Astral Fire/Umbral Ice timers are actually bad mechanics at a meta level.

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Originally Posted by Makrar

Agreed. This is why i believe the basic rotation is so simple. Its not designed to rotated through ad infinum in exactly the same order regardless of the fight like some other jobs are designed. If you remove timers then I really think you need to do a heavy redesign.

BLM is slightly different in this regard to other jobs and thats ok.

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No, the rotation is simple because bosses fuss with the rotation excessively. This is actually the primary skill check of BLM, how well you can do the basic core rotation in fights that try to prevent you from doing it. And your entire goal as a BLM is to try to get as close to the basic rotation as you can get without:

1. Dropping your GCD (Always Be Casting)
2. Overspending your instants (Always Be Casting, now with movement)
3. Dropping your timer (A consequence of not Always Being Casting)
4. Don't let the boss jump when you have mana (Do more damage, more efficiently)

These skill checks would exist in a class absent timers except for the check on the timer itself. And because timers are a structural component, not the core of the class, you can restructure the structure to not have timers simply enough with simple tweaks in the here and now, and then come back later when you have more time to properly shore it up. Which the class needs anyways because its leveling experience is the worst of any class in the game, so a larger sweeping rework to the leveling experience would be a godsend to the class, and removing the timers creates a nice vacuum where you can add some new class-unique mechanic that actually is fun, easy to understand, but difficult enough to be a more interesting check than timers to bring back what little skill the timers did bring to the ceiling. That's the fun of it, the class could have a real mechanic. Even something as basic as: "Casting 2 fire 4s enables a new, flashier, harder hitting spell!" would be a more interesting mechanic than timers provide.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

And I know, with certainty, because it was done with monk and summoner and machinist, that it can be done with Black Mage and actually massively improve the class. And just as with Monk and Summoner and Machinist, when you remove things holding back the class, which are almost always things that have their design dating back to ARR, the class massively improves. Across the board this has been true on almost every single class in the game. Why are you so afraid of improving BLM?

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Again with your stupid MNK bullshit. Stop blatantly being ignorant just for your agenda. You can see just from the first page of this board how much people are disappointed by the three jobs you listed, MCH and SMN especially. They're all living examples of what happens when you remove any and all tension/urgency from a rotation. Stop trying to pass off their reworks as objective improvements. You can argue they have their fans, but that doesn't mean other jobs need to follow their example.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

Again with your stupid MNK ********. Stop blatantly being ignorant just for your agenda. You can see just from the first page of this board how much people are disappointed by the three jobs you listed, MCH and SMN especially. They're all living examples of what happens when you remove any and all tension/urgency from a rotation. Stop trying to pass off their reworks as objective improvements. You can argue they have their fans, but that doesn't mean other jobs need to follow their example.

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I bring up monk because it's actually the closest thing to it. You're claiming I'm ignorant when all available data shows the Monk population is rising and I subjectively think the class is in a stronger position while you claim, baselessly, that it's not. So please, why the hell should I take you seriously on this?

Black mage isn't just an "always be casting" challenge. It also tasks you with maximizing the number of risky casts relative to safe ones. Doing something like swiftcasting Despair when you have 1s left on your astral timer isn't just about keeping your GCD rolling while you move or making sure your cooldowns don't languish off cooldown. It's a unique victory in the face of a unique threat.

Freezing the timer when you're not in combat is a good idea, but in combat the timer presents a unique challenge and balancing mechanism that would genuinely make BLM less interesting to lose. It's fine if not everyone likes it.

Introduction
Sprout here. Joined FFXIV from the WoW exodus in summer 2021, currently working my way through early SB, have BLM to lv70, and have personally witnessed some of the ShB->EW changes that have been discussed.

Way too many people are completely missing the point and it's extremely aggravating to read, so now I'm going to try explaining it as best as I can from my perspective as a competent (but still new) player who also sees these problems trying to get into BLM while leveling and perform well in the duties I'm able to queue for.

