The destruction of BLM

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Originally Posted by missTori

i just don't get how anyone found the job fun, regardless of timer or not. spamming fire iv is not engaging to me. BLM and picto both feel clunky. with picto, you have to draw paintings in combat which does no damage, so it feels like you're wasting time somehow. in- between pulls you can do it instantly at least.

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Originally Posted by missTori

There's a few jobs that just aren't for everyone, and i think a lot of the forum people will never realize that. (except machinist and bard, please help them god)

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So old BLM sucked and deserved to be buried so that it could be a job for everyone, but not all jobs have to be for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

bla bla bla

I get some people like complexity and to struggle, but it is what it is.. BLM shouldn't be the cool kid's club.

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You may as well be honest and quit with the fallacious appeal to popularity if you're going to reveal your hand anyways. You don't care about popularity. You're just happy to see something getting torn down and brought to your level. To hell with the people who enjoyed having depth in their gameplay; they were excluding me and making a cool kid's club without me.

The sad part is that nothing was ever stopping you from joining the club. All it'd take is a little bit of time and effort on your part. The overwhelming majority of jobs are already tailored to be as accessible and painless as possible, so why do we have to turn that number up to 100%? What's actually wrong with a single job providing a niche for people that want more engagement? Can you answer that question without appealing to popularity as if it has anything to do with objective quality? I'd really rather not go down the food analogy route, so please give this some genuine consideration.

I'm gonna be really honest, this overexagerrating of the rework from some Black Mage players kinda seems like a weird form of "I suffered, so you should too, we should never improve things", and I just don't vibe with that sort of mentality.

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

I'm gonna be really honest, this overexagerrating of the rework from some Black Mage players kinda seems like a weird form of "I suffered, so you should too, we should never improve things", and I just don't vibe with that sort of mentality.

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People are upset because there were no improvements.

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

I'm gonna be really honest, this overexagerrating of the rework from some Black Mage players kinda seems like a weird form of "I suffered, so you should too, we should never improve things", and I just don't vibe with that sort of mentality.

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The flaw in this line of thinking is the assumption that Black Mage players are secretly some cabal of evil gatekeeping masochists, who only wanted to play it in order to lord some non-existent difficulty medal over everyone else's heads. In reality it's simply a matter of people choosing a job that spoke to them and engaged them properly. "Improving things" is entirely subjective; for some people Black Mage was never suffering at all, and the current devolution into WHM-lite gameplay is an affront to their preferred playstyle. If they wanted to play WHM-lite, they would've been playing White Mage. Black Mage players were never suffering, they played Black Mage because they wanted to. Framing it as if they were is intellectually dishonest.

To put it another way, I like doing Sudoku puzzles in my spare time. I typically go on Sudoku.com to do them. The website has six difficulties to choose from: Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert, Master, and Extreme. I typically pick Expert, because it's a good balance of challenging vs. winnable for me. I wouldn't expect someone who's not interested in learning Expert difficulty to "suffer" like I did learning more advanced strategies (which, I didn't suffer at all by the way, I chose to learn because I enjoy the game), but on the other side of the same coin it would be wildly inappropriate to rework Expert difficulty into "Easy Mode 4" because the people that only play Easy want a new flavor of Easy to choose from. I play Expert because I enjoy it and it's suited for the level of challenge that I prefer. If you don't like Expert, there are other options available to tailor your experience how you like. If I were stuck playing on Easy mode forever because it's all they offered, I would either find a different site to play on or stop playing entirely. And before anyone jumps at the opportunity to tell me, "Well Quote, looks like this game just isn't for you! Go unsub and play something else!" ...

By the same logic, what's the problem with finding a different job because Black Mage isn't for you? There were 20 other jobs/difficulties to choose from if Black Mage imposed too much "suffering" upon you! For what purpose do we pressingly NEED to flatten it out? It's not like it was rocket science either, so I have no idea where this idea that it was awful, miserable suffering came from. And if it was really so awful that you consider it suffering, then what's the problem with finding a different job that accommodates your desired level of difficulty? Why does every job need to be flattened out to the floor to leave more advanced players out in the cold? We're constantly reducing jobs, and the game is explicitly becoming narrower in scope to exclude players that enjoy being challenged by the gameplay. There's no way to look at it other than the game objectively becoming smaller. I consider that to be the opposite of an improvement.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And PCT/SMN’s play rate went down. So…….absolutely nothing was actually achieved

Especially when they buff PCT in 7.3 and all the meta chasers go back to PCT

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Did you become a fortune teller meanwhile? Is this your part-time job aside from full-time forum whiner?

