For anyone who missed it yesterday, here's a link to the introduction to this series and my standard for the criteria. I would like to begin by defining a couple of terms for anyone unfamiliar with them.
GCDs: Global Cooldown, the timer in between each action you can take in FFXIV, universal to every class, which is lowered by certain class features, skills, and the skill and spell speed stats. Optimizing how you use each GCD is the key to optimal play once you have your rotation down, and it's an important factor in gauging a classes ability to get around it and use it well.
oGCDs: Off Global Cooldowns are any skill that isn't bound by the global cooldown, and can be cast at any time unless your character is in a casting animation or otherwise disabled. These often have a .7 second cast time to perform the animation, and finding ways to fit them between GCDs is an important skill in DPS and healing optimizations.
DOTs: Damage over times, any skill that applies a damage effect that slowly ticks damage over time to the enemy it's applied to. Most classes have one form of DOT, like lightning for Black Mage. DOTs are often very high potency once they've fully gone through, which means applying them regularly is a very large damage increase in most cases.
Procs: A proc is any skill or ability that isn't normally available, but becomes available when a certain condition is met. For the example of Black Mage, they have access to Thundercloud and Firestarter, both of which let you cast skills with reduced cast times and no mana cost.
Class Quests: 4/10 Fun to Play: 9/10 Complexity: 9/10 Depth: 8/10 Levelling: 2/10
TLDR: Black mage is a unique and interesting class that rewards your time put into it, but feels somewhat clunky in early levels both due to getting abilities that you can’t use until others are unlocked, and due to being wholly unrepresentative of the future playstyle of the class. You're constantly relearning your rotation, and the whole class doesn't actually feel complete until 60.
Introduction: Black Mage, classic of Final Fantasy, masters of destruction and of big damage numbers. Black Mage translate to XIV as a lone wolf DPS class, with no party utility, focussing solely on their own output, which, in the right hands, is the highest in the game. The class is very, very hard to play properly and not a little unintuitive in some ways. The basic idea is to expend all of your mana in your Astral Fire phase, casting insanely powerful fire spells amped up even further as you go along, then switching to Umbral Ice to regain mana and reapply your DOTs. As you go up this simple process gets more and more complex, with timers, Umbral Hearts, and a variety of procs and abilities that increase your damage.
Class Quests: Thaumaturge 1-30: These are unfortunately, in my opinion, the best quests Black Mage gets on the path to 60, so I would recommend taking the time to enjoy them. That said though, these are really fun quests. They aren't particularly deep, but tell the tale of a group of brothers who are hilariously extra but also noticeably less confident than they let on. While later quests take the master of destruction thing a touch too seriously, the roots here remember to have fun with the idea, which is used to great effect. The duties here are needlessly hard, and don't seem to have been designed around the fact that you have no way of defending yourself and your spells get cancelled. I didn't fail them or anything, but the balance just feels off for how frail the class feels on it's own.
Black Mage 30-50: This whole questline really feels rushed and lacking impact. There's a lot of twists which seem to be here for the sake of having them, and many of the characters involved are barely present until right at the end. The beast tribe companions are fun and enjoyable as characters, but once again you run into the trouble of being insanely frail alone and the game throwing duties at you which are frustrating to complete.
Black Mage 50-60: These are an improvement over the ARR quests for sure, but they still struggle with an overly serious tone and poor characterization. The new character here goes from open hostility to total respect in no time at all, and the objective is unexciting at best. The best part of this quest line is the final duty, where I found myself tearing up a little when your companions arrive to help you save the day. The Stormblood quests are off to an interesting start, so perhaps this section will get a boost in a later write up.
Fun to Play: There is very little that is as satisfying in this game is getting to do your uninterrupted rotation standing in your ley lines. So fun in fact, many black mages choose to die over dodging abilities. This sort of goes over my main problem with the class as a whole, which is the long cast times locking you out of good mobility, and enochian making it difficult to stop DPSing or risk losing your whole rotation and having to start from scratch. The challenge of the class comes from managing those two, and when you pull it off, it feels really good. Your spells are huge and impactful, and it really feels like your playing the master of destruction class. It seems to me like most of what you get going forward helps address the mobility concerns, which makes this class high on my list of classes to 80.
Complexity: The managing of various timers, your own cast times, positioning in ley lines, and mana leaves you a lot of things to consider at any given moment. I firmly believe black mage is one of the hardest classes to play optimally, and you really see it if you check DPS stats. Dungeon black mages tend to either barely do any damage, or double whatever I’m capable of applying, especially the ones that don’t join the Dragoon’s in tanking the floor. It’s incredibly satisfying to pull off properly, but can be slightly intimidating at times to keep working at, and failing to understand the core idea of using up all of your mana leaves can leave you not understanding what you're doing wrong.
