Please reconsider an upcoming Black Mage change.

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Originally Posted by Altera

i am wondering if BLM has been completely abandoned by Players as well as balance devs as currently BLM is the only Job not on the list of group comps in FRU. Not even 0.1%. PCT has 70%, RDM 27% and SMN 3%. BLM job symbol isnt even showing up on the screen of all the jobs lol

And about the NonStandard lines now back in full force. I feel they need to remove Despair, or make it become Flarestar at lvl 100. Keep its 3sec casttime, but buff its potency or make it a guaranteed Crit/DH hit to offset Despair no longer being in the rotations. As well make it refresh Enochian.

I find this expansion has been pretty laughable how Yoshida and balance devs has let PCT run around rampant being OP for 4-5 months now. And feels like fights have been catering to all PCTs strenghts.
I am feeling like my desire to keep playing now diminishing by every week and I have been a THM in 1.0 until Job System was introduced and been BLM ever since. Never taken a single subscription break from the game. Kept it at 180days plan, max retainers since day one to support their plans for ARR. Now I have reduced it to monthly subscription and only 2 retainers extra.

If BLM doesnt get the love it needs, or PCT gets its deserved Nerf, I feel i will make Sub 0days and retainers 0 :/

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Baseline is that pct is too overtuned and blm can barely compete against melee jobs to make blm, pct combo viable. Picto being op since launch of the expansion is why all encounters are undertuned, so you can clear them without pct. SE needs to either just nerf Picto or go the long way, buff all other classes to its baseline and also adjust all existing raid bosses HP. But so far they have not addressed the issue in a meaningful way

Mao thinkings the problem is way deeper than BLMs being weak or PCTs being strong. The problem lies in the core design of fights. All new boss fights keep pushing DDR with much runnings around with two-minute meta thrown in. Is so incredibly limitings. Is also, in Mao opinion, nots even faintly resemble what Mao considers to be actual fantasy RPG fights. Is just arcade game. Buts THIS arcade game has knock-on effect of guiding job development down some very dark and bad holes. Mao didn't see any signs of SE movings away from this so Mao decided to quit and go play other games. Mao still has hope though that maybe someday SE will wakes up and make things better agains. Someday.

Could they just cut the 'cost' of Flare Star in half, and make it require 3 Fire IVs instead of 6? You would get 2 Flare Stars per 10000 MP.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Mao thinkings the problem is way deeper than BLMs being weak or PCTs being strong. The problem lies in the core design of fights. All new boss fights keep pushing DDR with much runnings around with two-minute meta thrown in. Is so incredibly limitings. Is also, in Mao opinion, nots even faintly resemble what Mao considers to be actual fantasy RPG fights. Is just arcade game. Buts THIS arcade game has knock-on effect of guiding job development down some very dark and bad holes. Mao didn't see any signs of SE movings away from this so Mao decided to quit and go play other games. Mao still has hope though that maybe someday SE will wakes up and make things better agains. Someday.

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I see so many people calling out for these drastic reworks to BLM when the answer is simple.

Just revert back to Endwalker BLM. Endwalker BLM did not have a problem with excessive movement. Endwalker BLM did not fall apart when there was fight downtime. Endwalker BLM was a job that had room for optimisation while being simple to understand.

Seriously, look at every single good change that DT BLM had:
- Retrace
- Two charges of LL
- Instant cast Despair and Paradox
- Umbral Soul at lower levels + freezes timer

ALL of those changes that made the job more friendly and easier to use could have been made to Endwalker BLM and everyone would have loved it. Instead, Dawntrail BLM has the godawful Thunderhead and Flare Star changes that lock the job into a rigid rotation.

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Originally Posted by Realfoxy

I see so many people calling out for these drastic reworks to BLM when the answer is simple.

Just revert back to Endwalker BLM. Endwalker BLM did not have a problem with excessive movement. Endwalker BLM did not fall apart when there was fight downtime. Endwalker BLM was a job that had room for optimisation while being simple to understand.

Seriously, look at every single good change that DT BLM had:
- Retrace
- Two charges of LL
- Instant cast Despair and Paradox
- Umbral Soul at lower levels + freezes timer

ALL of those changes that made the job more friendly and easier to use could have been made to Endwalker BLM and everyone would have loved it. Instead, Dawntrail BLM has the godawful Thunderhead and Flare Star changes that lock the job into a rigid rotation.

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You had me until you threw in the instant Paradox and Despair. I've already stated a bunch just how much these changes detract from what makes Black Mage what it should be.
Without those casts, it's actually insane how much movement we have right now. We've got more instants than hard-casts because of those two simple cast times being removed. Paradox and Despair being instant also means that you need to plan out your fire phase and movement far less as every spell that refreshes it is instant unless you somehow need a Fire 1 past level 90.

