BLM Post-Patch, and where to go from here.

As someone who started at the end of Shadowbringers I share the sentiment that it has the same bad feeling to it, in comparison to Endwalker. But of course the issue I now have is still somewhat related to not playing the new rotation optimally, resulting in mistakes that are far more punishing than ever.

Without having all the background information and going in bad faith territory, I would say the changes were more targeted at making the non-standard lines impossible, rather than improving Black Mage. While I get that non standard lines might not be the indented way of playing, most high end players used them and I have not heard from anyone, who took the time to learn non-standard, preferring the default playstyle.

I have no doubt that Black Mages in statics will find good ways to adept to the new Raid. When it comes to PF, non-standard was often a good answer to play around strats that did not took BLM's into consideration.

On a personal level I am not opposed to a Black Mage rework, I am disappointed in the changes that feel more like band aid fixes and invalidating what I have learned over the entirety of Endwalker. At least I did not venture into Ultimates yet, that would feel even worse relearning them on a impeded class, only to wait for a rework that might not happen until 8.0 and then start all over again, if we go by past SE's announcements for class reworks.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

Tbh this would just further promote Polystacking for burst. Is that what you want? "No Xeno gameplay" and turn xeno into a much worse Reprise fom RDM?
Like "... did this BLM just cast a xenoglossy? what a noob... you never do that. You always go for a 3PFS, (3 polyglot Flare Star)".

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Nots necessarily. Is depends on fight conditions. Sometimes will wants get single Xenoglossy in because sometimes will has only one charge of Polyglots with boss changings state soon. Main thing is that this makes Flare Star FLEXIBLE....something whats needed for fights requiring more mobilitys.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

1.Astral Fire both lasts too long, and feels too strict.

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Its length doesn't bother me. Its length compared to UI's length does. That combined with AF/UI timers being completely worthless now but still existing makes the entire situation a farce. Frankly, if they removed the timers and dragged the class back to HW's 4 fire 4s per rotation and gave the class a real umbral ice rotation, it would feel better. None of this addresses how BLM is also still functionally an over-time class in a burst damage meta, but at least fixes core structural issues that have existed since ARR, but only became a real problem starting with Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

2.Flare Star is not a good capstone reward.

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I think it's fine explicitly, but there's some hidden problems with how it's handled. As mentioned prior, the damage over time nature of BLM means flare star doesn't do real damage compared to anything else BLM already does, including despairs and even fire 4s. It is an increase, but only in the way a normal midare setsugeka is an increase over the basic rotation. Only the numbers aren't as big as even PCT's giant doom meteor so you kind of get the original midare with the new midare's potency but no auto crit/dhit. This is more a balance and structure issue than anything, the ability is fine in animation and intent, but its place could use some looking at.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

3.Thunderhead, both a noob trap, and a bad replacement.

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It's possible to not clip because even going high thunder->fire 3 is still ~2.5s of wiggle room. The problem is, because of timers and, as you say, the 30s buff duration, I often find I can't cast it and it, simply, falls off before I have a chance to recast it, with the buff falling off sometimes seconds later. Thunder as a whole needs a complete redesign. It was functionally carried by the absolutely ridiculous damage it did with a proc enabling it even as an emergency movement tool, but always felt bad from HW on, confused new BLMs and made an interesting discussion between safety and damage from SB+, but overall just isn't a good mechanic. In a hypothetical rework, Thunder should be a stackable buff, rage bar, or some other mechanic that enables ad hoc movement. Combined with removing AF/UI timers, it would be an interesting replacement to enable more movement options.

As it exists now, Thunder is basically a better Scathe. If you clip the DoT it's decent damage. If you don't, it's about the same damage over 30s as ye olde thunder from SB+, but it's a textbook orphaned mechanic. It's there because of tradition and little else. I'd prefer thunder were kept, but reworked, because I'd like BLM to be a BLM, not a fire mage that occasionally tells the enemy to chill out.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

4.MP Regen Problems

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This can be completely solved by simply removing AF/UI timers. Also, your last statement about relying on server tics is interesting, but I've never run into a situation where even B4->transpose caused me to not get the full benefit. However, as brought up prior, in addition to removing the AF/UI timers, trimming back the AF rotation and building up the UI rotation would do wonders towards making this feel better. Black Mages are known to be masters of all destructive elements, not just fire. It would be nice to bring that back in.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

