A patch recently went online in Final Fantasy XIV that brought balance changes in PvP. The job “Black Magician” stood out in particular because it received a lot of buffs. It also happens to be the favorite job of the MMORPG’s boss, Naoki Yoshida.
Since April 2022, the new competitive PvP mode Crystalline Conflict has been raging in FFXIV. Along with the mode, there have been major overhauls to the skills and functionality of combat jobs in PvP. Since then, the devs have released individual balance adjustments.
The Black Mage received these buffs: The latest adjustment in PvP (via official site) went live last week. Except for the red mage, all jobs listed received at least one buff, but most were granted to the black mage.
Almost every single ability of the job received at least one buff. It was all there:
Even if not all changes went online directly with the 6.11a patch, but are only planned for 6.15 in June, it is still an impressive list.
In the animal lists of the well-known FFXIV YouTubers like Mr. Happy or Desperius, the black magician has so far ended up in the lower ranks like B or C. Therefore, the buffs are not completely unjustified.
Still, there have been plenty of little digs at director Naoki Yoshida from the FFXIV community. After all, it is well known that black magician is his favorite job.
“Guys, we memed too hard”
Here’s how the players reacted: While the Black Mage’s buffs weren’t unjustified, the amount of them has caused quite a stir. On social media and reddit, players shared the balance adjustments and commented that the black mage became really strong as a result.
At the same time, there were also quite a few memes and jokes about how the job only got so many buffs because it’s Yoshida’s favorite job. The boss of the MMORPG has used his power to give his favorite a big boost so that he performs better in PvP.
Both Revolver Blade and Black Mage received buffs. With the black magician, however, there were significantly more.
Add to that the fact that Yoshida was frequently spotted in PvP on the Japanese servers in the weeks leading up to the buff. He played with his official account Yoshi’p Sampo.
According to Global Community Lead, Toshio Murouchi, who accompanies his boss on every producer stream, Yoshida tries to play a few rounds of PvP during his breaks. He quickly climbed the rank ladder with his black magician characters on the data centers Elemental, Gaia and Mana to the highest rank Crystal.
The fierce Lalafell Sorceress by Yoshida (Left) has been spotted in Crystalline Conflict PvP.
Yoshida says: Most of the black magician jokes and memes weren’t meant to be taken very seriously by the writers, but they reached Naoki Yoshida and he must have taken them very seriously. Because a few days after the release of the patch notes for 6.11a, he published a detailed blog post in which the head of the MMORPG spoke about the balance changes.
Although we make all job adjustments according to the guidelines mentioned in points 1 and 2, according to data as of May 6th, Black Mage had the lowest win and usage rate of all ranks (up to 14% lower compared to the job with the highest win rate ). We therefore felt it necessary to strengthen it.
This is an example of a job adjustment, and the black mage is by no means a special case. We handle adjustments for other jobs in the same way, but this time the changed stats of the Black Mage caused significant inconvenience. I sincerely apologize for that.
Naoki Yoshida
Yoshida explained that the balance changes are affected by multiple factors, such as each job’s statistical job-specific win rates or their usage rate in PvP.
The adjustments from patch 6.11a also came with a delay. They were based on data the team had collected from Crystalline Conflict’s launch through May 7th. However, the balance adjustments had to be tested and debugged for several weeks before the release.
Accordingly, the patch came with a delay, and by the time it was released, the team had gathered new feedback that the Black Mage was a strong job. That’s why the balance patch 6.11a overshot the target.
Yoshida also emphasized that the length of the Black Mage buff list isn’t a sign of special treatment because he loves playing the job. Apparently the jokes really worried him and he wanted to clear up any doubts about his neutrality.
Incidentally, the black mage is also the preferred job of Scripe, who is the head of the best WoW guild in the world. He’s currently battling it out in FFXIV’s Ultimate Raid:
WoW’s best guild takes on the hardest raid in Final Fantasy XIV and it’s great