The Black Mage simplification completely misses the point

Not super surprised at the changes given it was clear for most casuals the DDR style of combat and turret gameplay of the BLM do not gel well together at all. Still kinda sad to lose the longer cast times but the combat just doesn't allow for it for most players and I think SE realise that so it had to go. I will give it a go and see how it plays, I do still enjoy DT BLM a lot since I was never really much of a non standard player. I was mostly hoping for smth to make flare star feel better, it's animation and potency don't feel that amazing for being a big fire phase finisher, as well as very slow cast speed blm feeling nicer. I liked the slow but big boomie BLM over sps BLM.

I get the point many put of non standard lines allowed for ppl to keep uptime pretty easily, but it's kinda obvious that wouldn't be allowed to remain the case imo. Standard rotation that devs intended should be able to cope with all the movement without needing so many different lines, for the avg player. Plenty groups don't even want a blm because of the lack of utility and the exp of BLM players just straight up griefing runs greeding casts etc. I've seen plenty ppl in balance saying they will go grief some pf groups to practice. That's pretty bad, it just makes people dislike raiding with BLM.

I think they aught to let us just cast thunder when we want. It's still punishing enough to recast early as it is, it would be nice to be able to double dot things without hassle. I'm honestly not bothered to lose the astral fire/umbral ice timers though.

Curious to see what happens to the job in 8.0, I really enjoyed the little turret that booms playstyle of the BLM and I am sad the current direction of the combat encounters is not allowing for it. On the other hand I do enjoy the encounters on melee etc, but those jobs have their difficulties elsewhere.

Or maybe it's the DDR that has to go.

If the increased DDR mechanics shoehorn every job into the exact same design mold because nothing else functions anymore, then yes, maybe it's the DDR design that needs to change.


On a side note, I'm also concerned about the melee buffs to supposedly compensate for more downtime.

Because I bet they entirely miss the point of melee uptime. It was supposed to be hard, you were supposed to take risks for your uptime and greed GCDs with last second dodges or unconventional strategies and good party coordination.
It was not supposed to be literally impossible.
Running around doing nothing for 30% or more of a fight is not fun gameplay.

I'm curious why people are arguing that Black mage doesn't work in "DDR" gameplay. The whole point of black mage is trying to learn the mechs so you know when to use your movement tools and when you can place leylines and not have the need to move. Almost like Black mage already had enough movement tools and the "DDR" gameplay is getting used as a excuse for why they should make black mage into a boring dull job like every other job in the game. Mages are just physical ranged, Tanks don't need to boss position or aggro manage, or even support the group much, Melees don't really care about positional nor are really challenged much with down time instances, healers barely heal and have one damage button.

What's even the point of having a class system if all we are meant to enjoy is the encounters, why do we need 2 new jobs every expansion??? The design and direction of this game makes zero sense and it's easy to see why numbers of people are getting disinterested when one of the core fundamentals to the game (the classes) have no meaning and have been getting less and less meaningful with each expansion.

Something seriously needs to change I rather have a imbalanced mess of a job system if it means they actually felt meaningful rather then this false balance of making everything the same and "focus only on encounter"

I'm also tired of "bro enjoy the encounter design" like you know what would make those encounters more enjoyable? If my job interacted differently in that said encounter compared to other jobs. Maybe we actually need both.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

On a side note, I'm also concerned about the melee buffs to supposedly compensate for more downtime.

Because I bet they entirely miss the point of melee uptime. It was supposed to be hard, you were supposed to take risks for your uptime and greed GCDs with last second dodges or unconventional strategies and good party coordination.
It was not supposed to be literally impossible.
Running around doing nothing for 30% or more of a fight is not fun gameplay.

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Well, I don't think this is going to happen in a system where everything is too binary. In the modern DDR model, it's either you can, or you can't. There is very little in between, bosses reposition themselves all the time to make sure the DDR pattern doesn't deviate, every fight is scripted to the T, there is only generally one target opportunity on the battlefield, and eventually the only metric they can play onto is fast disconnects from the boss to mildly challenge the melees, or to create bigger disconnects that result in GCD losses.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I'm curious why people are arguing that Black mage doesn't work in "DDR" gameplay. The whole point of black mage is trying to learn the mechs so you know when to use your movement tools and when you can place leylines and not have the need to move. Almost like Black mage already had enough movement tools and the "DDR" gameplay is getting used as a excuse for why they should make black mage into a boring dull job like every other job in the game. Mages are just physical ranged, Tanks don't need to boss position or aggro manage, or even support the group much, Melees don't really care about positional nor are really challenged much with down time instances, healers barely heal and have one damage button.

What's even the point of having a class system if all we are meant to enjoy is the encounters, why do we need 2 new jobs every expansion??? The design and direction of this game makes zero sense and it's easy to see why numbers of people are getting disinterested when one of the core fundamentals to the game (the classes) have no meaning and have been getting less and less meaningful with each expansion.

Something seriously needs to change I rather have a imbalanced mess of a job system if it means they actually felt meaningful rather then this false balance of making everything the same and "focus only on encounter"

I'm also tired of "bro enjoy the encounter design" like you know what would make those encounters more enjoyable? If my job interacted differently in that said encounter compared to other jobs. Maybe we actually need both.

