Dawntrail BLM | I'm so tired

Seeing that even Pictos are complaining about the core identety of the job beeing nerved to the point that it become punishing to paint your canvases outside of combat or downtime truly shows that YES they really have no clue what players identify with with there main jobs... and then there is the mess of Machanist beeing once more the bottom of the foodchain for daring to be a ranged job.

For all the trust I have in the Development team 8.0 will remove all buttons and will give every job 1 single one... it places an DoT on the boss that cannot fall off and constantly damages him, meanwhile the character will contatnyl do flashy automoves to preneted he is in combat while the only thin the player has to fokus on is to dodge the Boss Mechanics till after a set timer since the DoT cannot mess up it´s damage output, the fight simply ends.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Let me put my tinfoil hat on for a second.
Dawntrail Blackmage felt like a thinly disguised attempt to make everyone hate the job, to soften the backlash of completely changing how it functions. The job design in this game has been a mess for a while but they managed to mess up every single good aspect of Endwalker BLM with 7.0, felt too intentional even for them.

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7.1 BLM was pretty fun but OG 7.0 felt horrible that I would somewhat believe this lol.

Honestly I wish they gave us 6.5 black mage back and stopped making fights more dancy, if they actually focused on fun job design fight design, wouldn't have to be a crutch for lack of gameplay in jobs.

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Originally Posted by TheInsomniac13

Seeing that even Pictos are complaining about the core identety of the job beeing nerved to the point that it become punishing to paint your canvases outside of combat or downtime truly shows that YES they really have no clue what players identify with with there main jobs...

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PCT is the perfect example of them only caring about high end duty’s in job design nowadays.
It’s entire identity was sacrificed because of FRU more or less and the aoe changes to the jobs show that they don’t care how dungeons feel for example. (Yes balancing is important but it shouldn’t come at the cost of job feeling and dungeon enjoyment).
Trash mobs die so fast I don’t even have enough time for my leylines mostly.
It’s trash sure but now it’s not even recyclable trash anymore…

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Let me put my tinfoil hat on for a second.
Dawntrail Blackmage felt like a thinly disguised attempt to make everyone hate the job, to soften the backlash of completely changing how it functions. The job design in this game has been a mess for a while but they managed to mess up every single good aspect of Endwalker BLM with 7.0, felt too intentional even for them.

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I think it was mostly pure arrogance or not caring honestly.
All the jobs basically got a lazy finisher at the start of DT and not more.
It was so bad even at the fanfests that they had to repeatedly mention the 8.0 reworks.
The entire 7.0 was just a “they buy it anyway” project in my opinion and the jobs were just one part of it.

think the biggest issue I've seen is that dev teams dont talk/communicate with each other during design. so you have a team or person per job design and then a team for combat/fight design.

when new job comes out, they usually are great and does have a good vision on what the job plays like. but once new fight and other job start being compared, players will start having some critiques which tweaks will happen. and these tweaks are usually a bandaid fix that may or maynot affect the job's core gameplay and job identity.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Honestly I wish they gave us 6.5 black mage back and stopped making fights more dancy, if they actually focused on fun job design fight design, wouldn't have to be a crutch for lack of gameplay in jobs.

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I mean I know that personal taste differs, but I can't even imagine how someone could like pre-7.2 BLM. I don't like it after either, but it's better by virtue of some of the bad parts (those would be all of it) being removed.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I mean I know that personal taste differs, but I can't even imagine how someone could like pre-7.2 BLM. I don't like it after either, but it's better by virtue of some of the bad parts (those would be all of it) being removed.

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The appeal people had for Old Black Mage was how reactionary it was.
z.B. You were casting Fire 4 but mechanic forces you to dodge, Timer now says you will not manage another cast of Fire 4 so you cast Fire 1 to renew but bamm another mechanic and now you either need to use triple cast or swift cast in order to not drop out of enochian.
It sound complicated but it really was not, once you knew what your skills did it feeled quite intuitiv and rewarding when ever you managed to solve a difficult situation. The Flare stare came and made the Rotation far more riggit now you had to manage casting a certing amount of Fire 4 or you were punished, Black Mages diden´t even see it as a cool Finisher because we already got Despair and Flare which worked far better.