Depth: The reason depth is slightly lower than complexity is simply because Black Mage doesn’t have to worry about anyone other than themselves, which inherently lowers the depth of the job. They are purely focused on their own output, their own ley lines, and don’t have to worry for the most part about how anyone else is doing. Still though, they are one of the hardest classes to properly pump out big numbers on, so that alone leaves them fairly high in depth of play. I would rarely say that I’m bored, or not thinking trying to pull off proper rotation on Black mage. There's just a lot to do and manage, and thinking ahead is huge when cast times can lock you out of actions.
Levelling: This is certainly Black Mage’s weakest point. Many times throughout the levelling process, you’re given one half of a combo, and then have to wait until you receive the other half, like when you get fire 3, only to have to wait 5 levels before you can even use it. The class feels clunky and difficult at low levels, with your AOE feeling weak, and no procs or reduced cast times making it feel very dull at times. There are plenty of bait abilities, like how spamming only freeze and thunder 2 is optimal until you unlock flare, or how blizzard 4 essentially does nothing until you get fire 4, or how blizzard 2 and sleep can both be safely removed from your hotbar immediately. The final annoyance is the transition from Thaumaturge to Black Mage, a feeling of that’s it when your only reward is an ability that restores 30% mana. While it’s a powerful cooldown later, it makes the transition feel mostly hollow, or ceremonious in nature, with no tangible difference between the two until you get to level 40.
The class really comes alive at 42, when you have all your procs unlocked, and the transition between ice and fire phase is smooth due to reduced cast times and getting all three stacks at once. From there it’s just sort of waiting until 60 to have your real rotation, which takes some relearning as it’s fairly different and harder than the one you’ve been getting used to for the last 20 levels. If you can push through though, the class is well worth the effort.
Conclusion: Overall, I’d recommend Black Mage, but not as a first class, and only with the understanding that those first 40 or so levels are going to be pretty painful. It’s fun, makes you feel powerful, and is a challenge to learn, and most of all is very unique. I would highly recommend looking up a levelling rotation guide, as it changes often and it’s difficult to know what abilities are worth using in the early game. The quests aren’t exactly mind blowing, but are fun in their own ways. If you’re looking for a more difficult DPS, or you want to die for the glory of your ley lines, this one is certainly for you.
Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see with these or have any comments, questions or concerns about anything I said here. Tomorrow's class will be Bard.
submitted by /u/SealMeetsClub
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Continue reading...
GCDs: Global Cooldown, the timer in between each action you can take in FFXIV, universal to every class, which is lowered by certain class features, skills, and the skill and spell speed stats. Optimizing how you use each GCD is the key to optimal play once you have your rotation down, and it's an important factor in gauging a classes ability to get around it and use it well.
oGCDs: Off Global Cooldowns are any skill that isn't bound by the global cooldown, and can be cast at any time unless your character is in a casting animation or otherwise disabled. These often have a .7 second cast time to perform the animation, and finding ways to fit them between GCDs is an important skill in DPS and healing optimizations.
DOTs: Damage over times, any skill that applies a damage effect that slowly ticks damage over time to the enemy it's applied to. Most classes have one form of DOT, like lightning for Black Mage. DOTs are often very high potency once they've fully gone through, which means applying them regularly is a very large damage increase in most cases.
Procs: A proc is any skill or ability that isn't normally available, but becomes available when a certain condition is met. For the example of Black Mage, they have access to Thundercloud and Firestarter, both of which let you cast skills with reduced cast times and no mana cost.
Class Quests: 4/10 Fun to Play: 9/10 Complexity: 9/10 Depth: 8/10 Levelling: 2/10
TLDR: Black mage is a unique and interesting class that rewards your time put into it, but feels somewhat clunky in early levels both due to getting abilities that you can’t use until others are unlocked, and due to being wholly unrepresentative of the future playstyle of the class. You're constantly relearning your rotation, and the whole class doesn't actually feel complete until 60.
Introduction: Black Mage, classic of Final Fantasy, masters of destruction and of big damage numbers. Black Mage translate to XIV as a lone wolf DPS class, with no party utility, focussing solely on their own output, which, in the right hands, is the highest in the game. The class is very, very hard to play properly and not a little unintuitive in some ways. The basic idea is to expend all of your mana in your Astral Fire phase, casting insanely powerful fire spells amped up even further as you go along, then switching to Umbral Ice to regain mana and reapply your DOTs. As you go up this simple process gets more and more complex, with timers, Umbral Hearts, and a variety of procs and abilities that increase your damage.
