Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

Suggestions

Job ability to force magic burst regardless of skillchain happening. Doesn't work with Death. 5 min recast.

Putting Staff skill to A+ holy hell why is it not already.

Skillchain interruptions can be mitigated by T6 and aja spells. No other jobs can cast these so the 10 second window remains open for these spells only. It means those spells need programmed rather than the whole skillchain scenario with other factors.

Meteor 5 min recast without elemental seal. Really don't understand this. You can bring a comet down but not a meteor?

Subtle Sorcery remains but casting time halfed per spell.

Increase tp generated by spells or boost occult accumen.

Nuke Wall remains.

1. How is an all BLM set up different from an all SMN, or COR set up? Some people want to nerf all that ***.

2. No one bursts. No melee job is going to hold its 40k ws for a SC so the gimp BLM can do its one gimp *** trick. Its more effective to take some job, any other job that can equip Naegling, they'll out damage any BiS BLM, and no one has to hold their TP.

3. With the wall, BLM is useless, 0 free nuke viability, and no one magic bursts, its a moot point. BLM has always been a very powerful class in any of the FF's they were in; theres no way I can think of to give the class its purpose, its only purpose, with out people abusing it. If its the easiest, most efficient way, people are going to go that route, they do it in game every day, to me, the Savage Blade spam is the most offensive, when you see SAM, DRK, WAR, and DRG all taking Savage Blade set ups to current content instead of their native weapons, that's kind of exploitey, but if we ***, the fix will be worse than the abuse. So are we suppose to just give up BLM? Are you so sore about people mana burning content, that you're ok with BLM being a completely neutered, useless class?

I'm perfectly ok with getting rid of mana wall and death, I never played with those anyway, I came back after the nerf.

However, the resist wall has to go. Its the only way to enable BLM to perform its role.

While I can agree with you on the staff rating, I don't take issue with it, BLM isn't a melee class, its a nuker.

Meteor is crap, it'd be cool if they fixed it, but it alone doesn't make, or break BLM's viability. Get rid of death, and manawall, or rework them, but its easier to just trash them.

Subtle Sorcery, and Occult Acumen or secondary perks, but again they don't add viability to the class, they just enhance, and add options to play with.

BLM is a nuker, always has been, still is in the games that have followed. No ones interested in a staff wielding damage dealer with even less survivability than DRK. All the other roles people are trying to assign it are already filled by RDM, SCH, GEO, SMN, and BRD.

1. -you're correct on the surface, here's the differences I see broken down:

a)SMNs can only pull off what you speak of once every 45 minutes. Without AF/AC, they are a more balanced job and a fleet of SMNs isn't nearly as broken as what SE tried to stop with the implementation of the nuke wall.

b)CORs (really, the proper statement would be "magical WSs", but CORs of course are the current king of ease for those things) can do such shenanigans without the benefit of their 2hours, yes. And it is a big issue. In fact, you'd find many references to threads about Zerde when I mention exactly such a point, and it isn't even at all.

2. -the only way BLMs will ever find a home in this game in its modern era is through bursting. There is simply no way outside of 6 digit nukes on ridiculous recast timers where a BLM can match the top DPS potential of a melee.....and that's perfectly fine. We provide things they don't, and that's safety and simplicity of buff structure. So when you need a BLM strat, it should be a scenario where it simply isn't safe to melee something combined with the target takes good magical damage. In those situations, bursts are not only built into the plan, but also often needed to speed up a battle. If you truly think that BLM is gonna ever replace a heavy DD in a mixed alliance setup and not be a liability, you're playing the wrong game. That concept will never return.

caveat to 2...the power creep combined with content not suitable to magical damage is where the real problem arises, along with no higher difficulty content in terms of iLvl to frustrate melees like this. The game always has evolved new challenges from a position of safety to slowly adding offensive capabilities while reducing that safety to speed things up.