Yes, PCT went down as it got re-balanced and put more in line with the rest. It will still remain popular because the class design is actually really good especially for ultimates.

Each role has a least one played class. This is true in every single MMO and FF14 is no exception. Equal distribution among all classes does not exist.

Look at statistics regarding the new tier. War is least played 10%, WHM sitting at 7%, reaper, 3.2%, smn 1.8%, MCH 4%. Where are my Reaper mains to complain? Or Ninja sitting at 3.1% from m6s? LOL.


Anyway...........

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

Did you become a fortune teller meanwhile? Is this your part-time job aside from full-time forum whiner?

Yes, PCT went down as it got re-balanced and put more in line with the rest. It will still remain popular because the class design is actually really good especially for ultimates.

Each role has a least one played class. This is true in every single MMO and FF14 is no exception. Equal distribution among all classes does not exist.

Look at statistics regarding the new tier. War is least played 10%, WHM sitting at 7%, reaper, 3.2%, smn 1.8%, MCH 4%. Where are my Reaper mains to complain? Or Ninja sitting at 3.1% from m6s? LOL.


Anyway...........

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So if every role has a least played class then what was the problem of casters being BLM considering you said that it suddenly shooting up because it was buffed and made easier is a good thing

Like you can’t argue out of both sides of your mouth here that BLM changes are good because it moved BLM’s play rate but also that you’ll never change that there is a least popular class

(Oh and side note they managed to ruin PCT’s class design so I wouldn’t be too hopeful on that front unfortunately)

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Originally Posted by Quuoooote

You may as well be honest and quit with the fallacious appeal to popularity if you're going to reveal your hand anyways. You don't care about popularity. You're just happy to see something getting torn down and brought to your level. To hell with the people who enjoyed having depth in their gameplay; they were excluding me and making a cool kid's club without me.

The sad part is that nothing was ever stopping you from joining the club. All it'd take is a little bit of time and effort on your part. The overwhelming majority of jobs are already tailored to be as accessible and painless as possible, so why do we have to turn that number up to 100%? What's actually wrong with a single job providing a niche for people that want more engagement? Can you answer that question without appealing to popularity as if it has anything to do with objective quality? I'd really rather not go down the food analogy route, so please give this some genuine consideration.

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well what can I say? You will get over it, eventually and hopefully..

As for me, I don't get attached to any role. So in short, I don't give a F. I know games always change classes for the better or for the worse, and they always do this in a cycle. I am aware of that, and what I can do is play them, or not. There is not much to it. And if it reaches a point where the game itself becomes miserable for me and not much incentive to play, I switch. easy peasy.

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Originally Posted by Quuoooote

By the same logic, what's the problem with finding a different job because Black Mage isn't for you? There were 20 other jobs/difficulties to choose from if Black Mage imposed too much "suffering" upon you! For what purpose do we pressingly NEED to flatten it out? It's not like it was rocket science either, so I have no idea where this idea that it was awful, miserable suffering came from. And if it was really so awful that you consider it suffering, then what's the problem with finding a different job that accommodates your desired level of difficulty? Why does every job need to be flattened out to the floor to leave more advanced players out in the cold? We're constantly reducing jobs, and the game is explicitly becoming narrower in scope to exclude players that enjoy being challenged by the gameplay. There's no way to look at it other than the game objectively becoming smaller. I consider that to be the opposite of an improvement.

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https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2...axuE/giphy.gif

I can totally understand why BLM are feeling like their identity has been gutted. Summoners were treated very much the same way. I can empathise because the same is true of every healer in the game. Pretty much every healer feels the same at the moment with the exception of Astrologian which has a considerable edge because of their ability to buff damage.

Unfortunately like many other games, DPS are the problem. The developers become obsessed with DPS at the detriment of every other role in the game. The problem is, if they started rebalancing the classes, people would complain and they might lose subs so they are scared to readdress the trinity. As far as I'm aware, no other MMO makes a Healer work as a "back-up DPS" because nobody is taking damage they cannot self-heal away.

But now they have created a game where healers are not required, even for top tier content, tanks are there and DPS is the only thing that matters as well as dodging.

In a way, FFXIV has the same problem that Dark Souls has post Dark Souls 2, where dodging became so dominant, other defensive strategies were neglected and ignored. Which makes the game lack choices and basically boils the game down to two buttons, dodge and attack.

P.S. This is not an attack on DPS players at all but a criticism of Square Enix's handling of a lack of variety when it comes to DPS classes and how other roles have been pushed out.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And PCT/SMN’s play rate went down. So…….absolutely nothing was actually achieved

Especially when they buff PCT in 7.3 and all the meta chasers go back to PCT

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https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...65/425/3fd.jpg

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

I can totally understand why BLM are feeling like their identity has been gutted.

