The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

Coding my suggestions is extremely simple. Where the magic burst snippet of the formula happens the pseudocode is

IF Magic Burst = TRUE
DO - Magic Burst Formula
ELSE IF Main Job = Black Mage
DO - Elemental Free Nuke Affinity Merits

That's pretty much it. And the second part is even simpler. It's just removing the segment of the -aoe magic formula that reduces elemental magic damage inflicted per additional target. Just cut out that small snippet and bam, implemented.


Both of these are reasonable job improvements if you ask me, and both are very easy to implement with their limited resources. Technically this wouldn't even be enough to catch black mage's free nukes up to most reasonable melee DD either, because haste and all... but the job sure as hell would feel a lot less miserable to bring to non-coordinated magic burst events. Black mage is FINE in its bursting role. It's... everything else the job does that needs tweaking. This would be a simple and effecient way to start. And I'm sure it would make a lot of players very happy.

If they didn't do much else to Ancient Magic, then yeah. If the AM series as a whole was retooled around that sort of utility, then it might be different. As it stands, those spells don't exactly have much point to them. If they're limited in their ability to add new spells (as I think is the case), then it'd just make sense to reimagine some of those unique spell lines that already have reserved space. Maybe not in the direction I mentioned, but, somehow.

Well originally ancient magic was just designed around the concept of "long cast time, extremely high power". Lore wise it's, well... ancient magic. Long forgotten magics from the people of ages past, spoken in the arcane language of a forgotten tongue. The merit category was just an additional level of it to keep in tune with the rest of the spells scaling. Ancient magic 1 falls in the range of tier 3 single targets and tier 2-gas, so it made sense that by the time we had an additional tier of single and aoe spells another tier of ancient magic would fit for our merit ability.

Also there are a ton of things in the game that don't have much point to them. I could cite thief's steal, mug, and despoil abilities as "pretty damn pointless". They never added decent steal pools to mobs beyond gold beastcoins because they were afraid players would, uh.. steal stuff from mobs.... and it might affect the economy. Yeah. Despoil and mug follow the same philosophy. WHOOO, MUG for 40 gil every 15 minutes (they lowered the recast to 5 minutes in August of 2014 and it's still just as useless). They tried to incorporate them into our merit categories but aside from the ooccasional oddball aura steal to dispel a spikes effect nobody cares about them... at all.

That's why I think a more practical way to fix Black Mage is to just tweak its damage output. Since black mage still has its utility signature crowd control role and magic bursting ability there's no need to go overboard, but as it stands the gap between TP burn and black mage free nuking is just too damn LARGE. It needs to be a little closer, and my personal opinion isthat scaling up nuking damage with affinity bonuses is a good way to start.

just throwin' an idea out there to see what sticks.

What about removing the 99,999 damage cap and resist wall for just bursts? If the overall alliance DPS of a skillchain/burst setup could rival a TP burn, then the lower amount of TP fed to the mob from a SC/burst setup would have benefit, and the playerbase "might" move toward it. Hell, even limit the breaking of the cap to melee skillchain production vs. Immanence skillchains to encourage mixed setups.

Again, I'm just throwing something out there in the hopes of new ideas. Not sure what they matter on this site versus the OF outside of fun theorycraft, but hey, gotta spend my day off some way.

Then the meta just becomes SCH Immanence spam Fusion, SMN Burn Flaming Crush on repeat. Has to be something exclusive to BLM/nukers.

Mixed setups IE; Nuker in the party with skillchain makers(non sch) are never going to come back.

If it's slightly inconvenient, then the damage increase has to be astronomical to match.

To get a burster(blm, specifically) into a melee party, and get melee to make skillchains, and wait for bursts, the burst has to do a literal million damage. (maybe 500k will do it) Before buffs. Because if the cor brd and geo have to give independent buffs to the blm, it's not going to happen.

Well, problem is in single party content which is most stuff. It's a lot more efficient to stack 1 type. Even if nuking vs tp burn was of the same power, your problem is your geo (and other support) can only really buff one type or the other, or it will offer mediocre support to both. That's going to limit mixed setups more than raising the dmg cap on MB would help. So in that scenario, you'd still Nuke burn setup, but you'd slot a SAM meditating on the side line without buffs, cause your buffs going to nukers, and then run in, self SC, run out.

So you just traded a lacklustre melee SC bot to take the role of the sch using immanence, but the SCH could have nuked too.

Either ways, no one wins, except TP burns remaining so far ahead in group dps still.

Problem's still the resist wall.

