Removing elemental nukes from WHM

[Jinrya-Geki]

yeah but not really. blm is the *easiest* and most consistent damage dealer, but rarely the ideal/top DD in most scenarios



okay then, so what about mobs with really high melee defense?

edit: not sure why i even bothered asking this question. it's pretty apparent how biased you are on the issue.

Mobs with high melee defense? Is that why you usually have Slash/Pierce/Blunt damage? They resist one of the three so you switch to a weapon with the attribute on it. Like Drg in XI that had a polearm that did blunt damage, not piercing.

Welcome to the world of DD classes, where you get to find out that Black Mage is not the best, quickest, "Take em along for world firsts!" answer to everything. Using one spell as a crutch for your damage is your problem, it is not ours, it is not White Mage, it is not Conjurer.

It's our problem and it's the fault of developers and white mages who want to DD. You don't need to. Wizards/Black Mages/ Sorcerers any Damage dealer has had multiple ways of damaging any target. It's been the role since when games with knights and wizards since they been made. So sorry that I want the traditional power house all-situtation caster.

It's not like I even have a god damn choice, theres only two god damn casters and one is supposed to be a healer.

Because Damage spells does not only mean 'Elemental spells'. That is where this discussion keeps tripping. Also, you don't need to be the best DD in every situation. No other DD is. Live with it, afterall, they do.

Yes, black mages do, this is why we have the lowest hp and lowest defense. We are supposed to have the highest damage, and in this game the highest damage is determined by the resistance of the enemy. So if I don't have every spell for every weakness, then I can't do the highest damage.

[fusional]

Mobs with high melee defense? Is that why you usually have Slash/Pierce/Blunt damage? They resist one of the three so you switch to a weapon with the attribute on it. Like Drg in XI that had a polearm that did blunt damage, not piercing.

first, they did away with damage types. second, how does a dragoon switch from pierce to another type of damage in a game where the armory system is based on equipping weapons to switch jobs?

why are you basing your arguments on how things worked in XI? this isn't XI, no matter how much you want it to be. so how about framing your arguments in the context of XIV, which is what this game is, rather than XI?

It's our problem and it's the fault of developers and white mages who want to DD. You don't need to. Wizards/Black Mages/ Sorcerers any Damage dealer has had multiple ways of damaging any target. It's been the role since when games with knights and wizards since they been made. So sorry that I want the traditional power house all-situtation caster.

and again you base your argument on how things work in XI. so let first let me reiterate: you're not talking about XI. you're talking about XIV. (and if you try to play the "but in other FF games" card, what about other FF games where any character can have elemental nukes, regardless of 'job'? seems exceptions occur in games other than XIV, and yet it's convenient for you to forget this)

second, i don't even *understand* your argument. there's no basis. how does a WHM being bored on coincounter or MM (because the paladin covers most all of his own healing) and throwing in some nukes to help speed things up *in any way* impact your ability as a black mage to damage coincounter? hint: it doesn't. so how is it a problem? and even if you have *two* WHM and they *both* get bored and start nuking, they're still not impacting your ability to damage coincounter and they're still not taking a raid slot from you simply by virtue of having elemental nukes. nobody goes "oh, well we could take a BLM but why not just take a WHM instead because stone and aero are just so OP!"

i mean, unless they're doing a whm moogle burn. but then what's your gripe? don't people BLM burn enough things? hint: yes, they do.

oh, and you know that thing about being an all-situation caster that you want in XIV? name a single endgame situation in XIV 1.0 where BLM wasn't a desirable DD. i'll seriously wait. and i'm gonna be waiting a really long time because really the only argument you'd have is Ifrit Extreme- but even that's not true. adding one BLM to the group speeds the fight up *so dramatically* that you exponentially decrease the number of bad situations the group can get themselves into simply by virtue of preventing the fight from lasting long enough for it to happen. the only reason PUGs didn't use it is because it basically forces you to solo heal it, and PUGs always wanted to be safe with 2 healers.

so again- what is your argument based on? XI? you're just upset that BLM doesn't have *all* of the elemental tools? and yet, it has some of the best single-target DPS (even on stuff that isn't really weak to magic! go figure) and some of the best aoe DPS (*except* on amalja)

