Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

1: Get rid of the resist wall.
2: Tune Black Mages's nuking ability up so that they hit at least 1.5x hard as GEO and SCH on the same spell on both magic bursts and free casts.
3: Stop releasing mobs that take 50%, 75%, or even higher cuts on elemental damage even on their weakness without Rayke, OR put Subtle Sorcery's pseudo-Rayke function on a normal JA so they can bypass those resist walls on a more reliable basis.

This won't let them match melees in terms of kill speed, but it should make them usable while being safer from AoEs, having better enmity management, and feeding less TP.

This again supports what I just said. S-E is afraid to allow black mage to function like it was originally intended to, because they don't want players abusing it's mechanics that allow it to do its damage from range. They're so paranoid of making black mage too strong that they've swung the pendulum so hard in the opposite direction that it's just a crippled mess. S-E needs to acknowledge that Black Mage needs help. And right now they haven't.

Every new boss fight they release, every new event, every new encounter... same deal over and over again. "Black mage has no place because X, or Y, or Z". Either the mobs just flat out can't be nuked, or there's no point trying because elemental magic is so far gone that people would rather just bring a melee setup and burn the content. The devs don't want BLM to be strong, and they're afraid to buff it because they're too afraid it might create game balance issues where players would abuse BLMs ability to deal its damage from range to circumvent fight mechanics. And unless people start pushing the envelope and pointing out how bad BLM really is to them, they probably aren't going to do anything.

The helping hand it actually got:

The players constantly gargle squares balls when they talk to square and *** incessantly about what square does any other time

and still pay for sub

You're 100% right, I *** on the BLM thread on the offical forums almost every week now. I had been banned previously.

Everyone else on this thread should be over there blowing it up too.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/54978-Job-Update-requests-thoughts...


100% agree. However I don't think we should nerf other forms of AOE damage, just give BLM back the AEO effectiveness it use to have.

With the way damage has scaled, in no way is removing the wall and the MTDR over powered, despite what some of the cry babies here would lead you to believe.

Your reading comprehension skills fall by .1

Literally no one says jack ***about being too strong or overpowered.

I don't think even the most clueless player thinks taking the wall away would be overpowered. It would be broken. Not strong. Not efficient. Just, broken.

Whether you like it or not, it was broken, it is now fixed (by their standard of "fix"). Other things are also broken and in need of fixing.

In its current state the balance is so heavily centered on melee burn blm doesn't have a place. If aeolian edge, fell cleave, and blue magic is allowed to deal their AoE damage without multi target damage reduction than so should elemental magic. That's a system from 2003 that was necessary then, but is no longer relevant in the current meta. They can just get rid of it. Likewise, scaling up free nuke damage would go a long way to fixing blm. Literally just make it so it's capable of putting up respectable numbers without requiring a whole skillchain/magic burst setup. If it was independently more functional blm would be useful at events. I've said it before and I'll say it again

1: Remove the multi target damage reduction on elemental magic AoE

2: Give BLM a job trait that enhances their free nuke damage by a flat 40%, or something similar, but does not trigger on magic bursts. Or instead of a flat rate, just make it tiered. Like 10% on tier 1, 20% on tier 2, 30% on tier 3 and so on. Since it's a job trait it only affects blms (give it at say level 80+), and since it doesn't affect magic bursts it doesn't break any NM fight mechanics.

That's all BLM really needs. A bit more free nuke damage to help it align better with the current meta.

Multiple people have already gone over that an alliance of COR's can already do what you're afraid will happen with the nuke wall removed, with greater efficiency and less effort.

The MTDR thing is dumb, I can't even see the rationale in it. I can generally see the thing they were going for, but that one just makes no sense.

Well. In theory. Maybe. But it's pretty crap logic.

The difference between Firaja, and Seering tempest is location. A blm could in theory nuke while a pld held. A blu has to be in range. People would use 5/10 blm aoe parties with zero risk... blu in theory bares some modicum of risk with their aoe.

That might be their reasoning. and some small amount of it because blu in theory has to lose a minute by switching spells to do it, and lose a minute switching back.

All theoretical.

And that needs to be "fixed'. That's is the "proper" argument. BLM wall doesn't need to be "unfixed", other broken ***needs to be fixed.

Multi target damage reduction was implemented when the game was first released in 2002. It's one of the first systems they ever created. Back then blue mage didn't exist, aeolian edge didn't exist, fell cleave didn't exist, and the most challenging fights in the game were Kirin, Arc Angels, and maybe Nidhogg, Adamantoise and King Behemoth. During that era it made sense that Multi target damage reduction would be necessary, because NOBODY could AoE besides BLM, and BLM had the power to break things in the game's infancy.

That's no longer the case. Aeolian edge, fell cleave, and blue mages DO exist now. It's a system that was never removed when it became obsolete, but should have been. S-E just never went back to clean up an unnecessary artifact from an earlier part of the game's life. It has no use anymore, and it should absolutely be removed. Seriously, who gives a ***if BLMs can clear trash mobs a bit faster. Its not like thf, dancer, corsair, warrior, and blue cant do it in their place anyway.

Even back then though, the famous korroloka burn existed.

The only real use of aoe, thundersparks. Pull 100 mobs and get zero MTDR. (back in the real OG -ga was used for garrison*)

When level synced Astral Burn parties first happened in korolloka tunnel people reported the behavior to S-E, citing that it was an exploit and abuse of system mechanics. S-E responded by doing nothing, which was a silent acknowledgment that they were aware of the situation but had no desire to intervene. If they were OK with summoner's astral burning to "cheat" the level gain process at the time, then that should only further support the argument that the multi target damage reduction is unnecessary and should be removed. Nobody else is punished for cleaving more than 3 mobs at a time. Nobody. There's absolutely no reason blm should be punished just because it casts an AoE on multiple mobs. That's the whole frickin point of an aoe in the first place!!