3. -SAM doesn't Savage Blade. I share your "Naegling was a Mistake" feeling, but make sure when critiquing something to not exaggerate or the world will cave your head (and idea) in. On the subject of jobs abusing their non-native weapon types, some of it is needed to keep the game alive. And the reaction to that isn't always "Savage all the things".....sometimes its WARs and SAMs using Shining One to abuse a piercing weakness. Sometimes the answer IS Savage Blade, but requires a DRG to give up their polearm and RNG to give up their guns because piercing does garbage on the target. It means putting more effort into a job to maximize sets for different situations. That isn't a horrible thing- the problem is just the Naegling on this front.

Lastly- you may be ok with giving up Mana Wall and Death because you "never played with those anyway", but that doesn't make them garbage. Mana Wall is extremely fun and allows us to do amazing things that even RUNs and PLDs can't tanking wise. It added a function to our job that has purpose and use. We can talk about the problems of our main function without stripping one of the few things we do get naturally that no one else can do.

Funnily enough, BLM and DRK have some of the highest survivability in the game these days, possibly even the highest outside of PLD and RUN.

Couldn't agree more. I feel Invincible on DRK these days if I can burst a Drain3 100% of the time, not just for a minute every 45 minutes on PLD. And BLM is quite the same, the only difference is I can full time that drain3/dread spikes, and only half-time Mana Wall.

Omen card farming parties don't bother with magic bursting, and that was specifically designed into the game for BLM.
Any other event where the mobs are weak to magic you use BLU for AOE damage, and you use COR, or RNG for single target nuke damage. The current content is very unfriendly to BLMs by design.
So where is this BLM home you're speaking of, reworking 3-5+ other jobs, and reworking the entire design of Odyssey to be more BLM inclusive? They tripped over themselves to include BLM in omen, and almost no one messes with it anyway. The magic burst directive doesn't merit giving up the slot to BLM.



1. You can almost always farm a revitalizer in less time than it takes Elemental Seal to cool down.
2. I don't see how Astral Flow burning content is morally superior to mana burning content, please explain this.
3. Nuke wall does not apply to SMN in this regard



If you're ok with nerfing COR, then why not BLU, SMN, and PUP?
Can we stop with the nerfing. Let people play the way they want to.


1. SAM has several sword options. You don't see it as often as you see NIN wielding swords, specifically Naegling, but the fact you see it at all makes quite a statement.
2. I don't see a problem with Naegling, or Shining One, SE intented for these weapons to very strong, to give people more options, add fun to the game, help keep it alive.
3. To para phrase (and correct me if I'm wrong) you say that giving people exploitive options outside their traditional job scope is good, that it adds variety, and fun to the game, and I agree, but you also seem adamant on denying BLM its traditional role as a nuker.

When you hear how exploitive BLM is, you also hear about Manawall making them invincible, and how 12-14 BLM's doing a timed Death cast is so much more offensively over powered than Astral Flow burning, or BLU burning, or the absurd elemental spam from COR/ RNG, or how every one who can possibly Savage Blade, suddenly being required by the group dynamic to use Savage Blade, isn't that bad, and those abuse's are sort of a good thing, and sort of needed to keep the game alive, but God Forbid you mana burn something. Holy ***batman.

The problem isn't Death, or Manawall; it isn't Naegling, or Leaden Salute, it's people playing the game in a way you don't approve of. Nothing, and everything is overpowered in the game at this point, look at the Odyssey armor, its changing play dynamic as I type this ***.

Death and Manawall don't ultimately give BLM it's slot viability, being able to free nuke lower tier spells for competitive damage does. Being able to blast the last 50% of a sweetwater, or dynamis mobs hit points does.

The easiest, most practical way of doing this is to trash the resist wall. Every other idea presented requires a complex strategy, which sound good on the forums, but doesn't translate well over into game play.
The other suggestions boiled down into making BLM a shitty RDM, or a shitty SMN, or a half assed, neutered version of what it use to be.

The Elemental Debuffs are nice.
A better staff rating, and improved Meteor and Ancient Magic performance would be incredible, but isn't necessary.

Trashing the Resist Wall is necessary.
Trashing the MTDR is necessary.

