Black magic...kinda sucks

[Malkria]

Gonna keep this kinda short heopfully because I'm low on time. EDIT: It wasn't short at all lol

In the same vein, just because it has useless skills doesn't mean it needs a rework either.The second half is purely hypothetical. It could be better, but what more does BLM need right now? It would especially be hard to add those onto low level AoE skills. If you can propose something intuitive and interesting I'd be all for it.

Well for one lightining is supposed to be a major aspect of the thurmaturge and thus BLM, so simply removing all the redundant fire and ice aoe and simply have an aoe lighing spell that gets stronger as you level could be good. Furthermore you could have a mechanic that could work with ice spells to make ice spells aoe. Or in short you could have it where you use the lightning spell to 'mark' targets while doing damage and then use ice spells to 'flechette' the damage much like a standard aoe, which then leaves fire for single target damage as it primarily is now. This way you have diversity of play without to major a rework, and much better aoe capability on the BLM then it currently has.

Furthermore you could also have an ability that can be used off GCD to 'bank' damage in a similar fashion to teh MCH's wyldfire. But in this case simply lets you keep casting and do no damage, with no bonus damage. Basically simply lets you keep up dps during boss invulnerability phases, keep up the timer a little easier, and also would have the utility to be able to with coordination get a big kick off on damage once you can do it again. It also could be used for a big opener perhaps on bosses.

It might be better to refer to Firestarter and Thundercloud collectively as "Sharpcast" then. Every 60s you get a guaranteed proc GCD of free movement, that can be held for 18s.

Which highlights the issue right there. 40 seconds where at worst case you DON'T have that movement option, which from the guides I have read you basically want to use sharp cast as often as possible so therefore will be quite frequent you will not have that guarantee of movement. So while it is an option, it is by no means reliable and thus can't really be counted as 'free movement'.

Once again, this is pretty hypothetical. Looking at the spell, it COULD happen, but it rarely does.

If it 'rarely does' it isn't hypothetical. If everything goes smoothly then yes it works fine. But the point is that if it doesn't then it isn't just one person who is going to pay the price. It really isn't a good feeling to get killed by a movement ability because someone else messed up.

This is to get the most out of the job. If a BLM drops his timer, he can just recast Enochian and just pick up where he left of having taken a small hit to DPS. The challenge with BLM is not letting this happen to maximize damage.

Not always, and depending on how events go you could very well find yourself where both instant cast abilities are down, and where lag kept transpose from going off. Depending on where enochian is on CD you could have quite a bit of time where the BLM can't put out nearly the kind of DPS it should be.

I won't deny that the gauge itself is more integral to BLM than some other jobs like PLD and WHM though.

The closest I would put it to would be the MCH, but even then you have a fair amount of leeway and it doesn't just 'drop off' as the heat comes off. Again I personally feel it should be when the timer falls off you should start loosing orbs, but one every three seconds at that point rather then all at once. It would give some leeway without being a brick wall.

I'm just saying that those people should be decently experienced BLM player, that made threads recently. Not popularity polls conducted during ARR.

That was the only poll I could find, but you can find quite a few threads just going back a few pages on this forum alone. What they feel the issue varies, but a lot of it either comes down to how the BLM plays, the mobility, or how simplistic the playstyle is. Which the more I think on it I feel I agree that the BLM should be a little deeper. Hence the thought of making ice and lightning be the AoE side of things and ice and fire for single target as it is now. I feel it would add much needed depth while also feeling pretty natural as the BLM does feel up to when you are trying to beat a timer while casting spells that don't reset it.

If your point is that the BLM is currently functional, I will agree. It 100% is functional. But that being said doesn't mean there isn't significant room for improvement to how the job plays. I also strongly feel that the job is more about momentum then about being a turret, and just because the cast times don't encourage movement hat doesn't mean that the job shouldn't have better mobility to call upon in some fashion. Finally the biggest issue I feel is how badly you hit a brick wall should the timer run out, and yes an 'experienced player won' have that happen often' but that doesn't mean it won't happen nor does it not feel overly punishing if it does. You and others can claim all you want that 'experienced players won't have these issues', but that negates the fact that they will be a turnoff for newer players as well as glossing over the fact that mistakes happen. If that wasn't the case, then we wouldn't have in-combat raising for example.