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Imagine having an unhealthy relationship with a class/role and claiming it as your "own". What the actual F. It's not your class, you don't own any artistic value or expression, or rights on how they get changed or the direction they take. You can like/dislike or play/not play. That's it.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

Imagine having an unhealthy relationship with a class/role and claiming it as your "own". What the actual F. It's not your class, you don't own any artistic value or expression, or rights on how they get changed or the direction they take. You can like/dislike or play/not play. That's it.

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I think you misunderstand what I meant. Certain people will gravitate towards certain classes. Say you've devoted 5 years + into a class and then the developers change everything about that class to not represent anything that resembles that class or why you originally picked it. I can understand why people would be upset because its a "pull the curtain" moment and the veil is lifted from people and they realise that all that investment they put in to mastering the class is worthless and a waste of time. I can certainly understand why that would upset people.

Whether you believe that is right or wrong is up to you but I can certainly understand the viewpoint of disillusioned Black Mages and Summoners.

This notion that old BLM was a 'cool kids, egotistical, elitist club' is such a self report. I have to question if you even play your preferred job at the baseline because standard BLM was always on the easier end to get into and play.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

As far as I'm aware, no other MMO makes a Healer work as a "back-up DPS" because nobody is taking damage they cannot self-heal away.

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You might want to look into a little-known MMO called 'World of Warcraft'. Of the 7 Healer specs available to play, 3 are explicitly designed with 'do damage as part of your healing gameplay' in mind (Disc Priest, Mistweaver, Holy Paladin), and the other four have talents/abilities that massively feed into allowing you to do damage on the side while your HOTs are ticking/people don't need healing (Resto Druid can Catweave and have up to like 6 DOTs active at once potentially. Holy Priest has Empyreal Blaze to blast out heavy hitting Holy Fires and its new Hero Talent tree, Archon, allows it to use their not-Assize, Halo, a lot more often which deals damage that adds up. Resto Shaman has a talent that makes their Healing Rain (Asylum but a GCD and can have 100% uptime) also deal damage over time to enemies in it, and has totems that can deal damage passively akin to old SMN Egi Autoattacks).

The only healer that is remotely close in DPS design to FFXIV healers is Preservation Evoker, with a nuke (Living Flame, which also functions as their Cure1), a 30s CD (Flame Breath), a gauge spender that competes for healing resources (Disintegrate) and a 2min burst damage attack (Deep Breath). But even then, Flame Breath can be augmented with a talent that makes it take 80% of the damage it deals, and apply that as healing to an injured ally. Or a talent that makes it so that when you hit enemies with Flame Breath, your Living Flame hits X more targets on the next use, with X being equal to the enemy count hit by Flame Breath (up to 4 bonus targets iirc)

The idea that 'healers heal and that's their whole thing' is a cancer that should have stayed dead after Cataclysm's healing requirements were received so... divisively. M6S has conclusively shown that this playerbase simply isn't prepared for the idea of 'healers heal', and the funniest part is how nobody who says 'healers should heal' never seems to realize that, once we have gear, the amount of healing we need to do will sharply decrease, and we'll be back where we started.

Surely it'd be more sensible to have a small DPS rotation for the Healers, comprised of several actions of such similar potency that A: there is an 'optimal rotation' for the sweats, but B: the difference between 'optimal' and 'smash Broil over and over and ignore everything else' is so small that it doesn't ever cause an Enrage? Furthermore, having more damage buttons for the inevitable downtime would allow more variety in how those DPS buttons interlink with our healing output, allowing for more design space for the Devs to work with. They said pre-Endwalker 'we didn't really know what to do with SCH' when showing off Expedient. Maybe if they hadn't removed all the damage buttons and gone scorched earth on the idea of Healers pressing non-Heal buttons, they'd have ideas to work with?

