Hey casters, quick question, which spec across all casters i.e. warlock, spriest, mage, Elem and MM Hunter I guess, plays most similar to FFXIV’s black mage?
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I’ve never played Final Fantasy but from my understanding a Black Mage has a cyclical playstyle which consists of burning through your mana with fire spells and then entering another stage where you regenerate your mana with ice spells. And there is also an added element of applying various ailments to your target that increase the damage you deal to them.
If that’s correct then the closest in terms of playstyle would be an Arcane Mage but it would be a very different visual aesthetic. As for the ailments, that really isn’t a thing in WoW. There are a few debuffs that tanks can apply which will slightly increase the damage dealt to an enemy but that isn’t a focus for DPS classes. Even ones that deal damage predominantly through DoTs.
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Arcane Mage would be the closes, its a Mana management/burst dps play-style. Now in the next xpac, Fire and Frost mages are getting hero talents that “kinda” merge fire and frost play-style.
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Black mage has some big booms. The changing between fire and frost is meh imo, but the slower casting of big spells is what I was refering to. Its a slower more methodical caster.
The only thing like that in WoW are Fire Mages with the Sun King’s Blessing talent. When it procs you have to hard cast Pyroblast (which is basically a big fireball) and it does greatly increased damage in addition to granting you a buff that makes all your casts guaranteed critical strikes for a short duration. However, when you get that proc is RNG based so it isn’t cyclical like it is with a Black Mage. It can actually disrupt your flow.
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Not an entirely accurate description of SKB. It doesn’t just randomly proc as you seem to suggest here.
Building stacks is RNG based in that it’s based on how often you crit, but that’s in keeping with Fire Mage gameplay in general. If you’re keeping track of your stacks as you should it doesn’t disrupt your flow at all because you know when it’s coming.
Well it is RNG based in that getting the required number of stacks to proc it involves RNG. I didn’t get down to the nitty gritty details because obviously that’s not what the OP was asking for. Fire generally is also considerably more RNG based than the way a Black Mage plays in FF. In fact that’s true across the board, WoW relies on RNG much more than FF does. That’s the point I was trying to get across because I feel like it would be a difficult and at times frustrating adjustment to make.
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Yeah, I could make the adustment if I had to, but I definitely don’t like casters that feel like melee classes in that they have no cast times. My RP self enjoys some cast times because it makes me feel like I’m building up power for a spell. No cast times makes me feel like I’m just shooting a gun lol. I dont’ mind some skills off proc, but I dont’ like a class that is build off of non-cast time spells if you know what I mean. Whatever felt closest to what I describe.
I had rolled a Lock and destro kind of feels like that so far but I’m only level 23.
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I love my destro lock. It’s my main alt. They have very satisfying gameplay loop.
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Strictly speaking, true. Also important to note though that Fire Mages crit quite often so it’s not like we’re sitting around waiting for the dice to go our way. SKB is up quite a bit, to the point where it’s closer to being predictably cyclical than it is to being completely random. I know jack about FFXIV or Black Mage, and I realize OP wasn’t asking for nitty gritty, but even in the broad strokes let’s paint an accurate picture.