They just need to remove the magic damage wall on NM's and find a way to increase the MDMG for nukes. My idea was always a trait that gave a MDMG boost based on current TP, something along the lines of 1000TP = +100~200 MDMG and so forth (permanent stronger cascade). Lower Cascades timer to 10s and give it a bigger potency boost. This would create a purpose for OA outside of just getting MP back while also creating a strategic scenario where the BLM has to choose between sustained DPS via lower tier nuke spam or big shock damage by burning their TP for a boost or even to recover MP.

*BAM* Elemental damage fixed while introducing strategy and not breaking the game in the process.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Spaekona%27s_Coat_%2B3

is pretty much going to assure that no matter what SE does, BLM will never have MP trouble.

You gotta give up damage to use the AF body as it has no offensive stats on it's own. I only toggled it on when I was running low on MP and needed to live off fumes until convert was up.

The body is a really powerful slot for damage, so it's a valid trade off to consider, just like losing a few hundred MDMG per nuke for a MP restoral.

Uhm, what are you talking about exactly? My BLM mule auto-bursts and has no trouble whatsoever landing a T6 AND a T5 nuke in a single burst window even if the first cast starts after the Skillchain message appears in the log. Capping Fastcast for elemental nukes is trivial on BLM.


I feel these things should belong to Ultimate Skillchains from Aeonic weapons. Have Radiance/Umbra SC not be subject to magic wall (or greatly reduced, further reducible by gambit) and they suddenly become much more, well, Ultimate.

That's actually pretty reasonable. Ultimate skillchain negates resist.

But it's not enough... it has to make t1 do 99999 from blm only. And it still doesn't solve the core issue. What happens when not bursting.

Unless hes talking about doing multiple burst unresisted think the most you can get is 3-4 burst off in the magic burst with out going ontop each other and getting hit with the 1/2 3/4 7/8 resist

diggin the thought on Radiance/Umbra. Would definitely encourage their usage more in the right setup.

Remove resist wall period, or give it to melee jobs also. For the matter, pld and run should lose enmity and defense the more they are hit, nin should lose evasion.
Everything else is a half *** measure, why bother. Take blm out of the game,or conversely, take warp rings/ cudgels out. give it a purpose, or get it out of the way.

Everyone with 75BLM+ should put at least 1pt into each merit spell before update lands to learn them for free. ^_^

Speculation time, what are your 5 new t1 merits?

Magic Burst damage II (2% per merit)
Magic Burst Accuracy (+5 magic accuracy per merit)
MP conversion (mp restored based on damage, 1% per merit)
Occult Acumen effect (+10 per merit)
Elemental Mastery (+5% chance to bypass all magic resistance)

hahaha someone is far too optimistic.

Spikes damage +
Sleep duration ?
Elemental Dot +
Aspir/Drain potency ?

Curious for thoughts regarding Khonsu grip from ambu upgrades vs Enki strap. Going to put it in pdt and mana wall sets but the hefty macc, haste, and enmity- is tempting to use fulltime vs int+10 macc+10

Enki is just for mevasion set. Khonsu looks sweet overall, but lose enmity during manawall tanking.

Enki is really macc +15~20 once you figure in dINT. I wouldn't sacrifice greater spell base damage for 10~15 macc unless it was something supremely evasive.

The enmity is meh, since we mostly just MB anyway.

Haste is actually nice tho.

No amount of Enmity+/- from gear matters as far as Mana Wall tanking goes until they give us a way to lower enmity lost when taking hits with it up. :(

We also have too much natural enmity- to begin with for it to matter much as far as gear goes.

Well, for normal dmg taken enmity+ reduces CE loss, and enmity- increases it. I'm aware that Manawall uses a different mechanic, but has anyone actually tested if Enmity+/- gear can modify the CE loss under Manawall?

Probably going to get dropped to 4x categories to match normal jobs' choices. What I'm hoping for (and not going to get):

Ancient Mastery: Increase Ancient Magic damage and accuracy by 3 per merit point.
-Relic: +2 to each effect per merit.
Applies to both I/II tiers, damage=affinity. Not actually hoping for this, but do expect at least 1x something to boost AMs.

Elemental Wisdom: Increase the effects of Elemental debuffs by +6 and duration by 6 seconds per merit. (Affects both DOT+AttrDown)
Relic: Matching element MDB-3 per merit.
Lots of requests for improvements to the Elemental Debuff line of spells. This would accomplish what we want w/o requiring changes to the actual spells themselves.

