The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

If by situationally used you mean crowd control and the few specific NMs where a dedicated skillchain setup is actually part of the game plan then yeah, sure. Black mage is called on nowadays more for our ability to lock down waves of mobs with sleepga and breakga than it is for actual damage. Corsair is a far more effecient at dealing magic damage than the magic damage class itself. And a few extra points of stat down from burn won't change crap about that. Nor will it alter our DPS in the arms race against melee. The gap between black mage free nuke damage and melee DPS is about the size of the freakin grand canyon. All this does is tack on a tiny foot bridge at the canyon wall with a pair of binoculars on it to let us see the other side a little bit better. And no, the binoculars won't work unless you insert a bunch of quarters first. So don't get your hopes up on any freebies.

They should make those elemental debuffs into % instead of flat values. Like you could do -50 of a stat and it won't matter because I imagine ilvl 140+ mobs or whatever we're fighting these days have stats in the HUNDREDS, if not THOUSANDS.


That or at least make them increase in potency and effect the longer they're on, which makes more sense than the inverse tbh. If you're on fire, you're going to be debillitated much worse the longer you're on fire. It doesn't get better over time, it gets worse for you over time. Maybe every tick they could double in potency/effect. The DoT/debuff should be part of BLM gameplay instead of a set of meme spells with negligible use. Think like SCH's helices. No spell in any job's kit should be useless. *** retool Banish on PLDs too.

They aren't that extreme and actually follow a pattern that's heavily dependent on NM job. A "Warrior" NM won't have a particularly high INT but will have high STR and VIT. So you can expect around 400~500 on a CL150 BLM NM. -50 INT is a pretty big boost in that situation (it's actually worth more the more INT the target has).

The issue with BLM isn't target INT, it's that nuke damage doesn't scale with number of DD's, adding more BLM's just have them reduce each others damage. That and tier 1~3 damage is too weak and Tier 4~6 has too long a recast. Due to the 3s global lockout after spells a BLM can get a maxmium of one nuke per 4s. To be competitive that nuke needs to deal about 16K on average. This is on the low end of DPS but the BLM also generates less hate and from a safe distance.

Even if you could burn the mobs int to actual zero it's not really doing anything. in the grand scheme.

Now... if you could lock tp moves by lowering "Stat" to a certain level, then we might be talking.

Bozetto whatever cannot access Muzzling Wallop if his INT is below 100.

Also the whole "wait a long *** time" is why SC + MB is a ***strat outside of very specific contexts. DPS has the "S" in it for a reason.

Naked BLM/sch, totally unbuffed and naked except for 109 relic pants, with 5/5 ele debuff potency and 5/5 ele debuff duration:

@ 134INT (Ooops. <,< At least since they cap so pitifully low, we know that this should give a base of ATTR-11 and -4hp/tick.)

Burn
INT-31
14hp/tick
3min duration

This means that after subtracting the base+merits, the relic augment is giving: INT-10, -5hp/tick, +30sec duration. Given how strong the merits themselves are, i suspect the augment is double-dipping on the stat down and duration. Will remove potency merits then retest in an hour once my shield is off cooldown. XD

New max stats for ele debuffs with 5/5 x2 and any of the augmented relic legs:
ATTR-63
-30hp/tick
3min duration

Yea black mage update seem lazy and doesn't help the class in what it needs right now. Most of the problem right now is content and gearing for a "true" endgame blm at this point. It's sad because BLM had its moment but sadly I think its gonna be a wrap. Sure it can still do content but melee can do it better and easier at this point in the game.

Would Blm be fixed if they allowed SC windows to stack? meaning even if another sc happens, the original sc's window is still usable for MB.

Not even sure if they could do that, but would that fix blm?

No because the massive problem is you still get magic burst penalty for too nukes going off on after another. Sadly it still doesnt change the fact that a cor can get a 50k+ leaden faster and more consistent than nuking hell melee can do that at this point.

Point is, BLM still blows, its easy to fix by removing the resist wall. Square, for whatever reason decided to gimp it into obsoletion.

But hey, atleast AMII are scrolls now.

So this might seem like a noob question, but can't find the answer which is consistent, I hear one thing when other people say otherwise. Do the job point and merit category of BLM have any contribution to the 40% Magic Burst Cap or are they separate things?

Job points do not count to cap, merit point category is new, i don't know if anyone has testing if it is outside the cap or not.

Ok thanks for response, was confused on gearing with them in mind or not. That clears it up.

It's rather unlikely that merits count towards the MBD+40% cap, as that cap only applies to MBD bonuses from equipment. Bonuses from other sources like Job Traits and Job Points do not count towards any known cap, and neither do equipment bonuses that enhance uniquely named JTs (like AF+2/+3 GEO hat enhancing "Cardinal Chant".)

Tell them that BLM sucks ***. it does not accomplish what they think it does. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/55545-June-2019-FINAL-FANTASY-XI-Digest/page2

BLM is totes about macc and not damage.

