It occured to me I left off WoL from the Chibirhythm games...screw it I am not going back to do that now, because we have MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS!!!
BLACK MAGE
Yes, the font is inconsistent with Knight but shut up.
Black Mage probably has the single most iconic "classic design" in the franchise, proof of this goes back to how they made a whole point of making Black Mages look like that in FF9! Yet Modern Square-enix likes to pretend that isn't a thing and they smell as a result. Also none of that is relevant other than "This is why I'm choosing Black Mage!"
Black Mage has historically been identified by one very simple thing: Casting the Spells that make the people fall down. Also known as Black Magic. If Final Fantasy has a Job system of sorts, there's no question Black Mage is going to be there somewhere. It's a job with a very straight forward purpose, and immediately recognizable in what it does, to the point where it's one of the few FF4HoL actually couldn't try to pretend it wasn't a thing and had to put it in straight up! Anyway, onto HOW THE CLASS HAS BEEN THROUGHOUT!
Naturally, just having offensive magic doesn't qualify as a Black Mage, so the games where Magic is a universal skillset or a character falls under just a general Mage (as in, someone who uses all kinds of magic) like, say, FF13's Hope do not apply.
Final Fantasy 1 (NES/Origins): If Knight started off with the best, Black Mage starts off with the worst it's ever been. Black Mage's primary purpose was casting MT Spells to kill things in groups, and having some status as well as the offensive buffs. Fast/Haste works in all versions and it's great, Temper only works in Origins and is useless otherwise. It also gets Sabre (also bugged in FF1NES), which is...kind of pointless on the Black Mage seeing as it can't do physical damage and you wouldn't use it for. So what are Black Mage's problems? Obviously, it can't take hits, but that's a given. No, it's real problem is there's never a good reason to use them over the Red Mage. Red Mage casts Black Magic almost as good as Black Mage for most of the time, and the MP difference isn't large enough to care. Add in Red Mage has actual weapons to conserve MP wish and can use White Magic, it's just kind of a slaughter. Later on, you can item cast MT Fire 2 and similar spells which sounds cool in theory, but then remember everyone can do it just as effectively since Int is ass in this game, so not really a point in Black Mage's favor...if anything it HURTS his use because it means everyone else can do that to some degree, and Black Mage just has a few shots of stronger variants. So yeah, sorry to say but Black Mage kind of sucks here.
Final Fantasy 1 (Dawn of Souls/PSP): Now this is a much different story! A few major things kicked in making Black Mage a lot better. First of all, going with an MP System instead of a MP Charges means Black Mage has that much more ammo, and thanks to Ethers, he never really runs out, so you can be more spell sling happy than before. That of course doesn't help against the Red Mage, who has the same advantage, but other things helped Black Mage here as well, most notably, Intelligence now does something and it's a very notable impact. Black Mages magic damage is way higher than Red Mage's the entire game, and with the new MP system, he can actually use Flare late game on more than 2 fights to get reasonable crowd control. Add in Haste and Temper being extremely useful on bosses, and suddenly Black Mage looks like a viable class. It still has durability issues of course (...ignoring FF1DoS' nerfed difficulty) and has a crap physical, but the fact that it has legitimate advantages, not superficial ones, suddenly makes it a way better job.
Final Fantasy 3 (NES): Lumping Black Mage and Warlock together because one is blatantly an upgrade of the other and meant to replace it, just like Fighter -> Knight. Black Mage is somewhat of an under-appreciated job in FF3. It's useless at first since there's no real Black Magic and yeah, just wasting your time, but once it gets Black Magic, it's decent at it for all that it's ammo is limited. The game really wants you to use them during the Mini parts, because Magic damage is your only way to hurt things. True, Red Mage can be used, but Red Mage vs. Black Mage is a meaningful difference on damage, with the latter being way higher and has nearly double the MP. Once you get off the Floating Continent, Red Mage all but useless, but Black Mage has a new rival: Conjurer. How does it compare? Well, Black Mage has a few notable advantages on Conjurer. First off, consistency; Conjurer's only way to do consistent damage is Titan which is ST; Black Mage can do MT damage and do it 100% of the time. It also has higher MP than Conjurer. It also can use status whenever you want, Conjurer's status competes with ST damage. This means that Black Mage may not be as strong as Conjurer, but it's a lot more reliable. It's damage is sadly lacking around now, even with level 3's (which it can only use a few times), though, a different use perks up in the form of status. Black Mage's status, if you've been using one consistently, is actually very good (especially the Shade spell), especially the Shade spell. This becomes extremely valuable in the Cave of Darkness where status can prevent enemies from splitting, as well as making the dungeon less strenuous.
