Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

No we don't, it's elemental magic DPS, aka a caster, which is a normal role within the trinity system. The issue is not BLM's role, that is well defined and fleshed out, the issue is that current game mechanics do not support that role. This isn't just BLM, jobs like RDM, GEO and SCH all have elemental magic DPS capabilities that aren't viable for the same reasons.

You guys keep wanting to use snowflake logic to what is a very simple mechanical scaling issue. The existing casting magic system was designed around level 60 cap era, then nerfed around level 75. Back when doing 1000 damage on a weapon skill was "good". Now we are dealing 40~70x that number and magic weapon skills have become better then magic spells.

To put it another way, Upheaval, Leaden Salute, Torcleaver, Tachi: Fudo, Savage Blade, Black Halo, freaking Seraph Blade, all have a "cast" time of "right now" and a "recast" of 2~3 seconds, and deal more damage then Thunder VI and don't reduce each other's damage by 60%.

Saevel's argument is spot on, and here's something more to think about. While Black mage is in a terrible spot in FFXI, it's actually in one of the best positions in Final Fantasy 14. Now I know the two games have drastically different combat engines, but on a fundamental level they share important similarities.

Black mage in Final fantasy 14 is a DPS class with no party support. Like samurai, it just spams its rotation with a set of traits and abilities focused solely on sustained damage and burst windows. What makes it function is that its ability potencies and rotation line up with all the other DPS classes, so it's not left in the dust. Bringing a black mage to a raid is worthwhile because the black mage can put out a high level of sustained DPS.

In final fantasy 11 black mage has the exact same role, but the combat system is very different, and because of that its DPS is not sustainable like the other DDs. Saevel already touched upon the deficiencies in the casting system, the global spell lockout/cooldown, etc.... and everything boils down to that root cause. Unlike all the other DDs blm cannot do its job by itself, because casting DPS versus Melee DPS work on different principles with different scaling. BLM needs its damage scaled up. And yes, that does mean free nuking.


In addition to that, all these jobs are also hitting the mob for white damage while they build tp for those weaponskills. With Twashtar and a crit build my thief's white damage surpasses my black mage's nuke damage because capped haste, triple attack, and empyrean aftermath scale vastly harder than blm's free nuking. And all of that is before you add in rudra's storm damage.

That's nothing everyone hasn't been saying for about 5 years (longer, but its been 5 years since the 12 blm death alliances)

Except that it's basically impossible (without changing the entire games mechanics) to bring blm up to the games new speed. (*)without causing a blm onry meta

I mean, you look at any other FF. Magic is super OP early. But at the end it's a waste of time to even enter the magic menu. Depending on how much you over exped, and XI is at 99. You(I) don't use Lulu at engame. You(I) don't use Vivi at end game. You don't see blms in FFT endgame. You don't use magic damage in FF12 endgame. BLM isn't great in 1-6 endgame either. It's pointless to cast green materia in ff7 endgame. You don't (EVER!?) cast damaging magic in FF8. This isn't new.

This is more to show that square in general is bad at balancing magic than to say XI shouldn't see it's BLM improved.

So friend brought up something. Lately we've been having our GEO melee on our V15 Bumba charge runs (V15 Bumba + 2 x V15 Tier 3's) because otherwise they are just standing around. With Nyame and Maxentius they are belting out 25-30K Black Halo's and contributing 10~12% of the total damage. We were surprised because we assumed it would of been like 2~4% (which is more then then 0 they were doing before). Looking over it, there is nothing that guy was doing that a BLM couldn't also do.

So a melee BLM using Black Halo ends up stronger then the same BLM casting nukes. I'd suggest using Staff but Retribution is kinda weak, BLM/SAM doesn't have native access to Cataclysm and Flash Nova ends up doing better with off hand Day Break.

That is what I mean by existing mechanics not supporting elemental casters. It's better to get Songs + Rolls + Geomancy, build TP and spam Weapon Skills that don't nerf each other and don't inflict a 50% cooldown penality.

I don't disagree that we need to get rid of the walls. I'm just asking: "then what?"

If they fix the basic mechanic issues they could get to a point where Tier I ~ III's are spammed to build TP then that TP could be dumped via Cascade into a large boost of the next spell like -ja or Tier VI. OA would need to be reworked to be a lot stronger and Cascade put on a lower timer, but this would create a similar situation to what is in FFXIV. Free Nuke to do "white" DPS and build TP, expend that TP for a hugely damaging attack, then go cycle back to building TP.


