Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

gonna really miss those thunder procs

could BLM get a rework in 8.X

ice paradox removal why

I'm going to miss casting Paradox in ice mode, but what most perplexes me about the new design is the fact that you appear to refresh your ability to cast a Thunder spell about twice as often as you actually need to to keep the DoT ticking. I guess that's the functional equivalent of basically always having a Thundercloud proc in your pocket in 6.X?

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

I'm going to miss casting Paradox in ice mode, but what most perplexes me about the new design is the fact that you appear to refresh your ability to cast a Thunder spell about twice as often as you actually need to to keep the DoT ticking. I guess that's the functional equivalent of basically always having a Thundercloud proc in your pocket in 6.X?

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Given the removal of sharpcast, more or less.

Seeing it formally turned into its current form was expected, though I was really hoping it'd be an alternative TC spender.

With the removal of sharpcast, ice paradox, and the changes to MP regen in ice kinda screams as changes mostly made to specifically target and kill non standard to me tbh.

They pretty much removed everything I disliked about the job and made the rotation flow way better, way more naturally. Good expansion for blm.

You WILL pick up the paint brush.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Given the removal of sharpcast, more or less.

Seeing it formally turned into its current form was expected, though I was really hoping it'd be an alternative TC spender.

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Yeah, I want to cast Burst under some special thunder-related condition, like as a way to consume a DoT that's already nearly elapsed or something. Oh, well.

One thing that's stuck out to me is the tooltips for Aspect Mastery. The level 1 tip fails to mention any damage bonus for Astral Fire, which I have to assume is a mistake, but I and II of each aspect do mention respective 10% and 20% potency losses for using the wrong element. But, crucially, Aspect Mastery III mentions halved cast times but not reduced damage for AF3/UI3. That might just be a mistake, but it might also mean that at level 35+, Blizzard III and Fire III hit for their full damage when used to switch elements, and consequently that Firestarter procs no longer need to be saved and combined with Transpose for a damage gain.

I do regret that Blizzard 1 seems to become almost completely vestigial at max level, although it does still have a hypothetical "good lord how did you screw up this bad" use case.

One thing I'm VERY glad about incidentally is that the rumors of button consolidation between F4/B4, Despair/Umbral Soul, and maybe Flare/Freeze (I forget if this was one of them) appear to have proven true.

THANKS SE!!! For making BLM almost unviable in TOP p6... 凸

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

You WILL pick up the paint brush.

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People can't due to the colorful and childish aesthetics. Think about the average edgy male Xaela player... lol.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

They pretty much removed everything I disliked about the job and made the rotation flow way better, way more naturally. Good expansion for blm.

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From what ive seen you really love standardization of the job. So give us a favor and give us a recording of where you do TOP with BLM using only standardized rotation and ill see how much fun you have there.
And please for god stop talking about jobs as if you know them when you dont.
And all I can say is the only job that suits you is SMN with how you cant handle having any variance in rotations or anything with more than 1 key (SAM and BLM)
For god sakes you can't even play a single job correctly.

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Originally Posted by Valence

With the removal of sharpcast, ice paradox, and the changes to MP regen in ice kinda screams as changes mostly made to specifically target and kill non standard to me tbh.

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Question:
Would it be truly dead?
Non-standard was practicly to go into ice, use any spell, except ice (because it to weak), until mp is ready and go back to fire (i never understand, why you wouldnt collect the ice shards).
At last, if the cut wasnt false, does it look like, that ice phase is extremly short.

By the clip of WeskAlber, was the blm in Ice mode with 3 soul marks and 0 mp (mean, he probably used blizard to enter that mode).
After 1 freeze, was the mp allready back at maximum. So, that he was able to go back into the fire mode.

Isnt that even better, as what non-standard had yet? It looks to be faster as before and gives all needes ressources.


Aside of that:

The only th8ing i dislike by the new Blm is the thunder change.
I liked it, to started the fight sometimes with the thunder spell. Evenm by hunt trains did i used mostly thunder to set up the proc, and than simply waiting most of the time. To givbe other players the cnahce to hit the enemie to.
The forced connection to the soul-modes looks unnecressary and is a little sad.
Aside of that, do i see nothing bad at the new bllm. He looks even more to be a fire mage, as before (ok, that can be a negativ point, that the focus is going to much into fire).

