Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

Technically, not wrong. Fixed, by definition, can mean "neutered", which would be accurate in this case.

Whens the last time BLM was actually used for anything? Vagary 6 years ago? Has elemental magic damage been used for anything in the last 5 years?

This is literally incorrect. You don't spend any time here, clearly lol.

I would've made it impossible to "burn" in any capacity, full stop. I would've forced all different jobs and different weapons and repeated use nerfs on everything. Would've also corrected party swapping. Bard/Cor drops party, songs and rolls fall off.

But I don't get a say in what devs decide.

WTF are you talking about Urkel?

So your solution is to nerf everything?

Make everything as equally useless as Blackmage?

Sorta like.... what's the word they used to use all the time but never actually did... you know the one.

Balanced, that's it.

I think you're missing the point.
CORx5+GEO can already do what you're proposing will happen if the nuke wall is removed. They can do it even easier (dont have to worry about timing nukes to skillchains or melee missing WS's affecting skillchains), they can do it safer (as Leaden has minimal enmity generation), they can potentially have higher DPS (this is a very volatile variable depending on tactics),yet this abusively OP tactic is not considered meta, why?

Nothing has ever been balanced. Every time the "fix" something, a new abusive meta evolves, untill they "balance" it. Look at the old Asuran Fists/ Pentaspam nerf, Tanaka's *** *** said "Meray too powerfur, Savage Brade onry."
This isn't a thread on how to force people into playing a game the most complex, and difficult way, this is a thread on how to make Blackmage relevant again. Take your bleeding *** some where else and rag about the inequalities of life. Its like gun control, you take away guns, and people bludgeon each other with sticks, and rocks, because the tool isn't the problem, other people are. I say give everyone guns, that actually levels the playing field more. Letting Blackmage do what Blackmage was intended to do helps level the playing field. I don't give a ***about the smn, pup, rng, cor, whatever, whatever exploits, I just want to play Blackmage again.

Also, this is merely a discussion thread on how to get BLM off the shelf where its been for the past 5 years. Discussing the pros and cons of why the nuke wall should or should not be abolished or adjusted is simply discussion. Bringing "but SE dun care so nyah" to the table is a really terrible discussion point. We know they dont care, but appealing to authority isnt much of a discussion point since that is a very low-effort trump card to nix any discussion and the authority you're appealing to doesnt have the greatest track record in regards to job adjustments.

SE's customer service's moto is "Zero ***".

Confirmed black mage fix incoming next patch. Black mage will now be allowed to equip Fomalhaut.

It's not "like" anything.

And it is the way it is and complaining about it is moot. It's not something that's broken. it's something they purposely fixed to unbreak something.

If you want blm to get used you're going to have to think of something else. Cause it's not changing. Period. They're not going to revert a fix.
(They're not going to listen, btw, they've already got the plans they have and your input means less than nothing)

Other ideas:

1. Combine/simplify buffs, lowering the max for each (and adjust hybrid WS damage accordingly).
If the type of buffs are going to determine the jobs people are willing to bring, there shouldn't be a choice between buffing melee versus magic versus pets. That said, the technical debt for this makes it highly unlikely.

• Wizard's Roll + Chaos Roll: increases Attack, Magic Damage, and Pet: Magic Damage

• Madrigal also increases Magic Accuracy and Pet: Magic Accuracy

• Indi/GEO-Fury + Acumen get smashed together for more nerfed values, converting MAB+ to M.Dmg+, as do the reciprocal Frailty + Malaise

• etc.

2. Give BLM a way to convert magic damage into spirit/breath damage like Formless Strikes.
Void Cast: While in effect, elemental magic spells will not be considered magical damage (and cannot magic burst). 6:00 recast, 0:30 duration. To prevent manaburn situations, this ability could get a wall similar to Meteor's, only allowing one BLM per party to use it while the ability is on cooldown and giving the target a decaying 50~20% resistance for 2:00.