I'm not entirely expecting things to just fully revert back to Endwalker. I'll at least remain a bit hopeful though. That's why I and many others are proposing "drastic reworks".
I can see that they don't want to just keep things exactly the same as they were before, but the issue is that Endwalker Black Mage was so smartly designed that changing anything will break things.
As an example, let's work through what I'd imagine the dev's thought process was.

"We want to break non-standard play, so I think we should make MP regenerate off of Ice spells cast instead of server ticks."
"ok, Maybe we could have Blizzard4 and Ice Paradox together total 10000 MP."
"That could be seen as a nerf in certain contexts since it can take as little as just over 3 seconds to get to full. Let's make it just one spell."
"Sounds good. But we only added Paradox so that Ice can have another filler spell to have enough MP ticks to regen to full. So I guess we don't need it any more"
"Yeah, makes sense. To account for that lost movement we should make Paradox an instant cast even in fire phase"
"But if that's the case, then you could weave Sharpcast after Paradox, and have it last until your next Thunder almost every time. That completely kills that aspect of the job"
"ok, well let's just make Thunder instant all the time if that's how people are going to play anyway"
"But then people will just do the exact same thing and get Firestarter out of Paradox almost every time"
"Yeah, true. So how about we just give them what they want and make both Sharpcast effects guaranteed all the time"
"Perfect. It worked out so well for Kaiten after all. No one complained about that."

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Originally Posted by GartredZW

You had me until you threw in the instant Paradox and Despair. I've already stated a bunch just how much these changes detract from what makes Black Mage what it should be.
Without those casts, it's actually insane how much movement we have right now. We've got more instants than hard-casts because of those two simple cast times being removed. Paradox and Despair being instant also means that you need to plan out your fire phase and movement far less as every spell that refreshes it is instant unless you somehow need a Fire 1 past level 90.

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I actually agree with you, I was just taking that position for the sake of argument - that everything DT did to make the job easier could have been implemented without completely ruining the job.

I agree that my idea version of Black Mage would still have Fire Paradox and Despair as hardcasts. At level 60, you use Fire 1 to refresh your timer, only for the rotation to suddenly change in feel at 90 with instant Fire Paradox. Then at level 100, the hardcast Despair suddenly becomes instant, which changes the feel of the job again.

It's so stupid because in Endwalker, I honestly thought the BLM levelling experience was decent (not perfect) once you got Fire IV. Now we're back to this really awkward progression again.

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Originally Posted by Realfoxy

I actually agree with you, I was just taking that position for the sake of argument - that everything DT did to make the job easier could have been implemented without completely ruining the job.

I agree that my idea version of Black Mage would still have Fire Paradox and Despair as hardcasts. At level 60, you use Fire 1 to refresh your timer, only for the rotation to suddenly change in feel at 90 with instant Fire Paradox. Then at level 100, the hardcast Despair suddenly becomes instant, which changes the feel of the job again.

It's so stupid because in Endwalker, I honestly thought the BLM levelling experience was decent (not perfect) once you got Fire IV. Now we're back to this really awkward progression again.

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That reminds me of the good times back in Endwalker, where my lengthy wishlist of things to change about Black Mage included stuff like FireIV at level 50 or at the very least a different way to get the same gameplay, and Despair being merged with Flare so that you don't have to struggle to remember it in the middle of combat when synced to 70 or below.

I was so optimistic about this class before the Job Actions showcase. Seeing that instant Fire Paradox, and an instant Thunder just set off alarm bells in my mind, and filled me with a pit of dread.

Maybe soon they'll realize that these changes are doing less than nothing to make people play the class. There's only a single confirmed Black Mage to have cleared FRU, and it was a dual-caster set up with a Picto (Same for the only Summoner clear) and only two parties have cleared without a Pictomancer.
I like Pictomancer too, but it just doesn't hit that same level of satisfaction that is getting a cast off at just the right time, following up with a Xenoglossy while at the same time running right for the safe zone, maybe weaving a swiftcast, and getting there just in the nick of time.
I did SpheneEx as a fake melee on Black Mage the other day, and by all means, it should have been terrible, but it was just as easy as it's always been. I was week 1 progging as Black Mage in Light-Heavyweight, and even without instant Despair and two leylines, The biggest hassle was waiting for everyone else to figure things out. I thought that without the benefit of only grouping with the worst of the worst late-proggers that I'd have to actually put in a bit more effort to make the rotation work during progression. I got to Anabaseios late, so that was my experience, and I felt like I had more than enough time to optimize every last bit out of those fights.
Maybe it's just Light-Heavyweight (stupid name btw, should just be called Lightweight, but whatever) but it just doesn't feel as satisfying anymore. The only fight that forced me to actually think a bit and plan my movement was Valigarmanda, and I still think it's the most fun fight in the expansion.