5. Ice Paradox

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I could not care less about this as-is. The class has plenty of movement, especially given Paradoxes auto proc into firestarter, meaning you have 2 instants for every 8 manual casts. That combined with 40s swiftcast and triplecast's 60s cooldown, nevermind xenoglossy's 5 casts per 2m provided you don't accidentally overcap it (why did so many classes get overcap protection but not BLM, or even GNB for that matter?) In terms of raw mobility, BLM is remarkably similar to PCT, with the specific exception of having a much harder time using oGCDs without clipping for significant chunks of the rotation.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

6. Movement inflexibility, and the incongruity of it in current fight design.

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Compared to standard EW, the class is substantially more flexible on movement now. There's a reason I was screaming from the rooftops throughout all of EW at how bad BLM actually was, but the crowd of players completely addicted to nonstandard rotations drowned out the rather serious problem of BLM's core design. As it turns out, fixing nonstandard revealed just how bad BLM actually was. DT is an objective increase over EW's standard rotation, but holy hell is it still in a really bad place. Fun, but bad.


That all said, I'm kind of expecting BLM's main GCDs to get PCT treatment. 1.8s casts with 2.8s recasts for things like fire 4, or 2s casts with 3s recast despairs/flare stars. The class, now revealed to be in the dire straits it was in throughout all of EW even to the nonstandard junkies, is going to force the devs to give it a rework. Possibly even a rushed rework. Its problems are more than just potency related. It has no burst, it clips oGCDs too much, the class is almost entirely an AF phase now. Now that nonstandard is no longer hiding its issues, the class can finally get the rework it has needed since shadowbringers, but was always overshadowed by how much worse other classes were. Very much monk treatment.

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Originally Posted by ElevatedCosmonaut

4.MP Regen Problems
A recurring point within my points is this newfound lack of free movement we got in EW. All our movement now either punishes us potency wise, or is best saved for aligning into party buffs or long sections of movement. This lack of movement, where all the other casters, (even Pictomancer, with its long recast timers), have it, leaves us back in the turret mage design on StB and ShB, which doesn't fit in with the fight design of DT. If you've done EX1, you can realize how much small movement is needed in the mechanics, and as such, you can really feel the lack of flexibility.

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This is one of my big problems right now, I progged ex1 and had a rough time with it on BLM but I felt like it was doable, but ex2 I just gave up trying to learn the fight on it and just switched to RDM until I melded a bunch of spell speed and could do the mechanics more comfortably. Even after clearing ex2 well over a dozen times on BLM now, I cannot get over how the overlap of fire phase's new strictness/trying to save stuff for burst window/doing the fire/wind blade warp mechanic which happens EXACTLY at the same time as the burst window feels so incredibly hectic in a not great way, and I love the fight. Almost very single time I'm either like "ok, lets focus on burning through xenos for burst and staying alive for the mechanic" and then I look over and see I've dropped enochain, or I focus on the mechanic and keeping AF up and I don't maximize burst damage.

The thing that's getting me is that I did not ever feel like this during extreme or the few savages I did back during endwalker, and I was not a nonstandard player at all (I thought the concept was cool but it felt unintuitve to me/i hate using tranpose because its hard wired into my brain as the move I use when I've messed up.) Obviously dawntrail content is already more intense, but I feel like if they're not going to design the fights to accommodate for black mage, they should have at least tried to add things to BLM to be able to deal with more movement out of the gate without a crapton of SpSd melds besides Retrace (which is nice, but completely useless in constant movement mechs like ex1's Rain of Feathers) and another Xeno slot (which ends up just being saved for burst anyway). Don't get me wrong, I think the challenge of figuring out how to best use leylines/triplecast in a fight is part of the fun of the class, but currently I think it's too punishing if you ever do mess up, getting back into the flow while still doing the kinds of mechanics in ex1 and ex2 is very trying.

I like BLM's sustain damage style, its what it's built around and I don't want them trying to rework it to be just like other burst DPS, but I feel like most of these changes to the job weren't made with enough consideration for what the new content is like. I did not need the thunder damage changes to give me a new thing to fret about and worry about dropping thunderhead or the DoT itself since you're discouraged from refreshing too early now, or a new slowcast spell that punishes me from missing even one fire iv because i tried to adjust for a mechanic. I don't think its impossible to add stuff to BLM that makes it more capable of dealing with these kinds of fights without undermining the core of the class too. I'm kind of bummed that the devs either didn't realize (or just didn't care) that nonstandard rotations existence was a symptom of Black mage's flexibility, and by haphazardly trying to neuter it they took part of BLM's ability to adjust for mechs with it.

