BLM Tactics - How do they change at different levels?

[AtraposBLM]

With all the talk about best subs and such, I wanted to know how other black mages went about casting and such at various levels.

For a good while, I remember first casting dia, poison, and blind at the start of the battle, then I'd cast my best nukes, alternating between them until the mob was dead. Any time I pulled aggro, I'd stop casting for a bit and try to med back some MP. As a Taru, I never really ran out of MP, and I think I died *maybe* once due to aggro.

At my level now, I start off by casting Frost/Shock. Then I cast the 2 spells I have that the mob is weak to (Thunder II and Thunder for crabs, Blizzard II and Blizzard for Birds, etc.). Depending on my current MP and the status of the melee's TP, I might try to med back some MP. If I have a lot of MP and the melee's are still low on TP, I'll cast a III spell that stands a good chance of not being resisted (aero III, water III, stone III are the 3 that I have at this point). If the melee are very close to renkei, I'll cast an additional II the mob is weak to, cast Burn, and then MB with the -ga spell I have for the renkei (usually Blizzaga II or Firaga II). If possible, I try to stand where I'll take some AoE damage so that I can drain it back (yes, I know it does damage anyways, but I want to judge *how much* damage it's doing...even though that might not be linked to the HP drained...stupid SE), and I aspir every time I can (crabs only, obviously).

When needed (almost never), I'll cast the -na spell the melee require, or use curaga to wake them.

From what I've found, most whm's will just take care of the -na's literally AS the status effect occurs, so my -na's are usually useless. Also, the whm's in my party tend to have 30-40 points of enhancing over me, so my bar's tend to be useless as well. In addition, using Divine Seal + Curaga is usually overkill, as the whm usually uses Divine Seal with Curaga II and cures much more HP than me, OR, the whm will sit and I'll curaga, and the 180 hp it heals is basically meaningless.



Is what I'm doing wrong, right, similiar or different to what you guys do? I'm trying to be the best BLM I can be, but I also don't want to do things I think are correct and have my party members just be polite when they say I'm doing fine...so, tell me how I'm doing

[Oompa]

It's really refreshing to see such a humbling post such as this in a forum regularly speckled with anger and flames. Very good Kudos to you.

Anyway, being close to the same level as you I have a slightly different outtake on BLM. Although our jobs are the same, they can be played a number of ways to keep with the variety in the game. Here's what I usually do in a battle as a level 56BLM/SMN with 776 MP and 95 INT with melon pies.

I start the battle with an "attack" macro. It casts Burn, Choke, Shock in that order. I will ALWAYS do this for several reasons. Burn lowers INT helping you to hit for more damage, Choke helps melees out to hit the mob better, and Shock lowers MND helping RDM debuffs or whatever else you need to do. Also, these three stack GREAT. Adding a Frost or Drown in there will remove one of these and could end up making things difficult on you. Immediately after I cast Bio II as long as the WHM or RDM isn't casting Dia II. I prefer Bio II because it raises your DARK magic skill and lowers the mobs attack, helping to keep your melees alive a wee bit longer. If Dia II is cast then I ignore this because you can't stack the two together. After casting Bio II I'll cast Aspir to regain some MP used during the debuffs. If I don't cast Bio II, I'll cast whatever element the mob is weak against, version II spell, then cast Aspir. By this time the PLD or NIN tank will have loads of hate built up so you can pretty much go to town nuking away as you wish. I usually stick to Blizzard II and Thunder II for crabs and whatever spell to magic burst off the skillchain. I rarely get resisted but when it happens it's usually a one time thing. With a RDM in the party I can comfortably use up a good 500 MP on each mob if I want because SMN sub adds auto-refresh, stacked with refresh and if needed some juice, I'll be good to go in no time. Easily by the time the puller brings back another mob. After the battle and before the puller runs off the pull I'll usually cast Garuda and use Aerial Armour to help out the WHM a bit. I doesn't last long on the tank, but he definately helps more than hurts.

I don't sub WHM because I got so tired of the partys I was with expecting me to heal more than nuke. If I wanted to heal people to take a load off the WHM I would have been a WHM myself. I find no fun in being a wicked little taru BLM healing people and keeping my party alive. Should something terrible happen, of course, I'll be the first to lay down my life for the party or cast the much needed escape or warp II a dying member out, but I'm not a healer, I'm a "hurter". With the slightly higher INT and loads more MP of a SMN sub I feel I can be a much more effective party member and do what I was brought there to do, kill stuff. Auto-Refresh and liliths rod don't hurt either. I usually end a fight with a RDM or BRD in the party with about 600MP of my original 776MP. That's more than enough to chain at least three more mobs. No one ever waits on me, nor would I ever expect them to. There is absolutly nothing wrong with the way you play your BLM. I actually commend you for playing your way. Everyone needs to find their own nitch in their job and do what they feel makes them the most powerful party member possible. If I could get away with subbing WHM and not being expected to heal so much during battles I would be more than willing to try it again. Until that stereotype is gone, I will keep my SMN sub...

