Black Mage

[Xander_Diabolos]

First off... Just got 82 black mage (not rushing it to 90 SUPER fast).

Already I feel they need to tone it down a bit.
Enhanced Enochian III = 20% bonus damage
Main and Mend II = 30% bonus damage (and healing? why)
3 Stacks Astral Fire = 80% bonus damage

Side note... why does Flare/Despair give astral fire for 15 seconds? Who doesn't Transpose RIGHT afterwards to Thunder III for proc'd Thundercloud or Foul/Xenoglossy (Transpose/Blizzard IV for 3 Umbral Heart for next Fire IV spam is another option).

Also...
Literally Every other Final Fantasy game...
AoE Fire = Firaga
Single Target Fire = Fire
Stronger Single Target = Fire II

Can we get Firaga / Firaga II instead of Fire II and "High Fire II"?
Also... can we get Fire through Fire IV for boost in damage over time across levels and drop "Maim and Mend" which didn't make sense in the first place?
Or maybe instead drop "Maim and Mend" and allow 5 stacks of astral fire and make damage on Astral Fire go from 40%>60%>80% do like a 20%>40%>60%>80%>100%. Also make Astral Fire stacks harder to get. A single Fire III seems too easy to get the +80% boost.
Maybe they can add something to teleport around without breaking casting cause that is the biggest issue with some bosses.

Example (and similar thing to Blizzard/Thunder):
Level 1 - Fire (Single Target)
Level 18 - Firaga (AoE)
Level 35 - Fire II (Single Target) (replaces Fire)
Level 60 - Fire III (Single Target) (replaces Fire II)
Level 65 - Firaga II (AoE) (replaces Firaga)
Level 70 - Fire IV (Single Target) (replaces Fire III)
Level 82 - Firaga II (AoE 140 potency) (replaces Firaga II)
Level 90 - Fire V (Single Target) (replaces Fire IV)

[Raikai]

First off... Just got 82 black mage (not rushing it to 90 SUPER fast).

Already I feel they need to tone it down a bit.
Enhanced Enochian III = 20% bonus damage
Main and Mend II = 30% bonus damage (and healing? why)
3 Stacks Astral Fire = 80% bonus damage

Wait, tone down, why? These are just values that make the numbers you'll see at level 90, there's nothing really shocking about it.

[Xander_Diabolos]

I was mostly talking about at 90, but I can talk about leveling process.
RPR gets 300 potency at level 1 "Slice" and BLM has to wait until 20 to reach that with Fire.
RDM gets 300 potency Verthunder/Veraero at levels 4/10 (I think potency increases to 360 at level 62 with enhanced Jolt)
I realize these two jobs don't start at level 1, but should be balanced for Satasha (15 dungeon).

Level 1:
Fire = 180*1.4 = 252 effective potency with Astral Fire.
Fire (until out of MP), Transpose, Thunder, Fire (Until out of MP) - simple rotation
There are a few jobs that get 200+ potency damage for their primary attack (but you don't stay 1 for very long)

Level 20: +25% damage from level 19
Fire = 180*1.6*1.1 = 316 effective potency

Level 35: about +32% damage from level 34
Fire = 180*1.8*1.1 = 356 effective potency
Fire III = 260*1.8*1.1 = 514 effective potency (but 40% chance of firestarter and not able to be spammed)
Same as before, but - Fire 3, Fire (until Firestarter then do another Fire III)
At this level your Astral Fire/Umbral Ice is at 3. You have 45 more levels until max level and besides Polyglot your gauge doesn't change at all from this point.