Here is an example of what I came up with for WHM, while trying to keep the number of new buttons added to the Job low (to lower dev-time), keep the core of the job as intact as possible (to lower dev-time/retain familiarity), but still improve the DPS rotation in downtime. With just two buttons, Banish (15s CD) and Blessing of the Elementals (Costs 50 of a new gauge, built by casting literally any MP-cost spell), and reducing Dia from 30s down to 12s, this design's 'optimal damage rotation' per 2mins goes from having 35 Glare3's, all the way down to just 17. I even added some diagrams to illustrate this difference, and the best part is, with that design, over 60% of the GCDs a WHM would use for their damage rotation would be instantcasts. If BLM's justification was 'it needed to have the changes so it could keep up with the mobility demands of the new fight design', then this WHM design would fit perfectly with that thinking. It also requires zero actual hotbar spaces to be added, because those two required buttons (Banish/BOTE) could be gained by simply merging Cure1 with Cure2, and Medica1 with Medica2, given that we never use Cure1 after we get Cure2 anyway, and Medica1 is equal in potency to 'Medica2's cast, plus a single tick'. So, just frontload one tick of Medica2, reduce the duration by 3s, and boom, hotbar slot saved. It's surprisingly easy to come up with ideas on how to use the current designs as a foundation, and build upon them, when you don't arbitrarily handicap yourself with restrictions like 'Healers should not be allowed a DPS rotation (but Tanks ARE allowed one, despite being equally 'not-a-DPS'???)

Also, if people really want to follow the flawed mantra of 'healers should only heal', they might be interested in my SGE design where Diagnosis and Prognosis have no MP cost. Spam overheal to your heart's content!

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Originally Posted by Mecia

This notion that old BLM was a 'cool kids, egotistical, elitist club' is such a self report. I have to question if you even play your preferred job at the baseline because standard BLM was always on the easier end to get into and play.

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This what gets me the most, people act like playing black mage at a basic level was this super hard unachievable goal, it really wasn't the only real difference was theirs actually room to mess up and be punished on black mage, but once you played the job you usually won't mess up. You didn't have to be this "elite gamer" to play black mage in Endwalker or early DT, you just had to actually know some basic fundamentals.

I guess people will cry about jobs they play until the bar is set so low that no one will want to play them anymore.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

You might want to look into a little-known MMO called 'World of Warcraft'. Of the 7 Healer specs available to play, 3 are explicitly designed with 'do damage as part of your healing gameplay' in mind (Disc Priest, Mistweaver, Holy Paladin), and the other four have talents/abilities that massively feed into allowing you to do damage on the side while your HOTs are ticking/people don't need healing (Resto Druid can Catweave and have up to like 6 DOTs active at once potentially. Holy Priest has Empyreal Blaze to blast out heavy hitting Holy Fires and its new Hero Talent tree, Archon, allows it to use their not-Assize, Halo, a lot more often which deals damage that adds up. Resto Shaman has a talent that makes their Healing Rain (Asylum but a GCD and can have 100% uptime) also deal damage over time to enemies in it).

The only healer that is remotely close in DPS design to FFXIV healers is Preservation Evoker, with a nuke (Living Flame, which also functions as their Cure1), a 30s CD (Flame Breath), a gauge spender that competes for healing resources (Disintegrate) and a 2min burst damage attack (Deep Breath). But even then, Flame Breath can be augmented with a talent that makes it take 80% of the damage it deals, and apply that as healing to an injured ally. Or a talent that makes it so that when you hit enemies with Flame Breath, your Living Flame hits X more targets on the next use, with X being equal to the enemy count hit by Flame Breath (up to 4 bonus targets iirc)

The idea that 'healers heal and that's their whole thing' is a cancer that should have stayed dead after Cataclysm's healing requirements were received so... divisively. M6S has conclusively shown that this playerbase simply isn't prepared for the idea of 'healers heal'

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That may be true with modern WoW but I don't remember it being true of Classic or BC. I don't think its unfair for healers to ask for more things to do, maybe something that isn't just being a back up DPS.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

The idea that 'healers heal and that's their whole thing' is a cancer that should have stayed dead after Cataclysm's healing requirements were received so... divisively. M6S has conclusively shown that this playerbase simply isn't prepared for the idea of 'healers heal'

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The problem with things like m6s in particular is healers aren't expected to heal lots and haven't been expected to heal lots for a long time, so whenever you change the gameplay loop too drastically out of nowhere it's going to shock people and challenge people to actually adapt to that playstyle.

Making healing on healers more intense will require a slow process towards that, It's not a simple change that can be done on one fight when the entire game teaches you not to constantly heal.

BLM was never going to be an exception to the changes they make. I like the changes, I'm not happy with the job design right now but not mad about the BLM stuff is a win for me.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

That may be true with modern WoW but I don't remember it being true of Classic or BC. I don't think its unfair for healers to ask for more things to do, maybe something that isn't just being a back up DPS.

