause troubles to a BLM's opener if they're not careful.

Im unsure how well you blm (hell even im not the best, far from it) but idk, BLM is more about knowing the fight rather than knowing the job, i feel like. minimizing movement and planning ahead is fun to me, thats what blm is to me, and i dont want that to be changed, and most of your issues seem to be fixed by doing just that, knowing the fight better

I know the fights that I'm in to the best of my ability, since my static is progressing through Deltascape. However, "knowing the fight" only goes so far in a boss that also has its own RNG (Hi Halicarnassus! Hi Alte Roite and your Roulette Classical Elements!) and Black Mages are outright punished for being in a fight with any sort of RNG mechanics. For mechanics that you have to "roll with the punches", BLM is by far the harshest job to work with. And even so, my suggestions don't remove the strategic movement aspect of the job, but they mitigate the sheer punishment for playing it. Like the game actively mocks you for wanting explosions.

[Llugen]

Check out the Sub-Zero thread for Freeze and like it and share it with your friends for them to like it!

Reliable procs would be great, I suggest a free Thundercloud proc upon fitting in a certain number of GCDs on a target with Thunder applied (like Thunder Ready from PVP), and granting a free Firestarter when all three Umbral Hearts are consumed (Firestorm, affectionately named).

This menas not only more damage (7x Fire IV and Firestarter per Astral Fire, and more Thunder uptime) but also more opportunity for snap movement of ~2s during proc usage. With this in mind I'd also suggest Fire/Blizzard I become instant cast under Enhanced Enochian, so moving only costs you the difference in potency from Fire IV but not the Astral timer or quite as much difference as with Scathe (and there is a chance for Firestarter).



Outside of this, Fire IV should be 280 again (300 is really high, remember to multiply by 1.8 for Astral Fire III), double Foul potency when hitting single target, reducing Convert and Aetherial Manipulation recasts (or adjusting convert completely to grant full MP, refresh astral, grant 3 Umbral Hearts, a Firestarter, and a Thundercloud), increase proc timers to 30 seconds, increase Thunder III DoT timer to 30 seconds (I'd also like to see the remaining DoT potency of the previous Thunder added to the initial potency of the Thundercloud so no ticks are ever wasted), Each Umbral Heart consumed should result in +5% damage for the consumed spell (so 15% damge increase on a Flare that uses all three), and then we just about have ourselves a real class. A burst damage buff return would also really be great (or magic vuln up on Blizzard IV), and synergy with the Enochian timer and the RNG of procs (each thundercloud obtained grants 5 extra seconds to the Polyglot timer).

Utility-wise, I'd suggest a buff that "consumes" Ley Lines and expands it out to the whole party for its remaining duration. I'd also like to see Enhanced Enochian function like a reverse-BRD song; every party member in range of the BLM under Enochian grants it +2% increased damage, and in turn the party members within range are granted +2% speed (or crit or dh or det, I just think speed makes the most sense). And yes, to balance the role, BLM deserves access to some kind of raise, preferrably not rez dispenser style. Manaward mitigation is pretty strong, but it could be a slightly lower recast, or maybe something reduces the timer, and I might recommend BLM get its own special MP regeneration ability since it's the "recharge" class of this game (tether to one player to restore MP over 5-8 seconds but costs the BLM nothing, on 120s recast).


If they implemented EVERY ONE of these suggestions, the class might be OP, but to be honest, BLM is supposed to be the strongest damage in the game, and after the shunning it's been through, it deserves a patch where it's the strongest (see also: PLD and SMN), so I don't even really care.

