Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

That is indeed the general direction the Game has taken since Day 1 via faster more fluid combat. The only way to further improve upon such is via lowering the 80% cap to Delay on FastCast unto 90% cap & decreasing the animation delay into recasting.

Agreed. I'm getting inconsistent numbers as well. For now, I've updated my Sortie guide to stick to the conventional description of "wall wears off after 5s" mainly because my main point is to show how nuking too early, especially as a lightweight mage, can harm the overall damage output while a party of heavy-hitting DDs will benefit from as many MBs as possible within the window.

Here's the amended version:

What if they gave black mage a stance that they can flicker on and off, that changes magic to physical damage?

It doesn't skillchain or anything, and it can still magic burst, it just helps bypass the magic resistance monsters have in a lot of content.

Each element can be a different damage type, like thunder and ice could be piercing, water and stone are blunt, fire and wind would be slashing. Then death would be non-typing to no longer be resisted.

The spells would be effected by the monsters defense and still scaled with your MAB, so things like Frailty can help you, but not Geo-Fury, or maybe make the spells scale to your attack, dunno.

That... would actually be pretty awesome! It would make BLM a good candidate for NMs who have a physical/magical resistance mode like Hydras.

Because all we ever wanted was a better way to deal with all the hundreds of hydra's terrorizing the meta when they put up a specific bulwark right? Let's be honest here, while the idea is neat, it's very impractical. And there aren't that many use cases for such an ability. Even in content where physical damage matters, you'd still be burning through your mana reserves for sub-optimal results. Think about how efficient that would be in a seg farm. You'd basically free nuke yourself dry of mana by the third camp, and you wouldn't be building tp to savage blade anything along the way either. You wouldn't benefit from haste cap or attack buffs, and you wouldn't have a steady stream of white damage like you would if you had just brought an actual melee to do the job. You'd be losing out on everything that makes an efficient melee tp burn efficient. This doesn't just apply to seg farms of course. I just used that as an example. The same restrictions apply to all content in the game.

Besides, practicality issues aside, it's so anti-thematic it hurts. Black mage is a MAGE. They're the masters of black MAGIC. The stereotypical blm is a person with a frail body, often holding a cane or rod, wearing the job specific robe and hat casting spells that rain down oblivion upon their foes. Nothing about that image fits with physical damage. Spells are comprised of aether, focused by the mind and channeled into destructive energies that rend their victims asunder. There isn't anything about that image which fits with an ability that turns the spells into physical damage.

Im sorry but “the nuke wall can stay because Rayke exists” is such a dumbass excuse lmao. So for 45 seconds every 5 minutes the nuke wall will be 30% nerf instead of 60%.

It doesnt even annul the nuke wall completely lmao.

Tbh with bosses like EFG where they doesn't have ridiculous resist ranks or -MDT or MDB, nuke wall is barely a factor. I have seen Stone IV from GEO doing 99k yesterday with -30% nuke wall (with Bolster Malaise, but tbh BoGEA malaise is almost as good). With bis equip and right debuffs it's still a volley of 80-99k nukes. It's far from actual -60% or -30% of 99k cap.

The problem is when they put some stupid 400 MDB and/or 30% or less resist rank for each element and you need all debuffs and buffs in the game to even break 50k on first MB.

TIL sortie is the only content in XI

Every post of yours in the past 2 weeks here is “yeah but in Sortie”. I can do the same thing...Naegling abuse is no longer an issue because in Sortie theres a WSDMG wall. There you go, Naegling fixed.

Yes and MNK sucks because its not optimal at Shoel C. There will always be jobs that are better or worse for various events. All a job needs to be relevant is an event you are doing regularly that it is good for.

Yes in a vacuum BLM is still bad but I don't play in a vacuum, Sortie is a major event I do basically every day and BLM allows me to accomplish more, more quickly than not having BLM so BLM is relevant. Sure there's no guarantee it stays relevant for future events but no job has that guarantee. I will note now that they have created a ws wall they are more likely to use it again, just look at the geo and smn nerfs that get repeated on most new events.

Well... if you summon a giant rock from outer space and drop it on some bad guys, doesn't that count as physical? :D

Make Meteor Great…… Finally
Simply just usable since it literally never served any purpose whatsoever

Non-Elemental Dmg but delete the whole dependency upon ES
You can even just Delete the whole concept of multiple Casters too.

Yeah, the Doomed family has a move called Abyss Blast that is what I associate with what Dark damage looks like. Comet/Impact? Not so much. I get the ruineous omen motif, but it's just a space rock. I guess if you summoned it from a hell dimension by Impact costing 666 mp, but it still doesn't bear much of a resemblance to Darkness or Umbra SCs.

If you play a fun old Square Game called Vagrant Story, there is a line of spells called Explosion that did physical damage in an AoE and Solid Shock that was single target.

BLM are level 99, mastered, and can go up ML 50. They are blatantly wise old wizards and traditional limitations should stop being relevant because they've surpassed them several times over.

Theres a difference between "jobs that are better or worse for various events" and "BLM has been left behind on pretty much all content released in the last decade".