Meteor Storm: Meteor reduces resistance to magic damage and reduces recast of Elemental Seal by 60 seconds per merit.
- Relic: add'l +12 sec debuff duration per merit
Debuff duration: 180sec. Base: +1 tier, each merit: +0.5 tier
(Extra not-getting this since I think merits have to apply to lv75 or under effects/spells/abilities only? I guess they could lower the level requirement for learning Meteor to 75 to let this happen though. lol)

Elemental Fury [New "stance" JA, 2hr duration]: Increase elemental magic enmity gained, damage dealt, and status effect duration. Reduce enmity lost due to enemy actions.
- Relic: Occult Acumen +10 per additional merit.
Base effects: Enmity+20/MDMG+100/EnmityLoss-30%/DebuffDuration+10sec.
Add'l merits: Enmity+5/MDMG+50/EnmityLoss-5%/DebuffDuration+5%
(Possibly impossible? Not sure if there's even still room for any actually new JAs. ><;; Damage increase stat could probably use tweaking, but picturing a significant freenuke improvement without overbuffing MB's... Could address our lacking output when free nuking, we have enough natural enmity- that competent tanks shouldn't have a problem holding agro vs it. Worded to affect Burn-type & Firaja-type debuffs, AND would pair perfectly with Mana Wall. >:D My dream JA for BLM. lol)


.... Prepared to be disappointed come patch day. T_T

I don't know how to test enmity, but sounds probably boring enough that I wouldn't be able to do enough testing to get reliable results, tbh. ^^;;

I don't believe that Enmity+/- affects enmity loss with Mana Wall up though. I believe that damage taken while MW is up doesn't even qualify as "damage" for most intents/purposes/formulas since no HP is lost. With MW up, you lose a static -180 enmity per incoming hit, which is independent of the incoming damage value.

According to BG's page on Enmity, there's no mention of Enmity+/- stats in the CE Loss section, and there are only a handful of items/effects that reduce enmity lost on taking damage, all of which are PLD or RUN only things as well... Are you sure that Enmity+/- affects normal enmity loss for non-tank classed jobs?

Do you know how Enmity+/- interacts with Utsusemi? I suspect MW may be coded similarly.

I do know that I tried putting together an Enmity+ set for my BLM and still couldn't hold hate vs wipe recovery Raise/Cure spam regardless of what I cast. :(

I personally wouldn't call it boring, but... CE loss is one of the most annoying types of enmity test to do. Since it depends more on the mob's behavior than other tests. It's often difficult to control how much dmg you take and physical dmg varies obnoxiously making it very hard to reproduce a given test.

That would be a failing of the wiki page then. Cause we have the mechanic straight from SE.
From the FEB 18th 2014 version update notes
Now as I'm sure you've noted that it did say when receiving damage. So you could reasonably argue that Manawall doesn't count. You could also somewhat less reasonably argue that it's damaging your MP, and they didn't specify HP damage. XD

While I think it's reasonable to assume that it doesn't affect manawall CE loss, that is an assumption, if one with a fair basis. But this is SE. Lords of spaghetti code and poor descriptions. Many a time have we discovered things didn't work out quite as "Described."

Basically, needs to be tested. Like pretty much everything else about this mechanic.
Nope. No idea. There has been to my knowledge no testing on this mechanic at all. None to see what all it can affect, and none to quantify how much each point of enmity+/- does.

I've made some attempts, but they were frustrating and fruitless attempts. About all I got out of it is that it may be possible to reduce CE loss to 0 when the dmg taken is low enough per hit.

But Utsu specifically might be the easiest thing to test. It's a static CE- value, and could even be used against lvl one mobs. They'll take a shadow eventually. It removes a lot of the randomness that comes with trying to test actual damage taken CE loss. I suppose I could say the same for manawall actually. Wouldn't actually be that hard to test.

my gut is saying that enmity changes with Mana Wall up are probably more like getting hit with Stoneskin up and the hit being soaked up by that stoneskin completely. Nothing to back it up, it just seems like the easiest way SE would code it if it doesn't act like receiving regular damage.

A minor follow up. I tested ustu shadow loss CE loss. Lost -25 CE with 0 enmity+. Lost -25 CE with +30 enmity. So no effect.

Since this is a pretty good parallel for Manawall, I would agree at this point that enmity+/- probably doesn't affect manawall CE loss. But I maintain that it should be tested for manawall specifically as they are not quite the same thing. I might test it myself at somepoint. My alt does have BLM, just not really geared or with a functioning lua.