The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

Getting some mixed descriptions on the "resist wall" or "nuke wall."

Apparently this applies to non-magic bursts as well? Does it only apply for damaging spells, or would something like a Slow spell make the enemy take less damage from Earth for 3 (5?) seconds?

If I'm solo magic bursting or nuking, do I ever have to worry about this? Does it last long enough that one spell to the next will be affected, or is it generally only a problem if you try to volley a monster with multiple nukes from different people? Can I do something like Fire VI -> Firaja on a skillchain and not worry about the reduction, or should I do two different elements?

Lastly, I asked this question in the random question thread, but I probably should've just asked it here:

We have been using one to pull and hold mobs in dynamis...wave3 mobs.

Also the impact/burns/crowd control are all a plus over the DPS

I'm not sure on the specifics for nuke/resist wall, but for mana wall you need to keep the feet on or you lose the boost. I think my lua equips empyrean feet then disables the slot until it wears off.

So its the same sets that are used for the raetic/Lathi. I had no idea people even bothered with BLMs in dyna wave 3, seems odd but thats nice that people still use it lol. I'm assuming you mean as far as the MACC, it isn't like BLM is lacking it though.

I wanna do blm strat again melee strat is boring been doing it so long could use the change up.

It only applies to damage nukes from what I understand and have noticed. You can nuke wall yourself if you cast fast enough I guess but its gotta be rare. If nuking with someone you and you have better gear you wanna get the first nuke off so you don't hit with the wall. You aren't gonna hit 99k nukes back to back but should still be higher depending on content and gear.

I still keep my BLM geared just in case they magically make it useful. I loved BLM in all FF games, I wish they give BLM Ultima spell or something cool, but I liked Death lol. They should also change Meteor up somehow, no way people will use 6 BLMs anymore.

While you can argue that you can tailor a setup to use BLM, it certainly isn't optimal at all over other options, so in reality it isn't a good excuse.

For Aspir, is there a clear winner between these 2?

1. Arch. Sabots +3 (can't find info on bonus potency)
2. Merlinic Crackows w/+18 Drain/Aspir

Yea we added a second puller to our setup and its BLM.

Path C SU5.
Manawall build + DT build.

refresh3
entrust refresh
ballad 2/3
minne 5
honormarch
evokersroll
tacticiansroll

Thoughts? Improvments?

Unfortunately he's galka -.-

There's your improvement. Taru ftw. Galka smell too fat.

Recommended improvements for the Manawall setup?

ItemSet 373521


I haven't figured out if head/hands/legs should have refresh/meva/mp/etc...?

What do other people put in those slots?

Im sure its situational. Like are we super tanking melee mobs or mobs that cast... Is there a great happy medium?

Thanks in advance!

ItemSet 343718
If you aren't being hit by a lot of magic, consider swapping a bunch for more HP/MP/refresh. (amalric has the MP, merlinic the refresh; sadly volte has trash for hp/mp or that'd probably do best)
I haven't seen evidence of dmg > mp working with manawall active. 0dmg -x MP. Maybe it's just because I've never regained mp that it's hard to see or it may just check after the manawall check.

Thanks. Relic gloves +3 look like best option for non magic maybe?

Can anyone confirm if "Converts X% of damage taken to MP" works with/before manawall active?

Thanks in advance!

Yeah, high defense for a mage and a lot of MP. when you drop below w/e you could swap to refresh+ instead if you want to truly min/max.

You seem to have practice with this. I was impressed with our BLMs ability to mass pull and hold mobs in dynamis wave 2/3 farm sessions. Even pulling fetters mobs and holding them all no problem.

Whats the most exciting thing you've done with manawall?

sadly, I haven't played BLM in years. I love the job and want to see it be made better.
Last time I played BLM for real was when WoC was still new and we were manaburning geas fete NMs.
We didn't need for manawall since the tank was the only character close enough to the NMs to get hit.

I have supertanked several NMs through wipes on RDM & GEO just swapping to a meva heavy set and keeping myself alive with little effort.