Why don't you tell them for me so I don't have to !

Good lord could someone go over there and post a reasonable response to that. No flaming, just be honest and explain that black mage damage is bad, and why it scales so poorly in our melee dominated environment. I won't be home for a while and I can't log into the official forms since my security token is there. I'm not sure what's worse though. The seemingly obvious disconnect the devs seem to have where they apparently feel like black mage's damage is OK, or the fact that one person in particular is praising them for this change and essentially feeding them feedback that agrees with their apparent view and says they did a good job with the update.



Sure he addressed the resist wall, but aside from that everything else he wrote just completely overshadows black mages core problems. Elemental magic sucks when you aren't magic bursting. It completely blows. And only burn directly impacts nuke damage. The DoT effects amount to 30 DPS per second each, which if you stack all 3 you get 90 damage in 30 seconds. In the whole 3 minute duration that's a whopping 5400 damage. That's irrelevant with today's numbers scaling. And sure, the extra INT down on burn will make nukes hit harder. But not THAT much harder that it makes it a good update. BLM was already doing FINE in a magic burst situation. But those are so rare now that you can count them on two hands, maybe even just one.

Also the fact that melees can pretty easily cap their damage taken and still put up really high numbers is completely unmentioned. So is the fact that if you want to do damage from a safe distance summoner and puppetmaster are better alternatives than black mage is. They've been making elemental magic actively BAD in fights where you want to cater to a ranged strategy (just look at Odin Prime). Corsair is the magic damage class nowadays, summoner and puppetmaster are the ranged classes, and melees are the damage dealers in 95% of the content. That needs to be expressed in a respectful but honest way over there.

May not be all the points that everyone wanted to hit but I posted to that thread regarding the resist wall.

There is a stigma with Elemental Magic being too strong and too easy. I hope they listen because it's not fun waiting on the next MB and using a handful of spells when there is such a massive list. Let alone just being too slow.

BLM has so much potential to be active and dynamic if they just treat Elemental Damage similar to other forms of damage. I'd love some good magic JA buffs and decent elemental magic WS selection to blow Acumen TP on but I know that won't happen.

I remember when they added Mallquis armor set with higher Magic Damage was mainly to give lower tier nukes a boost and for casting in them more frequently Found here, but it's pointless really with the Elemental magic resist wall . It won't help if the purpose for creating armor pieces with high magic damage stat (but intentionally make them lack Magic Attack Bonus) was to give lower nukes better choices to cast if the elemental resist wall is there. (I'd post on the OF but somehow I was logged out near end of May when I google translated posts on JP forums lol...)

It wasn't even that great for that. When I had a full +1 set on release, it couldn't even beat whatever Merlinic gear I had for tier I nukes (it came close). Maybe the +2 set would barely surpass it, but not worth keeping an entire set around for an extra 1-10 damage for nukes you'll prob never use.

On one hand, low tier nukes are too weak (I personally find the impracticality of free nuking and low tier to be the biggest issue), and the resist wall is annoying.

But on the other hand... if they removed the resist wall, stuff would just go back to pre-wall timed nukes. Like the old BLM x4-5 + support XP parties, we'd just see 4-6 BLM in a party (or 12-15 BLMs in an alliance) coordinating timed T6 nukes. Maybe sleep the mob between volleys. You KNOW that's what people would try to force as the solution to everything, and that's just as bad of a problem with no good way to fix it aside from a blanket nerf magic damage (making nuking irrelevant anyway, so why bother changing anything in the first place?)

The player base has also pretty much proven they have no desire to even TRY to work around the resist wall by cycling elements or dividing group damage across multiple elements. This is something people could do today, but nobody does. No, it isn't a perfect solution: sometimes (rarely?) there's only one effective element, stuff like Rayke/Gambit only weaken mobs to a specific element, there are weird gimmicks like Kei, etc.

But why don't people ever even attempt to use multiple elements? A lot of the time, there's no reason people couldn't do a better job avoiding the wall by just not loading up on a single element. Light SCs in a group with 3 nukers and no light-aligned element resists? Why not assign one person to Thunder, one to Fire, and one to Wind? Even if, say, Fire gets a bonus... is the bonus so great that it's worth squandering everything by having a bunch of people nuking the same element, as opposed to someone doing a full strength Aero VI?

Similarly, if you have 1 or 2 nukers spamming low tier free nukes, you could split up elements and cycle between 2-3 of them to reduce/eliminate the consecutive elemental damage penalty, or space out your spells: P1 nukes with ice, P2 does water, P1 (after waiting 5 seconds) can do ice again... For one nuker alternating different element spells, it IS kind of annoying that you'll only be able to put Storms up for one element, true... but losing out on Storm benefits for some nukes is preferable to a perma-wall of 60% damage reduction by stubbornly continuing to spam just one element. Right?