The timers are an archaic system that is being phased out from many jobs because they're bad for the enjoyment of actually performing the rotations in a real-world manner. For a BLM, they're unnecessary to create a job that does this rotation and are actively damaging to the gameplay.

The core loop of a BLM
The timers are the current system that facilitates this rotational loop in the same way that the combo system is what facilitates the 1-2-3 for melees -- with stuff like Storm's Eye, Armor Crush, and Disembowel to break up that loop. Once you've reached lv60+ and BLM starts to actually become distinct from THM, your loop is something like this:
- enter UI to restore MP, apply DoTs, press a big ice button, and generate UH
- enter AF, burn MP on your most powerful explodey buttons, break it up with a spell or two so that it's not "Spamming Ruin for 10 years", end on a finisher
- repeat.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what the names and icons are of the buttons you press to accomplish this. As long as you have that brief ice phase to regen MP, followed by the fire phase of big fireworks that ends in an even bigger firework, you have a black mage. Everything else like Triplecast, Manafont, Thunder, all the procs, Scathe(lol), Polyglot, etc is just fluff that (if they were all properly designed) adds more icing on top of that explodey cake.

Why the stance timers are a problem
The timers come with weaknesses that lead to problems from both the player end and the developer end. Simply put: Using these timers to facilitate the modern BLM is like using duct tape instead of reinforced steel for a skyscraper. It might have been passable in a pre-F4 world, but not now, not since HW.

The pros and cons are such that:
- the timers are basically non-existent for competent players who basically ignore the timers or are capable of reflexively doing whatever their muscle-memory tells them to do to maintain their timers
- for new players, it's a gatekeep; it's unnecessarily easy to lose hundreds and thousands of potency of damage.

It's a disproportionate punishment that *does not need to exist*. It offers no benefits; when everyone is playing competently, the game is pretty balanced, and your DPS is not proportional to the added effort it takes. All it does is offer an arbitrary feeling of skill for being better at solving an unnecessarily hard problem that relies on excluding others. The fantasy of being an explosion mage should not be locked behind arbitrary timers that are both bad game design and unnecessary to the fantasy itself. Seriously: why does a stance have a timer?

The timers are also clearly a problem to the design of the job itself when you have:
- weird goofy broken rotations like hypermeme
- the messed up AoE rotation in ShB
- the improved EW procs leading to Transpose -> F3P interactions instead of your B3/F3
- wasted procs as a proc-based caster because the timers and low-mobility supersede the most intuitive way to use your procs: when you get them

Clearly, they are extremely fickle and easily broken with the slightest change to the job's design. That's not good job design, that's a house of cards. The timers *do not robustly sustain the intended rotation*. The rotations that keep coming out are *circumventing* the intended rotation because of how the timers work, something that inevitably gets patched out later. Just fix the core problem instead of patching the holes.

Conclusion
The timers are indefensible in a modern FF14, and to the people who "like the constant anxiety", I can't convince you. For those who think it's necessary to make the rotation work, however, I implore you to take the time to come up with a way to maintain the actual rotation itself -- making it as wholly unchanged as possible -- all while removing these extremely unnecessary timers. A BLM still wants to ABC, still wants to optimize their weaves, minimize movement, not waste polyglots. Just remove the stupid stance timers so that you don't lose thousands of potency because of anything from "I messed up" to "They designed a fight that exclusively punishes me".

There's been dozens of posts in this thread suggesting how to do all of this, if that isn't good enough, then try it yourself instead of dishonestly insisting it's impossible.

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Originally Posted by AnaseSkyrider

Introduction
Way too many people are completely missing the point and it's extremely aggravating to read, so now I'm going to try explaining it as best as I can from my perspective as a competent (but still new) player who also sees these problems trying to get into BLM while leveling and perform well in the duties I'm able to queue for.

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The hypermeme paradox has nothing to do with the timer, and everything to do with the conditions that allow its gain.

The AoE rotation has nothing to do with timers, and everything to do with potency calculation.

Transpose F3P has existed since ARR

We haven't been a proc based caster since ARR. Our procs since Heavensward have been selective, maximized use.

