Black Mage - streamline the remaining spells

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Black Mage since version 7.0 Dawntrail has had a variety of revisions to its spells up until now, however a few of them were made virtually useless or have been useless for the longest of times and are in dire need of an update and polish.


1.) Fire I (Lv60-89)

Fire I's original purpose before the overhaul in patch 7.2 from Lv60 onwards was that of a maintenance spell and to enable Firestarter, granting you a free + instant cast of Fire III, which is a staple for Black Mage gameplay. The following issues have since been introduced:

• In patch 7.0 with the removal of Sharpcast, you no longer had a way to guarantee the effect of Firestarter triggering with Fire I, which is negligible from Lv90 onwards thanks to Paradox, but is an issue in the range of Lv60 to Lv89, when you have access to Fire IV as a new filler spell.
  
• In patch 7.2 with the removal of the timer for Astral Fire & Umbral Ice, Fire I lost not only its purpose as a maintenance spell, but it also not worth in place of a 7th Fire IV due to only having a 40% chance to trigger Firestarter (which WOULD be a gain if it happens when using Transpose Firestarter).

There are a few ways how to handle changing Fire I, but one of the simplest would be to increase the chance to trigger Firestarter to 100% from Lv60 onwards. Paradox would still be a significant upgrade in potency + being instant-casted.



2.) Blizzard I (Lv58+)

The old purpose of the spell was prolonging Umbral Ice while doing damage, made easier with making Umbral Soul a Lv35 spell. The purpose since 7.2 is just to generate 10000 MP until you learn Blizzard IV, after which the spell only serves as a placeholder for Paradox.

I have no idea how to cleverly implement it, but the removal of any debuffs it had along with the predominance of Fire spells for damage contribution and Blizzard IV doing its job to grant MP makes it so bad, you might as well make Blizzard I directly evolve into Blizzard IV upon learning it.

Please give the spell some purpose for later levels - a weaker variant of Umbral Paradox would be nice to have.



3.) Fire II, High Fire II, Blizzard II, High Blizzard II (Lv58+)

I'm going to be blunt - Endwalker completely fixed those AOE spells and made all of them viable with its potency increases + Flare Synergy, but got reverted to the state it was in previous expansions since Dawntrail, which since 7.0 made all of them not worth using.

Reverting the potencies from 100/120 back to 80/100 along with removing Flare's synergy with Fire II/High Fire II made Transpose -> Flare the best way to initiate Fire cycles in AOE situations, while making Transpose -> Freeze grant enough MP + Umbral hearts to go back to Flare-ing as soon as Transpose was back. This held true even when Flare had 4 seconds of cast time, without using Swift/Triplecast to skip the elongated cast time, which they buffed TWICE (4s -> 3s -> 2s).

The Tier II spells clearly are intended as AOE variants of the Tier III (Fire III, Blizzard III) but completely fail by being too weak to be worthwhile over Transpose cycles and also are not worth using as filler spells. The issue is SO bad even in the case of Fire II as soon as you learn Freeze, it actually matches Freeze in potency-per-second at its strongest.

• Fire II (3s cast) - 80 potency * 1.8 (AF3) / 3s = 48 potency per second
• Freeze (2.5s cast) - 120 potency / 2.5s = 48 potency per second

Freeze, until you learn Flare, matches Fire II in damage output. You're a Freeze mage until then or you lose enough targets that single-target Fire I/Firestarter outperforms it.

Furthermore, (High) Fire/Blizzard II are the four spells that were not adjusted when they streamlined the cast times to the 2 seconds across the board. My requests are as following:

• Reduce their cast time to 2 seconds to achieve parity with most other spells
• Increase their potency enough so using them instead of Transpose cycling is not a sizeable damage loss but rather makes both of them viable options for AOEing
• Bring back (High) Fire II's synergy with Flare, without butchering the current potency of Flare. This was one of the coolest additions in Endwalker to the AOE kit.

4.) Scathe (Lv15+)

Scathe is straight up terrible. Aside from hyper-niche applications of "soloing Palace of the Dead to 200F" it has zero redeeming quallities since the change of how MP is generated in patch 7.0. It's MP cost matches the base cost of Fire I, Fire IV and Paradox which will cost you a full Fire cast if you use Scathe after any MP regenerating skill (Blizzard spells, Freeze, Umbral Soul, Manafont)...

...instant cast options have been advanced so much that between Paradox, Foul, Xenoglossy, Triplecast, Thunder I-IV, Swiftcast, Despair (Lv100) and Firestarter Fire III, you really have no need for Scathe's "on demand" instantcasting, especially for its MP cost, the potency is so low that even theoretically spamming Thunder I/II (!!!) back to back yields a higher potency average than casting Scathe...