>Remove Eye Requirement for DRG's Life of the Dragon buff
>Remove Target Requirement for BRD songs
>Remove Gauge Requirement for DRK's Living Shadow
>Gauge increase tools don't overcap anymore
>Have to Fire IV six times or you don't get to Flare Star at all

????????

All of these great QoL changes then you make one of the worst point of failure mechanics in the game. WHY!? What's worse is this isn't even the worst change. Ice Paradox is one of the most important tools for BLM. It's an important potential movement option with Thunder to delay having to do Blizzard IV until you can stop moving. Transpose Paradox before a boss leaves. Mistake recovery option. It's such a good skill and it's a complete kneecap to the job to remove it.

Flare Star should be a gcd or ogcd that scales with how much gauge you have, (Like BRD's Apex Arrow). For example Flare Star could be an upgrade to Ice Paradox. Where it does Paradox's damage + the gauge you gained during fire. At any rate you shouldn't ever lose gauge and Ice Paradox should exist as a form of its current design.

I am boggling at the choice to not move Umbral Soul to a low level. It is a vital quality of life tool that is even more important with these job changes; why is it a level 76 action rather than available by level 50, or ideally 15? Doing roulettes at low levels is going to be even more painful than it already is with no ability to regenerate MP out of combat.

I think that MP will still regenerate naturally out of combat as long as you're not in fire mode, so a lower level BLM moving between monster packs in a dungeon can just enjoy regular out-of-combat recovery and maybe pop Lucid Dreaming just in case.

That still feels far worse than your current ability to Transpose for more MP to be ready to burst the next pack. Umbral Soul lets you feel like you're doing SOMETHING besides being a Scathe mage.

I guess I don't see that much of a difference. I'm not actually casting Umbral Soul when enemies are onscreen even when I do have it, so the difference feels pretty minor. What I AM disappointed by, though, is that there doesn't appear to be any way to pause your timer out of combat, which makes all dungeons past level 70 just a little bit more annoying because you have to periodically hit Transpose or Umbral Soul to not interrupt your Polyglot generation.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

I guess I don't see that much of a difference. I'm not actually casting Umbral Soul when enemies are onscreen even when I do have it, so the difference feels pretty minor. What I AM disappointed by, though, is that there doesn't appear to be any way to pause your timer out of combat, which makes all dungeons past level 70 just a little bit more annoying because you have to periodically hit Transpose or Umbral Soul to not interrupt your Polyglot generation.

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I don't think anyone hits Umbral Soul while an enemy is targetable. The problem is that enemies are often not targetable and dungeons involve a lot of running between mob packs. Alliance raids, too. Currently, you can ensure you're always at max MP for the next pull by switching to ice, and at high levels you have a button to refresh your timer and gain hearts while you wait to cast again, which is Umbral Soul. They have removed the method to reliably be at full MP for the next pull, and not given any replacement until level 76, so in many dungeons you're reliant on Lucid Dreaming when you might have just ended a pull with Flare.

I think new BLM should be reasonably playable IF they lower Umbral Soul's level so that you can at minimum use it during downtime in UWU and UCOB, but it honestly deserves to be available before Crystal Tower.

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Originally Posted by wildvenonat

I think new BLM should be reasonably playable IF they lower Umbral Soul's level so that you can at minimum use it during downtime in UWU and UCOB, but it honestly deserves to be available before Crystal Tower.

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Umbral Soul will be the new Dark Missionary.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

They pretty much removed everything I disliked about the job and made the rotation flow way better, way more naturally. Good expansion for blm.

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What? You liked that they removed choice and freedom? The standard rotation didn't change.

A free fire proc is nice, but every change they made was in service of gutting the job

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Originally Posted by Poppet

>Remove Eye Requirement for DRG's Life of the Dragon buff
>Remove Target Requirement for BRD songs
>Remove Gauge Requirement for DRK's Living Shadow
>Gauge increase tools don't overcap anymore
>Have to Fire IV six times or you don't get to Flare Star at all

????????