Then they can get to adjusting the base values of nukes and tweaking stuff like OA / Cascade to create a damage mechanic similar to how ranged DPS works. Shoot for TP then WS, then shoot for more TP and continue.

I disagree with this. If you scale up black mage's free nuke damage without going over the top you can make blm far more relevant without butchering the system and encouraging "BLM ONRY" environment. I've already offered my suggestion on multiple occasions in multiple threads, and it hasn't changed. I'd like to see a job trait that works only on free nukes that straight up amplifies nuke damage by 30-40%, but doesn't apply to magic bursts.

Every single situation that people bring up saying "you can't fix BLM because...." revolves around an argument about full parties of blms breaking the game with magic bursts. So just don't mess with the bursts then. If Blms free nuke damage was scaled up it would align far better in its role as a DPS. It doesn't have to be buffed to the point it overtakes the top dds. Even if BLM only did 70-80% of a sam, war, mnk, drk, or w/e, that would be justification enough use the job. Like I said above, mirroring saevel, BLM's role is a DPS. The only thing broken about the class is that its dps is too out of line with the other dps classes. If you buff its DPS you fix the job. And free nuking s the area where the deficiency is most glaring.

Honestly none of that matters anymore. A bunch of BLM's doing 99K bursts still wouldn't touch the DPS output of buffed melee or ranged DPS. High powered WS's have a "cast time" of "instant" and a "recast" of "2~3 seconds". Gear growth has got us to a point now here those WS's are dealing in the high five digit damage each.

Anyone that use's a "but BLMs might do too much" are ignorant of the existing damage mechanics of FFXI, which is what most of the snowflake folks are thinking.

People need to learn this page before making comments about damage. Quantity beats quality, especially when that quality is hard capped at a value very close to what quantity generates.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Weapon_Skills

Savage Blade isn't the only powerful WS on that list, it's just the most accessible one that doesn't SC with itself. Nyame path B just unlocked high fTP WS damage to every job in the game instead of just a few jobs having access to it. The only shame is that it's rare, otherwise there would be a universally accessible TP set.

And just to mess with everyone, did you guys know that Hot Shot / Flaming Arrow can deal more then 99K damage? Yeah RNG and COR can break the damage ceiling, which is far more viable now that Nyame path B exists. Think Jinpu / Chi for Bow / Gun.

If you suggest people should read something before making comments, you should probably read update notes too. Hot shot/flaming Arrow doing 99k+ was fixed years ago.

EDIT: http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news25729.shtml

Almost exactly 2 years ago

Yeah, hot shot caps at 99k just like everything else. It also doesn't hit capped damage on many things. Qubtrubs in Sheol C stand out as one of the exceptions, and with path B nyame it does land capped damage consistently, but an exception rather than a rule.

Likewise, you don't just get 5/5 R20 Path B Nyame and start throwing out capped damage hybrid weaponskills on ninja either. You still need support to do it consistently. One of our linkshell's ninja's can hit capped or close to numbers in dyna wave 3 on nin, but it isn't every weaponskill, and we have geomancer and rune tanks to enable it. Hybrid weaponskills have the potential to cap because of how path B nyame amplifies both halves of the equation, but it's a fallacy to assume they do it outright on everything.

Even still, that's a bit of a sidetracking. Even if your average weaponskill damage is 35-45k on major content, that's still a far cry ahead of anything blm is capable of doing right now. Tier 6 ranges 10-15k, which is just pitiful in comparison. Blms nuke damage needs to be scaled up. It's that simple.

I could go for some more dark based nukes... Even WHM gets more light based(I hit objectives in omen on whm, fight me) nukes so something besides Comet/Death would be refreshing.

I second Celebrindal too.... Why do I have to sub anything to get Cataclysm when all of our REMAs are Staves?

Maybe some other elemental affinity gear that can be mage specific?

Hot Shot / Flaming Arrow went over 99K, remember it being a big thing on bg awhile back, haven't heard anything about SE "fixing" it. The issue was getting correct gear to fix it since Attack, Accuracy, Magic Attack Bonus, Magic Accuracy and Weapon Skill Damage didn't appear on the same gear ... oh wait.. Nyame exists. So on any target that geomancy isn't nerfed on, Malaise + Frailty + Dia II will cap pDiff and give ridiculous mDiff, which is sufficient to start seeing 99K on hybrids. Of course most dangerous stuff these days seems to have 90% resistance to geomancy debuffs, but that's a SE boss design thing not a game mechanics thing. Doing capped hybrid damage is really just about capping pDiff then cranking up the mDiff as high as possible with as much WSD as possible, extra hits don't hurt either.

