Chad Mages What else would you want right now for our class

[Shurrikhan]

My own wishlist:

• Consolidate Ley Lines and Between the Lines, Fire 4 and Blizzard 4, and possibly Flare and Despair and Foul and Xenoglossy (through simple potency and animation alterations when one would strike only a single vulnerable target with either).
• Remove the Enochian requirement from Fire 4 and Blizzard 4. Instead, Enochian becomes a burst/utility CD.
• Make AF/UI stacks more intuitive. Remove the 5/10/15% cross-element penalty, and just have each stack give 20/40/60% less MP cost and less cast time when casting the opposite element instead of 50/50/75 and 0/0/50% respectively. AF gives +20/40/60% extra damage. Fire potencies are increased to match, but Ice potencies are also increased up to the potencies of their paired attacks (B1 base potency = F1 base potency; B2=F2; B3=F3, B4=F4, Freeze=Flare, etc.) UI increases the MP given per stack by 20/40/60%. Base tick increased to match. At 60%, the first marginal tick is enough to give access to B4, but not T3, as in SB. Being in AF at all still doubles Fire costs. Being in UI at all doubles MP generation. THM will also have uniquely high MP generation to begin with.
• During UI, using Fire spells which grant fewer stacks of AF than you currently have of UI will simply remove that many stacks of UI rather than both removing all beneficial stacks and giving you nothing in turn (as they do currently). When it gives stacks AF of equal to or greater than your UI stacks, it simply switches you directly to those stacks (as Fire III/Blizzard III alone do).
• Transpose has a 12-second cooldown again, but 2 charges. This gives more deliberate use but also opens up some new options.
• Scathe removed. You now already have plenty of quick-casting options via aspected spells.
• Flare potency buffed but again has significant taper. Freeze still will not, despite having equal base potency, since it does effectively 60% less potency anyways.
• Fire II buffed not to be worthless. Blizzard II now on-target. Generates a stack of UH per cast later. Freeze changed into a long-cast, situational nuke, pausing MP generation over the cast (do not progress towards next tick) to cast a massive high-potency stun that generates 3 stacks of UH. (Think Shiva.)
• Instead of dealing with clunkiness all the way to level 72, allow MP to progress towards its next tick even while in Astral Fire, ensuring the first tick in UI is instant. Halve the effect of each tick, but have each tick at half a GCD's time, keeping it rotationally consistent over varying Attack Speeds and more smoothly granular in its pacing. This means there's still benefit for maintaining an MP margin beyond merely having just enough for a Blizzard III.
• Revise Firestarter. Spread out its RNG. Have the relative potency (Det, Crit, and DHit-affected, but not affected by main stat) of all Fire casts build resource which can then be spent on any normal Fire spell (i.e. any but Fire IV) to quick-cast and free-cast it. Fire IV only generates half as much of this resource as the other fire spells.
• Fire spell animations now scale with stack count.
• Remove Aspect Mastery. Flare/Despair should in most cases remain a deliberate, but competitive choice, rather than just a rotational finisher.
• Enochian then fills the rotation-adjustment niche left formerly by Aspect Mastery, as a burst CD.

• Enochian originally allows you to hold both UI and AF at the same time, thereby extending the period over which you have reduced MP costs (similar to Umbral Hearts) and quicker casts, while increasing all stack bonuses to 25% each. Thus, during AF, UI stacks are shown but muted to show that they are not generating MP, only continuing to reduce MP and cast costs of Fire spells.
• At level 72, Enochian is upgraded to also allows the generation of Astral Hearts from Flare/Despair (3 at a time) and Fire IV (1 at a time), which allows your next cast to act as if affected by three further stacks of Astral Fire, meaning 0 MP cost on Blizzard III after Flare or up to a 250% damage Fire III (yes, the animation affected). [Archwizard's idea, stolen and altered only insofar as I feel it's only necessary as a way to give a rotation similar to that of Aspect Mastery as a means of burst, via Enochian in this case, rather than as something to be used constantly.]

[Ferrinus]

I would love some kind of black hole type spell for sucking up monsters in preparation for an AoE nuke but FF14 is extremely stingy enemy repositioning abilities in general. In fact, off the top of my head I can't think of any Jobs that still have knockback/draw-in abilities for PvE.

