Black Mage Job Spells are disappointing.

[Reitrenner]

Nothing you earn feels conducive to making you feel like a better version of the Thaumatage. Some of the spells are outright worthless or have such an absurd recast time that it's insulting to even have them on your cast bar at all. While the Barrier Spell might be pretty useful in a PVP situation, it has zero utility in a raid, where you're going to spend most of your time out of harm's way.


Freeze for example is completely useless once you get Deep Sleep. MAYBE if it didn't have a cast time. But even still, this spell has no purpose. There is no situation I can think of where casting sleep wouldn't give you superior results.

Of the five spells you earn as a Black Mage, only one of them has any direct effect on your rotation, which is frankly embarassing. These spells do nothing as far as I can see for your overall damage output, and for the most part are pretty God damn boring.

[Reitrenner]

Dragoon get all kinds of sweet jumps, and maneuvers that make his combat and rotation more flashy and fun.

Black Mage gets a spell that makes the tank take less magic damage. Is it useful? Maybe. I have not raided yet. But is it fun? No. It's hardly what I think of when I think of being a powerful wizard. The quest told me that being a Black Mage would "Allow me to top into the most destructive magics of the Aether" or whatever. But these skills are boring, useless, and just not in the spirit of this Job.

We should be casting Meteo, Ultima, Exit, Quake, all kinds of CRAZY AWESOME magic. Not "Convert." DULL.

Maybe I am being pessimistic? But I thought I was going to get spells that made me do CRAZY AWESOME stuff. Not this weird support crap that's better off in an actual support Job's hands.

All I have to say, is that I was really looking forward to playing a SWEET WIZARD. Disappointing doesn't even begin to describe this Job.

[Inuakurei]

Ya the BLM skills suck. Even Freeze / Flare are next to useless.

[Thundarian]

There is unavoidable damage in end game content where the barrier can, in theory, save your life if you make a mistake. Anything that makes your healer's job easier is great utility.

Some mobs are immune to sleep. Whether or not they are immune to sleep and bind I can't say, but bind definatly has its uses. Since when were nifty utility spells boring? I feel like you would be complaining if you got to end game and had none of the utility spells.

I agree that sometimes the spell choices can feel a bit boring, but if they start out giving you all the spells that you mentioned, your class would have literally nowhere to grow over the next 5 years.

[NZ_Player]

D < 595 * 4.5 / (3.5 * 150 + 220) - 3.5 = 9.4%


just sayin...

[Reitrenner]

There is unavoidable ........... next 5 years.

I am not at end game yet, so I can't officially comment on the usefulness of any one Black Mage Job Spell. But the ones we're given are ultimately lackluster in the WOW COOL department. Being a BLACK Mage should equal RAW MAGICAL MIGHT. Not "You cast Barrier, so the next two auto attacks do 0 damage instead of 50." These spells SUCK. They might work in the numbers department, and that is perfectly fine, but they do nothing for me in the "This is a compelling and interesting Job" department. There is no reason we couldn't have gotten these spells at level 10, let alone them being the spells that define our entire JOB. NO ONE who has played a Final Fantasy game thinks "Barrier" and "Convert" when they think of Black Mage.

[Dean86]

Personally i think the barriers durations are to short

[Reitrenner]

Another thing, while I'm all about "Making the healer do less work. That has nothing to do with being a Black Mage. There is no reason White Mage couldn't have gotten the Resist Buff spell, and Black Mage gets something more flavorful instead.

I guess my main issue with these Spells is just that. Their flavor is just NOT Black Mage material. If you wanted to give us a cool support ability, why not Magic Weapon? Why not let us buff the Melee DPS's weapons with a cool fire spell that made their attacks burn our enemies. We could have even gotten 3 flavors of this spel(Fire Lightning, and Ice)l. Hell it's even one of the best parts of my favorite Final Fantasy. Magic Sword is why Steiner and Vivi were MAINSTAYS in my FFIX party. I never picked anyone else.

[Shisou]

I propose swapping the highest tier of damage spells for these Utility abilities. I.e. Thaumaturge gets:

Lvl 34 Freeze
Lvl 38 Apocatastasis
Lvl 46 Manawall

And Black Mage gets:

Lvl 35 Blizzard III
Lvl 40 Fire III
Lvl 45 Thunder III

Seems to me that this would fit the whole concept of BLM better. The THM would then get the Abilities which provide more breadth of utility, whilst the BLM would get focused single-target damage and the greater mana regen afforded by the Blizzard III Umbral Ice conversion. This would also mean that Transpose wouldn't become useless once Bliz III unlocks, as future non-BLM Jobs would need it.

I also think that Thunder II should be re-designed to fit the convention of the other two damage spells, such that it has slightly less Potency overall but that it's ticks do damage in a 5 yalm AoE around the primary target. Keep it so the Thunder debuffs do not stack. This change would give BLM's a reason to keep Thunder II on their rotation, as opposed to ditching it for Thunder III.

This would be a simpler set of solutions for the devs to code and balance, while the net change to existing lvl 50 BLM's would be a slight net damage increase without additional spike damage (from the Thunder II AoE DoT ticks), maintaining the function of the Job and making it feel more focused on damage than the THM Class in general.

[priceless]

I use them all but im raiding atm, they are situational yes but the bind on freeze is useful in raids as most raid mobs resist sleep, Apoc if ur in the middle of an aoe it can get u out asap and manawall/manaward good for u or tank to take less dmg which saves healers mana as a previous poster stated. Meh not the best skills but if you have your rotation down you can be in tops of dpson long 10-15 minute fights and these spells help survivability so you don't die and the raid doesn't lose the dps if your facedown.