Black Mage megathread

[Pyitoechito]

Anything goes black mage discussion.

Start a new discussion, reply to an ongoing one, dump rework ideas, complain about patch changes (or lack thereof), complain about complaining, or whatever.

[Pyitoechito]

Aside from grievances with the 7.2 changes in general, why does the AoE rotation have to be so plain? Specifically, why didn't they fix High Fire/Blizzard II?

High Fire/Blizzard II only exist to phase swap and their damage is abysmal to the point that transpose is a significant gain over casting them (even when clipped). B3 is somewhat similar, but it has only 10 less potency than B4 (before applying off-element penalty), and F3 has utility from F3P (well, it used to have more when it was an additional AF refresher before 7.2; now it's a near-last-resort instant for mobility and almost always used for a damage gain when holding it to transpose into fire phase).

There's potential to add more to the AoE rotation without having to add any new skills. Aside from T4 and Fouls sprinkled in, the optimal rotation for AoE is just Flare and Freeze spam with the usual Flare Star finish. Flare → Flare → Flare Star → (swap) → Freeze → (swap). It's functional, but Flare gets the same MP cost reduction regardless of one Umbral Heart being consumed or all three, so why not play around that and make it optimal for the fire phase to be something like HF2 → HF2 → Flare (at 1 heart left) → Flare → Flare Star → (swap)? It used to be similar to that when Enhanced Flare existed.

I don't even fully grasp why they gutted the AoE spells at the start of 7.0. They dropped Enhanced Flare and reduced the potency from 140 to 100 (a loss of 72 potency per cast in AF3). The upgrade from Fire/Blizzard II to High Fire/Blizzard II is now a meager 20 potency (36 potency in AF3). I just don't see the reason for it.

On the same subject, why is the base potency of Freeze half that of Flare (120 vs 240)? This is the only case in the entire spell kit where matched fire/ice spells have different base potencies (before applying AF bonus). Freeze will never beat Flare in damage because of the AF bonus, so just let it be the same base potency and falloff.

My fear is they'll fix the "problem" by removing Flare granting AF3 to force High Fire II casts (like how the removal of Paradox element refresh is likely going to force High Blizzard II into the AoE rotation without making its damage any less garbage). It does make the High spells get use, but they're still garbage potency and make people frown seeing just how low a damage number can go.

[Edgowo]

I believe it was originally nerfed because people were cheesing flare stars using enhanced flare on single target, so they nerfed flare to be less potency. I agree though, they should bring back enhanced flareor instead of enhanced flare, they could make casting HF in AF3 grant an astral soul and make flare only grant 2 souls, making it HF>HF>Flare>Flare to get a flare star. But the potencies of HF, HB, and Freeze need to go up. They also need to reduce the cast times in line with the other spells, or better yet just revert the cast time changes.

[TakoyakiLala]

Black Mage feels kinda lack luster, disjointed and weak in certain parts, i.e AoE damage. The reworks need to a serious roll back to its 7.1 iteration and the devs really need to rethink how they want to handle Black Mage if they want to make it more mobile. Because what they've currently done to it is they've basically broken that damn thing in so many ways, lol!

[Pyitoechito]

So now, at the levels between unlocking F4 and before getting Paradox, fire phase is 7 Fire IV casts, I guess? So, ideally, you never see F3P in that time period at all (Lv60-89). Why would someone ever cast F1 for only a chance to get F3P at the cost of losing so much potency? F3P only exists from Lv42-59 and Lv90+. I mean, it was only a 40% chance each F1 cast in that time before 7.2, but... gross.

Sure, black mage feels kind of okay-ish when content is challenging, but half the reason I picked up black mage was to make (subjectively) boring content a little more engaging. The only reason I mess up my rotation now is because I'm just not being engaged in it at all and forget how many Fire IV's I cast in a row. The timer made it at least a little bit thrilling to squeeze in an extra Fire IV or two before refreshing the timer. Now, casting 4-7 F4's back-to-back just leaves me feeling empty. The thrill is now flipped to tedium.

Yes, the shorter casts are faster and give more time to slide around, but I miss those long casts. I miss them a lot. There was really nothing wrong with having them, especially after deleting the AF/UI timer. It made Triplecast and Swiftcast part of the fun little game of optimization, planning on saving it for more damage during burst windows or using it for mobility so you don't die and lose even more damage by being dead. Red Mage does this with planning where they use Swiftcast/Acceleration so they can weave other abilities as soon as they're off cooldown, especially Embolden/Manafication for burst alignment while also not letting Acceleration overcap (I sometimes forget and have to use an Enchanted Reprise, tee hee). Oh, gods... devs, please don't look at this and try to find a way to take this away from red mage.

