BLM Thoughts.

[Burningskull]

Just personal opinions here: I HATE it.

There is just so much movement in this game the fact that BLM has such long cast times even with things like Triple Cast or Swift Cast, they just are not enough. Often while leveling I found myself running out of movement abilities cause there was just so much movement on bosses.

The fact the Umbral Ice and Astral Fire buffs still have timers on them when so many timers on buffs were removed or extended is baffling to me. And if they run out your entire rotation just jams to a halt more than any other job. Personally I think the timers should be removed and the interaction of the spells enhanced. Like Fire > Fire 3 > Fire 4 or maybe Fire has 50% chance to proc Fire 3 and the same for Fire 3 and 4 or just something. People complain about Ruin spam on SMN but isn't just using Fire 4 twice or 3 times only to switch to Fire 1 until you run out of MP then switch and do the same with Ice the same as Ruin spam? Maybe they could make Scaith add 5s or refresh your Ice and Fire buffs or something?

Speaking of switch to Ice, why doesn't switching just restore all your mp. So many times i've Switched to Ice and cast Ice 3 > Ice 4 only to still be at 6000 mp when I switch back to Fire. And then there is Transpose. Why doesn't it give you as many stacks as you had or upgrade into Umbral Soul and just have Umbral Soul work even when you are in Fire.

Why does Flare have a, what is it 3.5s cast time? When Despair is only 2.5s. You end up spamming Flare 2 or 3 times at the end of your AoE rotation and the cast time is sooo horrendous some things either die before you cast and you can't switch targets during a cast so it gets interrupted and you have to start all over or just switch to Ice and start the AoE rotation all over.

Paradox is interesting and fun mechanic that gives you a reason to use Ice 1 during your Ice phase and is a good evolution to have to the switch from Fire and Ice for mp mechanic.

Anyway these are just my thoughts on BLM. Having suffered it to 90 I'll probably never play it over SMN or RDM for my dailies or anything. However I do hope other people enjoy it. Hope it fills the BLM fantasy for them like SMN does for me now. And I just wanted to vent a little. Thanks for listening.

[BaconBits]

Slidecasts into your DMs

[Burningskull]

Slidecasts into your DMs

Slidecasting doesn't always work depending on latency, lag or any other problem that might occur. But yes I do try to do it. Just often the boss will do a AoE RIGHT AS I START CASTING lol.

[Kolsykol]

What fights in particular in EW do you hate?
I've cleared all of them on BLM and I don't feel this at all, you've got quite a lot of spells for movement now.

I dunno about Savage tho but we'll see tomorrow.

[ThorneDynasty]

It's one of the more fun AOE rotations now. Almost every job just has a dumbed down version of ST rotation, BLM is a completely different dynamic thing that depends on your procs, instant-cast cooldowns and MP recoveries.

[Burningskull]

It's one of the more fun AOE rotations now. Almost every job just has a dumbed down version of ST rotation, BLM is a completely different dynamic thing that depends on your procs, instant-cast cooldowns and MP recoveries.

I mean.... Blizzard 2 is just a AoE version of Blizzard 3. Freeze a AoE version of Blizzard 4. Fire 2 a AoE version of Fire 3. Flare an AoE version of Fire 4 / Despair. As far as I'm aware you only use Manafont to get another Flare or Despair. Do BLMs use Manashroud? I can't remember.

[BaconBits]

Slidecasting doesn't always work depending on latency, lag or any other problem that might occur. But yes I do try to do it. Just often the boss will do a AoE RIGHT AS I START CASTING lol.

Step 1: Get gear that naturally has spell speed, or failing that, meld spell speed on your gear. BLM scales very well with spell speed, and having too low an amount of it is a miserable experience imo. A good starting point would be about 1100-1300ish spell speed.

Step 2: Utterly abuse your movement tools. You have 2 charges of Triplecast, 2 charges of Sharpcast to force a Thundercloud or Firestarter proc, Amplifier to generate a stack of Xenoglossy, Swiftcast, and Paradox is instantcast during your ice phase. Use instantcasts to weave your abilities so you don't clip your GCDs. Ley Lines increase the speed at which you cast, Aetherial Manipulation to move to another party member, whether it be to a safe zone or a stack marker, and Between The Lines to return to your Ley Lines. Also abuse Surecast to prevent knockbacks from interrupting your cast and Manaward to nullify damage if you know a hit won't kill you.

Step 3: Know the Fight. This one's a bit tricky if you're going into a fight blind and don't learn quickly. Figure out which spots don't tend to get aoes dropped on them, get used to dodging aoes by a fraction of a hair, find that one pixel perfect spot between the multiple aoes that just spawned in your general area. And no matter what, always practice your ABC's. Show those aoes (and your stressed out healer lol) who's boss.

[Burningskull]

Step 1: Get gear that naturally has spell speed, or failing that, meld spell speed on your gear. BLM scales very well with spell speed, and having too low an amount of it is a miserable experience imo. A good starting point would be about 1100-1300ish spell speed.

Step 2: Utterly abuse your movement tools. You have 2 charges of Triplecast, 2 charges of Sharpcast to force a Thundercloud or Firestarter proc, Amplifier to generate a stack of Xenoglossy, Swiftcast, and Paradox is instantcast during your ice phase. Use instantcasts to weave your abilities so you don't clip your GCDs. Ley Lines increase the speed at which you cast, Aetherial Manipulation to move to another party member, whether it be to a safe zone or a stack marker, and Between The Lines to return to your Ley Lines. Also abuse Surecast to prevent knockbacks from interrupting your cast and Manaward to nullify damage if you know a hit won't kill you.

