Serious question for career BLM'sFollow

Now before I ask this question, read this first. My question has nothing to do with XP/merits so please refrain from making any statements to support your case if it focuses on those issues.

In the opinion of career BLM's, is the job broken? I don't mean the glitch either that SE screwed up recently, I mean in general for all stuff except XP. I keep hearing how 'broken' BLM is and I just don't see it. I do see a valid reason to want new stuff like spells that actually BLM, not D3.

Personally I think that the players and other parts of the game that are broken, not BLM so much. ToAU gave us melee weak but mage resistant mobs to fight (damn pink birds), while magic damage as a whole is less efficient than melee damage because melees don't have to rest ever. This gave melees their huge boost over BLMs XP gaining wise. It's not like ToAU did nothing for BLM though, BLMs mostly do their manaburning/soloing there.

However, BLM does have it's problems like other jobs. For BLM it's mp efficiency. Sure we can nuke like mad and do a lot of damage but then we're out of mp and we have to rest to get it back. Many BLMs are mad at SCH because they do almost as much damage but are far more efficient at keeping their mp. Not to mention all of their white magic spells. The only saving grace for BLM is that SCH lacks in magic accuracy so it's a lot harder to be effective against HNM level mobs unless a SCH has best of the best gear but even then they only reach the accuracy of an AH BLM.

And that is exactly why its broken.

A job that spends mp should not be "even" with other sources of damage; they should either be superior in damage, unquestionably, or gain enough defensive capabilities to utilize the full extent of that type of damage, or make the mp a complete non-issue so that they can continually deal an "even" amount of damage to enemies as other sources of damage.

Pick one, it doesn't matter which; they would all fix the problem.

Samurai is the favored job of SE, no surprise. So comparing any damage job to SAM is probably not that helpful.

You mean ever, right? You realize that black mage has not ever gotten a new ability since the games release unless you count retrace, right?

Oh wait, I think that Bio II used to cost more mp in 2003.

sh*t, correct me; I'd like to be wrong, but I spent about five minutes before making this post trying really hard to think of a job update that I remembered, and I can't come up with anything.

Aside from the obvious smart ass response of "every spell past level 50 was added after release", you're forgetting Ancient Magic II.

Still, that was a long time ago.

No, I am not forgetting anything. Ask yourself why I would purposefully exclude AM II. Go on, play with it some. You might come to an answer. I'm not doing it for you, not anymore.

They are abilities added after the game was released. :)

AMII were also merits and they only got really awesome if you decided to play like it's 2004 and MB.

WS are essentially free damage. TP comes from hitting the mob, so Melee are always going to accumulate it, without doing anything out of their normal routine.

BLM has to spend MP for every single spell, and the only way to recover that, (aside from meds, refresh) is to essentially remove ourself from the fight.

The idea of threat reduction JAs is entertaining.

Let's take the mage class in WoW for instance. They're glass cannons but have no trouble topping the DPS charts (up there with rogue last time I played WoW...which was before WotLK).

Mages used to be plagued with the same issues BLM are plagued with now. Mana regen is a bit more insane in WoW but...their main form of regen (evocation) sucked ass for a long time until it was properly modified. They were given native ice block (complete threat wipe) and some other very handy tools to make them much more MP efficient.

Warlocks, on the other hand, were easily able to top mage DPS pre-WotLK. They are similar to SCHs in that warlock DPS comes, in part, from DoTs, but they also had insane nukes that scaled well with gear. They had an infinite source of MP through life tap and spirit tap, which enabled them to basically do what DRKs and SMNs do: convert healer MP into damage or pet MP into damage.

Bringing this back to BLM...our problems stem from the early problems of mage. Poor MP conservation tools (conserve MP and the old evocation with spirit modifier are very similar if you ask me) and little threat reduction for our glass cannon play style. If SE would just catch on, we'd be in business...

I'd definitely follow up on the threat idea... I posted something in the FFXI Feedback Forums here. I got sub-defaulted in, oh, 2 hours though.

