Black Mage Blizzard II (and other minor suggestions)

[KayliRose]

There's no need to "play at distance" in low level dungeons. As long as the tank has control of all the enemies, you can stand right up close and only need to dodge the occasional short-range AOE.

.. The point of a ranged/magic DPS is to stay away from monsters to begin with. The only Magic DPS that should be anywhere near the monsters is Red Mage, and only when using the Melee-combo after getting their gauge up. The only time a ranged or magic DPS should be close to the action is if the mechanics of bosses or monsters demands it. Otherwise, even in low level dungeons there should always be some distance between yourself and the monster group. It's worth noting, that Blizz II is literally the only spell in Black Mage's repertoire that demands you to be within 5 yalms of your enemy, everything else having the 25 yalm standard you come to expect for all other spells. IF Blizz II actually did some sort of crowd control, like Stun or even Heavy, that might make it slightly more useful... But there's never a need for a Black Mage to be anywhere close to the action if the mechanics don't call for it.

[Iscah]

But there's never a need for a Black Mage to be anywhere close to the action if the mechanics don't call for it.

There's never a need to be far away either, "if mechanics don't call for it" - it doesn't affect your spell potency, and potentially inconveniences your healer as they try to position themselves so everyone is within their AOE circle.

Stand far away enough to be out of the enemy's attack range. That's all that matters. Extra distance adds nothing.

[KayliRose]

There's never a need to be far away either, "if mechanics don't call for it" - it doesn't affect your spell potency, and potentially inconveniences your healer as they try to position themselves so everyone is within their AOE circle.

Stand far away enough to be out of the enemy's attack range. That's all that matters. Extra distance adds nothing.

I'm not saying stand so far that it inconveniences the healer, but you definitely shouldn't be close enough to be doing a spell like Blizzard II. Believe me when I say I know the grievances of a Healer's job when it comes to positioning. I main Healers, not just here but in any MMO I ever play. It doesn't change the issue with Blizzard II though. As you said, out of the attack range of the enemy is where a BLM should be. If you're close enough to do such a short-distance spell, then you are indeed too close to the action for what the Job was actually built to do. I mean even the first several quests of Thaumaturge teach you to keep your distance. lols. To each their own though, if you want to be close enough to have to stop your casting every few seconds to dodge AoEs.
Pre-5.0 though, Blizzard II had a Bind, and the use was meant to be a means of escaping, not damaging. Since in dungeons you'd have no need to escape a group of monsters, however, unless the tank lost control or missed a few monsters, it was only really useful in field-work to keep monsters at bay. Without the bind though, its low potency makes it pretty well useless, and the close-range makes it too risky to use.

[PyurBlue]

To each their own though, if you want to be close enough to have to stop your casting every few seconds to dodge AoEs.

If you have to stop casting that's probably your fault, especially at the low levels where you use B2. There are barely any AoE's to look out for. B2 also has a fast-ish cast time, so it's very easy to slidecast and keep 100% uptime.

As far as tweaking the skill goes, I'd say give it a slight potency buff so you don't need to wait for 5ish enemies before it's worth it and then give it a slow/heavy/bind debuff again.

[Rilifane]

I'm not saying stand so far that it inconveniences the healer, but you definitely shouldn't be close enough to be doing a spell like Blizzard II. Believe me when I say I know the grievances of a Healer's job when it comes to positioning. I main Healers, not just here but in any MMO I ever play. It doesn't change the issue with Blizzard II though. As you said, out of the attack range of the enemy is where a BLM should be. If you're close enough to do such a short-distance spell, then you are indeed too close to the action for what the Job was actually built to do. I mean even the first several quests of Thaumaturge teach you to keep your distance. lols. To each their own though, if you want to be close enough to have to stop your casting every few seconds to dodge AoEs.

You keep saying that a BLM (or any caster/ phys. ranged for that matter) should stay at range when there is absolutely nothing to gain from it.
As long as you don't stand in aoes you can stand whereever you want and standing closer to the boss/ mobs is in most cases preferable because many aoes are cone-shaped and easier to dodge if you stand closer plus there's usually a "sweet spot" for most mechanics at max melee range where you can safely place your Leylines and dodge both melee and ranged mechanics while staying within them.

The point of casters and physical ranged being able to attack from range isn't that they should stay at range but instead that they can, if a mechanic calls for it.
Can. If, and only if, a mechanic calls for it. Everything past that is unneccessary and generally leads to more problems than staying closer.