Any new content smn has just as much of a damage wall as blm does but worse, if you don't wait 8 seconds after you do a blood pact or another smn does a blood pact you do 10% damage,the aoe nerf effects thunderspark and weapons skills, so newer content smn is just as bad, and the nuke wall also applies to smn's when they magic burst too, even mewing is nerfed. Sorry not really adding a suggestion but saw all this talk so just figured id mention it.

Cossack, I only ask this out of curiosity. You are coming across as a player who hasn't played BLM or the game in a while, and expected it to be as it was when you left.

There are no more "Card Farming Parties" in the game. Its either solo Swart Farming or Lowman/Large groups that are killing the bosses. And if your idea of success is to "blow up the last 50% of a sweetwater", then it has been a long damn time since you've played BLM.

The only reason people do "Savage all the Things" strats is because of the power of Naegling. There is no benefit over other WS options in terms of DPS unless that job is using Naegling if they have other weapon options.

No one talks about 12-14 BLMs casting Death being more powerful than the options you list. I'll try and say it again- its safer and simpler.




Your "fix" is simply to make things as they used to be, and buff up damage. You're ok with BLM armies ignoring game mechanics because other jobs can. Why is the fix to also allow more people to ignore mechanics vs balance? Dunno man, I'm trying to see your side of things and all I see is a desire for things to be as they used to be, and they simply can't. The time you remember is when melee gear and buffs were massively weaker. No amount of unnerfing will bring BLM back to compete with that.

If you want to complain that magical WSs get to be immune to a nuke wall with magical damage and elemental nukes don't, sure. If you want to complain that BLU gets to AoE without penalty and BLM doesn't, damn straight. But things aren't ever gonna return to where BLM is at the pinnacle of damage dealing outside of content developed for it in the future.

FFXI is balanced in terms of relative strength and unique ability, whereas the playerbase selects job viability based on solely the latest and most popular content. This means that a job can both be severely underpowered for the current content, but amazing for a hypothetical future content without any actual changes to the job. You see this constantly when ambuscade shifts out the flavor of the month DPS job. Some jobs, like NIN and PUP, have more extreme weighting toward ability. Things that can be tanked by PUP can be done amazingly easily by PUP. Things that are blinkable by NIN are amazingly easy when done that way. Yet, bringing a PUP or NIN to most content is considered dumb.

This is a fundamental point you need to understand when looking at FFXI balance. A job lagging behind in current content does not mean the job is unbalanced, and the NA playerbase simplifying the game to only the latest content does not create a fair representation of how SE sees the game.

With all of that in mind, BLM is still one of, if not the single worst job. Everything they can do has been outdated by other jobs occupying the same role better. It would be very hard to design any content that potentially makes BLM excel. The nuke wall is responsible for this, because every meaningful way for BLM to gain value is effected by it, resulting in COR/RNG based setups being more effective for physical resistant monsters.

No other job is effectively hard limited to 1 per alliance. An effective balancing measure would require either an adjustment to the nuke wall, or a significant enough boost to BLM damage that they can be competitive without malaise/acumen. A debuff that reduces MDB comparable to malaise, combined with a global MDB- cap at roughly the value of malaise, would be an interesting take. This would allow you to bring BLM to a COR/RNG based setup to replace malaise AND burst damage on the skillchains.

Letting BLM be self-sufficient without buffs allows you to fit it into groups using melee buffs. This is an important factor, because FFXI's ridiculous emphasis on buff-stacking will largely prevent the use of BLM in a melee setup, and the same emphasis will make superbuffing a group of BLMs pointless when the nuke wall exists.

Power Creep outcrept the need and appeal of skillchain+burst moreso than blm itself

Burst was already up against the hard capped damage and has no where to go. it's a game flaw, not a job flaw.

Game needs to change to fit blm back into it. without altering so drastically to allow only blm into it.

The damage cap isn't the limiting factor. If you can double burst for 99,999 consistantly, without special buffs, you're outdamaging melee while contributing less TP and sitting out of range. The problem is that needing an entire array of buffs to do competitive damage on BLM is prohibitive when only one person can use that array of buffs due to nuke wall. SC+MB window timing could certainly use adjustment too.