My point on that was to illustrate how insanely dumb the idea of "BLM's doing 99K bursts would be so broken" is. Melee and Ranged DPS already deal far more total damage then that. The focus shouldn't be on preemptively nerfing casting damage, but making it work in cycles which the engine supports.

For those thinking back to Death MB during the early Aeonic period, we didn't use BLM because they were stronger or did more damage, we used them because the T4 HELMs required something like 2000 accuracy to hit. Languor / Focus used to be much stronger so beating the magic evasion was easier then beating the physical evasion. This made a bunch of BLM's bursting during Rayke windows an easier strategy to implement then buffed range / melees. After SE radically reduced the evasion of the T4 HELM's, melee and ranged DPS because a significantly easier method to execute and we all immediately switched over.

Maybe borrow from ffxiv and do:

• Dual cast? Kind of like double attack but for spells; if you get a proc, you get to instacast a second spell. FFXIV rdm revolves around this

• DPS and recovery phase. During DPS phase, each consecutive nuke gets stronger and unlocks something? Maybe a free cast of death? Recovery phase means your nukes arent buffed but you are recovering your mp

• Improve occult acumen enough to allow BLM to weaponskill frequently. Also improve elemental weaponskill damage and maybe add more weaponskills?

• Add party buffs to blm lol or give blm potent debuffs that would make it an asset to the party

• This might break things lol but MB chaining? Like how skill chains have windows for when you can continue the skill chain, MB do the same and as long as you are successfully landing within the chaining timeframe, you can continue to MB

No, it's really not in line with what the job wants to do. That was suggested numerous times in 14 as well over the years and it never fit there either. Double cast is an interesting idea though, and I do like that one. BLM in FF 14 also has a similar effect, when the firestarter or thundercloud traits proc it gets an instant cast fire 3 or thunder 3/4 with no mana cost. If Blm had a similar effect where it could just cast spells twice that would certainly be a step in the right direction.

Ah but the second nuke would just get a 60% nerf to it anyway.

Thats still 60% more damage than they were doing previously.

Casting weaker, but more plentiful spells ought to be Red Mage's territory. This is kind of why I wanted to bring up discussion on Black Mage's power fantasy.

If it were a free nuke I would think they'd just code a trait like that to ignore the resist wall. For a magic burst it's still 40% more burst damage for free whenever it procs. Win win. Warriors and thieves already get multi attack natively, so it actually makes sense that blm would be the magic job to get a spellcasting equivalent.


The fantasy aspect is in line with the job though. Like I said, in Final fantasy 14 black mage gets that very effect. It has job traits firestarter and thundercloud, as well as double cast and triple cast abilities. When they activate they allow you to chain cast spells. But if memory serves firestarter and thundercloud only have a 40% chance to proc (or 10% per mob for thunder 4 since it's AoE), and the job abilities have a reasonale cooldown to resuse.

over half this discussion is just people who think all BLM needs is MOAHR POWER- just make their numbers bigger so it "looks" like the other DDs in the chat. This simply is revealing how little you know about how those numbers come into being.

You can't just turn a dial up to eleven for BLM and call it a day. I will keep saying it- BLM either needs a complete reworking of the mathematics of FFXI (not going to happen, too big of a job for this old of a game) or unique moments where BLM is the best option because all other choices of damage simply are impossible (-SDT walls, lethal and repetitive damage for those in melee range, something). You can't make BLM "work" with the current speed of the game.

Others who have spent years digging into the math and rules of FFXI have pointed out many specific matters that make any simple fix impossible. Nuke Wall, 3second lockout, damage cap...there's just too much to fight against. So please, if you're gonna try and "fix" BLM, know the world in which BLM lives and the physics of the game it needs to follow. Otherwise this entire thread comes across like Farva in Super Troopers and his 10 million dollar car.

Multi-spell would be fun, especially if they remove the damn -60% nerf to all elemental damage for 5s. Then can have a certain percentage of nukes generate a free secondary nuke effect.

Make current staff elemental weaponskills have some form of range like Mistral Axe(believe I saw it mentioned earlier in this thread) and accompany it with a stance-like JA that increases magic damage and MP cost on elemental magic. That way we can save the big hits for higher tiers to burst with and use low tier nukes as a form of TPing to WS even semi consistently.

Instead of adding weaponskills, just modify existing ones. We have two earth and two "Light or Dark" weaponskills that only get used to proc red in abyssea..

Just because XIV did it doesn't mean it's right. Black Mages are traditionally slower with big, explosive spikes of damage rather than a consistent barrage. Granted, the effect we're talking about could be flavoured differently in simply upping the spell damage (rather than making it cast multiple spells).