If you have to stop casting every few sec, you simply positioned yourself poorly and that has nothing to with standing close or farther away. If you have to frequently stop casting in close range, you're doing something wrong and need to position yourself differently. Escpecially at lower levels, where Blizzard II still has its uses, there next to nothing going on in melee range.
From experience I can tell you that most mechanics are easier to play close to melee range. Only very few, like automatically centered meteors, force you to the outer ring.
Just because it doesn't fit your idea or preference for a caster doesn't mean it's wrong to get closer to the action.

The only thing I'd change about Blizzard II is a slight potency increase so THM/ BLM has a decent AoE rotation at low levels starting at 3+ for both AF and UI.

Leylines... nah, don't touch them. Learning to place your Leylines correctly to get the most out of them is one of the key challenges of BLM and making it easier to use would take that away. The basic rotation is simply while it's more difficult to get the most out of it and your Leylines and that's part of BLM's concept. It's supposed to be easy to learn while hard to optimize.
You get the occasional bad eggs in DF runs that make it harder but that is something all jobs struggle with. Just ask Monks how much fun they have with a tank who enjoys taking the boss for a spin or two. Or Dancers when the started pre-dancing because the tank ran towards the boss only to stop last second and not pull for who knows how long after all.

[OneTrueMiqote]

You keep saying that a BLM (or any caster/ phys. ranged for that matter) should stay at range when there is absolutely nothing to gain from it.
As long as you don't stand in aoes you can stand whereever you want and standing closer to the boss/ mobs is in most cases preferable because many aoes are cone-shaped and easier to dodge if you stand closer plus there's usually a "sweet spot" for most mechanics at max melee range where you can safely place your Leylines and dodge both melee and ranged mechanics while staying within them.

The point of casters and physical ranged being able to attack from range isn't that they should stay at range but instead that they can, if a mechanic calls for it.
Can. If, and only if, a mechanic calls for it. Everything past that is unneccessary and generally leads to more problems than staying closer.

This would be right if it was in a raid setting. But in dungeons during trash mob pulls (which is the most relevant to this discussion), most aoes will not reach you if you are farther away. The ones that do reach are rare and are an exception. Your odds of needing to dodge an aoe are MUCH higher if you stand in the max melee distance as you suggested.

[Iscah]

This would be right if it was in a raid setting. But in dungeons during trash mob pulls (which is the most relevant to this discussion), most aoes will not reach you if you are farther away. The ones that do reach are rare and are an exception. Your odds of needing to dodge an aoe are MUCH higher if you stand in the max melee distance as you suggested.

That's very dependent on the individual dungeon though. Killing fireflies in Sastasha is barely a risk, but good luck doing that with Fire II before your party kills the individual one you chose to target. Blizzard II is weaker but goes off reliably; Fire II is stronger but does zero damage if you lose your target.

[KayliRose]

The Keypoint of my argument is that Blizzard 2 puts you far too close to the action. The "sweet spot" where you can be close isn't close enough for Blizzard 2 to be effective, yet being too close can put you too close to close-range AoEs.
For those who say most low-level dungeons don't have many AoEs, I'll recap because a lot of people forget about the lower dungeons.

Sastasha, Tam Tara, and Copperbell don't have many Circle AoEs, mostly Cones and Lines.

By the time you hit Halatali however you start seeing more circles from the likes of bombs, which are pretty well littered around the place.

Toto-Rak and Haukke Manor are littered with Circle AoEs. The Ochus (minions and bosses), are AoE poisons that you don't wanna be within 5 yalms of, but are littered through the first half of the dungeon, which is to say, all the way until the 2nd Ochu Boss is dead. Haukke Manor on the other hand gets its AoEs in the form of Succubi, the Maid Servants that wander the halls as well as all 3 bosses have close range AoEs you don't wanna be up against, being further than the distance that B2 would ever be needed or effective. You might be able to sneak some B2s in when the Maid servants aren't around, but at that point I'd just stick to the standard "Fire1/2 spam, Blizz 1 til mana tops, repeat" method since ya know.. It's easier and safer.

Brayflox starts to see a fall off of Circle AoEs until you get to the swampy area with the Surf Efts and Wyrmhounds, which have their own AoE circles, and the Hellbender. Otherwise most of the AoEs in the dungeon are cone/line and the boss has targeted AoEs which you can't really help.