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That second part is understandable. Buffing allies, granting damage to the team via a method that isn't just 'press Broil/Malefic/etc a lot of times', would be an ideal candidate I'd expect, as we're already focused on targetting allies with something else (the healing). Unfortunately, SE seems to disagree, as they've reduced how often AST is able to buff allies with single target buffs (used to be once per 30s, now it's once per 60s). If anything, we should be advocating for AST to have more cards to use, and less reliance on their own personal damage output. I think it's a shame that they increased Combust's potency by a whole 15 per tick, to make up for the reduced Card RDPS with the DT design, it's emblematic of the design being a huge misstep IMO. We should have at least one Healer, whose gameplay is very centred around 'buff allies, contribute damage via RDPS buffs', and AST would have made sense, but SE instead gave us 70p Combust, and Never-Crit Oracle

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Making healing on healers more intense will require a slow process towards that, It's not a simple change that can be done on one fight when the entire game teaches you not to constantly heal.

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Problem with that is, the playerbase doesn't really tend to react well to messages of 'you are not good enough' from the game. With JP apparently locking out NIN, MCH, SMN and WHM from their PFs for M6S (which is dumb AF, my clear had a NIN, and me on WHM), I wouldn't be surprised if the phase is treated as more of an anomaly, with a 'promise to do better', rather than an indication of design to come. It'd be nice if it WERE how the game would be designed going forward, for sure, but again, once we have more gear, how much of that healing difficulty will remain? Will I still need to put Regen on both Tanks, or will a single Medica3 cover it, will I even need that or will Asylum and Assize be enough?

This is why I think that the solution should be twofold: Address the immediate problem now by adding a bit to the damage rotation, and that opens up space (and gives the devs time) to work on tackling Healing Requirements (tm) as the other half of the solution. Consider the following two options:

A: You have WHM, with a new 0-100 gauge. You can spend 50 of this gauge on a new GCD heal, which is damage neutral.

Stone/Glare gives 1 point of gauge.
Aero/Dia gives 1 point of gauge, plus 1 point per tick over its 12s duration (total of 5).
Water/Banish (15s CD, GCD) gives 5 points of gauge.
Holy gives 2 points of gauge per enemy hit.
Misery gives 5 points of gauge.
Regen gives 4 points of gauge, plus 1 per tick over its 18s duration (total of 10).
Cure2 gives 5 points of gauge.
Medica2/3 gives 3 points of gauge, plus 3 points per tick over its 12s duration (total of 15).
Cure3 gives 10 points of gauge.

Or, option B:

The gauge spender above exists, and does the same thing (GCD AOE heal, damage neutral), but there is no gauge. Instead, the action has a simple 60s CD.


In both of these examples, the CD would be 'roughly 60s', if you did the damage rotation 'optimally' you'd generate about 55-60 gauge per minute, thus giving design A a soft-CD of about 60s. However, where design B has a hard-CD of 60s that cannot be adjusted by the player's own gameplay, design A would allow a player who is pushing more healing out (eg, it's M6S add phase) to get gauge faster, and thereby get more casts of this damage neutral AOE healing move to use. A player who is struggling to keep up on healing (and therefore relying more on GCD heals), builds gauge faster, and gets to use the damage neutral healing move more often, which then not only helps them to heal while preserving their damage output, it also guides them towards actually dealing damage as a healer, not only to make use of the refund, but also because it leads the player to think 'hmm, I don't need to heal now, but I could do damage for a bit instead, and by the time I do need to heal again, the damage I'd be doing will build the gauge enough that I get to use this move again, instead of something crappy like Medica2 or Cure3'

Point is, SE seems to believe, and keeps designing Healers in such a way, that 'the healing side of the kit, and the damage side of the kit, should be as far away from one another as possible'. WHM's Misery is one of the few examples where they didn't do this, and it works very well. Use healing actions, receive damage refund, that's cool. So why not do the opposite too? Have, as listed above, an action which heals, but is charged up passively while you do the damage rotation, so that when you need it, you've already charged it and it's ready to go. And the worst offender is SGE, why couldn't we get a design for that, where it actually leverages Kardia, and the concept of 'you trigger a heal on someone when you deal damage', into an actual system wherein you can modify how Kardia works for a duration? Soteria amplifies the heal, that's cool, but why not have a way to add a Barrier effect to it, so we can set up Barriers for raidwides by dealing damage instead of relying entirely on E.Prognosis (which would still exist, as a 'safety net')? Why not have a way to make Kardia AOE at a much lower level, so that it's a more impactful part of our gameplay (Philosophia is kinda limp for a level 100 action IMO)?