Warlock is an extension of Black Mage, but it's harder to defend, as it's main rival, the Summoner, is a huge step up from Conjurer. It still has more MP and has status but when Summoner can murder entire battle fields with spells like Titan or Leviathan, Warlock's hard to justify. The best use you'll get out of Warlock is a strategy of using it's excess MP it has compared to Summoner, then swap to Summoner, thereby artificially inflating that character's MP.
Final Fantasy 3 (DS): Black Mage in the first half of the game more or less is unchanged, outside of having a competent physical thanks to early game bows being quite good, so overall refer to the above. 2nd half is a different story...Black Mage kind of sucks. Magic damage doesn't scale as well as Physical damage, and it's limited. Status is nowhere near as good as it was in FF3o, and MT damage isn't as meaningful since you only fight 3 enemies at a time (FF3o could have you fight up to 8, which made splitting enemies that much worse to boot.) This extends to Magus as well, who has to compete with Sage that gets everything he gets and almost as good at it (though, less MP on higher level stuff), but can also Heal and use Summons. I hear Magus is the one case where Status is worthwhile, and it's good for that, and while I don't deny it, I do question it's long term uses up the Crystal Tower and World of Darkness, if those JLevels would be better spent somewhere else. Overall, Black Mage has a good start here, but weak end.
Final Fantasy 4 (2D): Palom is the only actual Black Mage in the game, though I think many will agree I need to evaluate Rydia so I'll get to her in a bit. In the original versions of FF4, Palom existed just to be a token offensive spell caster during Mt. Ordeals, to kill off pesky Zombies that Cecil couldn't kill, and nuke things at MT. He also murders Milon in 2 hits with Boast, but Milon is awful so who cares. When Tellah gets his OP spell selection, Palom still has the advantage in having an actual MP score, and does more damage with Aras than Tellah does (Tellah does have Agas granted, as well as Bio), so he's now more your cost efficient Mage. He works, though he can't take hits to save his life. FF4a gives him a bunch of gear that mostly just ups his stats to the point where he can compete with Rydia. Compared to Rydia, he has lower MP, negligibly higher HP, considerably better defense, and does Black Magic better than she does, at the cost of not having Summons. It's a pretty even trade and the two are mostly interchange-able, because while Rydia is probably technically superior, the parts where it's important Palom pulls his weight well enough. In fact, you could probably get away with using both if you wanted to murder things fast! Also Flare is a pretty awesome spell because it's fast and hits really hard, gotta toss that in!
As far as Rydia goes...well, I'll be looking at her as a Black Mage, not a Summoner. If she didn't have Summons, how would she be? Honestly not much different than she is. She'd mostly lose out on MT damage for the mid-game, until she gets Agas and Quake, but otherwise, she can sling Bio around for a fast, cost effective damage move, with Aras to hit weaknesses. Her status rates are pretty good too...except FF4 makes like half the enemies immune to it and has stupid status mechanics so meh. She CAN be twinked for physicals thanks to Minerva + Bow, for all that it's not worth it, but hey, that's neat for a Black Mage right? Basically, yeah, Rydia's about what you'd expect, even without Summons; Summons make her better, make no mistake, but she could have just been a Black Mage and gotten away with them. In fact, her primary form of offense during the Child Arc is her elemental spells (Chocobo mostly just a Boss spell.)
Final Fantasy 4 (DS): Why does the DS versions of games despite Black Magic? Ok, so early game it's just as effective as it was, but only because Tellah's stats are high for the time and stats are that meaningful. Palom doesn't really feel particularly special since now the situation is reversed; Tellah does more damage with the same spells, Palom just gets Aras earlier (which is a perk) and has more MP (also meaningful!) Rydia? She absolutely needs her elemental summons now since the Aras don't last nearly as long as they use to, Flare got nerfed so hard it's not really a great spell it use to be, doing now less damage with an actual charge time...and it's the only end-game spell worth using. It says something that Rydia literally joins with all her end-game gear save the Stardust Rod, which gives a lot of magic boosts, and her magic still feels lackluster. The summons help mid-game, but they don't last, seeing as the elementals are just Aga level spells, while the high end ones take too long to be feasible.