...all while the Final Fantasy XII & Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age version of Scathe is the ultimate Black Magic spell, a literal magical ray of death causing enormous damage. Literally, do SOMETHING with this spell. With the exception of removing its Sharpcast effect to guarantee its potency doubling from its base 20% chance, it has received ZERO changes. Possible solutions:

• Remove the MP cost or make it at least 400 so you don't lose a fire cast under Astral Fire.
• Increase its potency.
• Find a clever implementation for the spell that does something interesting.
• Remove it.

Feedback & discussion is welcome at all times, let's just keep things civil.

[Carighan]

Yeah I definitely agree, Black Mage underlying rotational "idea" is incredibly simplistic, and yet the class is slathered with spells that... do nothing.

Which if nothing else eat up the design space! They could be cool spells instead.

I think I'd stick to what I once wrote before:

* For Black Mage in particular, it'd be understandable if it's a "big badaboom" caster.
* As a result, AoE spells are now removed. Or rather, they are now the default. They are all X potency + 50% AoE or so, and everything you do is automatically AoE, with an unnaturally wide radius. Big badaboom. This solves the AoE rotation problem.
* Upgrade the spells as would be sensible during levelling, giving each new mechanism not via a trait in itself, but as Fire I turns into Fire II for example.
* Overall rotation ~unchanged, you use Fire IV / Blizzard IV to enter their respective elements now, the effect the spells have just changes based on which stance you're in. This removes the need to even have Fire III / Blizzard III as separate spells.
* I'm definitely with you on Scathe, and I'd just go into removing it. Maaaaybe have it for levelling before a trait turns it into Triplecast? That'd be an idea.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I think I'd stick to what I once wrote before:

1. As a result, AoE spells are now removed. Or rather, they are now the default. They are all X potency + 50% AoE or so, and everything you do is automatically AoE, with an unnaturally wide radius. Big badaboom. This solves the AoE rotation problem.
   -
2. Upgrade the spells as would be sensible during levelling, giving each new mechanism not via a trait in itself, but as Fire I turns into Fire II for example.
   -
3. Overall rotation ~unchanged, you use Fire IV / Blizzard IV to enter their respective elements now, the effect the spells have just changes based on which stance you're in. This removes the need to even have Fire III / Blizzard III as separate spells.
   -
4. I'm definitely with you on Scathe, and I'd just go into removing it. Maaaaybe have it for levelling before a trait turns it into Triplecast? That'd be an idea.

Hi Carighan, here my opinions on your points (I took liberty to enumerate them for easier reading):

1. This... solves the AOE problem, by utterly reducing Black Mage's spell arsenal to virtually nothing, which is an incredibly lazy approach that even Summoner has yet to reach.
   
   It will also cause immense issues in two scenarios.
   • By removing single-target spells, Black Mage in any fight with 2+ targets will now be a balancing nightmare and they will either be OP, or receive nerfs accordingly to either make the AOE pitifully weak or have total potency account for it, meaning less 1-target damage.
   • Fights where you have to AVOID using AOE (controlled damage, see Jagd Dolls in Alexander Ultimate Phase 1 for instance) will be significantly harder for a Black Mage where it might not even be worth the hassle.
2. Not a fan of that. A lot of enjoyability about Black Mage is the variety in animations - just straight upgrading spells will lead to visual monotony.
   -
3. REALLY not a fan of that. Fire III + Blizzard III currently offer a fun way to optimize your damage by managing Firestarter procs, Swift/Triplecast for Blizzard III and Transpose for stance switching, so I am against the removal of it by folding everything into a single elemental spell. It will also make Paradox lose a fair bit of purpose by removing Firestarter/Fire III that way - so yes, it actually has significant impact to the spell rotation.
   -
4. Removing would be the nuclear option, but I'd prefer if they did something with it that doesnt kill a use of Fire I/Fire IV/Paradox (you need 800 MP to cast Despair/Flare, you usually have 1200 MP, so 400 MP budget for it).

[Rongway]

I'm definitely with you on Scathe, and I'd just go into removing it. Maaaaybe have it for levelling before a trait turns it into Triplecast? That'd be an idea.

Removing would be the nuclear option, but I'd prefer if they did something with it that doesnt kill a use of Fire I/Fire IV/Paradox (you need 800 MP to cast Despair/Flare, you usually have 1200 MP, so 400 MP budget for it).

Here is the cleanest scheme I could come up with for this.

[Spell Lv15] Scathe
Instant
800 MP 400 MP (Per Reinhardt)
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 120. (Remove the Additional Effect and just go with the average value. Still not worth using yet.)