Honestly new spells aren't an issue, the real problem I have is that I have a RDM friend, a COR friend, and a SAM friend... and I can't do anything with the SAM on BLM because either I don't do worthwhile damage or he chases the mob who chases me (benny hill if you please).

In this instance, a big -Enmity of some sort would be a real problem solver... if I end up doing anything on BLMs it's only with other BLMs since that's the only way to take enmity out of the equation. It'd be nice to work with other jobs once in a while.

Magical damage is like the retarded stepchild of melee damage in terms of efficiency, and as long as that remains the case then BLM is broken. No new spells or minor tweaks will change that, in my opinion. Only a complete overhaul of MP efficiency can change the way things are, either in terms of dramatically reducing the cost of spells or, much more sensibly, giving us some way (seriously, any way will do) of maintaining our MP without taking ourselves out of a fight. Refresh is an absolutely laughable mitigation of the cost of us doing business, and we can't even cast it on ourselves! As the bare minimum, BLM needs some kind of powerful native refresh as a job trait - and one that stacks with other forms of MP recovery - new forms of which would likely also be needed.

If I'm having to spend 170MP to cast a spell which does as much damage as a free WS, then I need to be able, as a bare minimum, to recover 170MP in the time it takes a melee to get his TP back above 100. Bear in mind that the whole time I'm standing around waiting to cast again, that melee is throwing out an endless stream of damage with his normal attacks too, so I need something else: DoT spells which at least compare to melee DoT. Think about how much MP that is which needs to be recovered just to keep me on an even keel with a melee, then consider what percentage of that MP can actually be recovered by me as the game stands at the moment. Yeah.

I doubt it.

Said melees will be doing a WS and 50 seconds of hasted damage while you regen the mp used to cast a single Tier IV.

Even with 10mp/tick refresh, BLMs fall short of melee damage on anything but melee resistant, high level mobs.

What I'm about to say may surprise. Please sit down if you are standing. Please do not read any further if you are easily startled or pass out on a whim. Please proceed with caution.

THE SOLUTION TO FIXING BLACK MAGE IS NOT TO LEVEL ANOTHER JOB!

I'll say it again:

The solution to fixing Black Mage is not to level another job!

And a few more times in case you didn't catch my drift:

The solution to fixing Black Mage is not to level another job!
The solution to fixing Black Mage is not to level another job!
The solution to fixing Black Mage is not to level another job!
The solution to fixing Black Mage is not to level another job!
The solution to fixing Black Mage is not to level another job!


Are we clear? Awesome.

Holy bloody hell how did you ever reach sage? There are like three mobs in the whole game that are better brought down by magic damage. Armed gears, Jailer of Prudence, and Ouryu are just about it. Beyond that there isn't really any mob that can't be brought down faster, easier, better, and more efficiently by a good melee/buff team. Even the ones that change between magic and physical immunity can be brought down by good melee teams because of the DRK-zerg. BLM is the one of the lowest most inefficient endgame damagers in the game. You are arguing against mathematical calculations, parsers, and tests run by the most intelligent players of this game. Just stop.



No.




Both are necessary. One can't exist without a balance in the other. MP conservation is however the very root of our problem. The way the hate system works is also heavily biased towards melee damage-style.

**Edited: Blanket Statement removed since that seems to make people think the other billion points I made that remain unanswered somehow invalid**

Edited, May 8th 2009 9:36am by Hapernack

Not really.

Let us assume that your LS has a group of melees setting up skillchains for a group of BLM to burst on. While the collective of BLMs are going to be able to do a substantial amount of damage as a group, each individual BLM is going to have only a fraction of the damage done by the melees because you have to take the skillchain damage into account.

