Discussion: How To Make BLM More Relevant

Too late, that's already being abused by WAR/DRK/SAM/MNK/DRG/BLU/NIN/DNC/THF/RNG/COR/PUP/RDM and melee GEO.

But if we all stand in a star pattern and believe in ourselves, I'm sure we can use the power of friendship to make BLM relevant.

Well then a JA that bypassed both the damage cap and nuke wall on an MB then

ok now that made me giggle.

BLM new spell "the wall" does AOE dmg inflicts plague paralyze attack down 10,000 HP per tick burn. Gets East Berlin to the promise land.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Mana_Wall

The OG Wall.

Trash the resist wall and the mtdr, give us some melee gear.

MBLMGA

fully agree with your comment, just wanted to add a piece- in 14, blm isn't really worried about mp conservation. yes it has mp as its resource, but it just swaps to ice stance to get it all back almost immediately. while they have tools in XI to regain their mp, or make casting free, they all require niche situations to implement rather then something you just activate at will. (aspir needing a mob with mp, myrkr requiring you've built up enough TP, AF body requiring you land a MB)

unrelated to what you said, I do feel BLM needs some love. Removing their aoe spell penalty would be a nice start. giving them a more sustained form of mp regeneration for free nuking to actually make an impact the way melee job's white damage works. they should actually take a page out of the shantotto 2 trust and give blm a magical physical attack instead of slapping mobs with a clunky staff. or enable spells to be cast as such. i know in content, I'm constantly casting tier 2 nukes between bursting just to add in extra damage.

not that the devs will mess with the magic damage calculations at this stage of the game, but the fact that a blm can get upwards of 400 mab and still only pull out like 20k tier 6 free nukes is rather sad considering a warrior doesn't require that level of stat dedication to rip out 60k savage blades.
along these lines, brd needs either a mab or mag acc song because they literally only can help mages with refresh and dt type songs as it stands.

And in that vein- many of the current buffs need to be changed to percent based like corsair buffs. Summoner for example- most of their buffs have a flat amount tied to them that doesn't change with skill. The duration changes so that's fine, but the ability on diabolos that buffs MAB and MDB is a flat 12. it really needs to be 12% to rank up there with the other buffs being provided. I would say the same for get buffs. I've always found it a bit odd that a fury bubble offers attack% but an acumen bubble just offers a flat mab number. Attack and MAB are the melee/magic mods that determine damage output, so why is one getting buffed by almost 62% with an idris geo, while the other is only getting a flat 45.

I'll agree, the removal of the damage cap for Magic Bursts would be a great place to start. I'll even ask for an addition that Magic Crits should always be unresisted.

Answer to the threads question:
Sortie

There are two ways to make BLM relevant.
1.Remove the resist wall and the mtdr.
2.Remove warp items from the game.

Sortie is heavily catered for Black Mages, and now we have Locus Crabs. They will be heavily sought after again to keep up chains, like they were for CP in Dho Gates. They also work super well on Kei in Omen and Ongo in Odyssey.

Everything you listed is A BLM, one. Theres no punishment for 12 naeglings spamming savage blade via autows the way nukewall punishes multiple nukers.

Hell, the nuke wall even affects a single BLM trying to double MB the same nuke lol.

Do you even Sortie?

BLM in Sortie is good, because nuke start is good, exactly because there is mechanic you said there isn't. E F G H and probably Mega boss all have WS wall, that is much worse the nuke wall. It reduces all WS in 10 sec window by 90%.

Also before Sortie there was still same WS wall on some mobs (NMs and mega boss in Dyanmis for example), but it was much easier to work around than this new WS wall I have just mentioned above.

I'd like to see the cumulative magic effect (-ja magic) added to Ancient Magic. It would help boost overall party damage to an element much more quickly and also give people more reason to cast AMI/II.

either remove the AoE dmg penalty from Elemental Magic, or add it to Blue Magic. There is ZERO reason a BLU gets to cleave with their magic, yet we cannot (as effectively).

Change Subtle Sorcery to a 10 min recast timer and not the 2nd 1hour. If we can nuke effectively even with other mages bursting, there's less reason to yell at the well geared SCH, GEO, or RDM bursting as well. Sure, their numbers will get walled some, but the concept of "let the BLM deal the real damage" all of a sudden doesn't prevent other offensive mages from caring about nuking sets, and they're more than capable of good numbers these days.

I dont really think thats needed tbh.
Just do targets like Sortie with 100-122 MDB and no MDT and that's enough. With debuffs BLM does 70-90k+ even with nuke wall.