[Archwizard]

Wouldn't we need a enemy collision-circle resizing function for this? They're already packed as tightly as possible in most cases and we still can't AoE all without the tank ensuring a small mob is in the center of the fan of mobs.

Of course, I'd be all for said feature, perhaps even atop just shrinking down the oversized circles generally. (We see this most often on quadrupeds where the circle seems to be drawn according to their lengths, not widths, so mobs can't much clip through each other. But, since they're most often shoulder-to-shoulder (i.e. at width) in combat, this tends to just make them seem weirdly spread out.)

Sounds like a plan. It just seems like the only kind of semi-utility tool BLM would realistically be "allowed", since it wouldn't directly impact output.

At level 72, Enochian is upgraded to also allows the generation of Astral Hearts from Flare/Despair (3 at a time) and Fire IV (1 at a time), which allows your next cast to act as if affected by three further stacks of Astral Fire, meaning 0 MP cost on Blizzard III after Flare or up to a 250% damage Fire III (yes, the animation affected). [Archwizard's idea, stolen and altered only insofar as I feel it's only necessary as a way to give a rotation similar to that of Aspect Mastery as a means of burst, via Enochian in this case, rather than as something to be used constantly.]

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery! I do like the idea of Aspect Mastery being replaced by the ability to charge up Freeze or B3... though that also seems to fly in the face of your removal of Aspect Mastery, no?

But I do have some concerns about this implementation you've suggested on the idea.

• If Astral Hearts affect purely the next cast and are consumed in the process, then Fire IV spam phases will never be able to generate more than 1 Heart until we get to the finisher, since they're consumed as they're made.
• If Astral Hearts affect and are consumed by only the spells that don't generate Hearts, then that means the Fire IV spam will supe-up your refresher Fire 1, and we'll just toss FS before Despair like we already do, keeping the B3 benefit after. (Which... I guess there's nothing wrong with... but again, seems like you wanted to avoid when removing AM.)
• If Astral Hearts only affect non-Fire spells, then that means having 3 from Flare/Despair is redundant unless you toss TC or Foul/Xeno in before it, and you lose the super-F3 benefit.

[Shurrikhan]

Sounds like a plan. It just seems like the only kind of semi-utility tool BLM would realistically be "allowed", since it wouldn't directly impact output.

Damn this really makes me want to see Gravity revised accordingly... Pull them in and up, and then throw and squash them down...

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery! I do like the idea of Aspect Mastery being replaced by the ability to charge up Freeze or B3... though that also seems to fly in the face of your removal of Aspect Mastery, no?

Yes and no? The idea is that 80-90% of the time Flare is still Flare in that it's a distinct choice, rather than an obligatory Fire IV+ used as your last GCD in AF. In the remaining 10-20%, that "screw choices and just give me more damage!!!" feel of Aspect Mastery is now instead paired to the "Give me more damage!!!" CD. And it feels like a pretty good fit, imo. It also offers a greater feeling of synergy between Fire IV and the other Fire spells, given the change to Firestarter.

Put simply, I'm fine with losing options for a brief time in a sort of cackling mad mage moment; I'm just not okay with losing them as a basis of "new" gameplay. And, for me, an obligatory swap is not a rotational "choice", even if it may better vary which abilities see use over time.

Also, to clarify:

• As you suspected, Astral Hearts can't be spent by skills that generate them. I should have made that more clear, but I was typing hurriedly between shifts.
  
  
• As per description, it can serve either beneficial function of AF, making Ice spells cost increasingly less (to negative 50% cost, which would synergize well with the now far more expensive Freeze) or increasing Fire damage by a further 75% (given the initial effects of Enochian).
  
  
• You'd really want to avoid using up the +75% damage on an F1 if you could avoid it. But, the revised Firestarter should make that possible. You can Fire IV x4 to ensure the proc, given the added relative potency; or Fire IVx3 to max Astral Hearts, Fire III to nuke, repeat; or you can Sharp-Fire, Fire IVx3, spend the auto-Firestarter but not the progress towards your next, Fire IVx3 again, use the normally built Firestarter; or even Fire IVx3 to ensure a Fire's worth of Firestarter which will, given the added relative potency from Astral Hearts, guarantee a Fire III's worth of Firestarter, then Fire IVx3, spend on Fire III this time, etc. Plenty of timing options.
  
  Tbf, I'm not dead set on the generation, only that I want to see a way to make some disgustingly strong nukes from things we don't normally see.