Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

I got my BLM Mythic several months ago but I have barely even used it. Other than the occasional manaburns for Gaes Fete people just don't seem to use BLM anymore. I haven't even seen a BLM in Ambusacde for the last 2 years.

The idea I want to discuss is around Magic Crit and Crit Damage. As far as I remember it barely does anything and isn't even worth considering when building gear sets. What if they increased the base crit for magic spells to be more like physical crits and be a +100% modifier. This way free nukes in Dynamis D with no buffs could hit around 20 to 30k. This would help BLM compete with melee DD. To stop it from being too OP they could make magic crits not apply to magic bursts and only free nukes.

What do you guys think? What other ideas could make BLM more relevant without breaking it?

BLM is already in a phenomenal spot. Manaburning Dyna[D] Wave3 is probably the easiest and safest method as it stands now. Most older content can be destroyed by BLM paired with an SCH, such as Delve, Vagary, Escha NMs. Keep in mind BLM gets nearly hate-free damage when magic bursting. It has been used in a few ambuscades in the last 2.5 years, notably the Antican and Gigas battles for Intense. I use BLM consistently to clear content paired with an SCH and GEO.

BLM is also 1 of 3 jobs able to 1-shot "snipe" statues in dynamis using Death (RNG and COR the others). It's all about using it in the appropriate situations. If your entire group is oriented to a melee setup, BLM is not going to strive because you won't be able to burst consistently and won't be receiving the proper buffs. But a group with mage-oriented setup can easily plow through Dynamis.

Blm is currently completely useless. No joke. It WAS usable on gigas and antican the first time. Now with triple hp it's a no no

It's been made completely irrelevant. Until tier 1 start doing 99999 blm is gone.

Just like when formless strikes was important, cor and ranger are better magic dd than the actual magic dd.

Blm is in the worst spot its ever been in

The problem with blm is that melee setup(with malaise + leaden) seems to kill way faster than blm atm.....and cor rng can both 1 shot status. So in terms of efficiency, blm isn't extremely appealing.

Also have to say that there are like 9 melee jobs that's designed to be melee, not even counting cor rdm run pup .... So melee setup accomdates more people because pretty much any job can be a melee.

If pt do blm setup every DD slot has to be a blm and sch. It's MUCH easier to fill up an alliance with elite melee and functional Geo, much harder to fill up an alliance with equally geared blm and sch.

Unless blm is vastly more efficient than melee or se release new content thats too shitty to melee, I see majority of groups would prefer melee the way it is.

Nah, cor rng dmg is locked to 3 elements and they can't aoe nor dot like sch. I don't think they can completely replace blm sch.

But new content has to design in a way to favor blm like 2016 era.

This has to do with the piss poor scaling of base magic damage on nukes. WS's like Leaden have dStat x 2 along with a crazy high multiplier to it's stat bonus. Magic nukes on the other hand have flat base DMG values defined years ago before power creep with little in ways to raise those values. Nuke formula needs to be reworked to have a solid multiplier with an INT WSC bonus applied before it.

Something like
80% INT WSC
Tier 1 = 1.0
Tier 2 = 1.5
Tier 3 = 2.0
Tier 4 = 2.5
Tier 5 = 3.0
Tier 6 = 4.0

Light and dark cover everything. Until they make mobs with 99 pdt and absorb everything that's not earth.

Give Black mages a job ability that allows them to break the 99k hit cap. Not physical damage limit, more like a true limit break ability where you can deal several hundred thousands of damage in a high expensive nuke, once every few minutes or so. Allow nuke pairing (meteor , AM2) to naturally bypass the 99k damage cap when additional BLM are nuking at the same time.

Exactly as Afania said. In order to make BLM setup viable you need to have a full party of very specific jobs which is harder to setup than the typical.

The point of my post was to discuss ways in which BLM can be more relevant in a wider set of situations. For example if you brought 1 or 2 BLMs into a COR RNG alliance for dynamis what would they need to compete?

Would buffing their free nuke power do the job?

To make blm compete, yeah. They would need to do 50k enmity free nukes. Without burst.

10k tier 1, 20k tier 2 30k tier 3 etc

Exactly, but if BLM could do a guaranteed 50k nuke it would be so broken for clearing trash, 1-shotting statues, etc, and people wouldn't bother magic bursting anymore. If it was based on a lucky 30% crit chance then that might be less OP.

No different than leaden salute

Not exactly. Corsair's need to TP so they wouldn't be able to 1-shot stuff as fast as a BLM nuking 50k non MB. Also BLM has AOE while corsair's don't.

Maybe if they just improved -aga spells by increasing mp cost and damage proportionally so you could bring 2 blms along for clearing trash while cor and rng are more focused on single target damage..

Now that I think about it....when dyna wave 3 was out we tried clear with both blm and melee setup, melee actually seemed slower than blm and need more coordination.

Just checked, 1st galka used melee(no leaden malaise) took 26 min and semi wiped once.
1st elvann used blm took 21 min.
1st mithra used blm took 16 min.

So blm was actually pretty efficient at least in 2018/07.

