Black magic...kinda sucks

[Kabooa]

I guess I'm playing the victim card by pointing out that I am a woman.

Like I said, shout down long enough until the dissenter goes away. So good game "guys", guess that means you win. 9.9

A) Irrelevant.

B) Fine, I'll go through your original post point by point. I like to consider myself a pretty dang good Black Mage, not quite on Sfia's level, but enough to address this.

Edit: FORMATTING

Ok I started out loving the black mage, but apparently was playing 'over geared' or something since now that I've hit mid-sixty range the job...just kind of sucks. The cast times I could live with, the need to switch between fire and ice is fine, but the timer...just kills it. With base gear you MAYBE can get three fire fours out before you need to toss a quick fire one or switch stances. But with the sheer amount of moving involved not only does the black mage have to work the hardest of all the classes to do damage but whether or not you do the mechanics you get screwed out of a lot of fights.

Gear scales in this game. You will never hit the point of natural spellspeed where Fire 1 isn't required, as that requires a near 1.8 cast time on Fire 4 at all times, which is about 35% spell speed. Currently your highest natural gear you can get is 14%.

Every job suffers from mechanics, some just suffer a little more. Black Mage and Monk have the shortest, but Black Mage doesn't require a target or any other conditional to keep theirs. If a Monk has to run out of melee at a bad time, they're forced to either eat a hit (not ideal) or risk killing someone with said mechanic. Black Mage hits transpose. It's not a punishment to prevent the worst case scenario.

Take the ruby sea dungeon. The first boss isn't to bad, you just need to avoid the water drops from the add and placement can make it easy to take it out. But the second boss has two mechanics. One with he eruption that makes you have to run and thus probably lose your timer, and the second with seduce which again will probably make you lose your timer. The final boss is similar, with long phases where you can't attack anything, and thus lose your timer.

Swift cast, sharp cast, good use of Thunder procs. Transpose on the last boss if you have to.

Frankly I don't even think you need major changes to make the job not feel so bad to play. First off the ley-lines could be a buff for going through a full ice-fire switch with full charges and every time you switch after that it resets. Second, having you lose complete charges feels to heavy handed. But having you lose a charge when the timer runs out every three seconds would give enough breathing room to the timer while better allowing the job to do mechanics without losing all momentum.

Leylines is currently one of the only abilities in the game that actively changes your behavior. We need more of these, not less, as currently many abilities you simply spam on cooldown (Attack oriented ones) or mash during burst windows (Buff oriented ones). Leylines requires spatial forethought as well as minimizing the impact random aoes can have on it (Such as standing on the edge so the aoe doesn't cover the whole thing. Move to the other end. Easy street)

AF's timers and the conflict it has with the mechanics thrown at you is like, the main attraction when dealing with Black Mage. Loosening up this particular part of the Job makes it intrinsically less interesting. Easier, but less interesting. AF/UI timers aren't hard to keep so long as you keep your Spellspeed in mind and what it allows you to abuse. There is nothing more satisfying than skirting the timer.

I like the job itself and the power it brings, but it isn't the top DPS and it's mechanics seem to but heads with the dungeon/raid design of the entire game. With those combined the question should be how to make the black mage better fit into the game, because right now the RDM is more fun to play even if it doesn't hit as hard simply because it feels better suited tot he game at large then the supposed heavy hitter black mage is.

Red Mage is also considered one of the least valuable jobs because you have fewer opportunities to excel. The Black Mage may not feel, at first handle, as good as a Red Mage in most content, but a Black Mage is one of the most satisfying jobs to optimize precisely because it's harder to handle. Split second proc management, knowing when you can be greedy, knowing when you can dump your leylines, knowing when you don't have to run out, abusing every timer you have.

That's the job. That's what makes it great. The simple rotation and mechanics are deceptive in this mastery because it's 'easy' to be okay at Black Mage, but very hard to be very good at it. If it's not for you, there's no shame in that.