BLM Recommendations

[StrangeIove]

First point that BLM is underperforming damagewise goes without saying and SE have already commented on Umbral Soul and gaining mana at low levels. These are my suggestions for modifying the job to make it more fun:

- Remove Astral Fire timer so that you can cast more spells (like Xeno and Thunder) in your Fire phase without being punished. You are still limited by Mana so the timer makes no sense now that Enochion is a trait.

- Make it so that Fire IV and Blizzard IV have a shorter cast to recast so you can have a single 'weave window' during these casts. This will allow more flexibility to cast buffs/debuffs (like Triplecast and Manaward) when needed.


Then rethink the levelling experience, some jobs feel great at 50/60/70 etc. but others feel awful. Ninja and Astro at level 50 feel like reasonably complete jobs whereas on BLM you cast Fire I over and over this can't be right. I feel like a good alternative would be to give Fire IV at level 50 and give Blizzard IV and 60 that way at least at level 50 you have something more impactful to press.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

1.) Astral Fire timer has never been what held BLM back from blowing out actually serious amounts of damage. Enochian timer management is the core mechanic that has made BLM somewhat challenging and fun to work around and is the one mechanic I DON'T want BLM to lose. Do that and you just made BLM like literally every other caster. Thank you, no.

2.) Fire IV's whole challenge and minigame is getting them off consistently without interruption. Making them shortcasts like Ruin III just takes away from that fun. As for weave windows, you have a guaranteed weave window every 30s (Thunderhead refresh), you have a shortcast on AF3 Blizzard III cast and UI3 Fire III cast (non-proc), you generate a stack of Polyglot every 30s and at Lv90+ you have instant Paradox, guaranteeing an instant Fire III.

The most frequently weaved ability besides Transpose, Sharpcast, has been removed, reducing the necessity of such shortcasts. If they truly insist on never returning Umbral Paradox, then at most the shortcast Blizzard IV could be nice for Transpose Firestarter to conserve Polyglot.

As for the levelling experience, you don't actually "just" spam Fire I over and over at Lv2-59. What could be done however is some stabilisation and making the Firestarter proc guaranteed, if at least at Lv54+ (old Sharpcast level).

[CoeliAlmr]

Sorry for being harsh about this but with how trigger happy SE is about simplifying stuff at the moment, I feel I need to say that I personally strongly dislike the main two suggestions here.

They've just added a guaranteed F3 proc, you already have around 45 seconds of Astral Fire to play around if you want to use it to extend your fire phase.
It wouldn't feel the same without a timer, the tension is often what keeps the job interesting. I do think if you're playing optimally at the moment it is too tight but that's more from a lack of options. Even then I would rather the timer be too tight than removing the timer completely because the job would be really really boring IMO.

BLM's identity is repeatedly hardcasting long casts. If you remove that it isn't BLM.
With how encounter design is going, I do think some more flexibility would help but I would rather this be done via some form of decision making between some alternative spells rather than making F4 weaveable. If they make F4 weaveable, it plays like an extremely watered down version of picto. At least at the moment they are somewhat distinctive.

Moving F4 to like Level 50 is a good idea though in my opinion (or make a weaker version even earlier which becomes F4).

[Kaedys]

As for the levelling experience, you don't actually "just" spam Fire I over and over at Lv2-59. What could be done however is some stabilisation and making the Firestarter proc guaranteed, if at least at Lv54+ (old Sharpcast level).

I guess what gets me about BLM leveling is that your standard fire filler from 1 through 59 is a spell you never use again once you hit 60. The only other job that comes close to that is Summoner's Ruin, which is relegated to only 1-2 casts per minute by max level (and is still used then, just rarely, and rather more often prior to 86 when you get the elemental Favor abilities). Every other job, the spell or weapon skill(s) you start with are used, themselves or their direct replacement, all the way up to endgame.

There's just something wrong with the first 60 levels of playing a job involving spamming an ability that you literally don't even keep on your bar past 60 (hedge: ok, I've not dived deep into BLM advanced theorycrafting, so maybe there's some weird edge case where it's used, but it's clearly not intended to be part of the endgame rotation). And I don't think anyone can really contest that BLM is hands down one of the most painful jobs to level (or do synced content on) in the game.