The current designs for healers are a mishmash of missed opportunities IMO, but none moreso than SGE and Kardia

I still enjoy playing Warrior, so this has not been the final nail in the coffin for me, but it's getting very very close. Black Mage was fun because of the planning that went into each fight, but that's basically been removed. CBU3's decision to further push fights into a manic game of DDR with delay means that BLM's class design is no longer viable, which I think speaks to the greater issues with the current state of FFXIV as a whole. The supposed class rework coming in 8.0 will reveal what direction the devs plan to take the game from here-on-out, but I am not optimistic that it won't just be more of the same.

Every class rework 8.0 would suposebly bring still has to comform to the current game design.
So I do not think there is any need to pretend 8.0 will magicly fix a game which is heading into the wrong direction for years now.
The only question is when they will aknowledge that they are loosing players.

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Originally Posted by XenaCircei

Probably many people talked about this already but i gotta ask why did they do this, enochian wasn't an issue for people who knew how to play the job decently, BLM mains don't like speed mage at all.

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SpS BLM is literally one of my go-to jobs for DPS, viability be damned it feels better to me.
Your backside doesn't speak for me, and these changes make the job more approachable for everyone. If part of your job's identity was an arbitrary timer to make it harder while you plan, that just sounds like pain for pain's sake. No thank you, it's bad enough we still deal with server tick issues in boss mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Brignadalee

If part of your job's identity was an arbitrary timer to make it harder while you plan, that just sounds like pain for pain's sake. No thank you, it's bad enough we still deal with server tick issues in boss mechanics.

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Okay, sure, lets accept that the timer was a pain in the ass and wasn't really adding anything to the job. That's subjective, and others might disagree, but let's just say it was universally accepted that 'the timer has to go'.

But the other aspect of why people are complaining about the changes: Why did Fire4's cast time need to be reduced? The massive increase in mobility, on a Job that was already able to string together up to like 27s of constant mobility if it planned ahead, is the main 'destroyed identity' change, not the timer. BLM was always about long cast times, big damage, and working around that restriction, to plan ahead and know when/where it is safe to plop down and turret, with the payoff being 'damage so high you compete with (and sometimes beat) the melees'. Now the job is two shades away from having a Healer rotation, but without the added engagement that healing brings. Fire4 is Glare3, Xenoglossy is Glare4, LeyLines is Presence of Mind with a 'you must stand still' footnote, Thunder is Dia. It's like Carcinization, but instead of things evolving into crabs, it seems like Jobs here evolve (or devolve, more accurately) into Healer rotations

The whole 'timer gone, BLM is ruined' angle is muddying the waters, if the timer was extended/removed, and that was the only change, then I heavily doubt that we'd be in the conversations we're in

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Okay, sure, lets accept that the timer was a pain in the ass and wasn't really adding anything to the job. That's subjective, and others might disagree, but let's just say it was universally accepted that 'the timer has to go'.

But the other aspect of why people are complaining about the changes: Why did Fire4's cast time need to be reduced? The massive increase in mobility, on a Job that was already able to string together up to like 27s of constant mobility if it planned ahead, is the main 'destroyed identity' change, not the timer. BLM was always about long cast times, big damage, and working around that restriction, to plan ahead and know when/where it is safe to plop down and turret, with the payoff being 'damage so high you compete with (and sometimes beat) the melees'. Now the job is two shades away from having a Healer rotation, but without the added engagement that healing brings. Fire4 is Glare3, Xenoglossy is Glare4, LeyLines is Presence of Mind with a 'you must stand still' footnote, Thunder is Dia. It's like Carcinization, but instead of things evolving into crabs, it seems like Jobs here evolve (or devolve, more accurately) into Healer rotations

The whole 'timer gone, BLM is ruined' angle is muddying the waters, if the timer was extended/removed, and that was the only change, then I heavily doubt that we'd be in the conversations we're in

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Learning an encounter and planning cooldown use accordingly to maximize uptime through skill instead of just pressing the button that lights up is artificial difficulty and gatekeeping elitism.

Oh also of note, is that the change is so shortsighted that it creates new problems. Fire1 is a dead button from 60 to 90, because its purpose of refreshing the timer is gone. FlareStar having its potency bumped up to 500 (from 400) means a lot of powerbudget is in that one move, which reduces the power budget available in other actions. Essentially, this runs the risk of any pre-FlareStar DPS checks being harder for BLM, because at the lower levels it is now less powerful (due to FlareStar being all-encompassing).

And the best part is, High Fire/High Blizzard are STILL worse damage than simply Transpose-AF1Flare-AF3Flare. In fact, with the cast time of Flare now being lower than the GCD, HFHB might be even worse!

