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Play perfect or get outdpsed by Tanks is the biggest gripe I have with the role

I think the community takes parses way too seriously, to the point where they optimize all the fun out of the game by outright refusing classes and builds that are not meta. As far as I know, every encounter is balanced to be solvable with most group constellations as long as the players are good, so there is not really an issue with the game when a class does a few % less damage than others, but the problem lies with the community and their obsession with "but muh parses!": The focus is no longer on having fun with the game, but producing high numbers on some website only a fraction of the playerbase cares about. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the boss dies, and as long as a job is fun to play, everything is fine, who cares if it takes 5 more seconds. Of course, making selfish dps classes proving higher dps than those with damage-buffs for the entire party should be a given, but we should also not take it too seriously to the point where we look at single digit percent differences.

Since BRD and DNC have buffs, I suggest giving MCH DEBUFFS. Pepper Round - enemy does 10% less damage AP Round - enemy has 10% less mit Gel Round - enemy has 50% slower cast And make these have 10-20 sec durations. Far from OP, but nice utility

I do think that MCH should be outputting more personal damage than Bard or Dancer... But not as much as SAM or BLM (and especially not VPR). Yeah they are a greedy dps, but the free movement is quite a boon for Phys range (where black mage has cast times, and samurai has cast times, positional attacks AND has to stay in melee range to be effective). But MCH should definitely be doing more personal damage than Bard or Dancer somewhat consistently (with the disparity in damage between the phys range being balanced from the buffs they provide). I am okay with phys range being the bottom of the barrel of dps (it is, overall, the easiest dps role to learn imo). But MCH should definitely do more damage. As for PF not liking MCH. That is a PF problem. I am not playing MCH because its the best phys range dps. I am playing MCH because I don't trust PF to provide enough value that would otherwise make BRD or DNC better like 60% of the time lol. At least with MCH my damage variance is consistent and not reliant on an unproven factor that is some rando from PF.

Melee have free movement. You can count the instances of where you have to fight for uptime in EW or this tier on one hand. Also absolutely hate the idea of castbars. There'd be zero reason to not just play a caster instead then.

square just needs to make up their mind on phys range role. give them the dedicated buffing role bring back piercing/slashing in a single debuff provided by phys range on top of raid why supporting buffs and not just mit like dancer buff ya you select one team member they get a better buff but give the rest of the team a minor version of the buff for dmg, bring back mch sentry/turret it gives raid why buff but also ticks dmg against fight. brd upkeeping your songs increase team dmg or lessen dmg aka give each one a different version but consistent buff not just 1% for a different party memeber roll, hell give them soft heals that pulses a heal occasionly . RIFT the game had a hybrid role and it was great. OR just give phys range the dmg they should get

This is a community issue more than a balance issue. People are looking at the top 0.1% and then using this as a basis for average performance in a group when in fact it's not. At 75th percentile the difference between a MCH and a BRD is less than 4%, the top and bottom of their respective role has been the same for many years (just swap classes) and the further you go up the more rDPS is a difference(albeit small). If we keep asking for tighter balance when balance is fine (better than the vast majority of other MMOs) then you're running the risk of making the jobs too similar and we've seen this happen as the community demands better balance. Personally I believe a 5% difference between a top and bottom of their respective subrole is balanced, this is different for other people of course and as long as you bring a physical ranged, a melee and a caster in a group then everything is working as it should. A group playing the same level across the board will lose out of rDPS if they prefer to have double caster and double melee over taking a MCH. Adding to this it's pretty disingenuous to say that ranged physical needs to play at their best to not be outDPSed by a tank, when in reality when a tank and physical ranged are playing at the same level the difference is around 40% damage.

Just pile up the bait mechanics that case the bait around. BRD in expert is miserable when the othe dps sucks.

My alt job is dancer. The perk of playing phys ranged is that you do not have to deal with casting OR positionals. I think this is part of the reason why damage is lower. However, I hate machinist. Therefore, I do not have a problem with them having low damage.

They remove High blizzard,High fire , Flare 😅😅 why red mage have new skills 😅

The problem with the level synch system is less, don't take my toys away or I will be #sobored. It is the fact that SE has never been able to get the power levels correct, ever. A level 100 player that synchs to do a level 30 dungeon has the power of around a level 40-50 character. Regardless of less buttons, the abilities they do have do more damage, heal more, and take more damage than a character that actually was that level. I am more concerned that FF14 is currently having to deal with an entire new sea of players that have only ever played the game on easy difficulty due to Duty Roulette being mostly high level vets power running through all low level content. Then when they get to end game raids or trials they hit a brick wall and cannot handle the sudden spike in difficulty when now everyone is actually at the correct power level. Have them fix the awful power scaling in the game and then I absolutely support them looking at individual powers.