Yes, black mages do, this is why we have the lowest hp and lowest defense. We are supposed to have the highest damage, and in this game the highest damage is determined by the resistance of the enemy. So if I don't have every spell for every weakness, then I can't do the highest damage.

wrong again. not only will you be hard pressed to ever find a dev statement calling BLM the king of dps... you still have the capacity to do the highest damage, even when an enemy isn't necessarily weak to a particular element. example: chimera. not weak to fire. not weak to thunder. and yet completely in spite of a ranged advantage, BLM is still preferred because it's easier for them to maintain a proper DPS rotation (ie: you don't have to time your directional combos to make sure you don't get ganked by breath or traps) and therefore safely top the damage meters. because in XIV 1.0 the secret to doing the highest damage was mostly in your ability/spell rotation.

if you could frame your arguments in the context of XIV itself maybe you'd have more people on your side, but you keep talking about XIV with your head in XI's clouds.

[Jinrya-Geki]

first, they did away with damage types. second, how does a dragoon switch from pierce to another type of damage in a game where the armory system is based on equipping weapons to switch jobs?

why are you basing your arguments on how things worked in XI? this isn't XI, no matter how much you want it to be. so how about framing your arguments in the context of XIV, which is what this game is, rather than XI?



and again you base your argument on how things work in XI. so let first let me reiterate: you're not talking about XI. you're talking about XIV. (and if you try to play the "but in other FF games" card, what about other FF games where any character can have elemental nukes, regardless of 'job'? seems exceptions occur in games other than XIV, and yet it's convenient for you to forget this)

second, i don't even *understand* your argument. there's no basis. how does a WHM being bored on coincounter or MM (because the paladin covers most all of his own healing) and throwing in some nukes to help speed things up *in any way* impact your ability as a black mage to damage coincounter? hint: it doesn't. so how is it a problem? and even if you have *two* WHM and they *both* get bored and start nuking, they're still not impacting your ability to damage coincounter and they're still not taking a raid slot from you simply by virtue of having elemental nukes. nobody goes "oh, well we could take a BLM but why not just take a WHM instead because stone and aero are just so OP!"

i mean, unless they're doing a whm moogle burn. but then what's your gripe? don't people BLM burn enough things? hint: yes, they do.

oh, and you know that thing about being an all-situation caster that you want in XIV? name a single endgame situation in XIV 1.0 where BLM wasn't a desirable DD. i'll seriously wait. and i'm gonna be waiting a really long time because really the only argument you'd have is Ifrit Extreme- but even that's not true. adding one BLM to the group speeds the fight up *so dramatically* that you exponentially decrease the number of bad situations the group can get themselves into simply by virtue of preventing the fight from lasting long enough for it to happen. the only reason PUGs didn't use it is because it basically forces you to solo heal it, and PUGs always wanted to be safe with 2 healers.

so again- what is your argument based on? XI? you're just upset that BLM doesn't have *all* of the elemental tools? and yet, it has some of the best single-target DPS (even on stuff that isn't really weak to magic! go figure) and some of the best aoe DPS (*except* on amalja)



wrong again. not only will you be hard pressed to ever find a dev statement calling BLM the king of dps... you still have the capacity to do the highest damage, even when an enemy isn't necessarily weak to a particular element. example: chimera. not weak to fire. not weak to thunder. and yet completely in spite of a ranged advantage, BLM is still preferred because it's easier for them to maintain a proper DPS rotation (ie: you don't have to time your directional combos to make sure you don't get ganked by breath or traps) and therefore safely top the damage meters. because in XIV 1.0 the secret to doing the highest damage was mostly in your ability/spell rotation.

if you could frame your arguments in the context of XIV itself maybe you'd have more people on your side, but you keep talking about XIV with your head in XI's clouds.

Weapons had stats on them saying 10 blunt, 80 slash, and 10 pierce. You could switch to the ones that have a higher damage type over the other. This was in FFXIV 1.0, not just XI.

And for the power-house caster comment that is about every single game ever made where you have the choice of being some kind of wizard class, not specifically black mage from FFXI.

Name one situation where Black Mage wasn't an all desired job? That is so redicoulously easy, that I already stated it. Miser, monks do so much damage to it that I couldn't really compare. The most you really can do in the miser fight is sleep slugs. There is your one fight you asked for. Need another?