[Trait Lv56] Enochian
Grants the effect of Polyglot upon maintaining Enochian for 30 seconds. Increases damage dealt by 5% while under the effect of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice.
Polyglot effect: Increases the potency of Scathe to 450 and reduces its MP cost to 0. (The splash damage of Foul, but only to a single target. Still not as powerful as Fire IV in AF3 but much less of a loss than base Scathe)

[Trait Lv70] Enhanced Scathe
Polyglot effect: Upgrades Scathe to Foul.

[Spell Lv70] Foul
Instant (Remove the cast time)
0 MP
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with with a potency of 600 for the first enemy, and 25% less (450) for all remaining enemies.

[Trait Lv80] Enhanced Foul
Polyglot effect: Upgrades Foul to Xenoglossy.

[Spell Lv80] Xenoglossy
Instant
0 MP
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with with a potency of 600 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies. If there are no other enemies nearby, the potency is increased to 890.



Scathe would still virtually never be useful without a Polyglot stack, but this would give you a use for it and the Polyglot gauge at 56, upgrades it to AoE Foul at 70, and then to context-dependent AoE Foul or ST Xenoglossy at 80. It also removes the cast time on Foul and eliminates the need for two separate Foul and Xenoglossy buttons, which fixes two major issues with Foul and Xenoglossy when you sync below Xenoglossy level.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Sounds like the most overall "best case" scenario, though two things in my humble opinion could be done, because it it peeves me a bit.

• Potency could easily be increased to 150 without batting an eye.
• To make "base" Scathe without polyglot even remotely usable, the MP cost *needs* to be reduced to 400 so a single cast per AF/UI cycle is actually possible without forcing a 2nd ice spell/losing a fire cast.

[PyurBlue]

B1 was a MP safeguard. If you messed up and found yourself with no MP while out of elements, it was the fastest way to get back up and running. With the MP changes it became useless. It's the hardest spell to find a place for at the moment. It could have been a reduced cast time spell for movement but SE cut all the cast times instead. The only idea I have is to make it interact with Thunder somehow. B1 could mark a target with a status that makes Thunder applied on a different enemy jump to the marked target, and possibly deal extra damage. It would serve a niche in two target situations.

Scathe isn't a mainstay spell but it's actually fine as it. Removing it would be a loss for BLM. It's an always accessible instant cast finisher and it's very convenient in unsync content. I'm fine with the MP cost too. It means there are constraints on its use instead of being able to cast it whenever you want.

[IOwn92FCHouses]

Scathe isn't a mainstay spell but it's actually fine as it. Removing it would be a loss for BLM. It's an always accessible instant cast finisher and it's very convenient in unsync content. I'm fine with the MP cost too. It means there are constraints on its use instead of being able to cast it whenever you want.

Let's be real here. Scathe, as it is, is an unused button. Black Mage has so many flexable movement options that needing to use it for movement means you've fucked up your resource allocation somewhere. It's 1 use case, an instant before the boss jumps, becomes untarget-able, is no longer relevant due to the changes to Dispair, Xeno, or an instant literally anything else.

The only thing that should be done to Scathe is it should be made a precursor to Xeno/Foul, so early BLM can step closer towards the endgame loop earlier.

[Carighan]

Scathe isn't a mainstay spell but it's actually fine as it. Removing it would be a loss for BLM. It's an always accessible instant cast finisher and it's very convenient in unsync content. I'm fine with the MP cost too. It means there are constraints on its use instead of being able to cast it whenever you want.

You should never end up in a situation where you'd be pressing Scathe. You could remove it from your hotbar and go months of both high-end and casual content without ever noticing you took it off. It was useful and in fact necessary before movement options got mudflated, but now it no longer has a purpose.

Of course, this argument goes both ways: It would have a use if the various teleports and Triplecast got removed. But I get the feeling that most BLMs would far prefer to lose the (unnecessary) fallback Scathe over losing the (mainstay) Triplecast?

[Ckient]

If the goal is make Fire I, Blizzard I, and Scathe useful the BLM so that we can have a reason to keep them on our hotbars, I feel like it would be simpler to do the following:

Blizzard I
Deals ice damage with a potency of 180.
Additional Effect: Grants Umbral Ice or removes Astral Fire
Cast Time: 2.5s -> Instant

Fire I
Deals fire damage with a potency of 180.
Additional Effect: Grants Astral Fire or removes Umbral Ice
Additional Effect: 40% chance to grant Firestarter -> Grants Firestarter
Firestarter Effect: Next Fire III will cost no MP and have no cast time
Cast Time: 2.5s -> Instant

Scathe
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100.
Additional Effect: 20% chance potency will double. -> Potency increases as your MP decreases, reaching its maximum value of 400 when you have 30% MP or less.
Additional Effect: Becomes Xenoglossy when under the effect of Polyglot

The changes I'm suggesting are marked in bold. The ones for Fire I and Blizzard I would be made at level 70, and would only come into play when switching from Astral Fire to Umbral Ice (the Blizzard I changes) or vice versa (the Fire I changes).

