Frustrated

They tried this with the delve matamata and players just abused formless strikes and RDM enspells. Give monsters nasty TP moves and people will use mew, monk SB, low TP feed strategies (frog Ambuscade, dullahan).

It's a good idea on paper to try to be creative in your challenges, but SE isn't smart enough to implement this kind of mechanic properly, and it would feel forced that you're trying to make a use for jobs that are obsolete. Players will outsmart the mechanic in one hour flat. That's why they have to do silly gimmicks like they've done with Odyssey. They've literally run out of ways to be challenging (Mirue pre nerf doesn't count, he was just dumb and also lazily implemented), there's no reason to believe if they implemented such a mechanic it would change anything for BLM

We're at a point where no job is truly necessary because there are multiple ways to fill roles, and the biggest source of overlap is the DPS role. If black mages were brought up to a point where they were simply tolerated then yes, I'd be perfectly fine with that. It's far better than the state they're in now where they aren't even good enough for the leftovers party because they just suck outright at everything they do in comparison to other jobs. Like I said... everything black mages do the other jobs do better. We have melee jobs that do magic damage better than black mages. Freakin THIEF and DANCER are better AoE magic damage dealers then the supposed masters of black magic themselves. Corsair... a job that doesn't even cast spells ... is vastly better at nuking than black mage and can also gain tp for those attacks at range just like black mage if it needs to. Elemental magic damage sucks!. That's a problem in my book, and it's the only problem that truly needs to be addressed.

We also haven't had new major content in over three years. Dynamis D was released in November of 2017. Everything since has been filler fluff. Lillith and other high tier battlefields... filler fluff. Domain invasion... filler fluff. Oddysey.... filler fluff. And as it stands there's no sign of empyrean gear on the way. Just that "it'll happen one day..eventually.... we hope".

This is why I believe if SE wants to properly balance the game, they need to overhaul basically every bit of gear we have. And overhaul certain things like mew. Stuff like armor classes(heavy, medium, light, cloth) should have certain traits and draw backs and they currently kinda don't. Well heavy armor still does.

And then yeah we have so many tools like AFAC, Mew, SB, using SPs on support jobs, you name it. As of right now, we either have the stupid levels of defenses on idle sets to muscle through stuff or we have the tools to outright ignore their gimmicks.

Not going to happen with the development resources they have allocated. They couldn't even keep up with their schedule to release sheol-gaol on time, and in three whole years all we've gotten was some filler content and a couple minor job tweaks; nothing more. Such a massive undertaking could mean we wouldn't see empyrean gear upgrades until 2050. The scope of such a project is well beyond anything the limited staff they have are capable of executing and simply cannot be expected at this point in the game's life. That's why I'd be perfectly happy with a fix that just made black mages "acceptable" as it was put earlier. People want to play black mage because it has potential to be a fun job, but right now it's not fun because it's so weak it feels like the lame duck in the litter fighting for table scraps when everyone else is feasting on prime cuts of beef.

It all sounds good like "they should do this" but then they release a malignance set that basically invalidates any of that armor overhaul stuff you think would be a good idea. SE has absolutely no vision. They just throw things out without really stress testing it's effects on real job/content scenarios.

The most important takeaway points from the last few pages are this.

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1: S-E has extremely limited development resources

As Buukki mentioned above with the malignance example and I pointed out with their extremely slow content releasing, they aren't capable of doing anything major at this point.
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2: There is a lot of job and role overlap

It's simply not possible to make black mage more desirable than any alternative because of alternatives

--Corsair can gain TP from range and spam wildfire and leaden salute
--Ranger can do the same as corsair with Trueflight
--Summoners can magic burst just like black mage, scholars can also magic burst while creating the skillchain
--Blue mage, thief and dancer can all AoE magic burn with aeolian edge or blue magic, and can wear malignance gear that protects them fully while doing so
--Red mage can enfeeble mobs just as well, if not better than a black mage
--There are too many ways to make dangerous mobs safe. Indi-vex, indi-wilt, malignance, indi-barrier, mewing lullaby, etc etc...and that's just to name a few.
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Combine points 1 with 2 and you realize that the melee meta we're in is not realistically going to ever go away.

