BLM - Scathe adjustment suggestion

[Katie_Kitty]

You are aware that not every thread involving any of the 3 casters is automatically about RDM, right? Asking to make a currently useless and trappy skill to not be so, on one of the hardest jobs in the game, isn't an attack on Red Mage and won't unseat it from being one of the hardest, most punishing classes available.

BLM has no need for scathe at this point. That's just a fact. They have all the movement tools they need. In fact you can even argue that it's been made too easy over time to justify all the people who still claim erroneously that "BLM is super hard and that's why it needs to do a million damage."

Just saying this is a pointless change.

[wereotter]

Most jobs have skills that they retain at level 80 that lost their usefulness long before that. Scathe is just another of those that while you've obtained better tools, there's no real skill that can outright replace it and have it still make sense in the same way as something like upgrading Thunder to Thunder 3.

Other examples are things such as Fists of Earth becomes entirely useless on monk once you obtain Fists of Fire. Tranpose in your own kit loses a lot of its value once you have Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 and then looses it entirely once you have Umbral Soul. Ninja has no use these days for Fuma Shuriken, Summoner has very little use for Ruin 2.

These skills fill a gap that you might need/want in your kit at lower levels, that's all they're there for. Maybe they'll be culled in a future expansion, otherwise you can just not place them on your bar once they no longer serve a purpose and forget they exist.

[Beddict]

Tranpose in your own kit loses a lot of its value once you have Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 and then looses it entirely once you have Umbral Soul.

Umbral Soul can only be used under the effects of Umbral Ice. If you end combat with a Fire skill you still need Transpose to switch over which does make it useful all the way through to 80. If a boss is going to disappear then I'm going to want hit them with a Despair before they go, I can Transpose and Umbral Soul when I'm not doing anything.

[wereotter]

Umbral Soul can only be used under the effects of Umbral Ice. If you end combat with a Fire skill you still need Transpose to switch over which does make it useful all the way through to 80. If a boss is going to disappear then I'm going to want hit them with a Despair before they go, I can Transpose and Umbral Soul when I'm not doing anything.

I don't play much black mage, so thank you for the information. Though the fact remains that the skill wains in usefulness at higher levels, and there are still several skills on other jobs that, like Scathe, have no use by the time you're at level 80, which was my point. It's there to serve a purpose a lower levels, and that purpose gets over shadowed by better skills as you level, but those skills don't replace Scathe because they're not the same kind. Like they couldn't effectively replace Scathe with Sharpcast or Triplecast

[waifugenerator]

I only use Scathe in pre-lv44 content as a way to weave transpose cos I REFUSEEEEE to go straight from f1 to transpose it feels wrong in a single target rotation

[Doctor_Minime]

I just want something that's not "stop casting and move, lose most of a gcd, then f4 again". Even if it's mostly DPS neutral. It's not OP to ask for QOL changes ya know

[Eliadil]

I just want something that's not "stop casting and move, lose most of a gcd, then f4 again". Even if it's mostly DPS neutral. It's not OP to ask for QOL changes ya know

This reason is fine, for sure. And it's also why Sharpcast exists, as well as Pyro and Thunder procs. You can get a pyro proc every time you enter your fire phase, which is plenty enough to get the mobility you need for most fights, don't worry. Try playing a bit around it, you'll see that you actually have an enormous amount of mobility just because of this skill alone.

[Doctor_Minime]

This reason is fine, for sure. And it's also why Sharpcast exists, as well as Pyro and Thunder procs. You can get a pyro proc every time you enter your fire phase, which is plenty enough to get the mobility you need for most fights, don't worry. Try playing a bit around it, you'll see that you actually have an enormous amount of mobility just because of this skill alone.

Sharpcast helps a bit, pyro procs don't happen every time we F1 (kinda wish it did? maybe?), and triplecast is used on CD for DPS gain.

if it's dps neutral it's pretty much a buff because you can now just braindead it why playing wrongly... ad get same dps

i don't mind any buff but still should be significantly low, i don't want to the appear of scathe mage...

DPS neutral compared to moving and losing uptime, DPS loss to spam it.

Just delete scathe we have so many mobility tools at this point that we almost don't really have any trade off for our absurdly high DPS — bar having no utility

I don't feel like we do though. There's a reason BLM is #3 on the death list.

In my opinion, Scathe should be removed - replaced with a soloing tool like Drain - and Blizzard 1 should be instant. Maybe even add an extra trait at high level that makes Fire 1 instant after its replaced with Fire IV.

Two birds with one stone.

This guy gets it. That's actually not a bad idea, make F1 & B1 instacast! And upgrading scathe to drain would give some survivability options when not in a dungeon/raid.

[Archwizard]

This guy gets it. That's actually not a bad idea, make F1 & B1 instacast! And upgrading scathe to drain would give some survivability options when not in a dungeon/raid.

Blizzard 1 is pretty pointless after you unlock UI3, and with Umbral Soul there's already precedent for "instant UI refresher"; giving the same to B1 at least at early-mid levels (if not baseline) would still give Umbral Soul a space for when the boss can't be targeted. If you see a hit coming and desperately need to move, no Triplecast or Xeno or procs, worst case scenario you can Transpose then B1 spam until you can sit still. Sure you would lose DPS, but that's just a given for BLM any time they need to move anyway, and Scathing during AF is probably a bigger loss on MP costs alone.
Extending it to Fire 1 would actually be a huge QoL buff, if not a small DPS buff, so I could see them adding some kind of trait for that well into the 70s or 80s.

As for Drain, presently BLM only has Sleep and Manaward to survive in solo content, and from my memory it really wasn't enough for a lot of the solo scenarios you run into while questing. It doesn't have Vercure, early Physick or Titan, Bloodbath or Second Wind to recover, and Manaward is basically the BLM equivalent to the DR from Arm's Length.
So long as it's not the version of Drain we had in Stormblood anyway. Something stronger but still spammable. I usually say shoot for around 200 potency with 100%-150% healing. Still a DPS loss, but at least a decent amount of healing if you string several casts.

[Miminming]

if it's dps neutral it's pretty much a buff because you can now just braindead it why playing wrongly... ad get same dps

i don't mind any buff but still should be significantly low, i don't want to the appear of scathe mage...