A SAM that closes a Light skillchain with a Tachi: Kasha that does 1200 damage followed by Light for, say, 600 damage has just done 1800 points of damage with no cost. The BLMs damage will probably be around 1300-1400 per burst but at a large cost to MP. Meanwhile, while the BLMs sit down to rest their MP back, the SAM in question is swinging a big ass GKT adding to DoT, or they can simply Meditate and be ready to WS again before the BLMs even get a single tick of MP back. Even without Meditate, a good SAM with Haste, Marches, and a 6-hit build will probably have TP available after the BLMs get maybe one tick of MP. Maybe.

BLMs cannot keep pace with the way fights are done in FFXI. This isn't 2005 anymore. There is too much reliance on us being able to rest to get our MP back, or having things like green-eyed statues in Dynamis to restore MP to keep us on our feet. In any event where downtime cannot be afforded, BLMs are pretty much, if not utterly, useless. Nyzul Isle is a good example.




And how exactly does one get to the level to perform endgame? By gaining XP. They aren't unrelated. One necessitates the other.

Getting BLMs to run off and level DRG doesn't help BLM in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, you might be able to crank out the ridiculous XP and get a ton of merits for your BLM... to invest in what? AMII? Yeah.




BLM needs a combination of things.

1) Either a better means of controlling enmity or some utility spells that increase their defensive capabilities. By comparison, a SAM can pop off extremely high damage WS and then pop up Seigan/TE and can tank for at least a little while before falling on their face. BLMs, on the other hand, can pop off extremely high damage nukes, have the mob cast them a sideways glance, and they fall on their face.

2) Better DoT enfeebles. BLM needs something that can continue to contribute to their damage output while they are trying to rest. Melees get to swing their weapons after they WS, BLMs need to have something going after their nuke while they wait for the next nuke, in the same fashion that melees do damage after their WS while waiting for their next WS.

3) A better means of MP conservation. As I stated before, BLMs cannot keep pace with the way fights are done in the here and now. Downtime is bad. And BLMs bring a lot of it. Without some means of being able to stay on our feet longer in a fight, the usefulness of BLM in general will be limited.


This has nothing to do with getting new toys. This has everything to do with updating BLM to be effective in the modern day and age of FFXI.

Jeez man, take it easy. Are you seriously THAT upset?

To answer your first question, I got sage by at least trying to argue with some level of respect for the person I'm arguing with - and I don't make blanket statements like "No melee resistant high level mobs exist" when clearly that's not the case. And even with mobs that aren't melee resistant, often times BLM is the most effective way of taking a mob down.

Maybe we're playing a different game? From the top of my head, Tartaruga Gigante, OuryuV2 (cloud evoker fight) and Armed Gears are highly melee resistant to the point where they can't be beaten with only physical DD - and other mobs like Sarameya and Tinnin will wreck you if you melee it too much. I'm sure there's others that fit as well. Even older HNMs found in sky and sea still go down twice as fast with blms. Or do you assume that people just afk for 2 hours/call-in-the-corsairs after a zerg? Seriously - Are we talking about the same tier of HNMs?

@Kaetara - Thanks for the less ragefilled response with something to reply to other than "UR Retarded". The limiting factor on damage, BLM or SAM is enmity. That sam has to stop the damage or die, just like I do, Therefore SAM is not outdoing me in damage. In fact, because I have -enmity on some of my gear, I can probably do a bit more.

The amount of melee damage you're using in your example is the stuff of legend, saved in screenshots after using 2 hours combined with bard 2 hours. Blms, on the other hand put out the hurt without 2 hours, or flukes. Either that or you and I are talking about a different level of mob.

I'm sorry that you don't like AM2. I use it effectively a lot.

In the end as a career blm, I take my blm out to most things, kill whatever I'm after and have a blast doing it. At no time do I feel inferior to any other job out there and barring a small number of situations I'm always welcome as blm in endgame.