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Originally Posted by Quuoooote

It's a really damning indictment of the state of the game when the prevailing opinion I see nowadays is that Bard is the hardest/most engaging job left

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Jesus BRD is already so lobotomized lmfao. Are we going to reach a point where we praise SMN and MCH for being complex jobs in 9.0? LOL

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

bla bla bla

Statistics concerning BLM % in the new savage tier heavily increased compared to the previous tier. I call that a win. I get some people like complexity and to struggle, but it is what it is.. BLM shouldn't be the cool kid's club.

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Why are you talking when you haven't cleared a single Savage tier

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Problem with that is, the playerbase doesn't really tend to react well to messages of 'you are not good enough' from the game. With JP apparently locking out NIN, MCH, SMN and WHM from their PFs for M6S (which is dumb AF, my clear had a NIN, and me on WHM),

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I would like to to know where to find this cause that is interesting to hear.

I can understand peoples dislike of job locking in M6S because the devs simply didn’t put any thought into how AOE “flavour” differences play out when prioritisation and CC actually matter

Like the healers (as usual) are the worst example as SCH’s AOE is really really bad compared to the other 3 and then it’s partial compensation mechanism is an AOE DOT attached to a single target debuff. And it’s only AOE spammable option is self targeted…….during a mechanic where an add binds you in a corner. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that SCH is going to be uniquely horrible here through no fault of its own

And then NIN is basically in the “7.1 BLM in FRU” situation. Why would you bring NIN who’s always had a below average AOE and it’s directly competing with the job that’s carrying adds harder than PCT carried FRU. Like what is the playerbase supposed to do

If you remove all else besides damage then yeah people are going to scrutinise damage contributions and AOE damage inequalities are a mess in this game

Yeah, I feel sorry for Black Mages who have spent 10+ years honing their skill with that job. Personally it never appealed to me because of the Astral Fire and Umbral Ice switch mechanic. I could never get the hang of it but that's "Ok", not every class appeals to everyone. What annoys me is how much people slag off my main class (White Mage) for being "basic". I like the class BECAUSE it has few gimmicks and is straightforward, not every class should require you to do a MENSA puzzle in order to play the game effectively. (I also liked Yuna, Garnet and Aerith in the classic FF so the class appealed to me anyway). If Black Mages want their class to be challenging and the way it was, then that's fine... I don't want to play Dark Souls because my reaction time is bad but I won't demand From Software lower the game's mechanics and difficulty to appeal to me.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

I would like to to know where to find this cause that is interesting to hear.

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count me in as well.

There is a website that lets you see the active PFs in any data center, and Mana currently has 946 parties atm. When it comes to m6s I've seen nothing of the sort described above.

On the contrary, I see a lot of SMN, NIN, WHM, but I also see double vipers..LOL.(which kinda makes sense since the damn cat steals your LB anyway)

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

I would like to to know where to find this cause that is interesting to hear.

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I found out from here: https://x.com/Altia_1/status/1909399822219760005

And a pic so people don't have to use X for anything:

https://i.gyazo.com/ee2865ba61e9cd3c...59a08b7624.png

Now, is it true? Can't say for sure, cos I don't play on JP, but I can 100% believe it. Bear in mind though, this is talking about week 1 attempts, and gear will be making up for whatever shortfall in AOE output a NIN might have

Also for week1 runs of M8S, I was seeing job-locking on my DC, MCH was occasionally (but not super-often enough to be a pandemic) locked out of the Ranged slot, and RDM/SMN were occasionally locked out of the Caster slot. IIRC there was a party or two that also wanted specifically a GNB? But again, all of these various experiences could just be dismissed as 'anecdotal'

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I found out from here: https://x.com/Altia_1/status/1909399822219760005

And a pic so people don't have to use X for anything:

https://i.gyazo.com/ee2865ba61e9cd3c...59a08b7624.png

Now, is it true? Can't say for sure, cos I don't play on JP, but I can 100% believe it. Bear in mind though, this is talking about week 1 attempts, and gear will be making up for whatever shortfall in AOE output a NIN might have

Also for week1 runs of M8S, I was seeing job-locking on my DC, MCH was occasionally (but not super-often enough to be a pandemic) locked out of the Ranged slot, and RDM/SMN were occasionally locked out of the Caster slot. IIRC there was a party or two that also wanted specifically a GNB? But again, all of these various experiences could just be dismissed as 'anecdotal'

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people can say anything, it doesn't automatically mean it's also true. Do a google search for xiv PF, and you will find the site I am talking about. Sort by data center and see for yourself if that claim is actually true or not.

I glanced at it and I couldn't find anything. Maybe there are some that will lock out, but I don't think it's a trend in itself to justify any coverage.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

people can say anything, it doesn't automatically mean it's also true. Do a google search for xiv PF, and you will find the site I am talking about. Sort by data center and see for yourself if that claim is actually true or not.