"The Rotation" for Black Mage has been a guideline since Heavensward. It's what we refer to as Standard, the developer intended rotation, and is what all other rotations are compared to, which is based upon (who knew!) the AF/UI timer for the given expansion. Standard exists for those of you just coming in and needing a hard line to follow while you find your feet, and when you're ready to dive into the deep end, there's so much here for you to explore.

The amount that Black Mage can deviate and offer, the skill expression, all of that, wouldn't exist without the timer providing that restrictive window to work in. You keep saying to 'imagine' ways to make the rotation work without the timer, and I don't care to.

I do not care about making standard work, because standard already works.

I care about keeping all the wild and crazy and creative sidelines, transpose lines, no B4 lines, Lolonlyparadox lines, all of the depth of the Black Mage's ocean that can only be allowed because Standard isn't the only way to play. It's a handrail, it's the shallow end, it's good enough if you don't want to go further, yet here the lot of you are, wanting to drain the pool because you don't want to swim.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

Black mage isn't just an "always be casting" challenge. It also tasks you with maximizing the number of risky casts relative to safe ones. Doing something like swiftcasting Despair when you have 1s left on your astral timer isn't just about keeping your GCD rolling while you move or making sure your cooldowns don't languish off cooldown. It's a unique victory in the face of a unique threat.

Freezing the timer when you're not in combat is a good idea, but in combat the timer presents a unique challenge and balancing mechanism that would genuinely make BLM less interesting to lose. It's fine if not everyone likes it.

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And you know what? It would be risky without timers. There is no innate part of timers that would take away the risk. Why do the timers make the class better? I have explained, vehemently, against belligerent and poorly informed counterpoints, that the timers don't add to the class. You say that the class is somehow better because it can be kicked in the teeth after it's already tripped and fallen on its face. Why is the additional punishment justified? What is it that's so important about the timers that the class cannot actually survive their removal? And if I get a nonsense answer like the guy claiming Monk is ruined because they dropped the skill floor while keeping its ceiling I am basically not going to dignify it with a response.

The unique challenge it provides is getting more BLM mains onto the class. That is what the timer actually does. The class will always, forever, be held back by this awful mechanic because purists like you don't want to change something that makes the class arbitrarily difficult for people to get in, while making it annoying to deal with all. the. time.

So again, what is so important about the timers that is worth literally all of the downsides it brings the class, other than an arbitrary feeling that you like and I despise when you have to ride the line at every single second of the rotation? Even Ninja doesn't have to deal with this and it has the only ability in the game remotely as punishing for a single mistake as BLM does for literally existing at content at all times.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The hypermeme paradox has nothing to do with the timer, and everything to do with the conditions that allow its gain.

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It has everything to do with the fact that the reason you do the rotation you do is because of how MP and the timers interact. You can drain your mana and refill it in a way that is fast enough and offers more DPS because the structure is the timers. That's why hypermeme existed. That wouldn't exist if the job had actual mechanics on a solid foundation.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The AoE rotation has nothing to do with timers, and everything to do with potency calculation.

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Fair enough. On reflection, I accept.

Here's a better argument: you effectively ignore the timers because you don't play around them in the AoE rotation. The goofy ShB AoE rotation doubled-down on that.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Transpose F3P has existed since ARR

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Except it fell out of use, and is now something you can reliably do thanks to the increased proc durations.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

We haven't been a proc based caster since ARR. Our procs since Heavensward have been selective, maximized use.

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Right, so why are there still procs? THM is still the proc-based ARR class it was before, with some of the tweaks and bells and whistles, except it now becomes the HW+ BLM turret with the stress timer. Why do you have procs that do not actually function like procs? Sharpcast is a weak and pathetic button that exists just to add another tedious weave in a GCD-heavy rotation that nullifies its own mechanics. Sharpcast is a button that says they added something and then regretted adding it.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

"The Rotation" for Black Mage has been a guideline since Heavensward.