There are other ways to make black mage's fail state less severe than completely deleting the AF/UI timer entirely. For example, changing the 15s AF/UI timer to being a timer for the Enochian trait. Instead of AF/UI dropping when the timer ends, Enochian (extra damage bonus and granting of Polyglots every 30s; not AF/UI's Aspect Mastery trait effects) is disabled until the next element switch (or use of Manafont). It's less punishing but still rewards correct play without changing or dumbing-down the rotation heavily. It maintains some subtle spice from the timer existing and also makes Enochian more than just the forgettable 100% uptime buff it is in 7.2 (unless someone is some kind of Scathe mage that never casts a single fire or ice spell...).

The same gauge timer previously for tracking AF/UI duration would be used for Enochian, either keeping the red/blue color or changing it to something like pink or violet or gold. Enochian being active/inactive would still be shown by the Enochian (Polyglot) section in the bottom right of the gauge going dark like it already does before Enochian is learned and/or when AF/UI is off.

The additional/altered wording for spells/traits would probably be something like:
Enochian Trait
Grants Enochian when gaining Astral Fire or Umbral Ice from an unaspected state, or changing between their influences. Spells that grant Astral Fire or Umbral Ice refresh the duration of Enochian. Effect is cancelled if Astral Fire or Umbral Ice ends.
Duration: 15s
(Transpose innately grants Enochian because it swaps AF/UI)

Paradox Spell
Additional Effect: Refreshes the duration of Enochian
(It's only necessary to have this additional effect if Paradox doesn't grant AF/UI. Other fire/ice spells that give AF/UI have this effect innately by the text in the Enochian trait.)

Manafont Ability
Additional Effect: Grants Enochian
Duration: 15s
(This is the only skill that needs to directly grant Enochian aside from the methods listed in the trait.)

Umbral Soul Ability
Additional Effect: Halts the expiration of Enochian



I'm not advocating that this is the correct and only solution or implying that the timer needed to be removed at all. It's just a suggestion that compromises somewhere between complete loss of the timer and no change at all.

[Pyitoechito]

Completely unrelated to the changes in 7.2, why am I still waiting for them to implement the option (key word is "option") to have the element-exclusive spells consolidated into single hotbar slots?

They teased it all the way back in the 7.0 media tour. Tons of jobs got the ability to optionally consolidate select actions to the same button on their hotbar, black mage included. But why not for those "can only be cast while under the effect of Astral Fire/Umbral Ice" spells? Fire IV and Blizzard IV, Flare and Freeze, even Despair and Umbral Soul. If people don't want to merge them onto a single action, they don't have to (the beauty of options). I just want the option (again, key word) to do it if I (or anyone else) want to.

It was literally in media tour footage for black mage. I want it. Give!

[Ferrinus]

There is a simple fix to the existing AoE rotation: make it so that Flare and Freeze can only be cast at AF3/UI3, rather than at any level of either buff. That way we'd have to use HF2/HB2 to transition between aspects even though they have mediocre potency. It's not the most satisfying fix, but the fewer spells are useless or optimally skipped, the better.

Likewise, something needs to be done about the uselessness of Blizzard 1 at level 58+ and the uselessness of Fire 1 between levels 60 and 89. I have two ideas:

* F1 and B1 just upgrade directly into F4 and B4. To cast Paradox at level 90+, you press the other button, ie while in AF3 your B4 button turns into Paradox, and while in UI3 your F4 button turns into Paradox.

* As soon as you learn B4 and F4, B1 and F1 become both instant and free to cast, thereby becoming emergency movement tools. This would replace Scathe and might also entail either zeroing astral Paradox's MP cost or, as above, making only the opposite spell button turn into Paradox when you're able to cast it.

[Carighan]

So much worse than that, too. There's so many buttons on so many jobs that are either explicitly (Fire/Blizzard) or factually (Paladin stuff comes to mind) mututally exclusive...

[Carighan]

There is a simple fix to the existing AoE rotation: make it so that Flare and Freeze can only be cast at AF3/UI3, rather than at any level of either buff. That way we'd have to use HF2/HB2 to transition between aspects even though they have mediocre potency. It's not the most satisfying fix, but the fewer spells are useless or optimally skipped, the better.

I have a far easier fix: Given the supposed lore behind Black Mages and some of the visuals, just make the entire kit auto-AoE. X potency and Y% done in a radius. Use Flare visual instead of Fire IV for that spell, etc etc. Always-fwoosh-mage!

[Ferrinus]

I strongly disagree. Narratively, it would make BLM feel like a clumsier and cruder job - we'd have fewer spells to choose from, and lose access to distinct pinpoint vs. wide elemental effects; I like feeling like I have a lot of spells to choose from and need to use my expertise to pick the appropriate one, and like I have fine control over my magical powers rather than can't help but spill fire everywhere. Some spells, like Flare Star, are so powerful they can't help but go boom, but if EVERY spell were like that it'd feel like we were incompetent to wield our own power.

Mechanically, there are fights in which you DON'T want to deal splash damage to avoid breaking something's CC or accidentally pushing a bomb onto the wrong platform or whatever. Obviously this restricts us from using Flare Star in such cases, but it shouldn't restrict us from attacking at all.

Practically, it is much easier to change the execution requirements of two actions than to change the effects and animations of like six different ones while deleting several others.