3. AOE SCs and AOE MBs for spells that can natively MB, i.e. not Blue Magic.
This synergizes with the current situation where AOE spells do reduced damage based on the number of targets hit.

4. Have skillchains reduce associated elemental resistance for the next X seconds, rapidly scaling based on the average TP of each WS involved.
This would mesh well with the current wall, speeding up the decay and opening a window for free nuking. Introducing a building resistance to the same skillchain damage (in addition to the increased duration from WSing at higher TP values) should encourage DPS to try not spamming the next skillchain before spells can be cast. Only the last skillchain is taken into account, so multi-stepping wouldn't weaken it to several elements.

5. Give BLM faster TP generation and a way to do non-casted damage at range.
Make relevant staff/club WS usable at range like Mistral Axe. Greatly buff Occult Acumen or introduce abilities/traits that allow magic-based auto attacks at range for jobs with native Elemental Magic skill, draining MP for each successful attack. Attack speed would be affected by haste (magical and job), and damage output would be calculated using INT and magic damage in a similar fashion to STR and attack for melee damage. For extra depth, magical critical rate and damage could come into play here.

low effort meme time

Better delete the thread then, why have discussion threads?

Also lol @ "BLM is fixed", thats why it hasnt been used in 5 years, because its fixed.

Back with the turn Blackmage into a buffer, or a melee fighter, or something other than Blackmage.



They didn't fix anything, all they did was obsolete Blackmage.
How does making a job, (one of the original Final Fantasy jobs) completely useless fix anything?

2:45 Thats why Tavnazia fell, they hit the nuke wall.
Thanks SE

*** win!!

The definition of BLM probably needs to evolve to with the game. Black magic in a general sense is offensive/destructive magic, and a black mage is someone who practices those arts. The game no longer purely supports BLM as a job that just casts elemental magic for big damage, just like the game doesn't support KC RNGs Slugwindering for max damage at pointblank range, SCHs stacking an alliance's worth of Modus Veritas, DRKs zerging with Souleater, and so on.

Essentially, we can't have nice things because people abuse it. It was easier to throw a bunch of BLM bodies at everything compared to having well-geared and competent melee DPS with buffs to support melee damage as a viable method for defeating bosses. Alliances only took two melee DPS who could skillchain (regardless of damage output) without overfeeding TP so the army of BLMs behind them could magic burst, or they just rotated an even larger army of BLMs in and out of the alliance to dump their MP and log for hate.

None of my suggestions included BLMs providing party buffs, and only the last one out of five involved BLMs doing something besides traditional casting as way to add value to Occult Acumen and give BLMs something to do with TP besides Myrkr or Cascade. It would still be casting in a sense, just automatically and without channeling.

What a reasonable beta male approach. DRK and RNG still do melee damage, RNG even does more magical damage than BLM. Those two job got adjusted to stop the specific abuses your pointed out. BLM wasn't adjusted, it was nerfed into and mage who couldn't perform its one intended use. Hell, we're not even useful for warp anymore, and BLU's are better sleepers, and they can do magic damage, and melee damage, and enfeeble the mob, buff the party. We've got burn, take us on your next whatever run, maintaining choke is absolutely essential to winning most content.

I’m not a programmer or a blm player, but would causing sc to do a check similar to cor buffs and create a substantial bonus to burst damage when only one blm is in party change anything? It would boost other nukers as well, but I doubt they’d see the return blm would see.

Only way blm is coming back is a complete redesign or dramatic shift.

Bottom line is it's too slow. Slow everyone else down (dramatic paradigm shift) or speed blm up (complete redesign) ((t1 does 10k zero enmity))

Lets give BLM the elemental spirits and buff the hell out of them. They sit there nuking their faces off as your 'auto-attack' and lets BLM focus on dropping the big burst damage.

For SMN, the elementals are nothing but a battery but pumping them up and giving them to BLM makes a ton of sense to me.