[LeeraSorlan]

i do savage, most of V3S mechanics can be solved by using a regular swiftcast or atherial manpulation, altre roitte and its classical elements are very predictable, with a few of them lining up with ur leylines (between the eyes for no downtime) and the rest can be eased through with swiftcast.minimal loss in V1S, V2S is pretty butter too, V3S is more specific but is still possible to minimize the downtime, the only real headaches in terms of mechanics is being chosen for a stack/swap, which is a hinderance to every job and can force you to refresh ur astral/umbrals sooner than ud prefer, but thats really as far as uncontrollable RNG goes in VV3S. books can be solved by simpley turreting on your square, theres plenty of time to move to it if you arent there from previous emchanics before she does it again, cone waltz can be done by aetherial manipulatiion, there is PLENTY of time to move into position so that u can wait for one of ur party to move in, vines are annnoying, but only last a few seconds (melee are punished more for this mechanic), and the iceberg once again can be aetherial manipulated, not to mention the earlier phases of the fight, the single safe square repeaers, use atherial, vines, refresh stance just before u need to run, use swiftcast if need be to keep uptime while running. so on and so on..

Im not disagreeing that BLM has it punishing to mess up/deal with mechanics, because it does...im just disagreeing with changing that, because thats one of the things i enjoy about BLM, i enjoy being punished for things i could potentially work around. and so far in stormblood, every mechanic that punishes me greatly, that i cant control, also punishes every other job just as much. slidecasting and knowing when u can minimize movement is key.


and of course you will notice the dmg decrease when u are still leveling, because u are essentially the reworked lvl 60 version of BLM, i rather meant at lvl 70, it doesnt "feel" like you are weaker, due to gear differences. at least to me anyway.




All in all, im not against some of these changes, but i also am not in favour of some of them.

Im reading your individual quotes seperately and edit replying to each one, so forgive the lack of a neat post.


Im curious about your BLM opener in V2S that has you somehow able to drop enochian? what i do for that fight is precast swiftcast and being my opener walking into the fight with the tank, and planting myself on the safe square, there is no mechanics that require you to move for the first 30second of V2s otherwise. so its very much impossible to drop enochian due to mechanics during ur opener, infact, the only current savage boss ive had to adjust my opener around was V3S if i was unlucky to be picked by the stack/swap and V4S exdeath due to blizzard 3 aoes (that just involves timing triple cast later than id prefer). you should have 0 issues with V1S opener, 0 issues with V2S opener, 0 issues with shinryu and so on

[EllieShadeflare]

Check out the Sub-Zero thread for Freeze

I think that's a good idea too, I may as well include a link to that in the first post.

Reliable procs would be great, I suggest Thunder Ready like in PVP and granting a free Firestarter when all three Umbral Hearts are consumed (Firestorm, affectionately named)

This menas not only more damage (7x Fire IV and Firestarter per Astral Fire, and more Thunder uptime) but also more opportunity for snap movement of ~2s during proc usage.

Aether Static is actually based on Thunder III Ready from PvP, but reworked ever so slightly. Instead of just making it "sorta Wildfire", I decided to make it gauge and tic based. It'd still achieve the effect, and Thunder IV's version would heavily reward players for big pulls and beefing up the BLM's AoE game.

As for the Firestarter confirmation, I went with Astral Hearts to incentivise Fire IV for mobility and beef up the opener. In addition, it'd also make BLM's damage more consistent versus its original form.

Outside of this, Fire IV should be 280 again (300 is really high, remember to multiply by 1.8 for Astral Fire III),

Actually, I put into account the whole hog that is the 1.9x, because you forget Enochian. In fact, 300 with 1.9 from Enochian and Astral Fire III is a whole 570 potency, a mere 4 potency less than the 2.05 boost from 3.55 when using Raging Strikes. My main concern when I boosted it that high was that Black Mage was already having trouble keeping up with other classes in Heavensward, and if it's gonna be an easily punished one trick pony that only deals damage, then by gum it's gonna be a powerful, easily punished one trick pony.

double Foul potency when hitting single target,

Please, yes.

reducing Convert and Aetherial Manipulation recasts (or adjusting convert completely),

Well, Convert just needs a reduction in cast... or give more MP for the cooldown. I think Aetherial Manipulation could use both a cooldown decrease and an anchor support skill, since it's a bother to use.

increase proc timers to 30 seconds, increase Thunder III DoT timer to 30 seconds (I'd also like to see the remaining DoT potency of the previous Thunder added to the initial potency of the Thundercloud so no ticks are ever wasted),

Considering every other DPS job that has DoTs has 30s+ DoTs (with AoE dots being an exception) and other procs having a 30s timer, there's no excuse for BLM to not have this. The rolling in of the remaining potency of Thundercloud is a nifty touch and would encourage using it more often!

