How to Fix Black Mage for Good

[EllieShadeflare]

On removing sleep and scathe... no.
BLM is not the powerhouse at low levels it is at higher levels, and you said it yourself, sleep is useful early on.

I never said "remove Sleep", because one of the quests forces you to use Sleep. I only said "MAYBE remove Scathe."

That said, BLM does throw better potencies pre-Level 50 than most other jobs do (Heck, compared to ARR, a standard BLM at level 50 is massively overpowered, thanks to the fact that unlike in 2.0-2.55, BLM has access to 180 BASE potency Fire spells, compared to the original 150 Base potency spells), so not sure why you'd think we're not a powerhouse.

BLM is actually one of the more fun jobs to play early game because of this.
Why does it matter that a couple of minor skills become useless by end game? Just don't use them.

You say that, but few jobs have useless skills by the end of the game, making these spells all the more jarring. Freeze and Blizzard II have no purpose in our skillsets, Sleep has no purpose beyond soloing, and Scathe doesn't need to exist anymore if they're not going to do anything with it. We already got rid of Lethargy that proved to do absolutely nothing but get in our way.

All things considered, it's better to have more useful buttons than keeping useless ones which is why I proposed the Drowsy effect or suggested that Scathe be buffed.

I don't know that Scathe is ever useful. I suppose for movement at very low levels, but even then there aren't really enough AoEs or large enough ones to notice. Sleep is only useful in low level solo content. For dungeons it's pretty much only useful if your healer is abysmal and the other dps/tank don't blast the enemies you sleep instantly. They could both be removed and no one would notice or care. Although, I would rather seem them improved and useful rather than deprecated.

Scathe was useful before BLM was buffed into what it became in HW. Our damage, while impressive, wasn't anywhere near what it is now, and we were more heavily affected by slower cast times (due to how bad Spell Speed was).

Sleep shines a bit in Eureka, where it's a pretty good idea to use as your gimped version of a stun when you're soloing.

[GunksFoy]

Scathe was useful before BLM was buffed into what it became in HW. Our damage, while impressive, wasn't anywhere near what it is now, and we were more heavily affected by slower cast times (due to how bad Spell Speed was).

Sleep shines a bit in Eureka, where it's a pretty good idea to use as your gimped version of a stun when you're soloing.

That's why I said "is ever useful" instead of "was ever useful". It used to be passable, but now more or less worthless. As for Sleep, I'm not a big fan of moves that are semi useful in a single place and virtually nowhere else. Sleep needs a rework or the boot.