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3: If you make black mage too powerful the strategies would shift to only black mage burning.... and we all know what happened the last time this became meta. Hello resist wall.....
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There is no ideal solution to fix black mage. But when you look at black mage's toolkit it really only has two things it's capable of doing. First, it can enfeeble things, and second, it can deal elemental magic damage. Elemental magic damage however.... outright sucks. Free nukes do not scale with melee's powerfull haste buffs and weaponskill rotations, and for every melee weaponskill that can surpass black mage's nuking potential ten times over, there is a magic weaponskill equivalent just as potent. The fact that elemental magic is exclusively what the class does has been the achilles heel for half a decade now because elemental magic plain and simple sucks. There's no way around it. Compared to other forms of magic damage, or any damage, it simply sucks.

Even without the resist wall black mage would be in a miserable spot. And adding some kind of support or utility to the class isn't going to change it's usefulness. If we want to make black mage usable again... and by that I literally mean "usable" and not "amazing", we need to make it better at doing what it does without going over the top. The meta is a delicate thing, and giving black mage too much power is something you have to avoid. That was why I suggested improving elemental magic damage performance the way I did. If black mage was only 50-60% of a melee DPS, wouldn't that be so much better than the current 15-20% it is now? Compare it to other off jobs like beastmaster, puppetmaster, summoner, or ninja and you see that it's in so much worse of a state than even they are.

The best "fix" for black mage is to go the easy rout and make it usable, or as was mentioned, "acceptable". Right now it's currently "unacceptable", so much so that as the OP in this thread mentioned... people actively say NO you can't come to events with it because you'd be too much of a liability, and that actually is unacceptable. Because as it stands, the game's current state is and will continue to be very stagnant and the future outlook for new content isn't amazing. I'd rather make the job usable now than wait five more years before we may be able to dust off our robes and pick up our staves again.

There are still some uses for BLM. You can replace BLM with other jobs, but certain things BLM is still the best at.

A few mobs are easier to kill with skillchains for most groups, and blms make that easier.

Vagary is still BLMs main event.

A few HELM mobs are much easier with a BLM tank popping and taking the adds away. A proper mana wall set and refresh buffs mean you arent taking damage for most of the fight. Makes getting a handle on albumen for a lot of groups easier. If you main tanks, you should really have BLM as an option as it has content it can tank extremely well.

How would that be an enmity issue? Its the same dps as melee DDs, but BLM can have like -30 enmity in free nuke set. Not to mention 50% of the time they can stand 1' from most mobs and be safer than most DDs, because of Mana Wall. Also for like 70-90% of time you are between casting and in idle set, that can be super tanky. For longer fights when you would reach hate cap, you can also use Enmity Douse to completely erase your hate. BLM also doesnt need specific songs that badly, so you can just put Dirge on it and you would have -50 enmity all the time basically.

Give BLM a full time stance ability that gives massive magic damage (dont confuse it with MAB, I mean Magic Damage like on weapons). Also make it scale. The lower the tier of spell is, the higher the bonus is. so Tier VI would almost be untouched, while Tier I would do like 15k (just kinda guessing this number here with just bis equip. Also obviously remove Nuke Wall.

Please explain how that wouldnt fix BLM? Another advantage of that solution is that its super easy to implement.

Mana Wall tanking albumen adds is really a high level niche ability you may be able to implement if said BLM is good enough. I wouldn't necessarily classify that as a useful role that would justify using one over other simpler methods. Just because you CAN do something doesn't really give it a place. I can tank a lot of stuff on ninja but I can't convince anybody outside of close players that know me to let me do it on content that matters. People want the strategy to work the majority of the time, not experiment with tactics that COULD work sometimes

Blu honestly isnt nearly as good in vagary as BLM is. Higher nukes for bosses when you already have a mage setup, no real point making things any weirder with a blu.

SCH *can* do objectives, but youre going to have 1-2 schs and a bunch of blms because blm just does far more damage than a sch can do when said sch is blowing strats to SC.

You still sleep the mobs with mana wall tanking. You tank until all the mobs are out. Mana wall tanking makes the fight far easier to start up with.

Honestly, if people cant find uses for a blm, thats on the group, not the blm. Blm has content it is still king in for simplicity and getting things done.

imho a lot ppl simply embrace the fact that they now can do content melee style that they previously only could do in a BLM setup. there is a reason the majority of jobs are melee, ppl simply prefer playing melee over heal/support/mage.