Back in the day, Runescape did this thing where their newest set of spells, the Surge spells, would animate like combining four spells from the previous tier into one big ball of almighty "die". They eventually changed the animation - god rest its soul - but I feel like Flarestar should have done something like that, looking like you're just pouring all kinds of power into this one singular point, yeeting it at the enemy, and watching the equivalent of a mushroom cloud raise from the crater you just made.

There are definitely issues with level syncing in this game, but unfortunately I don't think the solution is as simple as just scaling down potencies on abilities. If you want a synced and non-synced player to have roughly the same damage and healing output, it becomes a balancing nightmare. Some examples: * WHM with Afflatus Misery - The obvious answer is to make its potency equal to 4 of whatever Stone spell would be available at that level. But you can also burn lilies between dungeon pulls or in downtime in a fight, allowing a synced WHM to gain extra casts over a non-synced WHM. * Should a synced WAR have their Fell Cleave potency reduced because they can use Infuriate to upgrade it to Inner Chaos? So their Fell Cleaves would be weaker than a non-synced WAR's. * Would it actually feel good to go through all the trouble of managing your Astral Fire timer on BLM just to have basically the same damage output as someone just spamming Fire 1? * Should a synced DRG's Doom Spike be weaker than a non-synced DRG's Doom Spike because they can also use Sonic Thrust? And consider that if they did this, they would have to examine how any new abilities they add going forward would be affected by the scaling. This all seems like it would take a significant amount of work and testing every time they want to add something new. Ultimately, I think the real solution is simply reworking the ability acquisition. Every job should have an AOE attack by level 15, and every job should have its core rotation by maybe level 50 at the latest. A good example that comes to mind is Samurai. At level 50, the core of their rotation is pretty much set. You do your 3 combos, you cast Midare Setsugekka, and you have Meikyo Shisui. Everything they get after level 50 is just building on that foundation but the core of what you're doing doesn't really change.

Black Mages' day be like "so fine" and then BAM! level sync <80

As a new player I have found the level sync confusing on my Black Mage. Each time I enter a dungeon I have to check all of my abilities and try to work out which ones I am allowed to use this time haha.

I want BLM to be more accessible, so... *clears throat* * Get rid of Stance 1/2/3. That's irrelevant after ARR. Just make it one stance. If you really want the ARR experience then just upgrade stance with abilities as you lv to 50. * Make Ice Spells instacast when in stance (UI and AF). Put their cast times in their recast. Make Umbral Soul a 3-second cast without stance. *Burn Scathe at the pyre.* * Fire/Blizz I adds 5 seconds to Enochian. Transpose swaps stances without resetting timer. * The II spells add 10 seconds to Enochian. The III spells add 15 seconds (full refresh). * The IV spells become upgrades to the I spells, so they also add 5 seconds to the timer. Both still drop stance if cast in opposite stance. (Ice IV gives Hearts only in UI. When getting Paradox, it goes on the opposite stance IV spell.) * Almost forgot, Flarestar becomes a Despair upgrade when filling the Astral Soul gauge. Astral Soul isn't lost when switching to Ice, but is consumed to buff Ice spells. Why do I think this'll work? Because it would be easier for normal people to pick up and play BLM (a skill available from lv1, I'll remind you). It means if you're playing BLM right then you will never be at risk of dropping stance and you can focus on gitting gud. Ideally this wouldn't change optimal play at all.

Make flare star function like apex arrow and/or keep stacks between phases, make it instacast, allow mp regen to proc on all gcds not just ice ones (so ice para, 1 filler would be 7500 or ice para 2 filler would he 10000 similar to in EW), make thunder be able to be hardcast freely and have the proc remain instant, with frontloaded damage like the old t3p

As much as I hate Flare Star and would rather they never added it (I don’t like extra finishers and Despair fits the aesthetic of BLM way better), I think the big thing we need is Flare Star castable at fewer stacks, with scaling damage for number of stacks. Maybe something like 300 base potency +20 for every AF stack. I just hate how much current Flare Star raises the skill floor of a job already considered high skill by the community. Also totally agree about how bad AoE feels. I don’t understand why High Blizzard/Fire and Freeze need to have such low potencies.

I want sharpcast, viable short fire phases, and other flexible tech to come back.

