Class Guide – Black Mage (BLM)

How to Obtain a Black Mage

• Level a Thaumaturge to level 30 as the main class
• Level an Archer to level 15 as a secondary class,
• Complete the Main Story quest ‘Sylph-Management’
• Go to Thaumaturge Headquarters and talk to Yayake at Ul’dah steps of Nald (x7, y12) and obtain the quest ‘Taking the Black’
• Complete the quest ‘Taking the Black’ and obtain the ‘Soul of the Black Mage’ and your first job specific skill ‘Convert’

Congratulations, equipping your soul stone will switch your class from Thaumaturge to Black Mage…

 

Attributes

The main stat of the black mage job is intelligence, after level 10, until you reach level 50 you’ll get 30 additional stacks in total that you can spend on either of the following:

Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, Mind, Piety

Most of the people would recommend putting all 30 to intelligence to maximize the amount of intelligence you can have but I recommend putting 3 stacks into piety to get the extra MP you need to extend your rotation’s fire section and produce more dps and putting the remaining 27 stacks to intelligence.

 

General Mechanics of the Job and Stances

The main mechanic behind a black mages rotation is to balance the 2 buffs (2 stances) which are ‘Astral Fire’ and ‘Umbral Ice’. These stances will later stack up to 3 with the effect of the traits ‘Magick and Mend’ at level 20 and ‘Magick and Mend II’ at level 40.

Astral Fire: Inreases Fire damage and and MP cost of fire spells, Reduces the ice damage and MP cost of ice spells.

Umbral Ice: Increases MP regeneration and MP cost of Ice spells, Reduces the fire damage and the cost of fire spells.

The rotation with the general outlines is to use the Fire spells to stack the Astal fire buff and increase the damage dealt by fire spells and use all the MP available to you, towards the end of your MP pool, using either ‘Transpose’ to change your stance to Umbral ice and start regenerating MP or at later levels using ‘Blizzard III’ to gain 3 stack of Umbral ice instantly. To fill the gap while waiting for your MP to fill back, use thunder spells whose MP cost is the most suitable to your remaining MP and go back to the fire rotation by using either again ‘Transpose’ or at later level using ‘Fire III’ to gain 3 stacks of Astral Fire instantly. 

 

Class Specific Skills

	Blizzard
	Deals ice damage with a potency of 170. Additional Effect: Heavy +40% Duration: 20s Additional Effect: Grants Umbral Ice or removes Astral Fire Duration: 10s
	Fire
	Deals fire damage with a potency of 170.Additional Effect: Grants Astral Fire or removes Umbral Ice Duration: 10sAdditional Effect: 40% chance next Fire III will cost no MP and have no casting time. Duration: 12s
	Transpose
	Swaps Astral Fire with a single Umbral Ice, or Umbral Ice with a single Astral Fire.
	Thunder
	Deals lightning damage with a potency of 30.Additional Effect: Lightning damage over time.Potency: 40 Duration: 12sAdditional Effect: 5% chance after each tick that potency of next Thunder, Thunder II, or Thunder III will be 240, have no cast time, and cost no MPDuration: 12s
	Surecast
	Next spell is cast without interruption. Duration: 10sAdditional Effect: 15% chance Surecast will have no recast time
	Sleep
	Puts target and enemies near it to sleep. Duration: 30sCancels auto-attack upon execution.
	Blizzard II
	Deals ice damage with a potency of 50 to all nearby enemies.Additional Effect: Bind Duration: 8sAdditional Effect: Grants Umbral Ice II or removes Astral Fire Duration: 10s
	Scathe
	Deals elementally neutral damage with a potency of 100.Additional Effect: 20% chance potency will double (Level 24+)
	Fire II
	Deals fire damage with a potency of 100 to target and enemies near it.Additional Effect: Grants Astral Fire II or removes Umbral Ice Duration: 10s
	Thunder II
	Deals lightning damage with a potency of 50. Additional Effect: Lightning damage over time.Potency: 40 Duration: 15s Additional Effect: 5% chance after each tick that potency of next Thunder, Thunder II, or Thunder III will be 295, have no cast time, and cost no MP.Duration: 12s
	Swiftcast
	Next spell is cast immediately. Duration: 10s
	Manaward
	Creates a barrier that nullifies magic damage totalling up to 30% of maximum HP. Duration: 20s
	Fire III
	Deals fire damage with a potency of 240.Additional Effect: Grants full stack of Astral Fire and removes Umbral Ice. Duration: 10s
	Blizzard III
	Deals ice damage with a potency of 240.Additional Effect: Grants full stack of Umbral Ice and removes Astral Fire. Duration: 10s
	Lethargy
	Inflicts target with Slow and Heavy +20%. Duration: 12s
	Thunder III
	Deals lightning damage with a potency of 60.Additional Effect: Lightning damage over time.Potency: 40 Duration: 18sAdditional Effect: 5% chance after each tick that potency of next Thunder, Thunder II, or Thunder III will be 340, have no cast time, and cost no MP.Duration: 12s
	Aetherial Manipulation
	Rush to a target party member’s side. Unable to cast if bound.