I'm not convinced there is anything wrong with BLM.

We do proper buffs and proper a proper party alignment for him.

Not only is the pulling fantastic. But the additions of the BLM debuffs that can be casted like burn/impact and random bursting.

One shotting stats.

At least in dynamis I would say BLM is doing just fine.

Is it reliable to one shoot statues on BLM? ive just doing this on COR but all my COR already unlocked all relic pieces already.

Imo, it's nothing wrong with BLM as a job, no. The Job performs its tasks and duties just fine, even better than ever probably.

The problem I feel is that BLMs BIGGEST draw is Magic Burst and SE placed a very heavy nerf on Magic Burst with the Consecutive Burst nerf. Back when they did it, the nerf made sense because LSs were using BLM and Death ONLY to kill things. But Now? It's probably time to take that nerf off I think because it's much easier to just Buff a Magical DD to hell and just let em' rip.

I feel SE should remove that Burst Penalty or weaken it. And possibly look into allowing Bursts to break the damage cap as well. Just thoughts. Mine's still geared but it's been on the shelf for years now and I don't think I'm alone in this.

Edit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/49eyc6/multiple_magic_bursts/

Seems it's a penalty to Elemental Spells in general not just Magic Bursts? Idk, seems much more noticeable on Bursts than anything but still its there.

Elemental magic multiple target damage reduction needs to also be deleted from the code. BLU, BST, SMN, and any AoE WS aren't made to pay this penalty and when SE doesn't want us using AoE's to kill, they reduce the damage on secondary targets by a factor of like 10 anyway. That extra penalty just makes the -ga & -ra spells trash compared to their competition.

Excellent point. Yeah this really should be fixed, literally every other form of AoE in the game does full damage across all targets unless forcefully halted. Elemental -Ga, -Ja, and -Ra should be the same as everything else, like why not? Lol

There are ways to implement a "consecutive magic use penalty" without destroying the concept of magical strategies, and there are ways with some fights to even avoid it completely.

-total damage marker before damage is reduced.

-change how non-BLMs burst. Either separate non-BLMs from the resist wall rules by not having their nukes count, or cap their damage massively compared to BLMs. They have other contributions to the battle, BLM not nearly as much. In some ways that would be like 1handed swords increasing a -DT wall while the PLD beats on a mob, then your greatsword DRK shows up and can't hit for ***because of the -DT wall caused by lesser DDs. Let BLMs still hit full damage as long as they're not being cockblocked by lesser mages.


-stop your goofball RDMs,BLUs,SMNs, and GEOs from bursting if you brought 3 BLMs. I dont' care how good your GEO burst set is. Its not a T6 nuke with more natural MAB,MBB, and better gear.

-vary the nuke used among different players. Say 2 use Lightning and 2 use Fire on Light chains for example.

I really think there has to be a way to allow BLMs to do their job without borking the game completely to where only BLM strats are used.

^
Cele, somedays I hate playing COR for the reasons you state about non BLMs lowering the burst damage of fully geared BLMs.

I love helping other groups and LSes, but not in a situation where the leader is lacking the support for melee and knowledge of battle mechanics. He'll ask all CORs to Leaden Salute a Dynamis boss down. The leader doesn't understand that this method will dramatically lower the damage of an R15 Death Penalty Cor from 90k to 5k. So you have 2 poorly geared roll CORs who at best can hit 10-20k Leaden Salutes mitigating everyone's Leaden Salutes to 5k and below. If I switch to Wildfire, I get evil stares for not following leader protocol.

Some groups you just can't help until leadership learns humility and has a better grasp of game mechanics.

preach it, sister.

Something I think would be nice for BLM is a trait that changes their Melee to Non-Elemental damage. Kinda like how Arciela attacks. Would give BLMs a potential usefulness to swing at things for funzies (Strictly for funzies though, they'd still get whomped if in AoE range of anything dangerous)

This is so true. It's insane that my Blu can aoe for 20k to each mob WHILE terroring them long enough to get my own sleepga off into another 15-20k aoe that petrifies them, ect, ect. All at the same time meleeing a mob that will give me unlimited MP from my main hand weapon.

