The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

tbh I'd be quite happy with 6 categories in group 2, each being "XXX Element Potency" that applies to every spell of that element, not just AMII. Or better yet, "XXX Element Affinity". I do love how that effect is completely independent in the calculation, and might give BLM the power to be able to "dps nuke" if you will, spamming T2 spells almost as white damage, then landing the big boys on bursts.

I completely agree that giving us 5/5 potency for AMII isn't game breaking in the least. I just don't see SE being that kind ;)

AM2 scrolls
Meteor no longer requires Elemental Seal.
and some kind of rework of group 2 merits.

I wonder, if they do add am2 scrolls, will they keep 6 options for group 2 merits or will they reduce the number of options?

All we really want is the 99k damage limit removed

This would be the only way manaburn would ever become viable enough to compete with setups like Cor/Rngs,Smn burn or TP burn.
Minor BLM QoL fixes won't change anything, its a fundamental design issue with the game itself.

Raising the 99999 isn't really going to do a damn thing. We aren't doing much more than 100k. and after the first no one is hitting 99k anymore with the resist wall. The whole formula has to change with an increased cap to make it even matter.

The low end has to change a lot more than the high end. It's what BLM does when NOT bursting that needs fixing. (and the resist wall needs to go)

Or an entire rework of the enmity system so that you HAVE to use BLMs again. (Including a full on smn All Pet 2hour nerf or it will never happen)

I care very little about this. If system-level changes are on the table though, that infernal multi-nuke-wall needs to be removed. There are already no valid arguments against allowing multiple nuke casters to all get full damage potential that can not be shutdown by simply answering "SMN."

Raising the damage cap would do essentially nothing in the current meta other than make SMN even more appealing, especially compared to BLM.

Remove damage cap from magic bursts specifically. Not the general damage cap which would be a buff to Flaming Crush.
Summoners can't stack magic burst damage increase or MB as frequently as Blm,Rdm, Geo and Scholar can. They could adjust magic burst damage bonuses on equipment and traits.

If the JP playerbase demand it they will. SE scheduled a whole job adjustment update for BST all because a JP player didn't want to put points in pet enmity job point trait >_>.

still wouldnt amount to much, youd just see more death mb numbers posted, job would still suck in terms of dps. Nuke wall needs to go/heavily reduced

This isn't entirely accurate. JP have been complaining.. a LOT if you read their forum on the OF. A LOT LOT. about many things lol. While they completely ignore NA, they are universally ignoring pretty much everyone. (for the most part)

They have a 25 page thread on RMT/Botting with pictures and videos. You can see how well square is responding to that. right?

BST wasn't because a jp complained. It's because it was legitimately a downgrade. It's the only category that could potentially be negative (without counting blm tank manawall). Not all pets are tanks, all the time.

That BST thing was zeroed-in on a single, specific Job Point category that some players avoided putting points into at all because of the negatives that the extra Pet: Enmity+20 brought to group play. It was changed only because it was pointed out that it directly conflicted with their new shiny toys (Div Weapons) at the time.

The resulting change might as well have removed the category entirely instead of giving us a whopping Pet: Magic Accuracy +20 in exchange.. which hardly counts as a "whole job adjustment update" by any means.

But at least now bad tanks have to worry less about our pets auto-attacks stealing agro from them! :D Pet buff moves, which would be the tanky stuff, generate 0 enmity btw, so it's not as easy to pet-tank as BST as you'd think. lol

The devs DO listen to the JP playerbase more than us when it comes to silly things like login point items though. lol

gotta say this somewhere. I was FURIOUS that the RP augment to Claustrum included -enmity.

There. I'm done.

They don't completely ignore NA. Just post *** pics and they'll notify you of your forum ban promptly.

BLM needs a form of sustained DPS not big numbers syndrome. High tier nukes take too long to cast and have a recast that prevents consecutive castings. Low tier nukes simply don't do enough damage but can be spammed. Then element damage resist building just sucks whatever DPS existed right out of the job.

To be fair that killed not just BLM dps but all forms of MB from your support crew in SC-MB strats. It crippled casting spells for damage purposes across the board.

Imagine what would today's meta look like if say, slashing weapon auto attacks would build slashing resistance on the mob, piercing weapon swings would build piercing resist etc... That's basically how it feels from a caster DD PoV.

Here's the problem. You all forced that change. You just couldn't resist throwing 12 blms at literally everything. And it really wasn't like variety either. Just Death. Death. Death. Death. Aero for Kirin. But Death. Death. Death. Death. Ice for Maju because you were forced to. Then Death. Death. Death. Death.

When I came back just before that resist wall, it was a pretty disgusting sight tbh.

If you had some modicum of self control instead of immediately and completely jumping on the one fastest method of winning they wouldn't have to completely cripple that method every time.