What a BLM is capable of doing solo isn't a very good representation of its overall power. Most of those situations you list above have case circumstances that you neglected to mention:

1) Yovra (aka UFOs) in sea are soloable by BLM, through the use of Manafont. This means you can kill one every two hours, which isn't entirely amazing. A SCH can kill Yovras without the use of Tabula Rasa since Helix spells are capable of defeating a Yovras high auto-regen trait.

2) Apollyon NE/NW have restore chests available immediately upon reaching a floor, which allows the BLM to use Manafont repeatedly through the course of the event, in addition to eliminating some measure of downtime by instantly recharging MP at the same time that Manafont is restored. A BLM looking to win these Limbus zones are required to kill quickly and with some degree of luck on getting the vortex to open quickly. A BLM can solo farm ABCs in Limbus without heavy reliance on restore chests, but to get the win they are going to have to use those chests to reduce downtime and increase kill speed.

3) The Bhaflau Remnants salvage run you speak of was performed by Kaeko, who was using /SCH for Parsimony with nukes and Sublimation for MP recovery. It also requires near perfect gear, an absolutely perfect performance in your kiting route and making the appropriate turns, use of "blink casting" to avoid casting animations that slow you down, and abuse of faulty AI. Any mistake on your part usually results in death.

4) Avesta's BLM solo of Brothers ENM required the use of Manafont and a death/unweaken/recover, whereas his RDM solo required the use of Chainspell with no deaths necessary. SCH could probably solo this easier and faster than either BLM or RDM using Helix DoT and opening with Tabula Rasa for quick, cheap, and powerful nukes.

5) Xenith was able to solo ODS as RDM/BLU using melee tactics. Just because this is possible doesn't make RDM melee any more welcome in an endgame scenario: it remains useful in specific situations. BLMs ability to solo ODS likewise doesn't necessarily reference their usefulness in certain endgame scenarios.


Just because a BLM can do these things in a solo effort doesn't mean that they should be completely overlooked as being perfectly up-to-date. Solo ventures give the comfort of being able to choose your own fights and go at your own pace. You can selectively target fights where you will have the downtime needed to be able to get your MP back, or fights where you are going to have use of Manafont numerous times.

In group efforts the pace is dictated by the group. A long time ago, fights were slower and took a lot more coordination. These days, fights are fast, frantic, and leave little room for downtime. In a fast-paced world, BLMs are entirely too slow to keep up.




Not really. The SAM is perfectly capable of continuing to dish out damage and can remain alive for quite an extended period of time, long enough for tanks to re-establish hate. Therefore, the SAM is outdoing you in damage, because the SAM has greater survivability upon drawing hate than you do. Apart from that, your -enmity isn't going to help your MP stay high in a long-running fight, in which case while you are resting the SAM is still meleeing and still WSing.




Stuff of legend? It was the stuff of legend back in 2005. Melees have much stronger gear available to them now than they did back then.. higher accuracy, higher attack, more skill items, better haste gear, more double attack.. the list goes on and on. Despite all the gear that has been introduced for BLMs, Morrigan's in particular, they are still limited by their MP pool. Melee classes don't have this restriction, and the more gear that comes out the better they are going to get. Can BLMs "double attack" a spell the same way a melee job can double attack a WS?

How about referencing Sea Gorgets and Obis? A BLM with the appropriate element Obi can get quite a significant boost to the potency of their nukes, but it requires the weather or day conditions to be correct, or for SCH support to force the weather effect. A melee with their Gorget gets the benefit of the Gorget regardless of outside conditions or other support.

And don't even get me started on relics. Back in 2005, relics didn't exist. Now, they are turning up more and more as the people who set their eyes on the prize back in 2005 are starting to realize their goals. A BLM with their relic (lolClaustrum) isn't going to even come close in comparison to a SAM with Amanomurakumo (note: I use SAM in particular due to their incredibly fast TP build, excellent two-hander damage, and ability to instantly regain 100% TP or more immediately following a WS with Meditate). In fact, the question would be: "Why the hell is that BLM using Claustrum?"

