Why Black Mage is the best designed job and what can be learned from it

[Reylah]

One downside to having different stat priorities on different jobs within the same subrole is that it means that you may have to remeld your gearsets differently to play optimally. Spell Speed on BLM is a bit of a niche case because BLM exclusively uses magic damage and has the lowest APM count in the game at baseline. Gish jobs in this game are always at a bit of a disadvantage because they still haven't bothered to merge Skill and Spell Speed into a single Haste stat, which really needs to happen.

I wouldn't use BLM as the standard for anything, though. It's the least played caster job despite having a significant dps advantage over jobs within the same subrole. It's also the preferred job of the director and producer of the game. I think if you had any other job with divergent design it would quickly become underpowered and ignored.

Yeah there is a reason I just referred to a Speed stat instead of the split speed nonsense.
I understand that having multiple stat prios for each job is kinda crazy. I meant more to highlight what allows for a difference to exist in this one job and how to expand that difference between jobs.
I also think this is could be solved with improvements to the melding system like I've heard someone suggest a "melding plates" type system similar to glamour plates to more easily swap between Materia. I don't like the idea that we should enjoy all of our jobs being optimal with the same stats (snuffing one of the highlights of RPGs, gear differentiation) just some that its easier to swap jobs.

I don't like using play rate as a measure of good design because I have other theories for why BLM is the least played caster such as SMN sharing with SCH, and RDM having a higher starting level so if you want to swap into Magic ranged its less you have to level. Also I see a lot of people touting BLM as pentacle of complexity in this game so that might scare new players away from it. Regardless I do agree that BLM being the directors pet job is probably the only reason it hasn't been sanded into oblivion to raise its play rates al a healers and what will likely happen to AST for similar reasons.

This is the absolute worst part of BLM. One spends so much time changing their rotation that they can't develop consistent habits. It's not until one reaches Lv90 and stops doing synced content that one can develop good BLM habits for Lv90.

I see that as more of a problem with the Sync system because when I sync down on other jobs it still feels like I have an incomplete rotation. I would prefer if outside or ultimates or synced savage raids that player's don't loose abilities during the level up experience because it feels like 1 step forward 2 steps back when ever you get sent to a lower dungeon especially one that crosses an expac capstone. That a whole 'nother can of worms though.