You're doing great, keep up the good work, and do what you do. I feel by reading your post that you ARE being the best BLM you can be. If you're happy with your results in a party, then by all means keep up what you're doing. Bravo!

[Asharu]

This is what I use for each battle:

Paralyze-->Drain-->Aspir

The paralysis is just useful at any level. Negating so many turns of enemy attacks for the mp cost is extremely useful. Drain will always work even if you're at full health. My BLM can drain up to 300hp for a mere 21mp of the spell cost. Aspir is great if you're fighting a magic mob... that's like 100mp right back at ya.

Once these spells are cast, I watch what's going on, whether someone needs a cure or whatnot... if the party is going fine, I start nuking once the enemy's hp is down 1/4-1/2hp. If they are magic bursting that turn, then I just rest until they start the skillchain to MB. IMO, it's all about aggro-control. As a BLM, you don't want to start nuking until the monster has its hate set on your tank. So usually you'll be resting into battle for a good amount, throw in a few quick nukes, and go back to resting and repeating this process... with a few drain, aspirs here and there.

[Asharu]

Also, on another note... spells like Choke and Frost are unfortunately not useful at higher levels. They rarely make any difference at all. You'd be better off casting enfeeble spells if your RDM isn't doing it or throwing a cure here and there to help conserve your WHM's mp (since you'll be resting so much anyway^^).

[evilution]

at 65+ the melee in your group should be concentrating on level 3 skillchains.. The power of a 3 style level 3 light chain is really insane.... So i dont even bother nuking outside of MB any more unless the melee took a long time getting TP and want to save it for the next mob, at wich point i kill the mob ><

So it is Frost, drain, backup heal and wait for MB time. Then i usually burst with Fire3->Thunder3 (as soon as i get 67 i will use Fire3 -> Aeraga 3)

mob is dead after this. Hell most of the time my 2nd spell doesnt even get to land the mob dies after the first burst plus closing WS

EDIT: I should clarify that this works better for some monsters than others. I guess tigers in kuftal are really easy to nuke (and i imagine there are other mobs like this as well) so BLM are encuraged to nuke outside of the WS chain on them.

[Altruist]

I'm leveling blm now, but my main still is rdm. At higher levels I see mainly the same activity described, two level 3 darkness with sam or a 3 WS level 3 with level 2 and level 3 burst. However in regard to the comment on paralyze I don't see how a black mage can land paralyze on most monsters past 64. Even with 261 enfeeble at 68 and +25 mnd I still get resists on darters.

[AtraposBLM]

Good to know that most blm's follow similiar patterns to me.

As for casting frost instead of burn to open, I find that most of the time, my regular spells aren't resisted, so the burn isn't needed. Frost helps the melee hit the mob much more than Choke does, and Burn overwrites Frost. So, my reasoning was that I use Frost to help melee build TP faster, and then overwrite frost with Burn once I need to MB. That makes SURE that my nuke goes through without resist.

As far as paralyze and the ilk, yes, they're amazingly helpful, but 90% of the time since lv41, I've partied with a rdm (brd's are a real rarity on midgardsormr for some reason. I only know like 4 in my level range, if that), so not only does my enfeebling skill suck, it's also considerably lower than what a rdm would have anyways. I'm considering asking some friends my level to devote the first hour of our next EXP party to helping me max my enfeebling skill...but I think that'd be a little selfish. Instead, I guess I'll just toss in a paralyze/slow every fight to try to get the skillups. I rarely bio II, as it's less effective than dia II (if they ever even cast it), and ridiculously prohibitive in MP cost. Plus, with elemental seal, I don't ever have to worry about adds, as I've yet to have an add resist a seal'd Sleep, let alone Sleep II. And it's very rare that we have more than one add per exp session, let alone 1 add every 10 minutes.

As far as bursting 2 III's, how difficult is it to time? Do you have to tell the melee's to make sure they delay their ws's (I'd imagine you would)? Keep in mind that back in the day around lv30-40, when my party would do a 3-man renkei, I could burst twice without a problem, so it's not an issue of skill, simply a question as to how hard it is with much longer casting spells. Probably not too bad, I'm assuming.