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Personally I do think most decent BLM players or informed players know that BLM's kit works and can be used for it (cannot say for 7.2 yet but there is very little reason it wouldnt, unless their vaunted new encounter design is actually wild).
But Aelin above still does have a point. It makes it very difficulty and unapproachable for the average player. It's still one of the remaining jobs that is punishing enough that you can not only drop casts and full uptime, but also drop enochian, drop flarestar, etc. The mobility toolkit is extensive but also probably the hardest to use (no weave slots, a lot of technical tools), and the job actually lost mobility in 7.0 with the disappearance of sharpcast, until 7.1 made Despair and Fire Paradox instants. And also, the inability to swap to ice on demand with non standard like it used to, or not as easily. It's what makes the job interesting to a lot of veterans and mains of course.
I just think that the DDR system is unfortunately something that is preventing the jobs to be very expressive else you end up with a game ultimately catered to hardcore players only.
Now you're gonna tell me, we need easy and hard jobs, and frankly, perhaps, but I hate that idea. I'd rather have jobs with accessibility and high ceiling all across the board and in my eyes it's the DDR that's in the way.

Agreed either way..

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Originally Posted by Arohk

You doomsayers are really getting annoying, the game is in dire need of fresh updates and job overhauls.

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So the solution is to mess with the one job people are happy with and is in no need of an overhaul, over all the jobs that people are begging for updates to?

Genius plan.

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Originally Posted by Valence

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Personally I do think most decent BLM players or informed players know that BLM's kit works and can be used for it (cannot say for 7.2 yet but there is very little reason it wouldnt, unless their vaunted new encounter design is actually wild).
But Aelin above still does have a point. It makes it very difficulty and unapproachable for the average player. It's still one of the remaining jobs that is punishing enough that you can not only drop casts and full uptime, but also drop enochian, drop flarestar, etc. The mobility toolkit is extensive but also probably the hardest to use (no weave slots, a lot of technical tools), and the job actually lost mobility in 7.0 with the disappearance of sharpcast, until 7.1 made Despair and Fire Paradox instants. And also, the inability to swap to ice on demand with non standard like it used to, or not as easily. It's what makes the job interesting to a lot of veterans and mains of course.
I just think that the DDR system is unfortunately something that is preventing the jobs to be very expressive else you end up with a game ultimately catered to hardcore players only.
Now you're gonna tell me, we need easy and hard jobs, and frankly, perhaps, but I hate that idea. I'd rather have jobs with accessibility and high ceiling all across the board and in my eyes it's the DDR that's in the way.

Agreed either way..

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I think the job could survive having the Astral Fire timer removed, but reworking the cast times is a huge mistake.

There are ways to make BLM easier for less experienced players, while still allowing the more experienced black mages to enjoy optimizing DPS. SE have simply chosen not to do that by throwing away the job's nuance and complexity.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

why don't you try it out first and adapt, maybe it is good, instead of constantly whining about anything new, this is why the game got so stale , lack of updates.

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We have.

I used to play Dragoon and loved the oGCD heavy nature of it. Alas, some people who didn't even play the job whined it was "too hard!!!" and now Geirskogul is a boring button I press once a minute. Likewise, Dark Knight's entire gimmick was first leaning into proc based gameplay and augmenting its abilities through Dark Arts. The former was gutted early on while the latter was neutered into a bland spammer that now doesn't even require MP management. DT took it one step further and made both gauges little more than window dressing. How about Bard, who used to have a nuanced gameplay balancing its MP for Foe's, which was unique to physical based jobs, alongside DoT management. Once again, the former was axed completely while DoTs became longer and longer, to the point you hardly even realize they're on the boss.

Some changes aren't awful. Paladin became one of my favourite tanks to play after the rework. Although, I feel for people who enjoyed what it was. At least I had Dark Knight and Warrior. They no longer have their preferred playstyle. And that right there is what upsets people. We already have a near cast free Caster in Summoner thanks to it being lobotomized. Even before EW, Red Mage reasonably filled that playstyle, albeit with some complexity if you wanted to play it at a higher level. Why do we need another caster to be baby's first? It reminds me so much of people who cried DRK wasn't a DPS back in Heavensward and refused to turn on tank stance because, "I'm a DPS!!!!" Or how they refused to play the easier tank in Warrior because "I LIKE THE BIG SWORD WAAAAAH!!!"

Imagine going to a restaurant advertising a variety of different options only to discover everything on the menu is actually just a different flavour of chicken. It's not even that it's necessarily bad, but rather very bland. Welcome to FFXIV job design in a nutshell nowadays: bland.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

We have.

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And that right there is what upsets people. We already have a near cast free Caster in Summoner thanks to it being lobotomized. Even before EW, Red Mage reasonably filled that playstyle, albeit with some complexity if you wanted to play it at a higher level. Why do we need another caster to be baby's first? It reminds me so much of people who cried DRK wasn't a DPS back in Heavensward and refused to turn on tank stance because, "I'm a DPS!!!!" Or how they refused to play the easier tank in Warrior because "I LIKE THE BIG SWORD WAAAAAH!!!"

Imagine going to a restaurant advertising a variety of different options only to discover everything on the menu is actually just a different flavour of chicken. It's not even that it's necessarily bad, but rather very bland. Welcome to FFXIV job design in a nutshell nowadays: bland.

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The dumb thing about the BLM changes is that we literally just had a caster added to the game which has nice and friendly slidecasts, it's called Pictomancer. Sure it's a little overpowered right now but that's fixable. So anyone that wanted that style of gameplay can just go play PCT, but no, we have to homogenise BLM to appeal to people that don't even enjoy playing it right now.