The chimera is netural damage in terms of resistance, every mob needs to be like that if we are gonna be limited to one spell type. If the spells stay exactly the same, and chimera got lightning resistance our overall damage would plummet badly. Fire spells are not good enough.

[KoujiGeki]

Weapons had stats on them saying 10 blunt, 80 slash, and 10 pierce. You could switch to the ones that have a higher damage type over the other. This was in FFXIV 1.0, not just XI.

And for the power-house caster comment that is about every single game ever made where you have the choice of being some kind of wizard class, not specifically black mage from FFXI.

Name one situation where Black Mage wasn't an all desired job? That is so redicoulously easy, that I already stated it. Miser, monks do so much damage to it that I couldn't really compare. The most you really can do in the miser fight is sleep slugs. There is your one fight you asked for. Need another?

or Princess in CC, Ring of Talons is far better dmg than Flare.

[fusional]

or Princess in CC, Ring of Talons is far better dmg than Flare.

i don't get it. is flare all you have? you understand DRG can't spam RoT but BLM *can* spam the fire line, right? what good does it do to compare direct damage between two abilities in one situation when you use more than those two abilities?

do you people not understand that dps comes from your rotation and your actions per minute?

do you also not understand that as BLM you can just stand in the back headbutting your fire spells while dragoon actually has to run around executing difficult position-based combos? that if the mob moves it doesn't impact your spellcasting one bit (unless they outrange you), yet it completely destroys the melee's rotation?

furthermore, does that mean BLM is *undesirable*? no. once again, most groups *preferred* using BLM for princess simply because it was easier to stand back and spam aoe.

while in the end, yes, a geared and well-played dragoon had a much higher DPS ceiling on princess (i believe my personal best was 290 dps on all targets, 110 on princess specifically), most people either couldn't pull it off or didn't want to bother switching only to switch *back* to blm for the rest of the dungeon. and this in no way detracts from how strong BLM was on over 90% of content in 1.0. so i really don't understand where you guys get off feeling so slighted.

Weapons had stats on them saying 10 blunt, 80 slash, and 10 pierce. You could switch to the ones that have a higher damage type over the other. This was in FFXIV 1.0, not just XI.

and i already said they did away with damage types. so without weapon damage types, what are melee supposed to do when a mob has high melee defense? i asked the question for a reason and you seem to keep skirting it, so i'll just explain where i was going.

there wasn't anything in XIV that was *just* strong to magic damage. but you did have stuff that was strong to wind, fire, etc. so what do you do on stuff that's strong to fire? you use ice and thunder. what about stuff that's strong to thunder? you use fire and ice. (oh and earlier you said freeze is useless before- wrong. not only is the damage-to-MP ratio quite favorable in an optimal dps rotation, meaning you want to have it on cooldown always... but if you're doing a proper rotation you're gonna need that enmity down as well)

see, BLM has the option to switch to different damage types. not all damage types, no, but melee are just plain stuck with melee and have no other options. and even if they *had* different damage types, there *are* mobs in XIV which are just plain generically strong to melee. like chimera. so every melee but MNK is hosed there, as MNK was the only melee class with a magic damage option.

And for the power-house caster comment that is about every single game ever made where you have the choice of being some kind of wizard class, not specifically black mage from FFXI.

still rendered irrelevant by virtue of the -fact- that BLM is a DPS powerhouse in XIV as well

Name one situation where Black Mage wasn't an all desired job? That is so redicoulously easy, that I already stated it. Miser, monks do so much damage to it that I couldn't really compare. The most you really can do in the miser fight is sleep slugs. There is your one fight you asked for. Need another?

is this a serious response? BLM burn became the most common way to kill miser after kaeko and seiken posted parses of ~1:50 kills using BLM onry, and our own BLMs could easily top out at 170+ dps even in a MNK burn group (this is significant because in a MNK burn group the bard will give monks 2hr paeon before engaging mistress then give ballad to BLM. in BLM burn group the bard will just give 2hr ballad to everyone, for the BLMs. it makes a difference in your DPS ceiling either way for certain)

furthermore, why shouldn't monk have a high dps ceiling on a fight which requires *far and away* a rotation with a MUCH higher skill ceiling to execute? and in the end really without paeon monks can't really compete. but with it, and with the proper rotation, they have the capacity to pull ahead of BLM.