The first Scathe effect change would be implemented at the start, and could eventually get a potency increase to 600 at level 70. The Xenoglossy Change would be added in at level 80 and would be a permanent change.

These changes would not only help justify keeping these buttons on our hotbars, but would also help players get used to the timing for Paradox. Having Scathe get more powerful the less MP we have would also encourage players to get used to the idea of having a "finisher" cast in our rotation early on.

As for the AoE rotation, the only thing that will help with that is to either a) give potency boosts to High Fire II and High Blizzard II, or b) give BLM a new mechanic that allows consecutive uses of High Fire II and High Blizzard II to boost the effectiveness of Flare and Freeze respectively.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

-snip-

Overall a lot of interesting changes, though I have a few points of feedback for them.

Blizzard I
Cast Time: 2.5s -> Instant
Additional effect is only granted when switching from Astral Fire (III?) to Umbral Ice.
Additional effect is acquired at Lv70

Fire I
Additional Effect: 40% chance to grant Firestarter -> 100% chance to grant Firestarter
Cast Time: 2.5s -> Instant
Additional effect is only granted when switching from Umbral Ice (III?) with 3 Umbral Hearts loaded to Astral Fire.
Additional effect is acquired at Lv70

I am going to assume you are essentially just creating Paradox Lite here, which is perfectly fine, but there are a few issues.

• By learning them at Lv70 rather than Lv60 (when you learn Fire IV and Blizzard IV), you fix it for Lv70-89, but keep the levelling/sync/learning experience bad for Lv58/60-69. Acquisition at Lv60 would be better for this.
• Blizzard I would still not be a spell you'd use once you learn Blizzard IV. Fire I would be fixed, but Blizzard I at 180 potency is too weak to not just clip Transpose after Blizzard IV. Your biggest potency contender is Fire IV, as less filler casts will lead to more Fire IV down the line. Basically it needs some actual use, either in worthwhile potency matching at least an AF1 Fire III (290 potency * 1,4) or something else.

Scathe
Additional Effect: 20% chance potency will double. -> Potency increases as your MP decreases, reaching its maximum value of 400 when you have 30% MP or less.
Additional Effect: Becomes Xenoglossy when under the effect of Polyglot

The first Scathe effect change would be implemented at the start, and could eventually get a potency increase to 600 at level 70. The Xenoglossy Change would be added in at level 80 and would be a permanent change.

VERY good change in my opinion, this would definitely make Scathe actually reasonably useable under Umbral Ice if you enter it using Transpose + Blizzard III, which will give you 2500 MP to work with. Not a "use it everytime" but certainly good. Though, the potency increase to 600 might be a tad much - I'd suggest 540 to make it match AF3 Fire IV or Paradox, at most. And the Xenoglossy override would just make it clunky for no reason, you can skip that.

Having Scathe get more powerful the less MP we have would also encourage players to get used to the idea of having a "finisher" cast in our rotation early on.

We... do have finishers Lv50 onwards in Flare and later Despair. The idea that Scathe gets more powerful the less MP you have is cool, but the potency cannot go too high. Here is a graph showcasing a variety of spells vs the Lv70 Scathe upgrade.



As much as I want Scathe to be the mega spell it was from Final Fantasy XII, this is too much. There'd be nothing stopping you from just staying in Umbral Ice I, using Blizzard IV to give you +2500 MP and even using Lucid Dreaming just to keep your MP between 800 and about 3200 to fire off nukes hitting harder than Fire IV, while being instant. In fact, even in Astral Fire, Lv70 you'd skip your last Fire IV + Flare for 3x Scathe, at Lv72 you still use Despair but skip a Fire IV for 2x Scathe until you learn Flarestar and even then it could be debatable.

Even the unupgraded version vs Fire I will absolutely dumpster the Astral Fire phase if you just use Blizzard I/Blizzard III on occasion to refill a bit of extra MP and use Transpose to reset yourself to Umbral Ice I (to not generate too much MP).

Mechanically sound, potency will make or break it though if there is no restriction.

As for the AoE rotation, the only thing that will help with that is to either a) give potency boosts to High Fire II and High Blizzard II, or b) give BLM a new mechanic that allows consecutive uses of High Fire II and High Blizzard II to boost the effectiveness of Flare and Freeze respectively.

Yeah pretty much on the AOE bit. That and they really should cut the cast time for those AOE spells down to 2s like they have done with literally every other spell that isnt Fire III / Blizzard III.