Frustrated

On the subject of manawall does the su5 stack with the cape and emp feet

Been hesitant to craft one for myself

Posting in a legendarily sad thread.

Pour one out for BLM.

AFAIK there is no such thing like lowered damage for cumulative MB. Its lowered damage for cumulative use of same element. Idk why people are confused about it for so long. If you skillchain Light and 3BLMs would cast FireVI, ThunderVI, AeroVI, then none would get walled. Also its not only for elemental magic nukes. If you for example cast Subduction on BLU fast enough even solo, you will get walled too.

I wasn't confused about it, that's what I meant when I wrote that because I thought that was commonly understood by everyone, so I didn't specify. The mechanic is already in the game in the way of RUN JAs so giving something similar to BLM would give them an edge over other jobs that can nuke. Sure you can MB different elements with different nukers but that's if you make a lvl 3/4 SC and if you can get away with nuking 3 diff elements to begin with which is an extra layer of rarity. Multiple BLM MBing death for example (and only BLM gets this spell) is basically out altogether unless you bring a RUN, which is a tank job, to buff a BLM.

Sure you CAN MB AeroIV and ThunderIV off a frag but that requires the mob to not resist both wind and thunder. Or in the case of Light it requires you to be making Light, which means you have a dedicated SC going so probably not 3 BLMs in the pt at that point. Also the mob would have to not be resistant to multiple elements.

They could do something with Elemental Seal like they did with Sab for RDM. Make ES last for like 1.5-2Min with 3Min cooldown, and let you bypass the MB cap wall. This will also bring more relevance back to the mythic if they decide to adjust bonuses that it can grant. Though its not the greatest fix to content where people want things dead quick and efficient but it at least lets you use BLM for those same fights without having to make BLM completely useless in those situations.

There are new people here and people commonly talk about it as "cumulative mb usage" which is confusing for those new people.

My thoughts while reading this thread: adding a trait to BLM along the lines of “Magic Burst stun” so that if blm MBs a big dmg nuke of the correct element it stuns or amnesia the target for like 5-10 seconds, that would add good value to bringing a BLM and setting up SC> MB with melee in content.

It is not actually the same element... it is any element. I've tested this with Fragmentation and bursting Aero 6 and Thunder 6 at the same time with 2 separate BLM. Was ~60% dmg reduction from normal.

I did not test it multiple times so it's possible a resist happened but I can definitely give it more testing.

Edit: Scratch that, definitely recall numbers getting nerfed to low amounts when just free nuking different elements between two blm.

with job points cape and feet you are already capped, only reason I can think of for su5 is when doing some crazy extreme cleaving and want to use hippomenes socks for endless flee the su5 lets you swap out the empy feet for them.

The job doesn't need much changing- its the ***we fight that needs a breath of fresh air.

Repetitive WS usage being penalized in Dynamis-Divergence is a good first start to add/return some variety to this game.

But we basically face an issue right now (and for the previous several years) where if you gear/buff enough, you can do 95% of the content in exactly the same way. Its the same strat, just a different face on the receiving end of the beat down. If you wanted to "fix" BLM, you'd create content that needed them. Not because of some weird proc system, but because you truly can't kill what you're facing without some tools that BLMs bring but GEOs, RDMs, and SCHs don't, or don't have enough "punch".

It's so incredibly easy to fix blm but it will make everyone whine.

Scale back the absolutely broken facerolling dps powercreep.

No one like barance but the opposite of barance is just as bad (for different reasons)

In simple words, the game is too fast and blm is slow. You need to slow the game back down to make blm work. It would take some insane fixes to bring blm up. (like... changing the entire systems of the game insane)

Idk that would force people to play specific jobs to beat content. That's not a good way to fix the job. Generally fixing blm by indirectly gimping melee is imo bad design. Blm should get some ability that gives them massive magic damage for spells. Big enough to make t1 spells do enough damage to create significant dps. Lets say t1 would do like 15k damage without buffs. Thats like 3k dps. With buffs you could push that to 6-8k? That would be slightly less then most buffed melee DD. What Afania said about mb window not ending when you hit new WS would be cool to, but that would probably require massive changes in basic game mechanics, so they probably won't risk touching it.


Nah, making free nuke spam of T1 competitive dps to melee would fix BLM too.

Nah, see, if blm has deeps like that, then the mob will be running all over the place, enmity would be a real issue. coupled with the fact that blm is "far away" typically, a running mob is a dps loss to melee.