but BLM can faceroll to higher DPS than monk on that fight assuming average monks, as long as you're doing a proper rotation. not doing a proper rotation doesn't mean BLM is underpowered or monks have some insane advantage over you. it just means you're not doing a proper rotation, and need to increase your actions per minute.

considering my LS invented ~2min mistress kills and we min-max to the extreme, when i say BLM is not only competitive but preferable to most because it's flat out easier to play... you just might have to take my word for it. if our creation of the ~2min mistress kill model isn't enough for you, maybe at least consider that we ran AV like 700 times, and tried absolutely everything.

or, you know. there's also this. (though kaeko's info about our monks is outdated- our top monk dps is 177 for MM. our top BLM dps is 173)

tl;dr yes give me another example because you're woefully incorrect here

[Jinrya-Geki]

I am wrong then about the damage types then, but don't all melees also have combos that ingore defense from certain positions?

I mentioned before that when I talk about fire/ice spells I refer to Fire/Fira/Firaga and Blizzard/Blizzara. They are the useless spells, along with flare. Freeze is really only good for it's enmity drop, but it's damage is great. How many times do I have to repeat myself on this?

Do you spam blizzard/blizzara on Gardua? Do you spam only fire spells on Miser? Do a parse on their weaknesses, i bet they won't be nearly as good as using Thunder combo. And when you run into a mob that has lightning resistance what would you do, you would still use a black mage when it's not optimal? Did you have the black mage use lightning on the basilisk in the in the drg af fight while the paladin/warrior kited the drg boss. Or spam thunder on the rock golem in skirmish?

Blm is a situational powerhouse. I want it to be more than that. I want to be able to go to every situation as a black mage, but until 2.0 comes we won't truly know what lies in store for end-game black mage.

Let's say the spells stay exactly the same right now. I will take your word on your miser fight, if you take my word on this.

If the spells work exactly the same, and ramuh or titan come out, are you really gonna bring a black mage to that fight, if their main way of dpsing is negated?

[fusional]

I am wrong then about the damage types then, but don't all melees also have combos that ingore defense from certain positions?

no, and even if they did it's hardly the same. spell cooldowns are ~8-15 seconds. WS cooldowns are 30/45/60/80. and even more troublesome is the fact that a combo action which ignores defense requires a combo in the first place, which means 1-2 actions preceding it which are dampened by the melee defense. and then what do you do in the downtime, be useless?

I mentioned before that when I talk about fire/ice spells I refer to Fire/Fira/Firaga and Blizzard/Blizzara. They are the useless spells, along with flare. Freeze is really only good for it's enmity drop, but it's damage is great. How many times do I have to repeat myself on this?

but seriously, on what planet are you calling fire spells useless? fire spells are the primary reason BLM is capable of 170 dps on MM, and the primary reason why they tend to thrash every other job in burst aoe situations (ie: av/cc trash). freeze is primarily for the enmity drop, yes, but the damage-to-mp ratio was so nice that it should be factored into an optimal rotation regardless.

Do you spam blizzard/blizzara on Gardua?

no, but blizzard is perfectly fine to use as filler if thunder and thundara are on cooldown. as i've said multiple times now- dps comes from your rotation, and optimal rotations maximize actions per minute. that means limiting any dead space whatsoever. you should never not be doing something.

Do you spam only fire spells on Miser?

nope, but it's the bulk of your damage for sure.

Do a parse on their weaknesses, i bet they won't be nearly as good as using Thunder combo

then why would monk use fist of fire rather than fists of wind? if fire isn't a weakness, then monk would stand more to gain from reduced WS cooldowns. but this isn't the case. *the entire reason* monk performs so well on mistress is because of fire. and why are you telling me to parse? are you forgetting who you're talking to? do you think our blms get 170 dps on MM from using thunder line? maybe i was unclear or for whatever reason you felt i was implying this was the case, but i suppose i assumed it was fairly obvious that MM is *very* weak to fire and that's why BLM and MNK destroy her.