Yea and give SMN non-spirit ancient magic remove the dmg cap beef it up to hell and make it full potency no matter what, but only on smn. /sarcasm

I would say no because successive bursts is already a penalty and a pretty powerful one at that. Removing this limitation entirely would need to be one of the handful of things to happen to bring BLM back into light with how the meta has been the past few years imo.

-- Doing so *COULD* bring back another "Safe Option" for dealing with tougher fights to get the job done almost as fast, like in the old days: Tank, Healer, Support, Skillchainzers, BLM, BLM. Wouldn't be revolutionary by any means but would give players back what used to be a practical tool for the sandbox

Edit:
Or did you mean having SE give a free boost/trait for a solo BLM burst? Something like a Free Acumen?

BLM needs to easily deal better AoE DMG than BLU since BLU's strong AOE spells also deal status effects.
This is made obvious in dynamis. BLM pulls in nyame+hippo socks. Sleeps > BLU's cleave all the mobs to death with little damage coming from any other sources.
BLM's way to deal similar AoE DMG is only Cataclysm.
It's just dumb. In that setup, BLM is only nuking for TP so they can Cataclysm more often.

My suggestion is remove MTDR entirely. There is still their newer method of making AoE useless for the new events they don't want us cleaving in. Why keep that outdated and targeted nerf to BLM around for content that is no longer relevant?

Onto the nuke wall. What content did that wall seek to balance? alliance content, yes? Then adjust the nuke wall to hinder the group after 6 nukes, that way a party centered around magic damage can actually do it efficiently without being punished while continuing to punish MB abuse in a larger setting.
(thinking run, blm, rdm, nin, sch, geo party)

Meteor, is trash. Based on lore, it should be our most powerful spell. it needs a massive buff for sure.

I agree with Chimerawizard's post entirely. (And speaking of lore, I always wanted an Ultima spell and was been really disappointed we never got it when SE changed BLM group 2 merits).

You seem emotional. Take a break and cool down, friend.

I hate the way Odyssey nerfs everything, its like we're being corralled into playing only one way instead of giving us multiple options.

There will always be and exploitive method. I am so *** sick of hearing people cry about BLM burning. Get over it, the game is nearly 20 years old, its hard to get 18 people together period, if they want to use and exploitive method to clear content, like triple Soul Voice and 12-14 Astral Flows to clear Reisenjima helms, then let them, stop hating on people who lack creativity.

I like Zombiemalphiu's idea, but there again, you're turning BLM into sorta SMN instead of just making BLM BLM again. By doing this, you'll disappoint, and anger the Already disenfranchised BLM crowd, and the SMN population will be pissed, and rightfully so.

Blackmage already has a niche, its nuking the ***out of ***.

Trash the resist wall and MTDR. Give us BLM back.

Until S-E actually acknowledges that BLM is in a bad state nothing is going to be done about the situation. Perhaps if people were really vocal about it on their own forms they may take notice. Last I recall, when the BLM update happened in June 2019 people actually praised S-E on their official forms for doing a good job and "giving BLM that extra helping hand it needed".

Since that update very little has been mentioned from them. As far as I can tell, the devs don't appear to have the same stance most players do about the job. If they feel it's in a good spot they aren't going to change much. Elemental magic is in a miserable state, and we've covered it time and again. The biggest issues are that

--AoE elemental magic suffers a 70% damage reduction on sizable pulls
--Free nuke scaling sucks and doesn't hold a candle to other forms of DPS
--The nuke wall really needs some form of adjustment because it's oppressive alongside the other 2 issues

But S-E needs to agree with that. What IS their official stance? Last I checked it was "Because black mage can do its damage safely from range we feel it doesn't need an adjustment". Thing is... all that "safety from range" is pretty irrelevant in 95% of situations because DD hybrid sets have come so far their magic evasion and damage taken caps are sky high. And compared to any other form of damage dealer, nuking with elemental magic is a joke right now.