It takes more than simply increasing t1 damage and "doublecast" or equivalent. it has to come with enmity tweeks, and enmity douse adjustments.

Scythe BLM. Make it work, SE.

Mythic melee blm is doable and quite fun. Downside being to get any aoe ws you have to sub some dumb sh!t like war to get them as for whatever reason BLM doesn’t have access to all staff ws. Vido is fun to spam tho. Reduced mdef and makes distortion with itself.

oh I am definitely aware, and love my Laev (and have built melee/WS sets for it). But RDM got access to malignance gear- I'm hoping over time that BLM gets a set built around solid acc with either STP or DA in solid numbers. Its very possible to build a set with 30% DA and ~1150acc with my current gear options.

Three of my chars have master blm, prior to getting master, the job was mainly just to secure MB damage in CP parties. I can strongly agree with other post, you need a lot of gear to support full time use. From the aspect of dual boxing, having the Magic Attack support from BLM never hurts, yet it doesn't overhaul pure DPS. It should be noted, blm is still just perfect for making fights even faster when keeping distance.

Just wanted to share something I was shown the other day that shows BLM can be quite useful in Dynamis, especially for Statue Crusher campaigns for lowman setups.
https://twitter.com/Phalaos/status/1351162904226181123
(Are twitter posts embeddable?)

I just don't believe that BLM is "fixable" (or more appropriately, "balanceable") with current game mechanics and opponents. No matter what you do to bring BLM dps up, people will still go for the easier route because BLM is still gonna be fragile as hell with a small HP pool, so if they can compete in DPS vs burst damage(not magic burst necessarily- just bursts of damage vs steady), hate is going to become unstable over time- so if you make BLM match other DDs, but those other DDs are sturdier and don't cause massive mob movement during battle, they'll still be preferred.

If the game encourages us to play multiple jobs, why do we seek balance among them so much? Isn't a simpler solution design wise to create content that suits certain jobs? And wouldn't that also encourage job diversity among players?

There was this Galka Blm who blew his entire MP on some Quadavs without killing them so.he just decided to wack them all to death with a giant staff.

It was a joke back then because blms were supposed to use spells yo beat their enemies but nowadays it's not really a joke but a reality. Blm are using their MP to tank mobs and defeating them with melee weapons while spells are taking a backseat.

This is sort of worrying since it's an indication that magic is losing it's place. The only magic left are from WS and special settings.

Since people have mentioned BLM tanking things, here's one more vid I remember being interesting.

Erinys with a BLM tank:

Magic bursting is irrelevant on melee content because melee's are too efficient at killing things. Stunning mobs is pointless when they die in 5-10 seconds, and black mage magic bursts one shot anything that melees do anyway. It's just the fact that black mages NEED to magic burst to deal 40-70k damage, whereas melees just do it naturally with a weaponskill. Your suggestion would change nothing.



I disagree. The solution is just the opposite. Black mage's problem is it's damage doesn't scale well, so we simply bring blm in line with other damage dealers. Elemental magic suffers a flat 70% damage reduction when hitting large groups of mobs. That was a product of the game's infancy and was necessary in 2003. We've moved past that. Aeolian edge doesn't have that restriction. Blue magic doesn't have that restriction. Why should elemental magic? The only reason it's there is because "it existed 18 years ago and nobody ever bothered to removed it when it was no longer needed". Just get rid of it and suddenly elemental magic is on par with aeolien edge and blue magic burns.

Likewise if you gave black mage a job trait "single target non-magic burst damage + 40%" their free nuking would suddenly stop sucking as much. It still wouldn't be as good as an actual melee, but it would be much closer. And since the job trait only affected single target NON-magic bursted nukes, IE free nukes it wouldn't interfere with the AoE spell change and wouldn't break them in magic burst setups. Voiola~ Black mage damage output doesn't suck so bad and suddenly the job is viable.

That's literally all they have to do. And it probably wouldn't take more than a couple hours to implement. And while it's true that adjusting the elemental magic AoE formula on a whole would make mob's aoe more dangerous, I'm sure we'd be just fine. You were complaining content is too easy. Maybe if mobs had slightly stronger AoE nukes content would be just slightly more difficult. Win win in the process. Most mob AoE would still still suck because malignance has such high magic evasion we resist mob nukes pretty easily anyway, and for everything else there's Indi-vex, so it's nothing we couldn't overcome with ease if we really wanted to.

Good points. And SE already hits us with magical AoE TP moves from mobs so they can get around any elemental magic reduction in AoE damage by just hitting us for the same type of damage, but from a difference source. Sure, there are examples of some mobs with strong aga/aja spells, but they are limited and as you point out, become manageable with just one or two sacrifices for safety.