This is starting to sound like magical critical hits. Maybe we could look at retooling that whole mechanic instead?

I think we're all perfectly aware of what blm's obstacles are in 11. The references to 14 just re-emphasize that its role is a DPS, and they provide insight into an environment where it functions well (14) versus one where it lags behind (here). I understand the difference between the combat engines just fine. But on a fundamental level blm just wants to blow stuff up. That's what it does, and right now it just doesn't do it effectively enough.

You said it yourself celeb, the game is far too old for the devs to go in and overhaul everything in the game engine. Short of your solution to "just implement more Ongo's and Marmokrebs" there really isn't anything they can do other than give blm more damage. And I also don't understand why you're so opposed to that solution. Your suggestions sound like you want blm to be a job where "in the right environment it does something no other job can do, but outside that environment it's completely unviable". I'd rather see it be more viable everywhere without the restrictions.

Forgive me if I misinterpret what you're trying to argue here. I'm just trying to be realistic and look for ways they can improve blm's quality of life in the current state of the game. We're nearing the 20 year mark and they're limited with what they have to work with. If the best solution is "give blm more power and make it look more like the other DD's", and that's enough to get people ot play the job outside "magic burst onry" events, then I'm ok with that kind of a solution.

Adjusting magic critical hits is just another way of implementing the same effect, and I agree it's probably more in line with the job. If magic critical hits did something like add 40-50% damage to a nuke that would definitely "feel" more blm ish. And let's be honest... the current magic critical hit system is a joke. They could definitely look at that system and give it some tweaks to proc rate and potency. And make it so the effect can trigger naturally like any other mmo on the market while they're at it. Seriously, FF 11 is the only game where you have to wear gear with magic critical hit rate on it to even be allowed to proc it AT ALL. That's just dumb. Every other MMO just has it happen naturally, and its effects are far more noticeable than the laughable damage increase we get here.

I'd say it's not so much "give BLM more damage", as "remove the things that are preemptively nerfing BLM".

I mean I'd like a boost to elemental damage, especially tied to TP and Cascade since that is special to BLM. Just removing the damage wall and 3s global cooldown would be a huge improvement by itself. We could then build an entire party around nuking and let everyone join in and contribute.

I still think the style of Chaining low tier fast nukes to build power (TP) then unleashing that power in a high damage attack via Cascade would fit the BLM style. RDM's would just spam nukes more, SCH's would do their SC and MB thing and GEO's would just nuke normally while buffing everyone's nuke damage.

I do want just moments where BLM shines rather than an overhaul, because SE's track record with massive changes to the game or jobs isn't that great- maybe 2 or 3 times where the end result was better or didn't create more issues than prior? So yes, I am approaching this more as a pragmatist than an optimist.

The problem with the "increase BLM's damage" solution is that it won't work, and for reasons stated better by those before I could- I would just be mimicking what better minds figured out by repeating it.

Complete spitball here:
I think it could be interesting if they tied it in with TP. If they forced Black Mages to rev-up a little bit before a climactic "boom" finish, it would alleviate the issue of a party of Black Mages vaporizing everything if the damage wall were removed.

Cascade (85 BLM) | 3'00" Duration / 1'00" Recast
Initial activation: Occult Acumen gains +100 flat TP per spell cast until reactivated, cumulatively reducing the target's resistance to that element by X per spell.
Reactivation: Grants a damage bonus to the next elemental magic spell cast based on TP consumed.

Just throwing out an idea.

As mentioned earlier.




Currently Cascade adds [TP/10] as magic damage, meaning 1000 TP is just +100 MDMG and 3000 TP is +300 MDMG. That is way too small to be useful in this method of play, mathematically it needs to be 50% of TP or changed into a percentile damage boost on next nuke. Then have it's cooldown lowered from 60s to something like like 10 to 30s, I prefer lower personally as it's consumes all TP. Using the ability, the next nuke would get a large damage bump. Tier I~III spells are best damage for time, especially if we remove the 50% penalty casting incurs over other methods. You would build up TP with those lower nukes then pop Cascade and use it to power up a big punch.

Would it be so bad to remove the damage cap for MB only? Maybe even buff MB so it can do 200-300k+, or give BLM a job ability/trait to do that. No need to tinker with the magic wall then, keep it so it won't be abused by 12 BLM.

Another idea I was thinking was hovershot kinda (hovercast?) that would scale free nukes to better than melee levels for longer fights. Would give BLM more of a niche.