The absolute second they remove the resist wall, absolutely every single person who doesn't like smn will be on blm again.

SMN BURN ALL THE THINGS.

The elemental resist wall has been around since 2006. [Source]

I agree it needs to go. Not only penalizing BLM but the group from using any other sources of magic damage. It was added because people were using it to cheese Divine Might. 18 BLM with timed Thundaga III killed all 5 of them.

Eiryl is right you know, and players will never change. If they remove the resist wall people will immediately start abusing it again. The REAL problem is that the magic damage formula is broken and needs to be fixed. TP burn is too effecient; weaponskills hit as hard as our highest tier nukes (some hit four or five times harder) and can be spammed, and still accompany white damage. And haste is FAR more effecient then fast cast. Capping cast time reduction doesn't hold a candle to capping delay reduction. Free nuking is terrible, and that's where the problem lies. Black mage is FINE in a magic burst scenario. That's what the job DOES. There's no need to improve it. But there are two things that really bother me about free nuking that I'd like to see tweaked.

1. Free nukes scale miserably and I'd like to see some form of multiplier added to scale the damage up for them. They can and SHOULD keep it separate from the magic burst formula. Give us a merit category for free nukes. Something to amplify damage like "free nuke elemental affinity". They could allow us 5 points in the category and each give 5% affinity bonus to every element and it wouldn't break anything. That would just make free nukes 25% stronger, but it would certainly help.

2: Black mage -aga magic still reduces the amount of damage dealt per additional target hit. This was around since 2003, and I understand why it was necessary then, but times have changed. There are many ways to cleave now and all of them are better than black mage -agas because none of them take reduced damage on extra targets. Blue mage and warrior in particular come to mind, but even a proper aeolian edge set can match -aga's and -ajas. Just get rid of the multiple target damage reduction. It isn't necessary anymore. This also won't break anything, but it would do a lot to help restore black mage AoE role. You know, one of the things the job was ORIGINALLY intended to be a master of.

I didnt play during death spam but why havent they fixed smn burning if death spam was such a problem, there is no difference now except that you have to use SPs to kill stuff with smns?

whats the point of the removal of variety of viable ways to kill things? its a little disappointing how difficult it is to melee burn certain things because you basically need multiple brd/geo to resist all the debuffs ***spams nonstop

The resist wall is fine. It should just apply to everything, not only elemental spells.

The player base has become easy-button, spam brain-dead.

Make Vanadiel Think Harder

Resist wall is fine... lol... good one fam...

Resist wall is fine. Death burns have to be nerfed. BUT it very clearly needs to exist for everything not just magic.

Every "burn" should experience diminished returns. If you gimpulse drive the same mob from 100% to 0% that's extremely lame. It shouldn't be a thing.

It's really not rocket surgery. If your strat is "eh *** it just throw rangers at it" you should hit a wall where bullets do zero damage. 22 jobs. FORCE variety.

Fix burns; after any ws/nuke/pact/sourceofdamage is used of the same name from anyone will do zero damage for the next 120 seconds. Simple. No more burns. Forces you to use bows/scythes/axes cant' spam death. can't conduit anymore. Forces you to take advantage of skillchains. (pup takes a big hit, sorry pup, I don't have an answer for that one =/)

Maybe less severe than that.
On an action nonauto-attack of {slashing,piercing,blunt,range,magic} a 5 second affinity X -10% will apply.
On a repeat of non auto-attack {} during the 5s wall, an additional -5% affinity is added and the timer resets, up to 95% resistance.
things like archon ring would therefore make dark affinity go from 105% on cast to 95% for 5 seconds.

If you don't make it absolutely impossible, don't bother. a 95% gimpulse drive from shining one is still better than anything else. a 90% gimpulse drive still better. an 85% gimpulse drive still better. an 80% gimpulse drive still better.

It -has- to be severe. and the window has to be big enough to force variety. a few seconds is meaningless.

Sounds like you should play another game as ffxi has always been that way

It really hasn't.

Once upon a time we didn't burn all the things. You'd take 6 different jobs because enough people were on and you had blms in party with melee.

Instead of 1 DD cor brd geo spamming the same ws every 3 seconds. or 4 blm spamming death. or 4 smn spamming volt strike. or 4 cors spamming leaden. or 4 rangers spamming true flight. or 4 sams spamming impulse drive.

The closest you got was 3 war spamming rampage at merits.

Drk zerg and blm on hnms says hi

And it got nerfed, didn't it. Bye-bye soul eater. Hello ranger distance nerf. Hi2u resist wall.

What is up with this killjoy nerfs.

Make SE create harder content then nerf jobs so year old content is harder...

this is a bit of a ridiculous stance lol and nobody likes being forced to use things just for gimmicks

voidwatch attempted to address this issue and you ended up with 12 people basically leeching and a single party with 3 dd doing 95% of the damage