Black mage fix number one: Elemental magic damage no longer suffers a damage reduction when hitting multiple targets

Black mage fix number 2: Black Mages now have a job trait "Non-magic bursted single target damage increase". It gives a flat percentile multiplier to black mage. They could figure out what fits bets. Maybe just a flat percentile increase to every free nuke, or a percentile increase based on the tier cast (say, 10% for tier 1, 20% for tier 2, 30% for tier 3, etc etc). Both are equally fine. The job trait doesn't work when black mages magic burst, so it doesn't break NM encounters, and it also doesn't work on AoE.

It really isn't rocket science and that's all black mage would ever need to suddenly be a strong job again. Make it happen S-E!

There's nothing they can do short of drastic to fix BLM that won't completely upset the meta. If it's drastic enough to make BLM relevant, that's all everyone will ever play anymore.

10 BLM nuking from range with no magic wall.
"Double cast" magic bursts with 10 black mages that can enmity douse everything afterwards
"Exceed 99k" damage cap x10
10 BLM sitting in Mana Wall set taking no damage while throwing capped magic bursts
"Increase single target nuke damage". - ok just bring 12 black mages to spam 4kdmg spells endlessly until stuff dies

You see where this is going. Nothing will ever be the same

This is honestly my concern. SE doesn't seem to understand their own game any more, and certainly not their own customers. Like I said earlier in this thread, and others have as well- BLM strats existed because they were safe against mobs that couldn't be effectively melee-burned. Give BLMs the power potential of a heavy DD but the safety of distance, and why would groups use melee strats any more?

In an ideal world for balance, melee SC+magical bursts would rule the day. It would create that lovely 3 party alliance setup that I personally miss so much- Tank Party, DD party, mage party. But I don't honestly see how such a concept can be returned to if they keep making enemies that can be defeated with the same strat. We need some content that forces the switch between meta jobs not just because it restricts us artificially (Odyssey Gaol), but rather because different tactics for different fights actually become best.

They've toyed with such mechanics before, either on less-rewarding content or small potatoes mobs like pre-boss NMs in Delve. Omen bosses at release encouraged this concept, but with gear creep and familiarity with the mobs, eventually all tactics switch to melee burn.

We need new enemies that make us afraid to stand close, and encourage real magical damage, not just Trueflight/Leaden/Wildfire spam. I don't personally believe there is a good fix outside of new stuff that forces new concepts. Any change that would be "enough" to make BLMs relevant could quite easily make BLM the only relevant choice, and I don't think anyone wants that.

Fixing black mage isn't a matter of making them as good as melees. It's just a matter of making them "good enough" that they don't suck so bad people cringe at the thought of bringing them. We're in a meta where almost every job is universally accepted at any event because we can easily steamroll content, yet black mages damage output is so pathetically and horribly weak in a melee environment that people still cringe at the thought of bringing one along. That says all there is to say.

It's not a matter of making them as good as melees. It's just a matter of making them good enough that people will go "Oh, you're a blm. Ok, I guess we can bring one of them along". If black mages only did 60-70% of an actual melee DPS output that would be enough to justify a slot, yet they'd still be weaker and melees would be preferred. As it stands, my black mage can do about 2 million DPS for every 10-12 million my thief can. It's one sixth as good at dealing damage. That's the power gap that cripples the job.



If spamming 40-50k weaponskills and the occasional 60-90k sneak attack or climactic rudra's storm is still more effecient, people will still prefer it. Melee's are at a point where normal hits do over 4k damage and come in quicker succession than blms can fire off low tier spells, and weaponskills one shot trash mobs. We can melee burn omen bosses in 3-5 minutes, and melee burn wave 3 Dynamis Su5 mobs in 45 seconds. These are some of the game's most difficult adversaries and with a good melee setup we cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Making black mage stronger in comparison, but still weaker relatively isn't going to change that.

@Melphina- do you want BLMs to just be tolerated or desired?

Your solution would work- assuming two things. First, that the group you are in is flexible and strong enough to already steamroll it and bringing a BLM or two for fun won't harm that. And second, that the current content is as high of difficulty as we're gonna get, outside of artificial restrictions.

But I don't want BLM to simply be tolerated and tossed in the leftovers party for an event because they don't "hurt" the alliance. I want situations where an alliance NEEDS a BLM. And you can't do that just by increasing the job's DPS.