As soon as leaden discovered to be OP on boss things changed completely and melee kills so much faster than blm, about 11 min wih leaden salutes. Probably lower than 10 if going with absolute elite DDs in every slot.

Since melee received Rema update and physical dmg limit buff melee setup pulls even more ahead. But blm haven't get much buffs.

Id say the fact that leaden salute can be used in melee setup is probably a good reason why mage setup seems slower now...

That wouldn't change much...since cor can cleave too, and it's a pretty damn effective cleave job. Was cleaving in dyna the other day and each AE do 20k some even 30k, and getting 1000 tp every 5 sec with Rostam B. In fact AE 1 shots statue too lol.

Can just invite 2 cor to cleave instead......(/Inserts cor OP comment here)

As far as getting tp, 2 QD in stp set got tp instantly. Alternatively just shoot for pull. It doesn't take that long.

That's interesting. I wonder if they could introduce something that encourages balancing magic and physical damage. Elemental magic lowers targets physical defence for few seconds and vice versa. That would be fun to play around with.

Most of BLMs gear can be easily farmed or bought, 1 AF piece is needed even then you can skate by w/ the +2, none of the relic is needed, +2/3 feet help, though. You can find 4/5 Amalric for cheap on most any server now, and Ea head/body/legs as well. Mage setup also requires less healing as the BLM shouldn't be pulling hate most of the time. Wave3 boss enmity is a non-issue as well. Combine that with enmity douse BLM should almost never be touched unless something goes horribly wrong.

I added the clarification there for a reason, if your group is mismatched between melee and magic, BLM is not going to reach it's potential. Yes, of course, COR and RNG can be much more useful even with less people around, that doesn't mean BLM is in a terrible spot. To do this, RNG and COR need better than just NQ gear, for some #s needing AG REM or Aeonics, with augments on top of that helping a great deal. Along with that they need multiple pieces of AF (rng, cor just the 1) and Relic (COR 3-4/5 +2/3, RNG 2-3 +2/3).

I wasn't saying BLM is the #1 job right now for any and all situations, just pointing out where it IS useful that the OP might have missed or not been aware of. I've found plenty of use for mine in endgame content.

Maybe an interesting general way to boost nuking a little would be to copy/paste RUN's rune system to BLM, only make each of them provide Affinity for that element instead.

That's why SCH can give weather and we have Obi, though. To focus on certain elements.

I guess it depends on the linkshells or server you play in. I used to see people doing manaburn for Dynamis but for the last 4 months everyone has seemed to switch over to melee or cor/rng. Really want to see more love for BLM!

It's probably MUCH easier to find a cor with r15 DP, Rostam and Oshosi than a 2100 blm with NQ Ea atm lol. In past couple months this is often the conversation between friends:

Afa: Hey Jack, I see you are in Nyzul atm, which mythic are you making next?
Jack: DP.

Afa: Hey Amy, what job are you working on next?
Amy: COR, my LS needs it for dyna.

/Logs on to game and see friends shouting to buy Rostam x2.

You got the idea....everywhere I go people are either lving COR, working on dp, or buying Rostams.

So if people are surrounded with bandwagon cor they are just going to use setup that favors cor.

BLM was the literal ONLY way to do ANYTHING for 2014-2017(partly). it had it's time, meta shifted like it always does.

Yes but it can't be a generic +power X type buff. The reason BLM's have become left behind is their power doesn't grow well due to how Magic Damage is calculated.

Base Magic Damage for nukes is


V is the nukes base power, mDMG is magic damage and M is the multiplier for the difference in INT. The base power also depends on dINT. This creates a scenario where the base DMG value doesn't go up by much.

Now here it is for magic WS.


So assuming 119 weapon we get
((201 + WSC) * fTP) + dSTAT + mDMG

Take something like Leaden Salute at 1750TP (moonshade and aeonic)
fTP = 6.025 and at 400 AGI (COR's can get higher then this) this is the base power
((201 + 400) * 6.025) = 3621, then add on some dSTAT and mDMG values which are frankly small compared to that base. Then throw in WSD as a free multiplier before mDiff and Weather.

Cascade is ~really~ shitty, at 1000TP it grants +100 mDMG which is complete ***. BLM struggles to raise it's base magic damage high enough to actually matter, when COR's and RNG's can rock 3K+ base magic damage then it's no competition for who can hurt the most with magic.

I came back to the game early 2017 so I guess I missed all that!

Well maybe buffing BLM damage isn't the answer and giving people a different way to play the job is.

Would be an idea to give blm stronger debuffs by enhancing spells like burn and frost. Also adding some more debuffs to ancient magic.

It's time for a Job Ability!

I'm gonna call it "Spell Turbo"

1min cool down time, 5 min active time.

Caps your mab and macc like Shanttoto. Reduce spell casting speed and delays to minimum.

The Blm moves at 50% speed. Can only cast damage dealing elemental magic but only up to tier III spells. No enfeebling, healing or anything else.

Just give Blm a powerful version of self destruct that can MB and go beyond 99k; while using all you HP, MP, and also requiring no M.acc. At least then the job will get use.