Could Black Mages Be Improved...

[Kacho_Nacho]

Woo, one of my same suggestions in the megathread~

Great minds think alike.

The only advantage we would get is being able to weave in OGCD's without a DPS loss.

Well, that’s the point. Black mages suffer too much from having to move.

[Cynfael]

Well, that’s the point. Black mages suffer too much from having to move.

BLMs who know fights generally don't suffer this way; it hurts during progression, but after that the negative impact on downtime is minimal to none depending on player skill.

What Harold is referencing is how BLMs weave oGCDs poorly due to their scarcity of instant GCDs, but he's right to imply that it isn't an enormous improvement.

The majority of suggestions to improve BLM are effectively targeted at lowering the skill floor without adding necessary value closer to the skill ceiling.

[Kacho_Nacho]

BLMs who know fights generally don't suffer this way; it hurts during progression, but after that the negative impact on downtime is minimal to none depending on player skill.
What Harold is referencing is how BLMs weave oGCDs poorly due to their scarcity of instant GCDs, but he's right to imply that it isn't an enormous improvement.

The majority of suggestions to improve BLM are effectively targeted at lowering the skill floor without adding necessary value closer to the skill ceiling.

Gotcha! Now I get it.

It's a shame, though, that black mages have the bar set so high to play optimally; but, that just goes to show there's a job for players who enjoy every level of difficulty from easy to complex.

Me? I'm an easy loving guy. It's less stressful and I can focus more on mechanics and my surroundings. Others enjoy the challenge of complicated classes and wear their good play as a badge of honor. But, that's all off topic.

What matters is black mages need adjusting in order to be competitive and SE is cognizant of that fact. (Something I was not aware of. Missed that memo.)

[Jollyy5]

It's a shame, though, that black mages have the bar set so high to play optimally;

Hoo boy, if you think BLM is a doozy, try optimizing Machinist. Even people with as little as 90ms latency are having difficulties pulling off the optimal opener, and I can't even do the 5 GCD budget opener at 180-200ms latency.

I know it's off-topic, but sometimes I feel like SE makes some really poor design choices in general in a game that is supposed to be well playable at 200ms.

[HaroldSaxon]

Adjustments to BLM DPS were already confirmed in the latest live letter, and in the video with gameplay happening, you can see the BLM cast Fire spells right quick.

The video with the gameplay had every spell from every player sped up. It was a bug with the replay system they were demonstrating.

Well, that’s the point. Black mages suffer too much from having to move.

That isn't the point. Good Black Mages have plenty of movement tools available and while it can still be an issue in places, it isn't the major issue here. The major issue is if a hypothetical fight had 0 movement whatsoever, BLM's DPS is still FAR too low to be considered. If they give BLM a bunch more movement without a raw DPS increase, absolutely nothing will change. BLM needs raw damage, QoL fixes as well as some general "dps balance" changes which I have detailed in my thread - namely the removal of disembowel and more single target DPS buffs.

[zuzu-bq]

That would not only not increase BLM's dps but also make AF timings harder to handle post F1 cast since you're refreshing it a few seconds earlier. Also, B1 is useless in most cases so I don't see how that would help.

Well, that’s the point. Black mages suffer too much from having to move.

BLM suffers from having to move if they don't know how to move. If you see good Black Mages playing you can note they move the bare minimum if even move at all without using an instant spell and even then they still don't do enough damage as a job. You can check any other of the BLM threads about this.

[Shiroe]

it's both:

blm EDIT having trouble in heavy movement (progression) savage /ultimate /ex raids

and not having enough deeps for a "no utility" dps class.. (sam atleast has slashing debuff and eats most group buffs)

... getting in certain pfs is a pain as blm, besides a pain progressing in some fights

[Marianno]

It wouldn't make any meaningful difference to our DPS. Our raw DPS is still not good enough. The only advantage we would get is being able to weave in OGCD's without a DPS loss.

This. Weaving OGCDS is a nightmare for me especially when/if I get T-Cloud back to back. Really hoping they take a long hard look at BLM and make the necessary changes aside from potency increases. People have posted some great changes to help the job, I hope devs are reading it and taking a look at those changes.

[HaroldSaxon]

it's both:

blm EDIT having trouble in heavy movement (progression) savage /ultimate /ex raids

and not having enough deeps for a "no utility" dps class.. (sam atleast has slashing debuff and eats most group buffs)

... getting in certain pfs is a pain as blm, besides a pain progressing in some fights

Good Black Mages don't have severe uptime issues in Savage/Ultimate/Ex raids. Its entirely a DPS issue.

[Sylvain]

Gotcha! Now I get it.

It's a shame, though, that black mages have the bar set so high to play optimally;

The real shame is the lack of actual reward.
If you're a bad player you'll do mediocre dps, (lose enochian etc)
If you're an average player you'll do sub par dps compared to most other dps. (you won't cast while moving and won't exploit your CD to their best)
If you're a good player you'll do OK dps but nothing spectacular.
And then, there are those special snowflake at the top 5 percentile.


For instance, when I went on Shinryu for the first time as a BLM (i knew the fight pretty well as a Heal tho), well I'll be honest it was trash because first I lacked BLM experience (I rarely play it out of Expert) and all my timings were off. After a few extremely lame tries I started doing what I would consider ok dps, no eno-chan loss, rather high casting uptime and what I would consider good use of triple cast and such.
I was first dps, but I think the only reason was that the other dps were not stellar. I did some 3k ish dps (can't remember if it was closer to 3 or 3.5)

On the other hands, reaching 3k as a SMN was a cake walk. I'm a bad SMN, I don't play the job often, but the simple fact that everytime I would screw up my pet + DoT were tickings on top of my tons of instants helped a great deal. And this left a poor taste in my mouth because I need to pay extra care and be much more concentrated on the BLM than on SMN.
What I would consider a good run as a BLM was slightly above what I would consider an average run as a SMN, and that sucks.

On the other hand, I love the job and it feels very rewarding when you're master the fight and are able to squeeze all those FireIV without interruption.
But the DPS is in fact not really there in general.

I can't wait for tomorrow to see what changes they'll adress. Instant Fire would be nice but a shorter cast overall would do just fine.
It would also be realllyyyy nice if they'd bring scaith back in a way or another.
And finally, altough it wn't happen, a Foul damage increased (single target only). I mean, for it's CD it doesn't do that much damage. I've read somewhere that it was something like around 40 potency pe second on average.

As a side note: I'm not talking about pro top percentile BLM vs SMN dps here to those who would point that at higher play it's fine.