SAMs with Amanomurakumo can save 200% TP (obtainable in 12 hits), use Sekkanoki, and immediately pop off Tachi: Kaiten to Tachi: Kaiten and solo their own Light skillchain. If they Meikyo Shisui after that, they can turn around and knock out three (3!!!) more Light skillchains back-to-back-to-back, which can result in the effective damage of 9 WSs in an extremely short timeframe. And in the world of relics, 1200 damage is hardly legendary. Hagun SAMs with good builds are capable of reaching those numbers already.

BLMs with Claustrum can effectively swap out their relic for the appropriate staff when casting a nuke, since Claustrum does absolutely nothing to enhance the potency of their nukes.




In the grand scheme of things, a Thunder IV can do everything a Burst II can do, better. Not factoring in Conserve MP on either spell, a BLM can use Thunder IV three times for less MP than a BLM using Burst II twice. Three Thunder IV is better than two Burst II.


Don't get me wrong. I acknowledge that BLMs are capable of doing some extraordinary things. However, if you look at the big picture, they are simply too slow to keep up with modern day events.

Edited, May 7th 2009 2:26pm by Kaetara

Edited, May 7th 2009 2:40pm by Kaetara

DANGER: Long post.



ThunderIV-BurstII-ThunderIV seems like it would be a huge hate spike on your part, and is hardly "holding back" and very taxing on MP. Regardless, you could do ThunderIV-BlizzardIV-ThunderIV and pull off slightly less damage with much better MP efficiency if you can afford the hate spike. You'd last longer in a fight for a negligible cost to your overall damage if you leave AMII out of the picture.

BLM Group 2 merits are really flashy spells used for showing off more than their practical effectiveness. Honestly, I believe BLMs get them because, "Why not? They're there!" Personally, I'd rather have Tier V single-target nukes than AMII.

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The OP asked if the BLM community felt that BLM was "broken". In my honest opinion, it is very broken and is badly in need of an update to bring it up to speed with the current times. BLM is still enormously useful as a job, but the situations where a BLM really shine are becoming more and more few and far between. Dynamis is a great example. BLMs really perform there, and it is one of the last remaining shining lights of how potent BLM can truly be. I know of no Dynamis shell in existence that doesn't go with a group of BLMs in a separate alliance dedicated to taking out the statues, and as a side-bonus they have lasting power since they can restore their MP using green statues and rest while the melee alliance takes out the beastmen mobs.

When ToAU was released BLM manaburns were in their glory days, and SE took that as a sign that BLM was too powerful in relation to melee DD. As a result, many of the mobs in ToAU areas were given specific defenses against magic, be it ridiculous magic defense or mimicking spells. BLMs usefulness first took a hit there, as much of the new content needed more melee and less magic. The EXP bonus conferred by the Astral Candescence prompted most of the playerbase to prefer partying in ToAU areas, which left BLMs stranded on the sidelines going off on their own to solo pets to get to 75.

Melee jobs soon took notice of this style of leveling and quickly followed suit, electing to solo against pets and work at their own pace rather than to seek a PT contending against the myriad of other DD jobs that were waiting for invites themselves (the infamous SAM bandwagon). There's been plenty of occasions where I was looking to go get some EXP on my BLM only to be confronted by a DRG/BLU at the pet camp, which is very disheartening when you consider how easily a DRG can find or make a PT.

Then SCH came along. It started off pathetically weak, in dire need of a boost just to keep it in the picture. The buff it was given gave SCH all the versatility of being a BLM and a WHM rolled into one job. Granted, a SCH cannot do both at the same time, but it can switch roles on the fly if necessary, whereas a BLM is restricted to only one role. SCH is an extremely efficient nuker when asked to perform the role of a BLM, able to crank out very powerful nukes for much less MP cost, and on top of that they are armed with their own tool for restoring MP while being able to /RDM for increased survivability, whereas a BLM/SCH gains excellent MP efficiency at a cost of survivability.