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Then why do the developers have to change it so that the optimal way to play it is the guideline? Why would they attempt to fix glitches like hypermeme or the ShB AoE rotation if it's intentionally a loose job design? The answer: it's not a guideline. They just think they can maintain the intended rotation and its flexibility while keeping its ARR core relatively untouched, when they need to just let go of the timers. They are not needed to have the features you're asking for.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

You keep saying to 'imagine' ways to make the rotation work without the timer, and I don't care to.

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It's a prompt to apply some critical and creative thinking. Half the replies are "They can't get rid of the timers because it will do X" when there are solutions ranging from simple to complex that take moments to come up with, which tells me these people are actively refusing to even engage with the idea of removing these awful timers; saying "no" is not a reply no matter how many words you put into it if you didn't actually consider what was said in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I do not care about making standard work, because standard already works.

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Except when a boss mechanic stuns you and you're the only person losing insane amounts of DPS compared to everyone else. These timers exist exclusively to say "If you don't DPS within however many seconds just so happen to be left on that timer whenever the mechanic decides to happen, you lose even more DPS than anyone else".

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I care about keeping all the wild and crazy and creative sidelines, transpose lines, no B4 lines, Lolonlyparadox lines, all of the depth of the Black Mage's ocean that can only be allowed because Standard isn't the only way to play.

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What you ultimately care about is maintaining a broken job stitched together with duct tape that is arbitrarily exclusive to all but the most pig-headed of people who find joy in bad game design. This is why I am imploring people to actually consider how to do it. What I listed, what this entire thread is about, are the REAL and TANGIBLE excessive problems created by these timers, and instead of asking "How can I avoid losing what I think would become lost?", the response is "No. I like pain".

How did this thread hit so many pages? The timers are a very simple purpose, they create restrictions in your rotation to navigate based on fight design. Every part of the current rotation balances the timer and your mana to fit as much potency into a given cycle as the fight will allow, if you don't see the value of the pressure the timer creates I would encourage you to play BLM more, or just move onto another class. It underlines every decision you make on the job in higher end content, second only to "can I cast here?". If you despise how a job functions when it has functioned, in a broad sense, the same way for 6.5 years you should really play another job and leave this one to the people who enjoy it. It is an extremely unique job compared to all the others and most serious BLM mains would probably tell you they don't want the fundamentals to change at all.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

How did this thread hit so many pages? The timers are a very simple purpose, they create restrictions in your rotation to navigate based on fight design.

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Because it's a terrible system and needs to be removed because it's an arbitrary way of lowering the DPS floor and raising the barrier-to-entry, something that doesn't even matter to experienced players who are able to manage the timer just fine -- except for when a mechanic forces them. You are a GCD-heavy caster, do your ABCs; job design done. Timers unnecessary.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

if you don't see the value of the pressure the timer creates I would encourage you to play BLM more

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You are *already losing DPS* by failing to manage your procs, polyglots, and your ABC. The pressure is entirely unnecessary. This is a job with an unnecessary curse that punishes you 10x worse for the same mistake compared to how any other job deals with it. **It is unnecessary**. The rotation can be coded *just fine* without the stance timers.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

It underlines every decision you make on the job in higher end content, second only to "can I cast here?".

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Except maintaining the timers is not an advanced mechanic that only the masters can do, it's the basic mechanic that you have to perfectly execute to be able to perform your main rotation. And if you don't, your DPS drops like a rock. It's not the extra icing on top that eeks out the extra DPS that only high-end players can do, that's what the procs, ABC, and polyglots are for. The timer is unnecessary punishment for bad timing on top of that.

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Originally Posted by tearagion

If you despise how a job functions when it has functioned, in a broad sense, the same way for 6.5 years you should really play another job and leave this one to the people who enjoy it. It is an extremely unique job compared to all the others and most serious BLM mains would probably tell you they don't want the fundamentals to change at all.

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As a WoW-addict who is a big fan of nostalgia, tradition, and class fantasy -- who believes Warrior(WoW) stances should come back -- this is a terrible job design that has been neglected and simply added-onto without care for the bad foundation. Stances and stance-dancing is great. Stances on a timer that bricks your rotation is absurd.