I glanced at it and I couldn't find anything. Maybe there are some that will lock out, but I don't think it's a trend in itself to justify any coverage.

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Yes, let me just go back in time by two weeks to see what the PF listings looked like on week 1. Point isn't whether it IS true, it's whether it WAS true.

In a game which has sacrificed almost all job identity/differences in playstyle, upon the altar of 'balanced damage output between jobs in a role', any job getting locked out, even once, immendiately proves how daft the design choice of 'remove identity so we can balance the jobs easier' is. And I did see some occasional job locking. You can say 'it's not really a trend worth coverage' but I would say that 'even one job-locking party is one too many', considering what we (by we I mean the devs) sacrificed to get here. We could have had Aero 3 in this fight, which would tip the scales back in WHM's favour. We could have kept Bane on SCH

Heck, one tech that could have been real helpful for SCH is, we used to be able to target the fairie with our healing. So, when the SCH gets locked in the Jabberwock Jail and can't reach the Tanks, they'd be able to circumvent this restriction by putting Adlo on the faerie (who would presumably be near the middle of the arena, and then Deploy that Adlo off of the Faerie, hitting everyone with ease and protecting the Tanks from the damage they're taking from autos, and everyone else would be shielded ready for the raidwide from the boss that happens there. of course, SE instead just gave us 30y range on things, because leveraging strengths of the kit (like 'use the faerie as a conduit to extend your range') is bad...?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Yes, let me just go back in time by two weeks to see what the PF listings looked like on week 1. Point isn't whether it IS true, it's whether it WAS true.

In a game which has sacrificed almost all job identity/differences in playstyle, upon the altar of 'balanced damage output between jobs in a role', any job getting locked out, even once, immendiately proves how daft the design choice of 'remove identity so we can balance the jobs easier' is. And I did see some occasional job locking. You can say 'it's not really a trend worth coverage' but I would say that 'even one job-locking party is one too many', considering what we (by we I mean the devs) sacrificed to get here. We could have had Aero 3 in this fight, which would tip the scales back in WHM's favour. We could have kept Bane on SCH

Heck, one tech that could have been real helpful for SCH is, we used to be able to target the fairie with our healing. So, when the SCH gets locked in the Jabberwock Jail and can't reach the Tanks, they'd be able to circumvent this restriction by putting Adlo on the faerie (who would presumably be near the middle of the arena, and then Deploy that Adlo off of the Faerie, hitting everyone with ease and protecting the Tanks from the damage they're taking from autos, and everyone else would be shielded ready for the raidwide from the boss that happens there. of course, SE instead just gave us 30y range on things, because leveraging strengths of the kit (like 'use the faerie as a conduit to extend your range') is bad...?

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Sir/M'am, your propositions have exceeded the player agency limit allowed by the battle design.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Yes, let me just go back in time by two weeks to see what the PF listings looked like on week 1. Point isn't whether it IS true, it's whether it WAS true.

In a game which has sacrificed almost all job identity/differences in playstyle, upon the altar of 'balanced damage output between jobs in a role', any job getting locked out, even once, immendiately proves how daft the design choice of 'remove identity so we can balance the jobs easier' is. And I did see some occasional job locking. You can say 'it's not really a trend worth coverage' but I would say that 'even one job-locking party is one too many', considering what we (by we I mean the devs) sacrificed to get here. We could have had Aero 3 in this fight, which would tip the scales back in WHM's favour. We could have kept Bane on SCH

Heck, one tech that could have been real helpful for SCH is, we used to be able to target the fairie with our healing. So, when the SCH gets locked in the Jabberwock Jail and can't reach the Tanks, they'd be able to circumvent this restriction by putting Adlo on the faerie (who would presumably be near the middle of the arena, and then Deploy that Adlo off of the Faerie, hitting everyone with ease and protecting the Tanks from the damage they're taking from autos, and everyone else would be shielded ready for the raidwide from the boss that happens there. of course, SE instead just gave us 30y range on things, because leveraging strengths of the kit (like 'use the faerie as a conduit to extend your range') is bad...?

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If what you say is actually true, then the locking out of specific jobs would have been persistent, but guess what? SURPRISE.

Also, I can tell you confidently that the tanks you had in your party sucked. The north tank can come closer to you (near 2) and the tank with the adds has to use their first stun around 4 so that the healer can heal/shield + hit the damn jabber as well. But hey, at least while your team was awful, you could have reminisced about what it would have been like if..