[Altruist]

If you PT with a rdm on a regular basis there are probably a few enfeebles they don't use because of time. One that I seldom use is blind, if someone wants to raise skill with it I'm more than willing to let them use it.

A JP blm told me that you could have burn and frost on at the same time as long as they were cast in the right order. I haven't tried it yet but who knows.

[AtraposBLM]

They don't. Try it out.

Cast burn first. Cast frost second. You'll get :
Atrapos's (your name, obviously) frost had no effect on the mobname.

Cast frost first, and burn second. You'll get :
Mob's Frost effect wears off.
Atrapos casts Burn.
Mob gains the effect of Burn.

The wear off message tends to get lost, as it's like a second or 2 before your burn message, so some peopel might miss it, but you can try on newbie mobs by yourself if you don't believe me

[Ruinwraith]

I use dia to keep enfeeble skill up. You can't get skill on resisted enfeebles, so it's hard to use something like poison when you're skill is behind. Dia never gets resisted, is only 7 mana, and anything the rdm casts will overwrite it.

With +25 elemental skill from my ice staff and af gloves, I don't find burn really necessary anymore. I use frost every fight to help the melees get tp.

I don't use the whm sub -na or -ga heals that often either anymore. I'd like to try rdm sub at 64/32 perhaps for dispel (a lot of rdms are busy casting or stupid and I get tired of having to say |dispel|). But this would mean leveling rdm from 15 to 37, quite daunting with all the ps2 noobs now >.<

[Onvix]

I like to Open with Shock -> Frost -> Bio II

The only note I want to make on that part is that I feel its important to open with Shock since it reduces resistance to debuffs which are all cast at the start of the fight, So if you opened with Frost for example a Debuff might be missed, while good rdms or whms reapply their debuffs if they resisted, why make them do it again when a simple change in the ordering works.

I wonder about bio II though, im starting to have serious doubts about how much it really is doing, I suppose some trials are in order.

After my opening salvo I usually use one Big nuke that the monster is weak to, for example Stone III on torama's of course assuming that the monsters health is dropping enough to support this.

After this I use little nukes stone II in my previous example while I wait for the skill chain which I'll burst a aga off, and by that point the monsters usually dead if not then I do another big nuke to finish and then sit down.

Im looking forward to level 3 skill chains but im concerned in terms of getting that mid burst with the higher spells requires you to start casting before the 2nd person begins their ws, and in some of my groups the melee's are ultra consistant and this is easy and in others the 2nd person can start thier skill 1 second after the first one sometimes and 3 seconds others.
I suppose the end result is the melee's will need to be consistant enough to allow me to get the timing down.

Onvix
63.334 BLM
Odin

[AtraposBLM]

I dunno, I still find burn helpful. Maybe that'll change when I finally can afford ice staff. Who knows.

lv3 renkei sound sweet, I can't wait

[zorca]

I think there's no "right or wrong" way to play as a blm. What I usually do is to match my mana to the other mages (whm and rdm ususally) in a chain. So basically I'll nuke more if the whm has less mana than me...etc.

Also, I usually don't throw in lv3 spells outside a renkei because I've found that doing lv2 and lv1 spells is better for the tanks to hold the hate instead of 1 big nuke. Of cuz, this is not true anymore when I MB

In short, the way I see what a blm should do is to deal a constant stream of dmg AND help out the team with healing and curing status effect. I've almost never played in a PT w/o the need of curing my teammates, except when we're going for chain5 or more I tend to be more offensive

P.S. I've seen many times those newer blms usually do their best to do as much as dmg as they can in the shortest ever time period... I won't go into too much details cuz probably most of you could imagine how things go when a blm does that in a pt -.-

[Yuanlung]

I think there's no "right or wrong" way to play as a blm.

Really? I have seen a BLM gulfing down a fish kabob, then preceeded to overnuking and started tanking for the party. :sweat: But then again, I think he was just trying to be funny at the time.

[Netrus]

im glad i read this post. i am a blm that probably casts more than i should. im currently at lvl 36 so any tips on what i should start casting at the first of the battle. also what helps the other ppl in my pt that i can cast. such as frost choke burn and such. i never really get told in the game tho im sure its my fault for not knowing. I know what the effects of the spells are i just dont know what would benefit my PT members. i guess i catch on slowly. i don't think im a bad blm and noone i have ever pted with say i am. except one time when i was in qufim and casts an AoE spell on some enemy and got me killed. which it was my lesson to be learned i dont do it unless i know nothing is around now. but ANY tips for me would be great. because of what you guys have sed now has helped me as a blm better than before. thanks