DT BLM still ranks low when compared to past versions. I wouldn't mind going back to EW's and calling it a day. MP regen should come back, maybe add some MP to B3 to deal with ticks. Thunder limited to proc only isn't fun and I miss Sharpcast management. Ice paradox should come back. Flare Star is just another Despair, it can stay, but it's not interesting.

I think if people are throwing out suggestions, they need to give ones where they "fix" the class but do not allow non-standard to come back. It seems clear the dev's goal was to eliminate non-standard, so any suggestion of bringing it back wouldn't be realistic. If we want to make suggestions that are meaningful, think on ways to fix the rigid rotation that don't involve bringing back the very thing they are aiming to eliminate.

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Originally Posted by dairymoose

I think if people are throwing out suggestions, they need to give ones where they "fix" the class but do not allow non-standard to come back. It seems clear the dev's goal was to eliminate non-standard, so any suggestion of bringing it back wouldn't be realistic. If we want to make suggestions that are meaningful, think on ways to fix the rigid rotation that don't involve bringing back the very thing they are aiming to eliminate.

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A flexible rotation that allows a player to solve a problem in different ways is exactly what the game needs. Flexibility should be designed into the rotation of every class, not only BLM. Maybe the devs don't agree, but they they should know how bland it makes the game.

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Originally Posted by dairymoose

I think if people are throwing out suggestions, they need to give ones where they "fix" the class but do not allow non-standard to come back. It seems clear the dev's goal was to eliminate non-standard, so any suggestion of bringing it back wouldn't be realistic. If we want to make suggestions that are meaningful, think on ways to fix the rigid rotation that don't involve bringing back the very thing they are aiming to eliminate.

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Our job is to express our concerns, which for many people is that the new changes make the class unfun to play, their job is to come up with a improved class. While looking at the changes it totally makes the impression they wanted to get rid of the non-standard lines, but the official statement was to change mp regeneration to help with lower levels, which also just failed.

Of course when creating something big like an entire expansion you have to take shortcuts left and right and here they failed in my eyes. So with the highest amount of copium, I would prefer them to roll the changes back until they come with a meaningful rework and not leave dedicated Black Mage players with this version for possible 3 years until the next expansion.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Compared to standard EW, the class is substantially more flexible on movement now.

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No idea what you're on about here. Right now if your Ice phase aligns poorly you're forced into a damage negative Swift B4. Compare to Endwalker where you had options like extending with Transpose into Ice Paradox (not nonstandard btw, everyone could do the recovery line of Transpose Paradox B1 B4). Thunderhead inflexibility is another huge dead weight that the standard rotation has to drag around.

Free F3p is good, yes. That doesn't make up for the everything else they've saddled the job with.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

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There's a reason I was screaming from the rooftops throughout all of EW at how bad BLM actually was, but the crowd of players completely addicted to nonstandard rotations drowned out the rather serious problem of BLM's core design. As it turns out, fixing nonstandard revealed just how bad BLM actually was. DT is an objective increase over EW's standard rotation, but holy hell is it still in a really bad place. Fun, but bad.


That all said, I'm kind of expecting BLM's main GCDs to get PCT treatment. 1.8s casts with 2.8s recasts for things like fire 4, or 2s casts with 3s recast despairs/flare stars. The class, now revealed to be in the dire straits it was in throughout all of EW even to the nonstandard junkies, is going to force the devs to give it a rework. Possibly even a rushed rework. Its problems are more than just potency related. It has no burst, it clips oGCDs too much, the class is almost entirely an AF phase now. Now that nonstandard is no longer hiding its issues, the class can finally get the rework it has needed since shadowbringers, but was always overshadowed by how much worse other classes were. Very much monk treatment.

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Are these problems with Endwalker BLM in the room with us right now? Ignoring TOP P6 (which I blame more on fight design), EW BLM was more than capable of handling its Savage tier with Standard play. People liked the job!

Your proposal - to homogenise BLM into a burst job alongside all the others in the game, forcing it into the 2 min burst meta and removing the unique identity of its long casts, is certainly a design proposal. Just in the way that deleting ShB SMN was also a design proposal.

I certainly think SE could do such a thing, but I would very much prefer that they did not.

I find this rework a disaster. Flarestar is just like Despair II, it makes no sense. I just expected an blizzard despair to add more button to ice phase. It doesnt give any other reward apart from just flat damage.. also the animation is crap.

I never understood why cant ley lines just be a damn buff and just that, why does it have to be in the ground? why not just surround yourself with ley lines that follow you everywhere you go?