There is a reason. BLU can't really MB effectively. Let BLU MB without Burst Affinity and we can talk about BLM having full power AoE :P

Oh come on. The AoE damage penalty is unique to elemental magic, and it was implemented when the game first released because at the time black mage was the ONLY job capable of doing real AoE damage. The aeolian edge, cataclysm, earth crusher, fell cleave, blue mage stuff all came post-abyssea. Back in the lvl 75 era it was justified to nerf -aga damage because of the power level at the time. But in todays era there's no reason for it whatoever. It's a relic of the game's early days and it has no real purpose now. The devs just never bothered to remove it is all, but they really should have. And long ago...

Divine magic gets away with it too, but no one is coming for WHM because they barely have a job right now. BLU and BLM are balanced differently. Example, BLU can't hit capped damage with Cataclysm on real content.

BLM could use a little razzle dazzle, but there is no reason to nerf any other job in the process. Lift each other up and power creep like a MFer.

I just wish Black Mage learned Cataclysm and Earth Crusher natively. Makes no sense

This has been a MAJOR complaint of mine for a few years now. Why don't BLM and SCH, the jobs with RMEA-level Staves, not get them natively, yet GEO and WHM, the jobs with RMEA-level Clubs, do?

And a lil' love for my PLD brethren on how they get the highest club skill in the game and no decent weapons to use. Give them folks a friggin mace!

Fact pld was kept off loxotic mace will forever baffle me as that's right in line with their theme of pld getting the heavy club/mace line of weapons, instead it goes to run for some reason.

I get that they're just c+p jobs from the original gear but it didnt make sense then either, pld just had like 12 other clubs to use instead back then

This just makes me remember reading that PLD used to have like B in axes back in 2002, but no axes they could wield. Rectified pretty quick lmao.

In my mind, I've always viewed Paladin as a take on a Crusade-era Knight, and for me there's 3 traditional weapons for that kind of Knight- the broadsword/shield, the lance, and the mace. And it could have been a really fun dynamic for PLDs to wield a club now and then.

Oh well.

You still have beryllium mace, so its not -all- awful. But yeah, 75 had a pretty nice (though mostly useless) weapon array for many jobs which i miss now and then

I like this idea, which is a little similar to what I keep coming back to... change Cascade somehow! Maybe make it give the next spell the equivalent effect as Rayke (elemental resist rank down on the mob, and reduces the nuke wall penalty), perhaps with some other perks. 1min recast is not bad, but consider 30sec too.

As for the consuming TP aspect, I guess I wouldn't mind if they just removed TP consumption from Cascade and made it a pure 1min buff JA. But even if they didn't do that, perhaps look at adjusting the TP used to something like the JA consumes a maximum of 1000tp - enabling you to save some TP for a WS, your next Cascade spell, whatever. Or heck, just let it take all TP and make it even stronger than Rayke if you use over 1000tp.

This could ease the obnoxious nuke penalty with a solution that's actually somewhat skill based (when to use it still matters), uses an existing (but not frequently used) JA, and could even open up neat stuff like making Occult Acumen builds matter for nuking. Aeonic staff could become a big deal for that kind of build (and really, there SHOULD be more incentive to use RMEA staves over stuff like Marin +1), but there really isn't much reason to care at this point.


This is why I had kind of hoped they would mix up the jobs on some of the Prime weapons. Put PLD on club, give the shield to WHM/GEO this time, stick RNG on the axe, make some pet-focused dagger for BST PUP SMN, etc. Obviously didn't happen and would have been a longshot, but would have felt fresh and fun to see.

I think Su5 weapons gave me a little taste of that, I thought it was pretty cool to see COR get a dagger instead of the usual gun. Was nice to not have to put my other REMAs away, and get to use those hard earned weapons AND a Rostam.

Yup, it's a common theme in the D&D era especially. Tons of people who've played through Icewind Dale and the Baldur's Gate series have specced their paladins with mace and shield. It fits the theme perfectly. They really should have been on loxotic, and they have the skill to boot. S-E is out of touch with some of the class themes.

3. Warpga
If you're in the party and warpga is cast on you, but you
resist, then you should instead be transported to the back side
of Purongo Isle, of course with no warp items.

Or have a heart attack, or both.

It'd be easier if SE would spare us the shame, and just remove this worthless class. It'd also be nice to get a formal letter of apology for failing to make one of the first, and always present Final Fantasy classes absolutely useless.