I love the casting animation of flare star but the actual animation of it is just terrible. This is the same issue I have with despairs animation. For despair I wish they just made a trait to increase the damage of flare to despairs and then give flare the cast time of despair

GG <3

wholehearted non standart BLM player here, i unironicaly am glad this playstyle is dead. It made balancing BLM a nightmare and its kinda silly that learning 20-30 sites of pure knowledge (jeah thats the actual size from the non standart BLM tutorial in Balance) to make a playstyle work so you can actually compete with the top of the top. BLM deffinitelly needs changes and balancing right now since the job itself is in big trouble, but i think this is a good step into the right direction. Alot of ppl are upset, but stop being so selfish and ignorant and keep in mind that there are others aswell that want to compete but dont have the time to learn this absolutely over the top and silly playstyle.

Other than some QoL stuff... Literally, all BLM needs is some skills guaranteed Crit&DH. This helps with the DPS numbers and power fantasy, especially considering the build-up certain combos require. Personally, I love the AoE combo but they just need to add enhanced flare to HF2 that reduced the cast times significantly. I dont understand the obsession with "lets spam the same skill moar like single target" plz, god no.

I think i would have it switch to ice phase with a spell similar to paradox! So fire 3 procs ice 3 to change to, lets call it distortion, so after fire ohase and mana is used up you hit distortion to start ice phase except what if!! Ice phase was a short damage phase the same level as fire spells or provide a defensive buff? So instead of restoring mana (this is getting long winded) These transformed ice moves alternate back abd forth so you can accrue 5 stacks of a resource.... lets call the resource twighlight ( chose it because i thought it fit well between astral and umbral) once 5 stacks are acrrued thunder changes to a new move, judgement bolt! Immediately filling mana. From there its straight back to fire 3 for fire phase! Of course this would be hurt in fights with long down time but you could hold onto the stacks for (now h3ar me out) Scathe! Then its back to Fire 3 followed by fire phase! I think stacks should be hold able so long as you are in umbral ice, thatbway down time doesnt kill your flow! I would have this iteration of ice phase be all instant cast, so to prevent it being op maybe it would be better to make it less potent than fire but make it a very defensive phase which could add a new fun and dynamic strategy as a caster. High power out put kinda static fire phase! Fast, mobile and defensive recovery ice phase! Maybe even this altered ice phase can also provide defensive party buffs. Tgenpossibilty for ice armour and stuff like that. I leveled black mage up to 90 in endwalker. It such an impressive job. I hope people wnjoy this idea and wpuld be interested to see what people think of it.

scathe needs a trait upgrade to "Scathe II" to change it in a 60 sec. 1100 GCD with FFXII Scathe animation. Flare Star needs AT LEAST be a guaranted CRIT. Also Fire 4 just be buffed to 350 and despair to 400. Flare Star should go to 600

Honestly, letting us use umbral soul out of combat to start in ice phase would let you actually get an opener, instead of a rotation and a half. The old mana font would’ve made the rotation super awkward and I get the change but it’s like they sacrificed a comprehensive opener to let us have it…. Unless blizzard opener is intended…

Me having played blm for years having totally forgotten scathe was a skill because I’ve NEVER added it to my hot bar. 😶

Scathe being an ogcd will feel really weird on BLM because you'd be forced into spending a movement tool for it The animation also sucks, so tbh I'd rather them just remove it entirely

Like you said, the feeling of Flare Star. It needs more SFX oomph, and I'll probably be using animation replacement mods for it when they come out. Flare Star should be a stack spender, where is basically Despair or worse with 0 stacks, and gains 10pot per Astral Soul stack you spend when cast. Full 6 being the intended potency. This means it does less damage on a short fire line, but you don't lose the cast entirely just because boss was going to disappear so you cut your line short. Ice spells in UI3 grant 10k mana, while any spell in UI3 gives 3300. Standard rotation doesn't change and rewards you for using B4 by getting back to fire phase as fast as possible. But if your setting up for short fire and don't need Umbral hearts, you can top up how much mana you want with Xeno/Paradox/Thunder. Replace scathe with a new Thunder spell that isn't a dot. 2.5s hard cast and does slightly more PPS than F4 so you actually have a reason to cast it. Thunder dot does far more damage, but you can use this to spend your Thunderhead that otherwise doesn't get used when it's not time to refresh the dot.

I had got my Black Mage to 100 today. I was so excited to try out the full rotation and at the end of the day, I was very underwhelmed. I mean, I guess an AoE spell with 400 potency is nice and all but… I don’t know man.

Man this job just feels like shit now, all the flexibility and room for skill expression is gone, the way it plays now is so rigid and overly punishing

Astral soul lmao

They just buffed the class!!! And it’s still trash. No nerfs to Picto either. Just throw the whole job away for end game content. Rip my main of 10 years.