I can see no use for B2 in these dungeons though, where it wouldn't be better to just use Fire 2 until your mana is gone, then B1 a couple times for mana pip, then back to Fire 1 or Fire 2 Spamming. By the time you reach Sunken Temple of Qarn, the next dungeon after Brayflox, you have your Freeze, which is all-round better than B2 would ever be in damage, range, and utility. The only time I could feasibly give B2 a purpose in any of these dungeons would be the first and second boss fights of Copperbell with the monster hordes, more so on the 2nd than the first since the Ichorous Ire doesn't do do anything, and it's a quick way to dispatch the low-healthed little slimes, but even then a Fire 2 would be more effective, and you should be mostly full mana for that fight anyway since most of the fight is ya know.. Tank?

Preaching positioning though is not the issue here. Positioning is key for most Jobs, always. It's just there's never really a time to want to use B2 since you have to be too close to the action to need it. If it had a better Radius like say 15 yalms akin to White Mage's Assize, or even a cone AoE would be better than a centered 5 yalm AoE, then it may be used more often by many. I just think it needs to be tweaked so that it doesn't stay in the chasm of disuse.

That's very dependent on the individual dungeon though. Killing fireflies in Sastasha is barely a risk, but good luck doing that with Fire II before your party kills the individual one you chose to target. Blizzard II is weaker but goes off reliably; Fire II is stronger but does zero damage if you lose your target.

Most of the time in this situation I don't even use Fire 2, I use Scathe since it's Insta cast.. and still does more than B2. When in this area though most of the time a BLM will kill the clams first, and only attack Seekers if there are any left. Usually not since the rest of the party, like you said, already killed them

Edit: Also I should point out that Blizzard 2's Cast-time is the exact same as majority of BLMs other spells. 2.5s baseline. It is not "Faster" to use Blizz 2 over any other spell standard spell. That being said, Blizzard 2 desperately needs something to make it useful again or needs to be removed/replaced by Freeze. Because I wanna ask how many of you that are preaching me about positioning, actually use B2 as part of skill rotations?

[Archwizard]

That being said, Blizzard 2 desperately needs something to make it useful again or needs to be removed/replaced by Freeze. Because I wanna ask how many of you that are preaching me about positioning, actually use B2 as part of skill rotations?

Oh, I guarantee most of them don't even have it in a convenient spot on their bar until they do Leveling roulette.

Meanwhile, I agree with the OP: B2 is redundant in the same kit as Freeze, and too weak to justify using at high levels during the brief window of the UI phase. Either B2 should upgrade into Freeze at the level the latter is obtained (same with F2 into Flare, since we drop the former long beforehand), or B2 should gain some other utility like a stun or slow to give it a niche use in AoE scenarios.
Personally I'm a fan of the former, since it would cut down on some button bloat -- and as I said, it eliminates needing to pull it out of the spellbook during roulettes.

Granting, I'm also a maniac who advocates dropping Scathe to make B1 the new instant at 15, halving the cast time of F1 in the 50-60 range for the purposes of weaving and AF timing, merging Enochian/F4/B4 buttons as well as LL/BtL, and letting Aspect Mastery affect Flare so we won't F3 during AoE.

[Ardox]

Oh, I guarantee most of them don't even have it in a convenient spot on their bar until they do Leveling roulette.

Meanwhile, I agree with the OP: B2 is redundant in the same kit as Freeze, and too weak to justify using at high levels during the brief window of the UI phase. Either B2 should upgrade into Freeze at the level the latter is obtained (same with F2 into Flare, since we drop the former long beforehand), or B2 should gain some other utility like a stun or slow to give it a niche use in AoE scenarios.
Personally I'm a fan of the former, since it would cut down on some button bloat -- and as I said, it eliminates needing to pull it out of the spellbook during roulettes.

Granting, I'm also a maniac who advocates dropping Scathe to make B1 the new instant at 15, halving the cast time of F1 in the 50-60 range for the purposes of weaving and AF timing, merging Enochian/F4/B4 buttons as well as LL/BtL, and letting Aspect Mastery affect Flare so we won't F3 during AoE.

Upgrade F2 into Flare at level 50 and then have no AoE rotation (or rather a very clippy/clunky one) between level 50 and 68?