This is for different reasons imo. Melee jobs are interchangeable for the most part, and are very easy to play. They also have less of an impact on your ability to clear the content, unlike Tank or Healer jobs, where other's survival depends on you. Many people prefer not to have that kind of pressure, which is why you can always fill content with DDs but can almost never find healers or tanks. In my experience, some of the better players are really good mages, tanks, or support. Most of the average players don't really budge off of DD jobs. Everyone is confident in their ability to "mash dat DP(s)", not so many are confident in keeping an entire group alive and supported.

Back in 2018 when we did dyna D w3 with BLM setup, BLM parsed much higher than SCH and they cleave adds better.

So no. Not seeing what you said is true cuz parse says otherwise.


Why do you want to helix Lilith to death when it can be done much faster with nukes? VD Lilith dies in 1-2 min with nukes+MB instead of helix only.



In alliance content you need multiple DD, in that case many MB would start hitting less than 99k because of resist wall mechanic. If you nuke much higher than 99k it's still going to cap at 99 when other jobs that nuke exactly 99k would do much lower.



You can only burst helix once, so alliance DPS with BLM+SCH will still be much higher than just SCH as DD.

None of what you're saying disproves what I said about blm. Sch can mb for 99k so everything else is moot. The reason I even mentioned helix is because lilith puts up light fetters which grant her dt so a helix negates that worry. Nobody cares how good blm cleaves because blm cleaving is a joke. Why you would waste a slot there on blm over a cor or rdm idk. It's just not a great job and every other job does what blm does better or just as good plus other things which have been covered plenty enough already.

Blm sucks.

Show me a video of BLM setup dyna D run with SCH GEO outparsing BLM with their none stop 99k MB then I'll believe you.

What you said makes no sense at all. Optimal BLM alliance setup has always been 2 SCH max, remaining slots are multiple BLMs and either cor, geo or tank. If SCH can parse as high as BLM why wouldn't people build an alliance of 6+ SCH instead of 2 and never run out of strats?


Missed the point. If you do Lilith VD with SCH AND BLM you kill her faster than just helix.

Fetter is irrelevant in the discussion since absorb TP exists. Even if you nuke it with absorb TP fetter doesn't happen.


If you do dynamis w3 with BLM setup then the only job that can cleave in the alliance will be BLM. In that case it's the better job than RDM and COR since both needs melee support and healer to cleave, and the whole point of using BLM setup is to skip melee support and healer to begin with. So RDM and cor cleaving is completely irrelevant in BLM setup.




If you make a point that BLM setup isn't as efficient as melee setup then I'd agree with you. But saying the job itself is worse than X job in "every aspect" with no context makes 0 sense.

Would you say "RNG is worse than COR in every aspect?" Probably not. Because RNG is a DD and cor is a support. You can't just compare both jobs in different roles. You can say cor is more useful and versatile, but using the term "every aspect" is a very bold statement.

If your alliance uses BLM setup, then BLM should be the most ideal choice as a DD. I'm not seeing SCH or even GEO(lol?) replacing it.

BLM setup has pros and cons. It's less efficient melee setup for sure. But it's much safer. Doesn't require healing and damn impossible to pull hate. It also doesn't require BRD which ranged setup often does.

You can make an argument that BLM setup isn't worth it v.s melee but it doesn't make SCH and geo better nuker than BLM period.

If you build alliance specifically for BLM and the job being played by extremely skilled player, it can do a lot of things effectively. Some of the most early dyna D runs were done with BLM Just because how little support it required. Just that people ditched safer strategy for higher efficiency later on.

SCH wont MB for 99k on mobs that matter as consistently as BLM will, especially since theyll be using strats for utility more than MDmg.

Not to mention BLM can hit more MBs/SC than SCH can, with higher tier spells, ESPECIALLY when you factor in the SCH has to actually initiate the SC most of the time.

Not to mention BLM is easier and more consistent to gear than SCH, which requires random augments and more niche REMA pieces and usage to get high damage output. BLM can just get NQ SU3 and be fine for the most part.

SCH doesnt come close to BLM in raw damage output. It physically cant, its not designed to.

You can use SCH and be happy, sure. But trying to say SCH does BLMs job better ignores what the differences between the two are. SCH cant do BLMs job better.