Final Fantasy 5: You get Black Mage, it's starting spells are worse than Blue Mage's Aero...well that's silly! Also not a huge deal since Black Mage has higher magic to lessen the gap and can hit a lot more weaknesses than Blue Mage can, which comes up fairly often, so that aspect is not a huge deal. Black Mage is a job I kind of feel bad for in this game. It's actually good at what it does, and doesn't have any real major issues as a glass cannon spell caster in and of itself. It hits notably harder than Red Mage with the same spells, elemental boosts exist to make the damage stand out, has the resources to make it manage-able, etc. The problem?
Summon exists, and in most cases does the same thing better. As soon as Summoner gets Ifrit, Shiva and Ramuh, you really have little reason to use Black Mage, and then Summoner learns Titan and it's kind of a one sided slaughter. Black Mage only finally feels meaningful again when it gets the Agas which crush anything Summoner can do on ST, as well are capable of hitting flying enemies, but that only lasts until Summoner gets Syldra, which is basically the best Attack Spell in the game (complimented with Leviathan hitting weaknesses in the final dungeon, and Bahamut in case the rare Wind Immune pops up.) To make matters more insulting is Summoner has game best Magic (...Oracle aside...but Oracle sucks), so there's little reason to invest a large amount of time in Black Mage. so outside of the brief early-game window where Summoner is limited/doesn't exist, and the Moore -> Pyramid window, there's really little reason to use Black Mage.
Final Fantasy 9: Remember how I said that FF9 has really 4 distinction of characters? No? ...well I did now retroactively and you're wrong if I didn't! Anyway, Vivi's distinction is...well...Vivi. Vivi really is a unique character in FF9 because he's the only dedicated offensive spell caster from start to finish. Until Garnet gets Ramuh, he's also the only character capable of legitimate MT damage (Zidane's Trances don't count), immediately noticeable in early dungeons when he's your screen clearing character. He also has the MP to support all this too. Vivi's use is kind of a Sin Curve overall...well, ok, more of a Cos Curve since he starts high. He starts off really good because he's your cannon, with Zidane and Steiner being your ST damage and Garnet being your healer. His damage starts to taper off when weapon upgrades happen and such near the end of Disc 1, then he gets Aras and Bio and shoots up again, especially if he can hit weakness. He won't really improve much until he gets Agas, so he slowly gets worse until that point, especially since Garnet learns Ramuh and Eiko pops up with Fenrir (admittedly, that can't do crap against flying enemies) , so his MT isn't as needed. Also enemy hordes of the "large sacks of HP" start popping up too, and fighters are starting to outclass him at ST. Focus helps of course so that's a boon! Agas are a similar boost in worth, but unfortunately, that's about where Vivi's use caps off; Fighters start doing too much damage, and even with Flare, it's basically Vivi using more MP to do a similar result. The other problem is that Garnet and Eiko match him in magic damage come end game, and they can do a heck of a lot more (like, say, Heal), so it's hard to justify him.
He also gets status, but FF9 status is kind of unreliable. Double Black would be a great trance since breaking the damage limit, unfortunately, Trance is the least reliable thing ever, kicking in when you don't need it. Overall, I think Vivi qualifies as "well balanced" but in kind of averages sort of way. He has his highs, his lows, and his medium points, and overall we have a character who works for what he is, even if it's not all the time.
Final Fantasy 10: Lulu is outright called a Black Mage by Wakka here, so any arguments about her not fulfilling this will get you smacked. Not that I think anyone would argue this in the Normal Sphere Grid since Lulu's entire purpose is nuking things with offensive magic. Good thing Lulu's good at it too! Her flaw, first of all, is that she's slow; she makes a poor character to open with. Otherwise? She's got crap tons of MP, does a lot of damage with her spells, is basically the only one who can kill large number of enemies thanks to FF10s RPS style combat. Honestly, there's really not much more to say; Lulu's good at what she does, and that's all we care about.
Final Fantasy 12 ZIJS: So as someone who actually bothered with Black Magic in FF12, I can only assume these guys are good. Yes, that's right; there's ways to play FF12 besides just casting Berserk, hoping that spell hits, and watching one character kill things. Black Magic actually kills things way faster if you bothered, and have the MP, etc. Murdering just about every enemy in Pharos with Firaga is fun and educational, you should try it! That aside, looking at it's skillset, Black Mage seems like it's quite competent and reading up on it for others, they seem to agree. Only people who seem to hate Black Mages are the "hurr durr physicals rule!" nonsense. They're your primary form of Crowd Control who get good ST damage too. They also are one of 4 classes to learn Steal, which if you've played FF12, you know how big a deal that is. Another major thing that makes Black Mages good are, well, in FF12 one limiting thing is for spells like Scathe, they could only do 9999 limiting that's use (when Firaga can be twinked to hit that high...hmm...); there is no longer a 9999 damage limit in ZIJS, so that will make them quite viable end game.