Each Umbral Heart consumed should result in +5% damage for the consumed spell (so 15% damge increase on a Flare that uses all three), and then we just about have ourselves a real class.

That's also probably not a bad idea as well. Umbral Hearts do feel empty as is.

Utility-wise, I'd suggest a buff that "consumes" Ley Lines and expands it out to the whole party for its remaining duration. I'd also like to see Enhanced Enochian function like a reverse-BRD song; every party member in range of the BLM under Enochian grants it +2% increased damage, and in turn the party members within range are granted +2% speed (or crit or dh or det, I just think speed makes the most sense). And yes, to balance the role, BLM deserves access to some kind of raise, preferrably not rez dispenser style.

As it currently stands, BLM doesn't need a rez because it's not in the lore, nor is it in the class's style. Black Mages haven't had much to do with resurrection or anything beyond 1.0, but that was when Thaumaturgy was being taught by a Void Mage Black Mage. As for utility, simply expanding the size of Leylines and allowing other party members to have a reduced potency Haste buff under it would be fine enough.

[Llugen]

Planning ahead and movement should be "punishing" on BLM but not so punishing that the class sucks at progression so bad that it's ignored in favor of SMN, a movement god, and RDM, which can move every other cast as well as swiftcast into dualcast (as well as corps and displacement and the melee combos are instant cast).

This discrepancy is MASSIVE and should be lowered.

I might also suggest they increase Foul base potency to 700 and decrease Flare falloff from -15% to -10%.

To be frank, I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea of BLM raise either, but if you consider that statics balance composition around roles not actual classes, the caster role is off-balance. Refer to the "SMN/RDM should lose raise or BLM should get raise" thread for comprehensive thoughts on this, but tl;dr, BLM not having raise translates directly into BLM being less viable for progression over rez dispenser and SMN, and it should be able to meaningfully compete for the role slot. Without this consideration, the logic becomes "Ok play RDM/SMN for prog and go back to BLM later", and that's exactly what we as a community want to avoid.

[Dualgunner]

You cannot swiftcast into dualcast. You can swift after dualcast, probably what you meant, but it's worth the small correction.

[LeeraSorlan]

Planning ahead and movement should be "punishing" on BLM but not so punishing that the class sucks at progression so bad that it's ignored in favor of SMN, a movement god, and RDM, which can move every other cast as well as swiftcast into dualcast (as well as corps and displacement and the melee combos are instant cast).

This discrepancy is MASSIVE and should be lowered.

i think you are overestimating how bad BLM is in prog compared to other jobs, and maybe think that groups exclude them often, its not often, its a rather small minority of raiders that demand meta.
But lets not get into that, and we shall agree to disagree, i personally think BLM could do with a few minor QoL tweaks, but as it stands, its find (to me) as it is right now

[Llugen]

@Leera, we can indeed agree to disagree, but I'd like to say gently that classes should be balanced around top tier play not around midcore/casual play, and if something doesn't affect the latter then it shouldn't even be a concern to you, as you won't be the one being forced/bullied into changing jobs. Out of 44 groups, exactly TWO BLMs have cleared unending right now, and with significantly lower stats than their SMN counterparts (and roughly " the same" stats as their significantly easier to use RDM counterparts).

The job is slightly stronger single target damage than SMN on a dummy right now, but a dummy check is not a meaningful measure of if the class is balanced. SMN utilizes burst windows far better than BLM does, and it has two minute synergy where BLM has none. This requires a little more careful consideration than "a few minor QoL tweaks", to be frank, but literally ANY meaningful tweak would be welcome at this point.

The final question simply becomes: Will they make it strong enough to justify taking over how powerful/capable SMN is and how useful/capable RDM is? (this is another reason why I grind my teeth and say give it a raise ability)

If the answer is no, then I can "look forward" to playing SMN for another 8 months until they fix it again.

If the answer is yes, hallelujah I can finally go back to my main and not feel like shit/be made to feel like shit.