I think the point that Cross is making is that, even though BLM can hit those numbers, the trade-off for other jobs with similar results favors other jobs... by far. The argument that you're using against him is building BLM based parties or alliances which is not what he's citing.

I LOVE BLM and the idea of it, but he's not wrong in his posts. I hate that SCH and RDM didn't outclass it, but I'd be happy if they were able to incorporate it in events without having to build around it.

The issue is on fights where they both don't easily hit 99k you are likely better off with a set up that doesn't include BLMs.

Also you kind of have to assume someone else is providing the SCs to MB off of if you are considering bringing a BLM so SCH being able to use strats for damage is the fairest comparison because otherwise you are looking at the situation of no one else provides the SCs and the SCH making their own SCs to MB off of compared to a BLM in that same situation just has no SCs to MB off of and that's a very one sided comparison.

A good SCH can easily double MB their own SCs, SCH can actually cast faster than any other job and yes triple MBs off a single SC when others make SC for you are doable if you get the timing consistent with the SCer.

Gearing SCH for MBs is definitely more of a pain without access to ea/ea+1 and usually relying on rare merlinic augments, this does cause a lot of variance between SCHs but if you make a nearly ideal set you are very competitive with BLMs.

The rest just boils down to that SCH provides far far more utility than BLM and if you gear it right the damage difference is negligible, in many cases there is no damage difference since both just hit the cap and that's pretty unfair for BLM. Especially if you consider that the BLM is usually relying on SCH weather and SCH SCs.

Who is doing this in the current state of the game

linkshell leaders addicted to BLM? ;)

That is the issue with setup efficiency, not the issue with job roles. The way cross worded it sounds like they are discussing job roles.

BLM is designed to be the best nuker in game and it's meant to be a nuker but nothing else. Since MB setup isn't efficient these days obviously a mage DD would be less useful than a more versatile job like SCH geo RDM which doesn't have to be a mage DD.

But they made a point saying SCH geo can deal as much damage as BLM because MB cap at 99k, which is misinformation afaik.

I can see SCH geo hit 99k against things like CP mob or when bolster/gambit all on. But against higher lv mob like dyna w3 run when macc matters and resist wall exists, I don't see it happen unless something has changed about geo nuking in past 2 years.

Decided to find the BLM w3 video posted way back in 2018.



According to parse the best BLM in the alliance parsed 24% but best SCH parsed 9%. Yeah, very "negligible". Or did SE buff SCH damage by 250% in past 2.5 years? I'm not convinced.

Also he didn't filter chat log. Take a closer look not all T5 MB hit 99k. Many T5 including SCH's hit more like 70k. You guys made it sound like SCH MB 99k every single nuke in endgame which is just not true based on the data.

In terms of efficiency, it was a 16 min run boss fight with BLMs. I wouldn't say it's horrible. When we did hybrid melee setup it's possible to push the clear speed below 10 min BUT you need a decked out DP cor, 2 BRD, 2 WHM in the alliance which are all pretty rare jobs. V.S BLM setup doesn't need any of these support and damn near impossible to wipe. I wouldn't say BLM setup is terrible just because how little investment it requires and how safe it is.

You are free to have your own negative opinion about BLM setup if you want. But if you want to make an argument about SCH being same level of DD don't you think it's more convincing to provide some kind of parse or data to back it up?


You know what's funny? There were several 2020 endgame LS that I know of, brought armies of melee DP COR to w3 runs but still kill slower than the 2018 BLM alliance in the video above because their melee party wiped to circle blade/AF/whatever.

What forum said about the "best" setup isn't always the best for everybody depending on people.

Another SCH adds more burst chances increasing overall damage per second. Parses are biased toward BLM who are there only to nuke. So should compare speed of run using BLMs or SCHs.

Black Mage can offer the same amount of burst opportunity. Black mage isn't just all nuking. One nuke can grant you 1000 TP if properly geared and you can open a darkness with vidohunir > leaden or even self skillchain a strong distortion doing vido > vido. With Mythic Weapon, Vidohunir does some nice damage too.

not to mention the added attribute to Vidohunir of lowering MDB by 10. No, its not gamebreaking, but who's gonna turn that down in a dedicated mage setup, in particular since if its going off, its highly likely you've got a Laev BLM or two proccing AM2s.