Final Fantasy 14: The Black Mage (and their Thaumaturge earlier forms) basically exists as the chief user of AoE damage. A neat thing about them is they always have some level of minimum offense. Spam Fire spells til out of MP, Transpose, spam Ice Spells until up to maximum, throw a Lightning spell in the mix for added DPS during the Umbral Ice Phase. For those who don't know, quick explanation on why you do this:
When you cast a Blizzard spell, you get Umbral Ice status. Umbral Ice increases the rate of MP Gain (by an extremely notice-able amount; while in Umbral Ice, spells may as well be free.)
When you cast a Fire spell, you get Astral Fire; this increases the MP cost of Fire Spells, but also raises their damage significantly (25% per stack, up to 3.) Astral Fire also stops you from regaining MP.
So Black Mage is shifting constantly between Big Damage and Modest but Unlimited Damage. Because of Umbral Ice, it also allows it some utility use, like an emergency 2nd Cure caster. It gets a bunch of buffs that let it make spells easier to cast by lowering charge times and such, and also gets a Sleep spell! Downsides to Black Mage? Naturally can't take hits, limited on Cross Class skills, and for ST DPS, it's a bit on the low side. It's not attrocious to be clear, just most other DPS' beat it here. Black Mage's primary purpose is blowing up mobs of randoms and killing adds and it does a pretty good job of that too!
Final Fantasy Tactics: FFT decided to call this job Wizard because...it's FFT...except in the Class Introduction screen where it called it Black Mage. Never change, FFT Translation...by the way, screw you WotL! Remember how in FF5 Summoner beat Black Mage in most ways that matter? Yeah, not so much the case here. While Summons are the superior skillset, Warlocks have some key advantages, a big one now being they have Game Best MA, making them the best job for shear magic offense. Sure, Summons might be better, but Summons on a Magus are better than Summons on any other Job, as well as skillsets like Draw Out, Math Skill and Un-Truth! ...you can choose it ignore that last one. On top of that, Thaumaturges also get Magic Attack Up, which is extremely handy for downright nuking things regardless what Magic class you're in. While it may not be the greatest job, particularly because Black Magic itself is,for the most part, a lesser version of Summons, the Vivi actually feels like it has a place and not simply a "worse version of this other more powerful job!"
Worth noting that in War of the Lions, Summoner was notably worse in this making the Lulus better by extension. I don't think it quite closes the gap entirely granted, and it does hurt Palom's use because that's one less strong skillset for them to use their game best MA with.
Final Fantasy 10-2: You know, I played this game twice, and I remember Black Mages being a thing and doing Magic but I don't remember them being particularly special at it? They did have MT damage which was harder to come by I suppose, and MP Drain means they didn't run out of resources. Glancing at the stat topic, it seems their magic damage is not great end game, being somewhat below average and they have charge times. I don't feel confident talking about them, so if someone else wants to field this by all means!
Final Fantasy 4 The After Years: First and foremost, No, Golbez doesn't count. Got that? Good. Palom is our primary Black Mage here with, again, Rydia as the Summoner/Black Mage hybrid. Like in FF4, Black Magic is your main source of big damage, though one thing that hurts them I found is the Lunar Phase system. Because of the way bosses work, most of them rely on big magic damage (a lot have Meteor) so you want to go in during the Anti-Black Magic phase. This in turn means Black Mages are worse against most bosses (though Rydia can get around it with Summon.) Otherwise, Palom's big thing is he learns the important Black Magic spells before anyone else, and has the stats to justify it; Rydia, by contrast, while getting them later, has more options in the long run, so overall better, but both are worthy of taking that slot.
There's generic Black Mages who assist Ceodore and Porom...but we don't care about them because they're Core Classes and Core Classes are awful! ...jokes aside, the generic Black Mages are pretty much exactly what you'd expect.
Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light: I'm making an exception here because I remember the damned job. Black Mage existed to be able to cast Black Magic every-turn, as it's passive is "All Black Magic costs 1 less AP to use", with the basic spells costing 2, (1 = Basic Physical.) It could damage magic damage which sometimes mattered because high defense, low magic defense things existed and...then you stop caring because FF4HoL honestly doesn't do a good job at distinguishing jobs after a point and basically wants you to only use later ones because the game is stupid. Yes, I wasted your time, MWAHAHA!