Maybe some of you actually do try some of these things. I've just never seen it in the wild. Inevitably, I'll just encounter people who all nuke the same element and fight to try to be first in on a SC to win the parse (if they don't screw things up for everyone by jumping the gun).

Pretty much anything you would use BLM for you NEED G/R to make it even worth trying, and that limits you to one element.

Like look at this ambuscade, nothing but water works. That's it. period. Generally mobs are only weak to one element.

Or death. You can't just "use water" when the strat is death. No water storm no water G/R. it just doesn't work.

If things were able to be killed without use of G/R then you could use fire/thunder combos etc. MACC really is at the core of the problem. BLM didn't die because it got bad, it died because langour and focus got "fixed" BLM lost like 200 MACC in that change?

didnt mob meva get nerfed in that same update, or nerfed along with the general mob evasion nerf? Regardless macc didnt seem an issue given all the ways you can drop a mobs meva these days, ontop of whatever increase impact+burn provides.

All seems to come back to that SE simply dislikes magical dmg, as mentioned odin prime, most if not all HTBs have the same high resistance to magic dmg, ambus in a similar state depending on difficulty in that either its SDT to everything but the 1 element is high or its overall mdb is stupidly high or its both.

Not only do you make a good point that multiple elements could be used if that wasn't the case, but I think it's ridiculous that BLM is even put in the situation of feeling reliant on a pair of 5min RUN JAs (which also limits tanks to RUN or GTFO). And assuming only one RUN, those JAs will be down a majority of the time if not reset via temps or COR.


Now, I also don't necessarily miss strats that were nothing but MB death... But that's another discussion ;)

They never dropped mob magic evasion as far as I remember. That's part of the issue. They adjusted physical evasion twice. First by lowering evasion, second by lowering their combat skills. They made it harder because Languor on GEO was "fixed".

The resist wall just needs to go in my opinion. I'd rather they just balance around it being gone. Nerf MB damage/enmity where it's a boon but not necessary.

I don't think anything hard even has low enough HP where a timed nuke would kill it instantly. But there's ways to balance around that too. I just think Elemental Magic should be treated like any other ranged damage.

Let's play a game.

For everyone that says "resist wall needs to go"

How do you stop 14 deaths from instantly killing anything and everything in the game? (nerf death)

How do you stop 14 fire/water/thunder/aero 6 from instantly killing anything and everything in the game?

Make mobs HP higher? Great, completely *** everyone else over, and now it takes 28 instead of 14.

Cumulative same damage negation must be a thing. It can't just exist for magic. Even that doesn't really "work" it just forces variety.

Resist wall doesn't need to go. You barely even notice it with Gambit/Rayke. You just need to accept that BLM require alliance to cater to them, same as melee. Storm2, cor rolls, geo buffs, at least 2 RUNs to rotate JA(3 is better).

The complaints about BLM are largely done by people who expect it to roll up unbuffed and compare to melee that are used to having BRD GEO COR.

I find it hard to think of ways to make BLM relevant which doesn't make it insanely OP. If resist wall is gone, Mobs such as T4 helms which have 1-2 million HP depending on size of group, die in 1-3 volleys. However, if you leave it as it is, it's rarely used and only used for very slow and safe fights. The slow and safe is good imo, as it is the opposite of melee strats, but I just don't think it matters anymore.
Content now is old, it's easy, that going nuts and all out isn't much of a risk as it used to be.

Perhaps allowing 1 additional nuke to be unaffected by the resist wall might make it slightly more competitive with the current DD meta (I am aware SMN burn all things is the meta, but I don't use or like bandwagon SMN zergs so melee it is).

edit: just seen Comeatmebro's response. I completely forgot about that. That does affect BLM's usefulness/wanting to use it. The amount of support for BLM which is needed/really nice to have has increased since GEO nerfs to Languour a while back.

I think we just need better buffs for magic.

Aside from GEO, BRD and COR don't really do anywhere near the same increase to magic as they do to melee/ranged, You can really only boost INT and give the same amount of MAB as a single piece of gear gives. Wizards needs to give like........ 200 MAB same with warlocks

There's no march equivalent, fc caps on its own and if you made it faster it'd be insane.

Weather is it's own thing and it's a huge increase it's just not enough.

Maybe Change the way the resist wall works. Change it to a set amount of damage triggers resistance instead of every single nuke triggering it. If 5 deaths go off at once, Instead of 100k 80k 60k 40k 20k make it 100k 100k 100k 0 0.

And that's all before accounting for the fact that free nukes are trash.

BLMx4 GEO GEO
RUN SCH SCH WHM COR THF

(4 blms out of 12 chars), drops vinipata and the other elemental nukable t4s in under 2 minutes

that's barely slower than smn, with lower job density.. if you build around blm and use all the needed buffs and debuffs it's perfectly fine right now

as i said in my last post, the real problem is that nobody buffs them and you still expect them to compare to buffed DPS