Yeah, but hypothetical, if they merge buffs.

Chaos and Wizards into one roll, torpor and langor into one bubble etc it just buffs magical ws and the meta will still ignore blm

I still like the idea of a non-stacking malaise substitute spell for BLM, maybe with some sort of elemental m.acc boost given to the job as a trait. You definitely can't improve the buffs as a whole because they help COR/RNG just as much.

This has been and still is my stance on the matter. Hence why I proposed the changes that I did. I really just want to see BLMs free nuking improved. They're fine when you have to magic burst stuff, it's just that apart for a select few mobs in the whole game you never have to magic burst stuff. Their free nuke damage scales so poorly aside buffed melee damage that there's no justification to bring one. Removing multi target damage reduction and adding a job trait that scaled up only non-magic burst casts would do a whole lot for the job, and you could do that without even touching the resist wall.



The problem with this is that the game is 20 years old and the dev team is down to 6 people. With just a skeleton crew to work with and a handful of other important projects in the pipeline (all jobs adjustments this year, empyrean +3 coming thereafter, and everything else they do in between), asking for such a massive change at this stage in the game's life is somewhat unrealistic.

That's why I suggested boosting Magic Damage instead of MAB if the buffs were combined. It doesn't provide the same increase to magic WS damage and encourages the use of lower tier nuking outside of magic bursts.

Shantotto II might not be a bad example of how BLM could better work.

This a dozen times over. When I cleave omen fodder with aeolian edge I can do anywhere from 7k to upwards of 13k depending on tp in my aeolian set on thief, and a red mage or corsair can do more because they have stronger MaB options. But throw down malaise and give me acumen and wizard's roll and my aeolian edge damage shoots up to 21-35k. The same goes for ranger spamming trueflight, corsair spamming leaden, etc. The buffs that affect BLM also affect the jobs that already outperform them. You have to make the changes BLM specific. Generalizing a change will only hurt blm more than it helps, and even further warp the meta around the current powerhouses.

I "like" the "idea" of blm being more shantotto II like (basically a ranger but with t1 spells instead of bullets) and giving blm more tp based "things", altering staff ws to have better meva- mdb- stronger mrykr

But honestly there does need to be some magical ws adjustments too. Once upon a time, like alpha release, they nerfed elemental ws because they were broken (or so the legend says) it just may be an inevitability of magical ws being adjusted. They've gotten a bit ridiculous.

Definitely all for nerfing the ***out of magic(and especially hybrid) WS.

I really don't get why they have done so much to increase our DMG when it was never really necessary. Unless they have something big planned, I really cringe when I see gear like the ones we just got.

because its the easiest way to keep people paying and playing, even if it runs you into a corner longevity wise

Maybe a trait like dual cast in a manner similar to double attack and such for blm? Not really sure if thats even feasible tbh. Or if it helps much. They cna treat itnlike barrage so it can technically go above the damage limit.

Again not sure i dont mage really never did.

That would actually be kind of neat, but it'd have to be quite chunky (like 50% or higher) and most importantly not affect the nuke wall.

Give BLM an elemental (pet) that mirrors the masters spells (with some limits+boosts to certain spells) its basically a mirror magic conjuring . make the ability tied by lore to one of great many Taru Mages(+karaha-baruha)you have to choose from. Can just RIP aspects from SMN since its elementals serve little purpose.

I quit after Hero's, and returned in early 2019. I don't feel my expectations are unreasonable.

You're right, people will absolutely mana burn that the content that lends itself to being mana burned, but there just isn't much of it, the game has been overly restrictive to magic casting for a long time.

I've joined two card farming parties this week, and made a third. Neither were full alliances, but it's rare to get those any more anyway.