Class Quests: Thaumaturge 1-30: These are unfortunately, in my opinion, the best quests Black Mage gets on the path to 60, so I would recommend taking the time to enjoy them. That said though, these are really fun quests. They aren't particularly deep, but tell the tale of a group of brothers who are hilariously extra but also noticeably less confident than they let on. While later quests take the master of destruction thing a touch too seriously, the roots here remember to have fun with the idea, which is used to great effect. The duties here are needlessly hard, and don't seem to have been designed around the fact that you have no way of defending yourself and your spells get cancelled. I didn't fail them or anything, but the balance just feels off for how frail the class feels on it's own.
Black Mage 30-50: This whole questline really feels rushed and lacking impact. There's a lot of twists which seem to be here for the sake of having them, and many of the characters involved are barely present until right at the end. The beast tribe companions are fun and enjoyable as characters, but once again you run into the trouble of being insanely frail alone and the game throwing duties at you which are frustrating to complete.
Black Mage 50-60: These are an improvement over the ARR quests for sure, but they still struggle with an overly serious tone and poor characterization. The new character here goes from open hostility to total respect in no time at all, and the objective is unexciting at best. The best part of this quest line is the final duty, where I found myself tearing up a little when your companions arrive to help you save the day. The Stormblood quests are off to an interesting start, so perhaps this section will get a boost in a later write up.
Fun to Play: There is very little that is as satisfying in this game is getting to do your uninterrupted rotation standing in your ley lines. So fun in fact, many black mages choose to die over dodging abilities. This sort of goes over my main problem with the class as a whole, which is the long cast times locking you out of good mobility, and enochian making it difficult to stop DPSing or risk losing your whole rotation and having to start from scratch. The challenge of the class comes from managing those two, and when you pull it off, it feels really good. Your spells are huge and impactful, and it really feels like your playing the master of destruction class. It seems to me like most of what you get going forward helps address the mobility concerns, which makes this class high on my list of classes to 80.
Complexity: The managing of various timers, your own cast times, positioning in ley lines, and mana leaves you a lot of things to consider at any given moment. I firmly believe black mage is one of the hardest classes to play optimally, and you really see it if you check DPS stats. Dungeon black mages tend to either barely do any damage, or double whatever I’m capable of applying, especially the ones that don’t join the Dragoon’s in tanking the floor. It’s incredibly satisfying to pull off properly, but can be slightly intimidating at times to keep working at, and failing to understand the core idea of using up all of your mana leaves can leave you not understanding what you're doing wrong.
Depth: The reason depth is slightly lower than complexity is simply because Black Mage doesn’t have to worry about anyone other than themselves, which inherently lowers the depth of the job. They are purely focused on their own output, their own ley lines, and don’t have to worry for the most part about how anyone else is doing. Still though, they are one of the hardest classes to properly pump out big numbers on, so that alone leaves them fairly high in depth of play. I would rarely say that I’m bored, or not thinking trying to pull off proper rotation on Black mage. There's just a lot to do and manage, and thinking ahead is huge when cast times can lock you out of actions.
Levelling: This is certainly Black Mage’s weakest point. Many times throughout the levelling process, you’re given one half of a combo, and then have to wait until you receive the other half, like when you get fire 3, only to have to wait 5 levels before you can even use it. The class feels clunky and difficult at low levels, with your AOE feeling weak, and no procs or reduced cast times making it feel very dull at times. There are plenty of bait abilities, like how spamming only freeze and thunder 2 is optimal until you unlock flare, or how blizzard 4 essentially does nothing until you get fire 4, or how blizzard 2 and sleep can both be safely removed from your hotbar immediately. The final annoyance is the transition from Thaumaturge to Black Mage, a feeling of that’s it when your only reward is an ability that restores 30% mana. While it’s a powerful cooldown later, it makes the transition feel mostly hollow, or ceremonious in nature, with no tangible difference between the two until you get to level 40.
The class really comes alive at 42, when you have all your procs unlocked, and the transition between ice and fire phase is smooth due to reduced cast times and getting all three stacks at once. From there it’s just sort of waiting until 60 to have your real rotation, which takes some relearning as it’s fairly different and harder than the one you’ve been getting used to for the last 20 levels. If you can push through though, the class is well worth the effort.
Conclusion: Overall, I’d recommend Black Mage, but not as a first class, and only with the understanding that those first 40 or so levels are going to be pretty painful. It’s fun, makes you feel powerful, and is a challenge to learn, and most of all is very unique. I would highly recommend looking up a levelling rotation guide, as it changes often and it’s difficult to know what abilities are worth using in the early game. The quests aren’t exactly mind blowing, but are fun in their own ways. If you’re looking for a more difficult DPS, or you want to die for the glory of your ley lines, this one is certainly for you.
Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see with these or have any comments, questions or concerns about anything I said here. Tomorrow's class will be Bard.
submitted by /u/SealMeetsClub
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...