 

Traits

 

	Enhanced Intelligence
	Increases intelligence by 2.
	Enhanced Intelligence II
	Increases intelligence by 4.
	Enhanced Surecast
	Grants a 15% chance that upon use, Surecast will have no recast time.
	Magick and Mend
	Increases base action damage by 10% and allows for the stacking of a second Astral Fire or Umbral Ice.
	Enhanced Scathe
	Grants a 20% chance that Scathe will deal double damage.
	Thundercloud
	Grants a 5% chance that after each damage over time tick inflicted by any Thunder spell, the next Thunder, Thunder II, or Thunder III will add its full damage over time amount to its initial damage, have no cast time, and cost no MP.Duration: 12s
	Enhanced Intelligence III
	Increases intelligence by 6.
	Deep Sleep
	Extends the area of effect for Sleep from a single target to a five-yalm radius.
	Magick and Mend II
	Increases base action damage by 30% and allows for the stacking of a third Astral Fire or Umbral Ice.
	Firestarter
	Grants a 40% chance that upon casting Fire, your next Fire III will require no MP and have no casting time. Duration: 12s
	Enhanced Manaward
	Increases damage nullified by Manaward to 30% of your maximum HP.

 

Job Specific Skills

	Convert
	Sacrifices 20% of maximum HP to restore 30% of MP.Cannot be executed when current HP is lower than 20%.
	Freeze
	Covers a designated area in ice, dealing ice damage with a potency of 100 and binding enemies that enter for 15s.Additional Effect: Grants Umbral Ice for 10s or removes Astral Fire.
	Apocatastasis
	Reduces a party member’s magic vulnerability by 20% for 12s.Cannot be reused on an individual for 60s from when the effect wears off.Cannot be cast on self.
	Manawall
	Creates a barrier that nullifies two physical attacks for 20s.
	Flare
	Deals fire damage with a potency of 260 to a target and enemies near it.Additional Effect: Grants Astral Fire III for 10s or removes Umbral Ice.

 

Cross Class Skills

Arcanist		Archer
	Ruin	Raging Strikes
	Pysick	Hawk’s Eye
	Virus	Quelling Strikes
	Eye for an Eye

 

Although these are all the cross-class skills being offered, you can’t pick more than 5 of them, you absolutely need 2 of them which are Raging Strikes and Quelling Strikes the other 3 you’ll pick will be entirely situational but I can recommend getting Eye for an Eye and Virus for some Crowd Control and damage reduction on the tank and also Pysick for solo adventures like Treasure maps or solo fating out in the wild.

Rotation

Every damage dealer needs to have a some sort of rotation that they can use repeatedly over the course of a battle, especially for black mages, from full to zero MP, it takes about 15seconds, so you have to have an optimal rotation for this 15 seconds to maximize your damage and sustain it over the course of even longer battles. The optimized single target rotation that I use is as follows:

Thunder II -> Fire III -> Fire x5 -> Blizzard III -> Repeat

  ->     ->     x5   -> 

I use all the Thundercloud and Firestarter procs during the Fire x5 and I only use Thunder III for the Thunderclouds. If they both come out at the same time I always use Firestarter proc because at that point the existing thunder DoT on the enemy is still going on and the Thundercloud proc will refresh it, so before doing that you might want to extract as much damage from it as possible.

By adding a few things on the existing rotation, I came out to be using a burst rotation that you can use every 3 minutes. This part is about implementing the cross class skill ‘Raging Strikes’ and ‘Quelling Strikes’ to prevent the tank from having a hard time and also the use of the lv50 Job Skill ‘Flare’ and the lv30 Job Skill ‘Convert’ and lv26 Class Skill ‘Swiftcast’. So the burst rotation becomes as follows:

Thunder II -> Quelling Strikes -> Fire III -> Raging Strikes -> Fire x5 -> Swiftcast -> Flare ->

  ->  ->    ->   ->  x5  ->   ->    ->

Convert -> Fire -> Blizzard III -> Original Rotation

 ->  -> 

After this point your buffs will wear off and you’ll go back to your original rotation. A couple pointers for maximizing the damage output:

• Never cancel any casts to use a Firestarter proc
• If you get a Firestarter proc at the end of your rotation use it to go back to your Fire x5 part of the rotation when you get your full MP back. You can increase the damage of the proc by using Transpose when you have full MP and gain a single stack of Astral fire, and this will double its damage compared to the Umbral Ice III stat of the proc
• Since swiftcast has a 60 seconds of a cooldown whereas Raging Strikes and Convert has 180 seconds of cooldown, in between burst combos, you’ll have 2 free swiftcast and it’ll again be available when it’s time to use the burst rotation, so use those 2 swiftcast right after a Firestarter proc for a Fire, that way you are gaining 1 global cooldown worth of time on your rotation.

and the AoE (Area of Effect) rotation I use is:

Fire III -> Fire II x3 -> Flare -> Convert -> Swiftcast -> Flare -> Transpose ->

 ->  x3 ->  ->  ->  ->  ->  ->  ->

Blizzard -> Thunder II -> Repeat without the Convert + 2nd Flare part

 ->  -> Repeat

Although the down side of this is to gather enmity on everything pretty fast, the up side is even it’s a pack of adds consisting of 30 mobs, they all die pretty quickly.

Have fun and Good Luck