What are your impressions of BLM's current "game feel" ?

I got a chance to sit down and play it again on my alt... I felt how I expected to feel about it.

For me, there's three things that make a good class;

1. Clear feedback. It should be obvious when you're playing the class well, and obvious when you're playing it poorly. ChidoriYumitori explained this perfectly in the above post. When mastered, black mage felt totally different than when you first picked it up. It wasn't really an awkward class-- you were just an awkward player. Other classes just didn't "tell" you that like black mage did.
2. Synergy between class systems and skills/abilities. Without enochian, a lot of black mage's abilities have lost their utility. When half your class is a system and the other half is abilities & skills that interact with that system, you can't just take out one half. Doing so removes both halves. This isn't a redesign, as much as an undesign.
3. Meaningful interactions with encounter design. Leylines, retrace/btl, aetherial manipulation, manaward, and triplecast all impact how you engage with an encounter. But a lot of these have been made less impactful or less necessary to Black Mage's success. Classes & encounters are siloing away from each other, increasingly becoming two mini-games that you play at the same time.

I'm not someone that believes black mage can't ever be changed, but I miss when my skills and abilities were more consequential. In other words, It feels like I have lost toys/tools that were fun to use.

The response appears to be "well, now you don't NEED to use them," but what good is a game that doesn't need me to play it? Black Mage was a power fantasy unlike any other, and it's sad to see it go.

Regardless of whatever changes they made in 7.2 I still am wondering exactly what the hell their endgame is with superfluous buttons such as:

Scathe
High Blizzard II
High Fire II
Blizzard

With the potency or skills as they are there shouldn't be any reason they should take months, or even years, to address. And this is coming from someone who didn't really play BLM much (but did start the game as one back in HW).

I would actually fold a lot of those buttons. BLM in particular, aesthetically and also lore wise, would be entirely understandable as a job who always deals AoE damage. Very few abilities would have a dedicated single-vs-AoE version, just for reasons that "big badaboom mage does big badaboom".

Ofc, these would all need to be of the type "X potency and Y% less in a radius".

I'd combine:

* Freeze/Blizzard IV
* Flare/Fire IV
* The thunders. The AoE High Thunder II animation is dope, just make the main target be hit by the larger bolt from HT1.
* The stance-switching spells, which also eliminates HB2 and HF2, though I'd probably use those visuals instead as they're pretty damn nifty.
* Xeno and Foul I'd merge into a two-step automated sequence spell because I feel both animatiosn can combine well. On press you cause a (reduced damage) Xenoglossy to a target, the end-animation gathers the visuals into a single point, then ~1.5s after pressing the button initially this explodes into Foul, which on the main target happens to exactly equalize the damage to one target.

I'm not sure whether I'd prefer the AoE rotation to then also be the "full" rotation, but it'd make sense I guess? In any case, so many cool AoE-seeming visuals, it'd be a shame to not make the entire rotation on all targets essentially be also an AoE rotiation.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Current BLM now feels like a healer, where you just kinda zone out spamming whatever key your fire 4 is on because you don’t have to pay attention to anything

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As someone who has mained healer and dps caster since ARR, this is exactly how I felt when trying the new BLM out.
Playing the occasional BLM with the slow weighty casts and threat of dropping the astral/umbral stacks, along with actually having to think about how to keep them in moments with high movement, was a very fun escape from the boring healer rotation. SMN used to be a nice escape too with complex rotation and dot upkeep.

All my favorite classes are being slowy butchered over the lifespan of the game, even Picto now I hear has become more spammy and simpler, I can't bring myself to test it.

Only RDM remains, though I'm sure the class will have something "pleasing to look forward too" in the near future, get ready for the jolt III spam...

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Originally Posted by Kurado

I love the 7.2 BLM changes. It feels fun and flashy. I've been using BLM for all sorts of content now after barely touching it since 1.0

Thank you to the devs for making SMN, AST, and BLM more accessible and fun.

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Great bait!!

b8 aside, I don’t do savage anymore (scared of other people) but I played BLM (not religiously) for EW & DT extremes and normal content and post 7.0 it became my second favorite job only behind Ninja.

I hate the changes.

To me, (someone who isn’t 100% optimal or doing freaky nonstandard rotations) it feels the ~~same~~ but the same as it did when I was playing “perfectly” and not messing anything up.

My favorite part about black mage was the fail state. There was a way to destroy your rotation and making a bad move or positioning yourself poorly meant you had to try to correct your mistake. Again, I was never playing “optimally” but doing something like using an ether to correct almost dropping enochian and missing a flare star charge or whatever felt FUN. it felt so fun!!! I had so many options and progging a fight and crafting the perfect rotation with each attempt was rewarding and satisfying. No other job had a sense of mastery to it. You were able to improvise and adapt to the situation. Manafont pre-7.0 was fun too because it was just another option to either squeeze out more damage or save your rotation from a mistake.

My question: What purpose does Paradox serve now? What about Umbral soul? Why even change Leylines’ duration? The job feels incomplete. I don’t like to criticize developers harshly or be dramatic but they legitimately did a terrible job. Removing a fundamental aspect of it without really reworking anything else just felt lazy. Why even do it in the .2 patch and not as part of some huge .0 patch rebalance instead?

I think CBU3 should allow at least ONE job in this game to be difficult and require actual mastery. I originally picked up Black Mage because I assumed incorrectly that it’d never be gutted and I’d have a fun job for boring normal content and extremes.

I want to fail. Let me fail. I have 18/21 combat jobs to max level. I am tired of pressing your buttons in the same way you want me to every single time I want to use my brain and think and adapt to the fight I’m in.

I am not BLM main and when I play BLM I just run normal content.

That being said I have a mix feeling about the change.

Although I don’t play BLM for challenge, I do found keeping the timer unique and fun even in normal content.

On the other hand I am not a fan of “memorized” the fight. Yes, fight have been DDR since ARR, but it is clearly getting toward more memories game than the more reactionary we had early in FFXIV, this is always one of the biggest reason I do not like bringing BLM in higher content, and the recent change in BLM just hints we are moving towards more to that side.

So on one hand I feel BLM not as interesting but on the others hand it feel less punishing if I do not memorise the fight and keep check on boss health like an accountant

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Originally Posted by Kurado

I love the 7.2 BLM changes. It feels fun and flashy. I've been using BLM for all sorts of content now after barely touching it since 1.0

Thank you to the devs for making SMN, AST, and BLM more accessible and fun.

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Almost had me until you said SMN more accessible. If you mean to the point where a 10 year old could figure out the rotation without a guide then congrats

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurado

I love the 7.2 BLM changes. It feels fun and flashy. I've been using BLM for all sorts of content now after barely touching it since 1.0

Thank you to the devs for making SMN, AST, and BLM more accessible and fun.

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Please explain how BLM was not flashy before, they are the same animations.