Odyssey: A/B/C Nope, Gaol 1 battlefield out of 17
Omen: nope
Geas Fete: Was BLM really used here? Celebrindal suggested MB Death strats were used, but I believe that only came about for some Reisenjima HELMS? He also denied the existence of the nuke wall until 2017 though. SE was so quick to shut down MB strats, but Conduit cheese is still goin strong.
ilvl BCNM/HTMB: nope
Master Trials: nope
Sinister Reign: nope
Vagary: yes...the NM's here were very magic squishy. In fact, I wouldnt be surprised if SE simply copied their Vagary boss data over to Sortie and made minor adjustments to their behavior. I dont believe Vagary was all that popular either outside of Vagary campaign because the mob drop rate on platemail is so damn terrible.
Omen: nope
Delve: nope
Dyna-D: nope
Incursion: nope
Skirmish: nope

That was only ilvl content. What was some of the content added pre-ilvl? Abyssea and Voidwatch? Not really needed but were forced inclusion via procs.

Now make the same list with bst

They're ***at balance. Shocker. BLM works in some places and not others. That's the best they can do. Because they're ***at their job. Always will be.

Singalong if you know the next verse:

♫ They don't have to be because you won't quit so why would they bother giving any effort at all ♫

(they wouldn't fix it even if we all quit or they would shut down the game QQ!)

♫ Then you get to play a better game that does what you want and you can be happy knowing its not a problem for you anymore ♫

Damn, I guess they dont need to do patches or new content either anymore

They don't, you wouldn't leave.

Reskining mobs and calling it "new content" is less effort than actually balancing anything, by the way. Just an fyi, to whom it may concern.

Way less effort. Maybe the next step of the prime weapons will look like black/purple versions of empyreans.

Literally the Fomors in Sortie are not undead because they wanted a different monster type that could have jobs for objectives and it was super easy to slap armor on them because they have the same uv binds and animations as regular players. They could have used mannequin models and been amazingly creepy, but then they'd have to that extra work. I honestly have no clue if they have staff that can do that anymore that has ever done it in FFXI. I don't think we've seen an original character model since Adoulin other than Cloud of Darkness and maybe parts of Iroha.

You are totally missing the actual point here

The idea here is simply to conversate about the State of BLM

You are not interested in a BLM Discussion. That’s fine. Nobody personally Invited you to Reply here

If you are not even interested in such a Discussion then just move on. If you think such Discussions are Unwarranted then that’s a totally Different perspective from what you are spewing atm.

You’re literally just telling everyone to just STFU about The State of BLM atm

You are correct. There is absolutely zero purpose in this thread. As I've said a dozen times.

Use BLM where you can, the way they want you to, or don't. Bitching about it, especially here, is as useful as yelling at a wall.

Blm has uses, it's perfectly fine (when it's supposed to be). You just can't use it the way you want to, boo hoo.

Well…
Sometimes others simply just find it appealing pondering other avenues that SE could possibly take moving forward & How said decisions taken would correlate to the Gameplay itself.

Nobody has to Agree here about anything being stated nor theorized
— Nobody liked my Ideas but I am perfectly cool w/ that

I don’t need a pat on the back nor anyone’s approval

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/search.php?searchid=34434374

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/60160-Suggestions-to-improve-BLM

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/39537-Suggestions-Quality-of-Life-Stuff-and-other-suggestions

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/forums/95-Black-Mage

Well…..
Maybe if we find something worth sharing w/ SE somebody may indeed post upon the OF of SE

This ain’t all that serious tbh.
Everyone has their own opinions so it’s whatever

That’s some straight up total BS tbh cuz even when a supposed Nuke Wall existed we were STILL able to play BLM w/ 6 in pt taking down NMs in Sky, Sea & everywhere else included.

You want to be SOLO on DD and NOBODY else is ALLOWED to even play WAR but YOU?

Well that’s Great dude but I personally ENJOY going 1 vs MANY in a PARSE

My BLM vs your BLM in a DPS Parse…….
Very simple logic bro. I want to go Vs others but like DD do in DynD fcs Full Alliance.

So IDGAF about what YOU think. YOU get to PARSE Vs Full Alliance of DD. I am NOT even ALLOWED to.

Hence this Topic is intriguing to me…..

What motivation do I even seriously have to outplay myself when I am the ONLY BLM amongst my Party or the ONLY BLM period in my sphere of Players.
—> ZERO

I feed off of the Competition itself…. Just like DD do
Ignore the Song. It’s the Movie Clip that drives me on DD and BLM too included via the PARSE.

So you're saying you'll leave if we all quit BLM?

Ofc not. I am saying that I WANT you to CHALLENGE my Supremacy on BLM.

— It’s all about the Parse… that’s the actual Game w/in the Game itself

Y’all having FUN on DD via just Segs & all types of shat vs each other due to the Parse.
We NOT allowed to have FUN on BLM via Parse too then, Right?

6 BLMs vs Akson? Now you have my Full undivided Attention
—> Delete the frivolous 99,999 Dmg & make Dmg meaningful Again
—> Delete ALL these Lazy “fix” Walls too

If only we could be so lucky.