Level 40: about +18% damage from level 39
Fire = 180*1.8*1.3 = 421 effective potency
Fire III = 260*1.8*1.3 = 608 effective potency

Level 60: about +45% damage from level 59
Fire IV means rotation removes Fire. Fire III to Fire IV until having to recast Fire III before Enochian wears off.
Fire III = 260*1.8*1.3*1.05 = 638 effective potency
Fire IV = 310*1.8*1.3*1.05 = 761 effective potency

Level 90: about +14% damage from level 89
Fire III = 260*1.8*1.3*1.2 = 730 effective potency
Fire IV = 310*1.8*1.3*1.2 = 869 effective potency
At least 2/3 of the spells you cast being Fire IV which becomes effectively 869 potency (really high for not being a 30+ second timer ability)

DNC = Standard Finish 720 potency, but 2 actions required to do it and 30 second cooldown
DNC = Technical Finish 1,200 potency, but 4 actions required to do it and 2 minute cooldown
NIN = Hyosho Ranryu 1,300 potency, but is locked behind 60 second Kassatsu cooldown
MNK = Rising Phoenix 700 potency, but requires all 3 beast chakra to use
MNK = Phantom Rush 1150 potency, but requires all 3 beast chakra + Lunar and Solar chakra
BRD = Barrage + Refulgent Arrow is 280*3=840 effective potency. Barrage is 2 min cooldown

I think the reason BLM is considered "balanced" is the amount of movement to avoid AoEs later on that mean you have to interrupt Fire IV. Triple cast can help mitigate this, but if Triple cast is down you are stuck casting 100 potency Scathe.

That being said Black Mage is always expected to be glass cannon. Having a spell be that powerful is almost expected. I just wish it was more consistent across all levels rather than hating "Leveling Roulette" when it pops for 59- as BLM.

[Karni]

Why is it that some new players nowadays always ask to change the core foundation of job before they even finish leveling it? What happened to taking a bit patience and time and truly learn and understand the full job before wanting to dismantle it.

[popotaro]

Please stop this.

[SeiyaSoiya]

Why would you transpose for thunder?
Why would you transpose for foul/xeno?

Why would you ever use aoe spells outside kiddie content like dungeons

Are you trying to normalize all potencies across all dps jobs on every level bracket? If so, why?

[Rongway]

Firaga

That's not how the naming scheme works in "literally every other Final Fantasy" though; in the classic FFs that use suffix naming, the suffixes are just fantastical substitutes for 1/2/3/4. Classic cartridge-era FFs in English used 1/2/3/4 or --/II/III/IV. Final Fantasy XI used roman numberals to indicate relative power level but also introduced meaning-bearing suffixes that indicated spell range and radius, where -- was single target, -ra was caster-centered AoE, -ga was target-centered AoE, and -ja was target-centered AoE with vulnerability.

Thread: Skill Name Change - Black Mage

We have this conversation often around here. tl;dr, the devs decided to use roman numerals in the English localization and that's just what we have to live with. It won't be changed.

From a UI/UX standpoint, a suffix system would work if it were like the one used in FFXI, where the suffixes were meaningful--

• Base spells: single target
• -ra spells: AoE centered on caster
• -ga spells: AoE centered on target
• -ja spells: AoE centered on target and reduces target's resistance to subsequent uses of the spell

--so they weren't just power indicators. In that system, they also used roman numerals to denote different power levels of spells with the same target scheme. If BLM and WHM spells used that same system, it would look something like this:

Current system >> Suffix system

• Fire » Fire
• Fire II » Firaga
• Fire III » Fire II
• Fire IV » Fire III
• Blizzard » Blizzard
• Blizzard II » Blizzara
• Blizzard III » Blizzard II
• Blizzard IV » Blizzard III
• Thunder » Thunder
• Thunder II » Thundaga
• Thunder III » Thunder II
• Thunder IV » Thundaga II
• Cure » Cure
• Cure II » Cure II
• Cure III » Curaga
• Medica » Cura
• Medica II » Cura II

However, still from a UI/UX perspective, if you wanted to just rename Fire/II/III/IV to Fire/Fira/Firaga/Firaja, then it would be no different from naming them Fire/II/III/IV except that then people would have to learn to associate --/-ra/-ga/-ja with the meanings of 1/2/3/4 or A/B/C/D, which would be an additional cognitive load on the user. Therefore, if we're not going to use meaning-bearing suffixes like XI uses, the more user friendly choice is just to number the spells.