Now with 7.2 there is nothing of this appeal left. There is absolutly no fail state anymore which means most of your skills are worthless to be used because there are no clutch situation to solve. Black Mage went from slightly complex and rewarding to Healer who do´s not have to heal Rotation... and deam I find it pitiyfull that Red Mage the caster I once thought the most easy... is not the most Complex caster left in this game.

Having played 7.2 BLM for weeks now I'm increasingly convinced that removal of the astral timer (they probably could've removed umbral if they wanted) is a bad change that does NOT at all increase mobility but DOES increase difficulty in an extremely undesirable way: it makes the job so monotonous that it's easy to literally forget to cast Paradox and so lose damage.

Because no astral timer allows Transpose-Paradox-Firestarter phase transitions, and because doing those is optimal for the first ~100sec of a fight following the new 7-5 opener (itself super boring to execute), BLM is actually no more free than it was before in terms of when it should use its instant casts for maximal damage and so no more mobile than before, except for being rooted in place by leylines for less total time.

Also, it was actually really fun and satisfying to use a clutch instant spell to save your astral timer from ticking down at the last second and now that's gone.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

Having played 7.2 BLM for weeks now I'm increasingly convinced that removal of the astral timer (they probably could've removed umbral if they wanted) is a bad change that does NOT at all increase mobility but DOES increase difficulty in an extremely undesirable way: it makes the job so monotonous that it's easy to literally forget to cast Paradox and so lose damage.

Because no astral timer allows Transpose-Paradox-Firestarter phase transitions, and because doing those is optimal for the first ~100sec of a fight following the new 7-5 opener (itself super boring to execute), BLM is actually no more free than it was before in terms of when it should use its instant casts for maximal damage and so no more mobile than before, except for being rooted in place by leylines for less total time.

Also, it was actually really fun and satisfying to use a clutch instant spell to save your astral timer from ticking down at the last second and now that's gone.

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The modern healer effect, the job is so boring it makes itself harder by you zoning out in boredom so you end up making mistakes as you are simply not paying attention

Wherever you go now, whether its savage ex alliance raid or dungeon its always any given BLM that dominates the damage because the job is completely braindead now. Yet theyre still using some kind of difficulty metric to justify phys ranged and smn etc doing less damage. The "difficulty tax" died with introduction of VPR but now its completely dead and buried with the new BLM. Every job has to do the same dmg regardless of what SE thinks of as "difficult" because the current BLM a 5 year old can play and top every dmg statistic by just existing.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

Having played 7.2 BLM for weeks now I'm increasingly convinced that removal of the astral timer (they probably could've removed umbral if they wanted) is a bad change that does NOT at all increase mobility but DOES increase difficulty in an extremely undesirable way: it makes the job so monotonous that it's easy to literally forget to cast Paradox and so lose damage.

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I've found the same thing, it's so easy to lose track of where you are because there is so much of hitting the same button without anything else to focus on.

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except for being rooted in place by leylines for less total time.

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This is only the change that has done anything to make BLM more accommodating in AoE heavy fights in my opinion, though even then it still wasn't necessary. EW BLM had a full arsenal of instant casts already and a timer that was very, very lenient if you wanted it to be. I'm still not sure if the changes have made a meaningful impact on player performance anyway. Dropped casts are a big loss and less experienced players still tend to stop their casts and run immediately if they get caught in an AoE.

I finally gave the changes a try today and good lord is the new BLM boring. Previously I could play the job in almost any content and the timer would keep things interesting, now it feels like a WHM rotation even at max level. :(

I really feel for all the BLM mains who liked the job as it was. Hopefully SE wakes up one day and realizes catering every job to people who just want to roll their face on their keyboard to victory isn't a healthy long term design for the game.