Bravely Default: Good thing this game exists and disowned itself from the above, because Jobs are meaningful again! Black Magic is your primary MT damage dealer until you get Valkyrie. Magic Mojo is kind of useless you either use 2 Black Mages, or get others who learn Magic Mojo and equip it because it's a 1 slot skill that works for filler. Black Mage has a good start but it slowly starts to taper off as things like Valkyrie show up, enemies get more health, etc. It still has a few nice niches though. It's best quality is probably Piercing Magic Defense, allowing any spell caster to do consistent damage regardless of enemy. Arcanist showing up allows it it a compliment as well, since now it's status (which is actually fairly effective this game) can be used in combo spells like Sleep x3 + Twilight to murder an entire enemy team (or alternatively, Evil Gaia x3 + Dalek Catch Phrase.) I guess Black Mage is a decent early-mid game job that tapers off, but still has it's niches later on is the best way to put it.
EDIT: Forgot 2 IMPORTANT GAMES!!! on this list...
Theatrhythm: A Black Mage in this game I'm definining by someone who focuses very heavily on using offensive magic, getting most of the elemental spells, and stats are clearly defined as Mage. For this game, that would be Terra, Shantotto, Vivi and Rydia. So let's analyze each!
Terra: One of the better characters in the game. Trance makes her the strongest Mage in the game (if you don't suck), and she gets all 3 Agas and I believe all Aras so some flexibility, as well as her skill slots are well suited for her, so no problems there. Another bonus she has going for her is her speed is passable enough; it's kind of average at base but she gets Agility Up, which pushes her to the point of "can regularly max reach the end of Dark Notes" which is all you need for an FMS, so she's good for leading a team of 3 dudes wielding Strength Up 2+3 which means they have no speed whatsoever. She also gets Bluff but it's hard to use that alongside Trance and have room for something else.
Shantotto: A Terra variant; Shantotto gets Dualcast + Ancient Magic combo making her blow stuff up when a boss appears. Her spells don't hurt as much as Terra's thanks to Dualcast < Trance, but Ancient Magic is probably good enough to make it roughly even. She also has good speed so she's good at the FMS leader as well.
Vivi: Is Shantotto w/out Ancient Magic. He's solid, but kind of superfluous unless you really want a 2nd Mage. He also lacks her speed so not good at FMS'. That and this is Theathrythm; if you're not one of the starting 13, you might as well not exist.
Rydia: And here we have "how not to do a Mage." Rydia's problems are two fold. First off, she misses Dualcast AND Bluff, making someone like Lightning or Ashe (who one could argue is a Black Mage but I don't think she was a blatantly magical oriented) actually better at spellcasting. The 2nd problem is she's 2 Pro-active, 2 Re-active, meaning she can only use 2 Spells at once, while the other 3 can use 3 spells if they want too (well, Terra's Trance takes up a Re-active slot technically, but it's so good that it's worth it.) She gets all 3 Boost levels, and Mana's Paean is nice, but not enough to really save her. She also has Vivi's problem of "isn't one of the initial 13."
Curtain Call: So...there's a lot more Black Mages this time around. The same 4 still exist, but now we have a bunch of others! I'll be briefer here as a result. Terra and Shantotto are decent PCs who, if you take twinking into account, are apparently the undisputed best BMS PCs in the game, with Terra having the ludicrous 6x Multiplier on her spell (which makes Ultima so stupid strong you don't care it's OPB), and Shantotto having 3x w/ Ultima and Ancient Magic combo. Vivi's better too since Dualcast is that much more meaningful, and Tornado is a unique spell to him that lets him fire off a near-Ultima level attack with only a 25 chain. Rydia...gets Bluff and doesn't have the slot restriction, so that's better than before, but still not particularly great.
New Black Mages? Well, Krile is basically another Rydia, a mage who gets Bluff and little else...also doesn't exist in the US because Square-enix is stupid. Hope gets Faith meaning he boosts other Mages and gets a Limit...that is Physical damage...yeah, I don't get it either. Ace is basically Hope except that Physical Limitis a Magical One, making him a hell of a lot better. Yuna #2 looks fine on paper but then that Physical Limit pops up and you're banging your head against the wall.
So Black Mages are all over the place here, ranging from "Among the best PCs in the game" to "MEEEEEEEH."
I believe that should cover Black Mages. Anyone want to fill in the gaps for things i missed from the franchise, be my guest!