By now, we have what we have, and changing things would just cause even more confusion, especially since most people don't bother to restrict their search results to the past 6 months when looking up information on this game and there's a lot of outdated information on the web. You'll have people looking up rotations and wondering why they're being told to spam a single target spell on a group of trash mobs, or why their III spells aren't extending their Aspect timers, and some people will take the outdated authors at their word instead of realizing they need to find more current information.

[Hasrat]

Side note... why does Flare/Despair give astral fire for 15 seconds? Who doesn't Transpose RIGHT afterwards to Thunder III for proc'd Thundercloud or Foul/Xenoglossy (Transpose/Blizzard IV for 3 Umbral Heart for next Fire IV spam is another option).

Kinda invalidated a lot of those opinions with that part... At 80 (long before, really), Transpose is just there if you get stuck in AF during a phase change or something.

Also

Maybe they can add something to teleport around without breaking casting cause that is the biggest issue with some bosses.

Yes, planted turret is the tradeoff for big numbers. Sounds like SMN is what you want.

[Rilifane]

It's quite clear you haven't understood the class yet, so asking for changes based on your knowledge and observations doesn't make sense.
Take your time to level it to max level and play it, low level potencies and dps mean nothing because the leveling phase is a very short one in the grand scheme of things.

You made a lot of statements that are simply false or are ignoring something important.
Nobody transposes after Flare/ Despair because it would clip and you have Aspect Mastery to change to Umbral Ice 3 with Blizzard 3. Transpose is either a tool for downtimes/ between pulls (especially once you get Umbral Soul) or for highly optimized gameplay.

BLM has by far the lowest APM of all dps jobs because their dps comes solely from GCDs, they have no oGCD damage; they have oGCDs that enhance/ affect GCDs (like enforcing a proc) but no oGCD damage itself. Their primary cast is longer than the GCD by default. Which means their GCD spells have to have higher potency than e.g. the average NIN combo skill because the NIN also has TCJ, Ninjutsu, Raijus, Bunjin, Meisui etc. - all fairly weak individual hits but they come in addition to their GCD combo hits.

BLM also has absolutely no dps support, meaning only their own numbers count while every dps except MCH and SAM also has party buffs that are factored into their overall dps. The fact that BRD and DNC (and MCH, rip) are behind not just BLM but pretty much every dps has nothing to do with the number on their highest nuke and everything with the outdated concept of range tax.

Balance is fine for the upper half of the dps because they're extemely close to one another. The only thing that is not fine is that we have a noticable gap between the upper half (MNK, BLM, RPR, SAM, NIN, DRG) and lower half (RDM, SMN, all phys ranged). Within the hard hitting bracket BLM is balanced; not because of movement required to dodge mechanics - a good BLM can do that without ever dropping dps - but because their consistent damage evens out against more burst-y jobs like NIN and jobs that bring party buffs.

Yes, low level balance is scuffed. A DNC and RDM absolutely steamrolls dungeons, SGE and SCH regularily out-dps proper dps in big dungeon pulls etc.; potencies are adjusted for lv 90, not low level content because they factor in having access to the whole toolkit. Every few levels a different dps is completely op while another is falling behind because one got access to their cool shiny skill that signifcantly increases dps while the other got something "meh" that won't really work until higher levels.
Adjusting low level potencies in a way that affects max level balance is something that should never ever be done because it completely screws max level, the level where you'll spend the majority of your time on, and all max level content.

[Picker]

The suffix system of classifying spells is not “literally in every other game”. Maybe if your under 20 years old you can claim this, but it’s false, they weren’t localized that way till the 2000’s. I played fan translated roms of 2,3 and 5 in the 90’s and 5 was the first time I noticed this.

If your on primal I can invite you to the novice network and teach you some blm, I’ve mained it since beta.

Flare and despair refresh timer so you can manafont or to give you time to blizz 2 or 3. Take transpose off your main bars, that’s only for phase change or if you’ve made a mistake and need a do over.

You should be weaving aetherial manipulation after an instant cast, if your clipping it, you made a mistake. This is one of the last unaltered jobs with consequences for bad decisions, you need to practice more.