[Ferrinus]

It'd be nice if BLM learned an equivalent spell to Fire IV earlier in its career so that players could practice finding a balance between a strong spell that doesn't refresh AF and a weak spell that does earlier than level 60, but since the game now goes up to level 100, it's a little less weirder a structure than it had in HW or SB.

Ideally, it'd also let you use a more conventional naming scheme: Fire and Fire III would be single-target spells that refresh AF, Fire II and Fire IV would be AoE spells that do the same, and then Dark Fire and/or Void Fire would be the slow, hard-hitting spell you spam but not too much because it doesn't refresh AF.

[StrangeIove]

That's fair, I'm just one person just saying what I would like them to do. But I think with how the other jobs are going in general, BLMi is at risk of becoming a relic of the past and I don't want that.

[LilyPendragon]

Suggestion for Black Mage: Just give us Endwalker Black Mage back lol

[Shiroe]

imo Blm plays great atm ... (just its dps is too low)

.. Smn has more odd issues (healing on a timer, Ifrit dash still unreliable or even an hinderance, very inflexible in encounters that can push or delay phases, very low dps)

[Sylvain]

Damage is a side concern, it's just number crunch and we're just 1 week into DT.

To me, the current itteration has 2 flaws.

1 [Minor issue] - Thunder damage coming mostly from the DoT makes it so that the impact damage is now minimal, thus unsuited for a movement spell like it used to be.
This isn't much of a problem in itself, what is annoying is that we get 2 proc per cycle so there's always this feeling of "wasted proc".
One solution could simply to bring back the old potency repartition (loads of impact little DoT). Another solution would be to cut Thunder's DoT duration in half (as well as double the DoT potency), however it would result in twice as many thunder cast which may be undesired.
Overall I feel like bringing back the old repartition would be best, "ideally only 1 per cycle but if you really need something instant, there's always thunder"

2 [Medium issue] - Astral Fire doesn't hit the mark and has 2 problem (in single target)
1- Finisher of a finisher, it's basically redundant with Despair (more of a feeling issue, not a really "objectif" flaw)
2- Can only be used after a complet fire phase which isn't always possible due to boss mechanic

Something that could be done to adress both would be to make Astral Flare stack only obtainable through Despair / Paradox / Manafont. (the stack would be kept in Umbral and without Enochian)
This would result in us having to do 3 cycles, so one Flare every 90s. (Without Xeno cast). Note that it could be tweaked to only require 4 stack to be cast aligning it with a 1min timer (on average)

The redundancy of having 2 finisher would be gone because it wouldn't really be a finisher anymore, but something you slowly build overtime.
The issue of having to do a whole astral phase would also be removed as only 2 spells per cycle would be required, Paradox and Despair, our 2 biggests nukes.
This would also ensure that newer BLM do not miss a whole Astral Flare because they did a oopsie during the astral.
Manafont would grant a 30s buff allowing for 1 cast of Astral Flare to avoid any overcap and ensure we can have 1 Astral Flare in every burst window.

As a side result, because Astral Flame would be a rarer spell to cast, more oomph could go into increasing its potency making it more of a "big boom" and not just "the second finisher hitting slightly harder than the first finisher".

I'm fine with the rest atm.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

I'd appreciate an extension to our timers as crit low sps blm feels very rough to play now. Our thunder proc lasting longer would also be nice as it often is falling off right as you want to reapply it on low sps. Making the blizz 4 a shorter cast to allow for transpose f3p is an interesting idea. It would save a polyglot in some cases which would be nice.

I don't share the hatred towards being a turret some others do.. I think that's what BLM was always meant to be. A giga damage blasting turret and everything you did was in the goal of being able to just stand and cast. The trouble is encounter design has become increasingly antagonistic towards the style of the black mage. Getting to sit and blast is satisfying, but encounter design forces us to be running around instant casting regularly and it is very much against the core of the job.

I find BLM very enjoyable currently on higher sps but I generally prefer crit blm for the bigger booms so I'd like it to feel less rough than it does now with some small QoL changes. Also in favour of the devs ensuring that the standard rotation remains optimal and enjoyable to play. I still don't want the mana ticks coming back.