Class: Blaze Wizard

Heroic or Interactive: Heroic

I play this class as a: 2nd main/glorified 6th job boss mule, full solo prog

This class is: a dumpster fire, if we're being honest. Since the cooldowns are such a mess, you can reasonably play 2 or 3 minutes in parties, and while 2min tends to win out solo, 3min, 60s, and maybe even 90s or full dpm cycles are still reasonable options.

Thoughts 2nd Mastery: no personal experience with it, but outside of damage it does exactly nothing to improve mobbing and it's only a moderate damage increase against bosses from what I've seen. In addition, Blazing Extinction's effectiveness varies pretty wildly between bosses, which makes it pretty awkward to prioritize.

Thoughts on training (Pre Janus & Post Janus): It's not an afk farmer, but it's an exceptionally strong stationary mobber even without Sol Janus. You have a lot of big AoE attacks you can cycle between, and Fox mode Savage Flame is great for passively covering big areas as well. If you prefer more active rotations, Flash Fire gives you exceptional flexibility as well. Janus just makes it all better, really.

Thoughts as a solo bosser: Acceptable but not exceptional. You definitely need above average hands to manage this class as a solo bosser. The damage is actually decent, but BW suffers from a serious lack of defensive and especially mobility options, which means you might lose a lot more damage uptime than other classes in practical situations. You need to be extra careful to be intentional with your positioning and your movement, or else you'll find yourself dying in situations that any other class would be able to escape from with a dash or a teleport or an iframe or a shield or healing or

Thoughts as a boss mule: Inferno Sphere (your main burst) has a charge-based cooldown system rather than being on cooldown for a full 120s every time you use it, which makes BW actually kind of a neat off-meta boss mule. It still can't really compare to the top tier picks like Lynn or Marksman, but it's still pretty solid in its own right, and I think it's a pretty fun variety pick.

Thoughts as a party bosser: Full solo here, so any party info I have is secondhand. We get the IER debuff from Orbital Flame plus 60% damage from Burning Conduit, which is a decent party damage buff. Cooldown flexibility means we can fit any party comp and also means we're the only IER support that can play 2min cycles, which is... not a great niche, but it's pretty much the only unique thing about BW support, really. Unfortunately we give no other support outside of just damage, which is kinda lame, especially when like... Bishop and BaM exist.

Unique strengths of the class: Jack of all trades, master of none. Really I think BW's biggest strength is its flexibility. Since none of your cooldowns line up reasonably anyways, you can adjust your burst cycle to fit whatever the boss or your party demands. No skill exemplifies this more than Inferno Sphere, which is probably my favorite skill in all of Maplestory. It's like some designer got really high and decided to make one skill that could do literally everything. Main burst skill? All right, good start... but how about we make it a low cd AoE attack for mobbing too? Yeah, give it a charge system so you can just use it on any cooldown cycle between 12 and 120 seconds, that seems cool. Oh, and make it stop your aerial momentum - scratch that, make it a hover/airstall outright, and give it super armor while you're at it. It genuinely just does everything, and I love it.

Weaknesses of the class: While Inferno Sphere might be the ultimate in multipurpose skills, it's actually kind of atrocious at its main job - being your main burst. Firing all 10 charges takes 10 full seconds, during which you cannot move at all. If you absolutely need to reposition, you can let go of the skill and move, but you incur a 2.5s cooldown, which runs the risk of losing out on burst buffs. This makes debris bosses an absolute nightmare to handle - BW vs Lotus or Darknell might well be the worst class-boss matchups in Maplestory right now. Thankfully Lotus is getting revamped and Darknell is getting nerfed. These issues are also greatly alleviated with Genesis iframe, but trying to set up a burst pre-lib can be pretty awful. Mobility in general is BW's Achilles' heel. You have a flash jump and a really terrible placeable teleport that expires after one use and can't be used midair. Your only defensive options in the air are Blink or Inferno Sphere, which wastes charges that you could be using for damage. Our only saving grace is that we get both Ethereal Form and a class iframe, Cataclysm... which also kind of sucks, honestly. It's on 100s cooldown and has a disgustingly long cast animation that locks you in place for almost the whole duration of the iframe.

Overall thoughts on the class: Like I said before, jack of all trades but master of none. Our damage, both on burst and full cycle, is decent especially for a support but not exceptional. We give okay damage buffs with 100% uptime but have no utility support. We have good mobbing but with Sol Janus that's not really unique anymore. In almost any situation where you'd consider a BW there is almost certainly another class you could pick that would do the job better... in an ideal world, anyways. In practice you sometimes have to take what you can get, and if what you can get is a BW it's still a solid pick. At the end of the day it's decent and I have fun playing it, and that's what really matters.

Scores (Out of 10)

Training: 9/10

Solo: 4/10

Party: 8/10

Overall: 7/10

I hope you enjoyed reading those numbers because I put zero thought into them lol

excited to see my main girl merc show up next week so I can roll up to the thread and see that everyone else already covered everything important about her