Step 3: Know the Fight. This one's a bit tricky if you're going into a fight blind and don't learn quickly. Figure out which spots don't tend to get aoes dropped on them, get used to dodging aoes by a fraction of a hair, find that one pixel perfect spot between the multiple aoes that just spawned in your general area. And no matter what, always practice your ABC's. Show those aoes (and your stressed out healer lol) who's boss.

Step 1. Even IF I cared to use materia on any job it wouldn't be blm lol. I don't enjoy playing and only got it to max level.

Step 2. I do abuse my movement tools. So much so that I run out. I also have no clue when you are meant to use Sharpcast and tend to ignore it since the long cast times make it difficult to weave Sharpcast in. Aetherial Manipulation is horrible on controller. Between the lines is nice but it's only there when you have Leylines which is once very 120s.

Step 3. It is impossible to memorize every fight in this game. If you are only playing BLM in say Savage or Ultimate then sure. Memorizing the fight would be necessary but that's any job imo.

Again these are just things I hate about the job and am mostly talking about how fun the job is to just pick up and play. Running dungeons for roulettes or trails, leveling, etc. etc.

[Gruntler]

Step 1. Even IF I cared to use materia on any job it wouldn't be blm lol. I don't enjoy playing and only got it to max level.

Well that's just asking for a bad time. There's no excuse not to take the free shit the game gives you and stick it in the holes in your gear. They've made it the easiest thing ever. If you're not willing to take the steps to make the game better and easier on yourself, then you can't exactly complain the game is hard. It's like blaming the pavers of a road that you're having trouble walking on the road after you've shot yourself in the foot.

Step 2. I do abuse my movement tools. So much so that I run out. I also have no clue when you are meant to use Sharpcast and tend to ignore it

You either use your movement tools or you don't use Sharpcast because you can't find a place to use it. Pick a lane. If you have an instant cast (and you do if you use your triplecasts, procs, xenoglossy, swiftcast, etc, and even Fire 3 gives you time to weave an ogcd when you go into Astral Fire) then you can use it. You're GOING to be casting a Fire 1 or Thunder 3 soon enough.

since the long cast times make it difficult to weave Sharpcast in. Aetherial Manipulation is horrible on controller. Between the lines is nice but it's only there when you have Leylines which is once very 120s.

Swiftcast, Triplecast, after Fire 3, Xenoglossy, these all give you weaves. Come on.

Step 3. It is impossible to memorize every fight in this game.

For BLM prog purposes? It's very possible to memorize every fight you can do with it.

If you are only playing BLM in say Savage or Ultimate then sure. Memorizing the fight would be necessary but that's any job imo.

Again these are just things I hate about the job and am mostly talking about how fun the job is to just pick up and play. Running dungeons for roulettes or trails, leveling, etc. etc.

So? Should BLM be made a ranged physical because... you won't (not can't, won't) use its tools and won't (not can't, won't) try to understand the fights on a basic enough level to conquer them?

Maybe it's not the job. Maybe it's PEBCAK.

[LilyPendragon]

Step 1. Even IF I cared to use materia on any job it wouldn't be blm lol. I don't enjoy playing and only got it to max level.

I mean I hate to say it then, but your opinion is kinda irrelevant. It takes more than levelling a job to 90 to actually understand it. BLM has a ridiculous amount of mobility tools now, to the point where we're almost more mobile than Red Mage (admittedly in bursts of it, rather than a consistent every other GCD). It has 2 Charges of triplecast, swiftcast, sharpcast charges every 30 seconds and has 2 charges (and procs last for so long now that you practically always have one available), instacast paradox in ice, and it's two zipping moves. For everything else there's slidecasting.

Step 2. I do abuse my movement tools. So much so that I run out. I also have no clue when you are meant to use Sharpcast and tend to ignore it since the long cast times make it difficult to weave Sharpcast in. Aetherial Manipulation is horrible on controller. Between the lines is nice but it's only there when you have Leylines which is once very 120s.

You use sharpcast as the first thing in your opener, and then weave it every time you switch from Fire to Ice (as this is always a short cast). Aetherial Manipulation is fine to use on a controller, even more so if you run with premades and thus know someone you can trust to be in the right place, and have them at the top of your party list.

Step 3. It is impossible to memorize every fight in this game. If you are only playing BLM in say Savage or Ultimate then sure. Memorizing the fight would be necessary but that's any job imo.

I mean that's literally the point in Black Mage? Ask almost anyone what the difficulty of Black Mage is, and it's always that they have to have a good understanding of the fight mechanics in order to maintain uptime, possibly more than any other job.


I mean there are some legitimate issues with BLM, namely the absolutely horrendous dropoff of potency for Foul, and the cooldown change for Leylines blows, but most of the problems you listed can be overcome by just improving at the job.

As someone who has little raiding experience on BLM and just plays the job once every 2 years:
Is that amount of mobility even legal on BLM?

Since I didn't cared much, I tried to keep triple cast for movement rather than for the rotation, I'm not sure if it's still supposed to be part of the rotation.
Results? I often sat on 2 charges, dynamisation and swiftcast.

Even when actively using the tools, I was often sitting on 1 stack of triple cast.

If played optimally, you should only have one extra use of triplecast over a whole fight, and that's during the opener, as it should just be slammed on cooldown from then on; however that's in a perfect world when you know you can get away with it.