-Ra isn't nerfed right?

If I had to guess, I would say that it's because of the positioning.

Everything that has aoe except -ga -ja has to do it from close range. (SMN has timers)

I don't think it's good logic, I just think that may be their reasoning.

Korroloka burn did not exist back when MTDR was implemented since SMN only came out with the Zilart expansion (and then needed Level Sync in 2008 to actually become something more than just a curiosity). It was in all likelihood just something SE implemented because they thought there'd be a chance of it being abused, but just never bothered to go back and reverse it even after they decided they were fine with high power non-diminishing AoEs.

Back in the day the biggest effect it had was basically doubling the number of BLMs you needed to Thundaga III down Divine Might, or making AoEing down Qn'aerns and Jailer of Justice adds harder.

Maybe the dev's, who hold the keys, wont fix it because they dont think its broken.

I'd be more inclined to believe the current devs have no clue where the nuke wall code is, and its not that they dont want to remove it, its that they CANT remove it.

Every attack spell from Divine, Healing, Enfeebling, Elemental, & Dark magic when AoE'd suffers from MTDR.

Ok bud, then what does broken entail if not "Too strong", or "Too powerful"?

Just curious, I know you've got some crazed, burnt *** straw man argument, lets hear it.




Theres merit to what you say here, however the compromise comes with BLM having paper defenses. Back in the old Fafhogg days it was T2 and T3 only, because if you pulled hate, it could signal a wipe. Obviously this doesn't apply to nearly anything these days, However, BLU has an amazing array of traits, spells, and armor, not to mention BLU can sub DRG if hate were ever an issue, but it isn't, ever, BLU will never pull hate with nukes, now its savage blade spam is a different story. By that same token, while BLMs maybe 19 yalms away, thats a quick jog for any mob to make, 2-3 hits ,or a good aoe TP move, and bye bye BLM, all of them.

The real argument here is manawall, which I'm 100% ok with trashing, right along with the resist wall.

The MTDR has to go.

It'd be nice to see Meteor and ancient magic get buffed, but it isn't nearly as essential as getting rid of that god damn wall.


This could potentially work, although I like the flat, I think 80% should be the upper limit, and I'm ok giving the scale in tiers, until BLM is mastered. I don't like the scaling based on elemental tiers, frankly, I think T1-T3 should be the sweet spot in terms of mp per damage ratio, plus the short cast and recast times help with consistency over the pharse. I think a T4 nuke should be powerful enough to finish a sweetwater mob at 50% hp, again high level spells should also generate a lot of hate too.
I totally agree with everything else you said.

This needs to be hand written and sent to SE head quarters. LOL dim wits

Drain doesn't.

oh, same for aspir. Not sure about Bio. I know kaustra suffers from it. forgot there were other potentially AoE dark spells.

edit: answer is not nerf blu of course. it's to un-nerf other magics.

BLM has paper defenses? Im guessing you are intentionally leaving out mana wall. 2-3 hits and dead is a huge exaggeration. Youre trying so hard to come off annoying as ***, and edgy. Have a discussion with people who are interested in fixing the job and stop being such a douche. I dont think anyone disagree that it needs updating, probably the most out of all jobs. People probably just dont want it to go back to how it was during the beginning of Escha.

Also leave BLU alone, #blupdate.

I can't begin to express my satisfaction at annoying the *** out of you.

Trash manawall, trash the resist wall.

Leave BLU alone.

Thank you for supporting my two year old thread :)

Hope to see BLM get the love and attention it deserves.

Either way, still my favorite job to play.

Stop the BLU bitching. Some jobs in this game excel in alliance content. Some excel at low-man concepts. And yet others are kings of soloing. SE has evened the playing field some, but it will never be totally equal- otherwise why have so many job options in the first place?

Be happy with what your favorite job does well, and have other options. The rest of us do it all the time. To whine for the better part of a decade about how your mostest favorite job needs fixing when it is perfectly fine where it is for what it does just reeks of a kid who got plenty of 13th place soccer trophies vs a little disappointment now then.

BLU bitching? He is the one who brought up BLU when the discussion was about BLM, you quit your bitching. Ya dummy

to get back on subject- the problem is rarely what one BLM can do, its the fear of returning to an all-BLM meta in terms of damage dealing. And no one, not even BLMs, want that.

1. Allow BLM bursts to break the existing damage cap through a job-specific trait. If all they really can do is nuke, then they need unique traits that make them powerful enough to justify a spot vs a hybrid job that can nuke 80% of what a BLM does and buff/heal. This is very similar to the situation RNG often finds itself in compared to COR, and SE did address it. Although SE didn't have the problems in design when helping RNG vs helping BLM.

2. Rework the concept of the elemental wall to allow a BLM in a setup to be fully aggressive, even with secondary nuking mages (SCH, RDM, GEO) contributing. Its insulting to keep giving those jobs great nuking/bursting gear and then all strats that actually use nuking/bursting tell them NOT to nuke. Of course the hard part of this is execution without allowing abuse with multiple BLMs.

Every point you just made has been brought up in this thread multiple times, by myself as well. We already were on the subject until you chimed in with your useless comment.

Oh my goodness, someone did bring up that idea earlier! Back on page 4! How rude of me to repeat a statement and pretend it some new idea. I feel so bad for the person whom I stole it from. Please forgive me.