I've been playing Black Mage for the last part of Endwalker and most of Dawntrail so I'm relatively new to the job. But by listening to some of the main concerns from other Black mages and looking at the job in Endwalker, I have some ideas. - I think the initial damage on Thunder spells needs to be increased. They did this at the start of Dawntrail when they changed over to Thunderhead. But I don't think it was enough to make up for Thundercloud procs. Thunder should be a strong instant spell with a DOT effect added on and not a DOT with and initial hit of damage if that makes sense. On top of that, I think we should be able to hold to two stacks of Thunderhead if you need to leave a phase without casting Thunder. -You should be be able to keep Astral Souls between phases. I'd be fine with only losing Astral Souls on death but a more flexible Flare Star is a must. I have other ideas to like having High Fire 2 and Despair also provide 1 and 2 Astral Souls respectively. -Fair warning, I didn't level black mage in time to play with the old Paradox. So what I know about Ice Paradox is just from guides and asking people about the spell. I can't see the harm in getting Ice Paradox back though. -If Scathe did become an oGCD, it would be cool if it provided a Sharpcast style effect based on the school of magic you uses. Thunder Spells provide Thunderhead, Fire spells provide Fire Starter, Ice spells provide and Excog like buff but for MP instead of HP.

its an easy fix, just raise blackmage potencies. being one of the harder classes/rotations it deserves to have higher dps than an easy class like Picto which is both more mobile and has more front end damage at most levels. just raise the potencies, it plays great i love sharpcast being gone- we just need better balance to picto's damage which is just making most blm players feel like wtf is the point when you can play easy ass picto and get more damage instead, while also being more mobile for mechanics.

Ok so i gave it some extra tought overnight and basically the most basic thing i'd do is remove Despair, Xenoglossy, Flare Star, Freeze. Foul and Flare have a specific functionality and they do not require a "single target alternative" (xeno and despair). Obviously potencies need to be adjusted for ST. But you can do the exact same gameplay without all those spells. The 6 charges of Astral could simply give you a Free Flare cast. F4 x3, paradox, f4x3 , flare, flare. This is simply a solution to having one button for every action WITHOUT TOUCHING THE GAMEPLAY AT ALL.

My list of BLM changes: QoL - - Scathe, free during UI. Scathe was shadownerfed due to the mana regen rework, this would at least bring its already fairly low utility back in line with what it was before. - Paradox is now an AoE with falloff damage to non-primary targets. BLM AoE rotation can feel very slow when you dont have instant cast enablers. This is a nice fix to bring that back in line and have some damage between those windows. Also, it just generally feels lame to get a paradox proc in AF and not want to use it during AoE rotations. Paradox in UI The spirit of this proposed change is to keep Paradox available in UI while also maintaining SE's push for BLM standard rotation - Flare Star additional effect: Grants Flashfire - Flashfire: When switching from AF to UI, changes fire1/blizzard1 to Paradox

1st ice phase should give you mana either by any cast you do there or bring back old server tick mana regen 2nd ice paradox pls. 3rd flare star is the thing that makes you stuck to do 6 F4 so either make it possible to carry the stacks to ice or make it a 60sec/120 and give it a higher potency, that way we can still do small number of transpose lines while star is in cd for movement or small dmg gains 4st idk how i feel about the Dot, it was a big thing on double target fights keeping the dot up on both target

i mean shorten the cast time by 60% add a haste button ( like timewarp from wow ) and let the laylines move with the character buff spell dmg by 25% ish and tada you got the best job ingame

Call me insane but.. I still love BLM. It is my exact fantasy. THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO PLAY. I liked the flexibility on the advanced lines, sure. But the core of trying to find my spots to get my hardcasts off is still there. Back in HW we had no Xeno, no Despair, no flare star, and it was all about the Fire 4s, and it was FANTASTIC (had other "issues" like ridiculously hard punishment for not refreshing astral, etc but was great in that regard) AoE does kinda suck, sure, but i dislike pretty much the entire AoE/ST duality that most classes have.

I think it's lame that if u swap to umbral ice you lose all ur flare star stacks. Other than, im p much fine with every thing else, aside from pictomancer top fragging. They need to adjust the numbers.

