Thread: BLM itemization in 5.4 is a problem.

Originally Posted by lulunami

I am not sure choosing the lower VIT weapon is advisable for Ultimate considering Lalafell already have lower VIT than other races.

Wait, do racial stats matter all of a sudden?
I thought our numbers had gotten so big the few point differences between the races were unimportant.
Are they relevant just for BLM? Or are there more situations where +/- 5 points actually makes or breaks your character?

Originally Posted by ItMe

Wait, do racial stats matter all of a sudden?
I thought our numbers had gotten so big the few point differences between the races were unimportant.
Are they relevant just for BLM? Or are there more situations where +/- 5 points actually makes or breaks your character?

A world prog group is not going to want someone to be missing a small amount of hp, and potentially dying to something as a result.
Same reason some people choose to meld tenacity/det for prog. The small difference can occasionally make or break it, and when you're world progging, you aren't gonna want to break it.

Originally Posted by oblivion238

A world prog group [...]

Oh! Ok, so it's not something normal people need to worry about.

Originally Posted by ItMe

Oh! Ok, so it's not something normal people need to worry about.

If you're worried about 'normal people' then I'd recommend just getting your ilvl as high as it will go and not caring any more. If you have any arbitrary gear set and luck with crits, you'll do better than people who run average. Go forth.

You can arbitrarily define any subset of people in this game who won't care about a particular issue if you believe the presence of such people eradicates any meaning for an issue to be fixed. I'd be shocked if there were more Triple Triad players than people who do Ultimate raiding, for example. Yet we still, somehow, get cards every patch.

The issue is: traditionally the raid weapon has been BiS and in instances where it hasn't, we have historical precedent where SE will change the stats to make it BiS, see: Diamond Weapons in Stormblood.

Right now, for Black Mages (and Black Mages only) it is not BiS. This is exceptionally problematic for content beyond the current raid tier. However, beyond just the weapon, it's also endemic to caster itemization overall.

Bumping this as this severely affects BLM for the upcoming ultimate, putting it at a severe disadvantage compared to other DPS classes. Some other notes:

Unlike other classes that are mostly able to work around poor substats here and there - this patch there are 5 slots that have no spellspeed on them whatsoever. Weapon, Head, Gloves, Feet, Ring 2. Melding spellspeed can make up some of the difference - but when the respective caps are 531 (Weapon), 301 (Head/Gloves/Feet) and 226 (Accessory), we're missing out on over 1000 spellspeed (after melds are taken into account).

Not only is that our most favored stat, but missing out on that takes away a lot of the intricacy of the class - enabling you to do F1 skips more often for example, and being able to fit in more procs for movement. The class is just far more fun to play with lots of spellspeed. When another class gets a bunch of undesirable substats - the rotation doesn't change significantly like this.

Since 2.1 i've been asking SE for up-gradable 24 man gear. Would that be a good solution for Ultimate world prog? Absolutely not - unless they suddenly gave a weapon and accessories, didn't put a lockout on 24 man gear and delayed ultimate for a week. However what they can do as a short term fix is what OP has suggested - fix the weapon stats to at least bring us halfway to the stats we have lost.

And at least, modifying the weapon would not screw over the stats of shared role gear (ring 2 for instance SMN and RDM also have to settle to one 520 to not take the savage one). I'm all for everyone having their raid weapon the best weapon for their class.