And when you run into a mob that has lightning resistance what would you do, you would still use a black mage when it's not optimal?

that depends on what kind of damage it can do with fire, like with mistress. it also depends on secondary and tertiary functions such as aoe requirements (as blm was the strongest on-demand aoe class due to lower cooldowns and lack of TP- though this may change in 2.0) and sleep duty. if fire rotation does less than stellar boss dps *and either* aoe isn't necessary or sleep isn't necessary, then no, you generally don't bring BLM. and the weird thing about that is, there were next to no situations like that in 1.0.

Did you have the black mage use lightning on the basilisk in the in the drg af fight while the paladin/warrior kited the drg boss. Or spam thunder on the rock golem in skirmish?

you got me there. i don't remember and i don't care, because that content isn't endgame and is therefore trivial to us. that doesn't mean BLM sucks in any of those situations for whatever reasons, it just means we never did it or paid much attention to it so we can't really give you a definitive answer.

Blm is a situational powerhouse. I want it to be more than that.

but again, it's strong in *most* situations and strongest in some. that's already more than we can say for warrior, monk and dragoon- which have to be swapped out from fight to fight either for each other or for more BLMs.

I want to be able to go to every situation as a black mage

in 1.0, you pretty much could without exception. however,

but until 2.0 comes we won't truly know what lies in store for end-game black mage.

Let's say the spells stay exactly the same right now. I will take your word on your miser fight, if you take my word on this

If the spells work exactly the same, and ramuh or titan come out, are you really gonna bring a black mage to that fight, if their main way of dpsing is negated?

you do have a point in that we don't know how 2.0 will play out. especially now since dps will have a short global cooldown rather than a mix of longer cooldowns (which i personally am not a fan of, as on the surface it seems to discourage skillful play) plus start with TP rather than needing to build it up. one of the biggest reasons BLM was always the aoe powerhouse in av/cc was because melee just didn't have the ability to keep TP in between pulls to have aoe ws ready all the time. BLM had aoe on demand. it will be interesting to see how that's impacted in 2.0

as far as the miser fight, you don't need to take my word for it. i posted proof.

if spells work the same, BLM would almost categorically suck against ramuh, absolutely. as far as titan, it's difficult to say- but i think it would be far more reasonable to assume he'd just have really high melee defense. but one thing you're failing to consider here is how the devs, as 1.0 went along, progressively learned to better balance job roles in groups.

while you can argue that, in practice, garuda and ifrit extreme didn't quite execute there- we can see the intention was clearly present.

with garuda, one sister resisted physical damage and the other resisted magical damage, so you needed forms of both. no stacking. garuda herself had pretty low magic defense, but her plumes were highly magic resistant. with ifrit extreme, BLM wrecks him... but you can't just stack BLM because you have to deal with nails, plus the fight is so movement-heavy that it can be hard to stand still long enough to get back MP. you also can't just stack only one melee class because you need to have jobs/classes present which can knock off both of his horns.

in practice, garuda could still be melee burned with monks and dragoons, or even *just* monks if you were good at managing fists. but most people primarily just used blms and had bards handle plumes. and ifrit extreme *almost* delegitimized BLM to the point of not being used at all. only the most skillful teams could execute a strategy which included a BLM. so they just barely missed the balancing mark there.

but darnus hard was a culmination of their efforts. darnus himself was strong-ish to magic but you had to deal with meteors and BLM wrecked them (bard sort of worked the same way, but you didn't need more than 1 of them). golems were strong to everything but wind, so you either needed a monk with fists of wind or a nuking whm to aerora them down. and dragoon destroyed darnus in single-target damage.

and while it's possible they could forget what they learned in 1.0, could just barely fail in execution again, or just regress a bit under the new engine until they can get back into the swing of things- the pattern we can see from av/cc through the end of 1.0 is that devs learned the community wants job variety for encounters. and since they know the community doesn't want to stack one job for every fight, and actively tried to design fights around that toward the end, i'm at least mostly confident they will continue along this path in 2.0

...especially since we're getting 24 man raids, and it will be extremely awful if they can't find a way to design the fights in a way which encourages us to bring *all jobs* to the fray.

in the end, while it's possible BLM could be lost in the fold- i doubt it, and it would only be temporary anyway. you can guarantee they'd rebalance to make sure BLM is still a coveted job.