Black Mage megathread

[Pyitoechito]

The part that throws me is lower-level, especially when you first get Freeze, at 40. If the reduction in cast time from swapping elements doesn't also impact the recast timer, my understanding is that a cycle of casting Blizzard 2, Freeze, Fire 2, Fire 2, Fire 2, Fire 2 ends up being 664 potency (two 56 from "80 potency" at -30%, 3 144 for "80 potency" at +80%, and one 120 pot Freeze) while just casting Freeze six times is 720 potency. But it's worse, because with the timer changes Freeze six times takes 15 seconds while the "proper" cycle takes 16.5? Am I missing something there?

Not missing anything there. The cast times on Blizz/Fire II are meant to imply you only use them for element-swapping. BLM AoE while leveling has been far stranger in the past (as many other jobs before ShB, specifically tanks). There is decidedly an awkward gap between learning Freeze and learning Flare where Freeze spam is DPS positive for a "normal" rotation, but it's kind of endearing to me.

---

Observations after a week

• For better or worse, there has been a noticeable uptick of black mage in content in general.
• Synced black mage is not very appealing (as usual?), with most significant instant spells for weaving gained around EW/DT levels. Foul is a hard cast until Xenoglossy is unlocked at Lv80, Paradox is Lv90 (including F3P because nobody castin' regular ol' Fire after getting Fire IV), and Despair isn't instant until Lv100. Triplecast exists at Lv66+ but can only be weaved without clipping by using Thunder spells or when element-swapping.
• Black mage at cap just feels like it has way too many instants for movement (and hardly any spread out at lower levels). It feels strange letting Triplecast charges cap off since there's no net benefit to spending them on anything but movement or weaves (RDM Acceleration is both mobility and a DPS increase).
• AoE rotation feels meh, but it was kind of always this way since 7.0, it's just more obvious now that Flare casts are fast to show how small the rotation is overall (and the aforementioned High Fire/Blizzard nonsense).
• The removal of timers specifically for F3P and Thundercloud is a net positive, in my opinion. I didn't like the punishment of losing those procs due to a longer fire phase or something (like it's some kind of crime to spend Xenos to move). The problem was losing so much else along with them.
• I still don't really like Thunderhead in general. I get why they made it proc-only (because they wanted to remove the MP cost messing with the fire/ice spend/restore casts while not letting the spell be spammable), but it feels so weird to gate it. I miss thunder spells having big numbers.

[Rithy255]

Black mage will obviously have a uptick mind you, people flock to new things and as black mage was a hot topic for a while you will get people playing it. It's also not like black mage mains have anything else to go to because all other casters are super easy and boring as well. It was VERY Underpowered in 7.0-7.1 so there was no reason to pick it over picto now that has obviously changed.

people will play it if it's doing better then pictomancer in terms of damage which looks like it will, generally people will flock to the META caster, now that black mage is easy to use and easy to play theirs no real competition on choice you literally just pick it up because it's the best DPS and got high mobility, if picto was better people would play that more, if a rez caster like summoner was more needed you pick that, you don't really pick based on enjoyability if every job plays the same.

I don't think it will have any staying power like the summoner rework. People will get up with it and assume woah they must be thinking of a cool design to build upon in 8.0! but no nothing will change the job will remain boring and people will follow the new fad or whatever does the most damage.