And as much as I love that, I would also love to be able to reasonable play my Blm again in some sort of fashion that doesn't involve only doing things with my few friends when we want to kill something differently just because we can.

So...I think that those of us who have played BLM enough are aware of the mistakes made by SE trying to correct over-usage of BLM based tactics:

-the AoE nerf that affects Black Mage nukes but not Blue Mage Nukes (as mentioned right above) or AoE elemental weapon skills (such as Aeolian Edge).

-the resist wall from repetitive usage of the same element that again only affects Black Mages. 6 SMNs can use the same Bloodpact in a row without reduction in damage as they are repeated; 8 Corsairs can use Leaden Salute in a 4 second span, again they all land for their max damage (outside of ONE new mechanic only on a number of mobs less than fingers you have). But 3 Black Mages use 4 Thunder based spells in succession, the last 2 hit for less than they would independently.

There are others, but these two BY FAR have the most negative impact on playability of Black Mage. I think the real solution is to properly address these two major issues in a way that still encourages variety of strategy while also returning BLM to a functioning member of the endgame community. Yes, top groups that work hard can effectively use BLM strats. But one or two "off moments" can result in huge reductions of damage in a battle that can even go so wrong to even cause a failure. Meanwhile, there's never a moment where in a SMN strat if the SMNs are using their abilities too close to each other that results in a fail. They can blindly mash buttons and win. But 4 BLMs can't.

I don't really think the BLM community wants to be able to succeed even while in complete idiot mode and just blindly push ***. They want some finesse involved...but they want that involved for others as well to equalize things. In my opinion- it needs "fixes" on both sides, some extra freedom for BLMs, some restriction added to others.

If someone is good at acting oblivious, make a bug report about elemental magic multiple target damage reduction. I'm not good with making those reports. SE probably forgot they ever added it to BLM way back when BLM was used in OG dynamis to clear waves quickly.

I don't see SE getting rid of MB soft-lock since that is recent. can probably bug report other jobs being immune to it at least.

It would help BLM if SE could remove one piece of code, the MB window closure when another weaponskill is used. Keep all MB windows open until timed out regardless what else is going on. Only thing to change a window's duration is if that element's window is reset to full duration by a repeated skillchain or upgraded skillchain including the same element. fusion > light (light & fire elements reset to full window)

I talked about the AoE damage reduction back when the BLM update was just a month away. That and the terrible scaling of free nuke damage is what's holding BLM back more than anything. Its free nuking damage output is miserable in comparison to jobs that don't have their potencies nerfed.

Elemental Magic AoE suffers a significant damage reduction for each target hit beyond the first, caping at a whopping 60% potency loss with 10 or more targets. So if your thundaja would deal 10,000 damage to 1 mob, it would deal 4,000 damage to 10 mobs. That makes blm's AoE burning worthless. Meanwhile warrior's fell cleave, blue mage's everything AoE, and any job that can use aeolian edge can all cleave without any reduction in potency to as many targets as they can get in range.

Black mage's AoE multi target reduction is a remnant of the level 75 era that was important for game balance at the time. But the game has evolved beyond that scope and it's no longer necessary. BLM needs a rework to its free nuke potency to increase damage output so the scaling isn't quite so linear, and it needs to be able to nuke AoE's at full potency to become relevant in end game content. I think S-E is worried that if they un-nerf the AoE multi target damag ereduction it would become too easy for players to cleave trash mob camps. But that's completely invalidated by the fact we can already do that with blus, warriors, thieves and dancers anyway. There's no difference between blm aoeing camps at full power, and just swapping to a warrior, thief, or blu to do it instead. The result is the same. The only thing it does is hamper blm to the point it's utility is currently "magic burst a few specific mobs and aoe crowd control in dynamis".

is there any updated guide?