I have 3 main changes I'd make 1. Not a single spell should be longer than Fire 4. That goes for Flarestar, Flare, Despair, Freeze, High Fire ect. There is literally no reason for it. I'd argue even Fire 3 and Bliz 3 not longer have any reason to be slow at any point in time. Any spell that feels like it "needs" Swift/Triplecast, shouldn't exist in its current state 2. Despair, Firestarter and Paradox should also build towards Flare Star. Right now there is zero viability in cutting your Astral line short, and requiring all 6 Fire 4s is kind of insane. This way, you'd never actually get "more" Flare Stars, but you have more options to cut Astral down if need be. Also for Manafont windows, you actually would be able to get 3 Flare Stars which I think would feel rewarding to do. 3. Thunderhead is really good... but it doesn't have the "juice" of Thundercloud. I'd make it so that landing High Thunder on a target affected by the Thunder DoT already, would make the Thunder do increased damage. You'd have more options to clip it slightly earlier, since the upfront damage is better but for AOEs it would be more satisfying. Not to mention Alliance raids, currently bosses can only have ONE Thunder DoT on them at all, so this would work well. . 2 other changes that I think are more debatable are returning Ice Paradox. And the other is changing how Umbral Soul works out of combat, where from NEUTRAL, it would give you full Umbral stacks and freeze the timer. You'd lose out on SOME Xenoglossy/Fouls in a dungeon moving between packs, but the sheer ability to START A FIGHT already loaded up and good to go in a full Astral rotation I think would be nice.c

I dunno how to fix black mage without a mini rework, the new gauge with flare star just being something you add into to result in damage feels weird, the whole gimmick of keeping up balance between ice and fire phases does not interact at all with it, fire fuels it but ice does nothing. Maybe the devs could do something to increase the amount of time you spend on ice to make the fire even stronger based on the new gauge, they could bring ice paradox back to make it work. Like, you get X numbers of uses of ice paradox and every use it, it will add a ice counter to the flarestar gauge that increases overall damage but unlike the fire points those will not be spent on flarestar and will only reset if you are not able to change to ice. So black mage would be about slowly building up power if you are able to keep your balance for big amounts of damege, maybe you would get 3-2 uses of paradox if you want the time spent to be long or medium. Side note can we make scathe add 3 seconds to the fire timer? That thing is so useless that a small buff like that would be awesome to save atleast from a few resets.

I would not just increase the overall damage, but I'd get rid of the Astral Fire/Umbral Ice timer management. Instead, I'd have the timer management in your Flarestar charges. As time goes on, they'll eventually dissipate unless you continue meeting version requirements. Additionally, changing the Thunder skill when in Ice phase, changing them to Thunderfrost, a DoT that also applies Slow. It would be a separate DoT from Fire's Thunder spells, so they could also stack Umbral Soul would swap you to Ice 3 immediately and give you all three hearts, while also giving you the instant MP max. However, in combat, you'd have to use it three times for that. Lastly, maybe make Fire's Thunder DoT explode when hit by Flarestar for extra damage

Ok ignoring the advice at the start and giving my thoughts without watching the rest yet. I'm pretty casual so I can't say how it works pn a numbers level or in any kind of high level content but as a casual not even 100 BLM yet: Just give AF and UI more time. Like Picto and SMN and RDM have so much wiggle room and freedom in their rotation and BLM you miss a single cast and you're dropping AF3 and wanna commit Final Sting. I do know the numbers are absolutely fucked and the optimal way to play is not the intended way to play. I *want* to cast B4 and use my umbral hearts. Also FUCK the thunder change. All my homies hate the thunder change. No thoughts on flare star I'm not 100 on BLM but I hear it's also all fucked even though I thought it sounded good on paper. I will say I didn't particularly like sharpcast and I like that it's gone, but I do also think BLM lost some skill expression for that. And if sharpcast coming back means we get old thunder I'll take that trade. To expand on OGCD scathe, they could make it a followup action to leylines, since they're a huge fan of follow ups to buff actions this expansion. It would just need a new animation because I don't think scathe even had an animation or if it does I don't think ive ever seen it because I haven't used scathe since I was like level 15 or something

oh, and of course, Enochian -> 50%

Don't fall for the framing trick, BLM isn't broken, just need a few tweaks.

1. Inrease high thunder duration by atleast 5 seconds 2. Remove the insta cast for paradox cuz it actually makes it worse, or make so that when you insta cast paradox the astral fire timer will stop until it goes back from cooldown. Cuz now IT FEELS LIKE SHIT waiting for it go back from cooldown while astral fire timer goes on, and with low spell speed you basically refresh astral fire to 13-12 seconds LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK 3. By removing astral fire paradox insta cast, make flare star instant or atleast with the same cast time of F4 or preferably even less i'd say those changes would be nice and won't interfere with the main design (i would have asked for ice paradox return aswell but it's pointless they won't bring it back, they hate non standart so much as they see it something "cursed")

As soon as I saw picto I knew Yoshi had a new main so blm fell off pretty simple

Flare star should have been ultima