When I returned in 2019 I had a level 99 Almace, as that was the highest (short of the absurd afterglow) level weapon you could make when I quit. Upon returning I was told CDC was basically a means to AM3 only and to start making Savage Blade sets on RDM, BLU, and PLD. Naegling made the Savage Blade more powerful, but to be honest, no more than Shining One has for Impulse Drive, or Tauret has Evisceration. It isn't the tool, or even the weapon skill, its the power creep, we can *** about it, but Square Enix's fixes are historically worse than the problems, look at our current discussion.

By your own admission 12-14 BLMs doing timed casts aren't the problem, its people playing in a way that offends you which is the problem.



I don't want to see elemental damage buffed, I want BLM to be BLM again. Its a powerful class. I don't care what COR, or SMN can do, I'm glad they have broad use, it keeps players engaged in the game.

BLM armies? For real?


It's hard to get 18 people with a mix of buffers, healers, tank, and Savage Blade melee together at this point in the games progression, getting more than 4-6 that people that want/ need the same fight, and who also have mastered BLM's, that are half as well geared as their, or anyone's pet melee job is a bit paranoid.

How does a group of BLM's doing a timed cast ignore game mechanics? Sounds to me like you're reaching for any justification you can keep BLM broke and useless.

If no amount of un-nerfing will make BLM viable again, then what are you really objecting too. According to your statement, melee are so powerful that BLM damage will never be able to compete if we trash the wall, then why do you care if the wall is trashed?




So you're ok with these other jobs having their power niche, but not BLM? Bro, again it sounds like you're just hating on BLM rather than being objective. Then again, no one else who's maintained that the resist wall is in any way still necessary has yet to put forth a very objective argument except, "OMG armies of BLM's will come spilling over the walls, they'll breeze through all the content, no other job will ever get used again, and they'll reelect Trump."

I think it's time someone started bitching about how over powered BLU is on the official forums again. Don't worry though, even if SE "fixes" BLU's AOE damage, they'll atleast still have great buffs, good debuffs, and very respectable melee damage, hell mythic BLUs don't even have to Savage Blade.




I agree with most of what you had to say, however, SE already tossed us a half assed Atta boy with the elemental debuffs. I think giving us a job trait that helps mitigate the resist wall would be awesome, give it to SCH, RDM, DRK, GEO, and NIN too, but do it in tiers. What a reasonable solution. However Square Enix doesn't do moderation well when it come to "Adjusting", they've historically been all, or nothing. If they were better at moderation, they would've used it five years ago, negating this thread and the countless others like it.



I love the first half of this, hate the second half, quit with the nerfing ***, the last thing the game needs is less options.
I'm still waiting to hear your definition of "over powered" by the way... Still. .
waiting. . . . . . .



What you described is a job called SMN. Beside, an elemental pet casting the same element as you, would only make the resist rate worse.

Trash the resist wall.


This is the heart of the problem with adjustments to BLM, this and the complete lack moderation issue. Theres been a few respectable ideas presented at how to make BLM useful again with out trashing the resist wall, but they're complicated, they require a great deal of consideration in terms of down the road scaling, and also how they interact with other jobs. I don't like the idea of taking anything away from any of the other classes, I just want to see BLM be a useful nuker again. The easiest, simplest way to do this, and not *** ***up for anyone else, is to remove the resist wall, and the MTDR, especially considering the fact that 11's resources are so limited, and the current dev team does seem to genuinely lack.

The only argument against removing the resist wall is lol Atilla the BLM, and the elemental horde over throwing civilization and shitting all over everyones Naegling/ Death Penalty/ Nirvana/ Tizona.

God forbid players be able to use an exploitive game mechanic, that is your pet exploitive game mechanic.

Fix resist wall w/o trashing it? Easy enough.
Adjust the resist wall's starting position. If it starts at 0, have it start at -200. That way a party can generally get away with nuking even without mACC buffs for non-malaise numbers AND won't wall for the first few nukes.

That's not a horrible idea, it wont do anything for blm, but the concept is there

GEO will be happy though

"how to make BLM more relevant"

Delete all the other DD jobs and suddenly BLM is the best again.

When? how!?

Doesn't do full TP wipe on newer NMs.