In addition, SCH is only going to get better as more updates come out, since they were restricted earlier by not being able to reach the skill levels needed to nuke reliably against certain HNMs, whereas now they can obtain those skill levels if they have "perfect" gear.

I should note that the BLM Mythic weapon, Laevateinn, has a nice bonus to Elemental Seal that gives a potency bonus of 10% to the next spell cast. Coupled with MAB+20 and M.Acc+10, plus the inherit M.Acc bonus of Elemental Seal, this weapon could easily outperform HQ staves once every 10 minutes (who is going to merit Elemental Seal recast when you have potency bonuses available?), but that's not what BLM truly needs. Laevateinn is extremely time consuming and demanding to get, and not many are going to see it.

BLMs need inherit JAs similar to the ones WHM got in the last version update that grant potency or other applicable bonuses to their spells based on certain conditions being met, or a spell that functions similar to Spirit Taker or Mystic Boon that converts damage to own MP in order to give BLMs staying power for fast-paced fights with no room for resting. They need better DoT enfeebles so they can keep their damage flow high while resting. They need better enmity control tools that allow them to do cast nukes more often without fear of getting eaten by the mob, without having to sacrifice gearslots that are used for optimizing their damage.

BLM is a DD job. It specializes in harnessing the power of the elements to unleash devastating attacks against hapless enemies. An organized group of them are capable of destroying entire legions of enemies with a single coordinated blast of elemental energy. Nevertheless, BLMs require extensive meditation to maintain their power, and without the time necessary to do so they will eventually run out of their resources and serve no purpose except to cheer for their allies.

The world is changing. BLM remains one of the only jobs locked away in the past with no updates to keep it flexible and fresh. Without an update to bring them into the present times, it will slowly continue to diminish in stature until the armies of BLMs that once stood strong and proud will be left as nothing but a memory in the minds of the older generations.

Edited, May 7th 2009 5:26pm by Kaetara

replace MP with Gil and there you have RNG... which I believe Career RNG's and/or the RNG forums would like to have a word with you...

On a serious note both jobs, especially BLM need a tweak. AMII's are nonexistant as I have personally never seen a BLM canst a single one, not even in endgame related events and I play both support and melee class type jobs, so at one point or another you would kinda notice it if they ever did O_o

My thought exactly. There are a few other poster who said the same thing which I agree with as well. To be fair BLM has very useful utility spell (sleep, stun, sj whm/rdm spells), but that should not be an excuse for BLM to not be a premier damage dealer. Isn't the point of black magic to deal damage? I will be happy to giveup utilty spell to deal more damage with less hate and less MP cost.

"Glass cannon" is right. An 1800s cannon made of glass, sitting in the middle of a battlefield with 8 cannonballs. Meanwhile, melees are steel 1950s naval guns sitting on a battleship with entire supply convoys handing them ammo.

I don't think any of us doubt that there are other jobs who need an update just as desperately as we do and, in some cases, even more desperately. However, just because one can make the case that x is more broken than y, it doesn't detract from the fact that they are both broken. I don't want to see BLM get fixed instead of other jobs, I just want to see it fixed.

A friend as SCH and I as BLM were doing limbus King zone for the LS, what can I say, with his potency JA and spell up, he nukes slightly more than I with the same tier IV spell. Mind you, I even got slightly better gears than he does (such as 2 snow rings for me, 2 diamond rings for him). From what he told me, Ebullience and weather give him 30% MAB potency (and Ebullience is 20% potency of total MAB, including 10$ weather, so the number is big). When resistance is not an issue, BLM can't beat that big number of MAB with gears and Job Traits.

When he is kind enough to cast weather on me, yes, I can out nuke him.

The only place where a BLM wins over SCH is HNM resistance. That's so sad.

IMO, BLM need some new JA for MP conservation or generation and nuke boost.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the most you could do with relic WSs was a double Light or Darkness? (Meaning after that you'd need to open the chain from scratch again with a WS that closes no chain)