All of these great QoL changes then you make one of the worst point of failure mechanics in the game. WHY!? What's worse is this isn't even the worst change. Ice Paradox is one of the most important tools for BLM. It's an important potential movement option with Thunder to delay having to do Blizzard IV until you can stop moving. Transpose Paradox before a boss leaves. Mistake recovery option. It's such a good skill and it's a complete kneecap to the job to remove it.

Flare Star should be a gcd or ogcd that scales with how much gauge you have, (Like BRD's Apex Arrow). For example Flare Star could be an upgrade to Ice Paradox. Where it does Paradox's damage + the gauge you gained during fire. At any rate you shouldn't ever lose gauge and Ice Paradox should exist as a form of its current design.

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They probably removed paradox for the ice phase, because it became obsolent.
When i saw it correctly, do you need only 1 ice attack in the ice phase, to max out your mp, when you has 3 ice souls ready. What you should have, if you used blizzard to enter that phase.
Meaning: It doesnt look like, that whe are more as a few seconds in the ice phase anymore. That make paradox in the ice phase mostly useless (ok, it was 1 attack more). Even, when it was nice for movement phases.

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Originally Posted by Keichi

Question:
Would it be truly dead?
Non-standard was practicly to go into ice, use any spell, except ice (because it to weak), until mp is ready and go back to fire (i never understand, why you wouldnt collect the ice shards).
At last, if the cut wasnt false, does it look like, that ice phase is extremly short.

By the clip of WeskAlber, was the blm in Ice mode with 3 soul marks and 0 mp (mean, he probably used blizard to enter that mode).
After 1 freeze, was the mp allready back at maximum. So, that he was able to go back into the fire mode.

Isnt that even better, as what non-standard had yet? It looks to be faster as before and gives all needes ressources.

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Well, you pretty much answered yourself, the whole point of non standard is to avoid using weak spells(blizzard 3, 4 and weak fire 3(when you change from ice to fire))

It is confirmed that when you use blizzard 4 on umbral ice 1 and 2 it gives you only 2500 and 5000 respectively, making any non standard line non viable as you will only be able to cast a few fire 4.

If this BLM iteration stays like this on release, the only optimization you can do is: use an instant on umbral ice phase(thunder or xeno), transpose into astral fire 1, and then you use fire 3 proc, you would skip the weak fire 3 casted from umbral ice to astral fire. Another one would be do a b4 b1 paradox line but that's just a niche thing to align your gcds with manafont/movement which 0.2% of players will use so.

No MP regen under lv 76 is really dumb, I don't understand how they could have missed that, hopefully it gets fixed before release.

Let's not forget jobs change quite a lot between media tour and the actual expansion, in EW, blm was quite different in the media tour in comparison what we've got nowadays.

Non standard is completely dead, and it's intentional. Now let's see if they can listen to feedback about the rest otherwise it'll feel really clunky.

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Originally Posted by awhitet

If this BLM iteration stays like this on release, the only optimization you can do is: use an instant on umbral ice phase(thunder or xeno), transpose into astral fire 1, and then you use fire 3 proc, you would skip the weak fire 3 casted from umbral ice to astral fire. Another one would be do a b4 b1 paradox line but that's just a niche thing to align your gcds with manafont/movement which 0.2% of players will use so.

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Actually, this is gone. So, the original AF buff was a 40/60/80% buff to fire damage. AF1 is now dropped to 10% and, crucially, fire 3 is now 280 potency. The thing is literally DPS neutral with fire 4 with current known potency values, but saving it for a transpose firestarter will cost you about 100 potency now, assuming numbers stay the same. There's currently what I assume to be a typo in Aspect Mastery 3 where none of the previews say UI3 has a debuff to fire potency, but it's safe to say this could be missing. There's also a possibility that AF1's buff is still 40% but typoed to 10%, seeing as the 2 numbers are right next to each other on a numpad. Regardless, a fire 3 pulling roughly identical DPS to a fire 4 is a much bigger gain than a 70% damage to 110% damage fire 3 on transition. Going from 110% to 180% is just too big an increase now to consider saving it.

I still don't understand the process of thinking behind removing non-standard. If it is not the intended way to play, then what is the intended way then? My tinfoil hat theory is that in the eyes of devs, BLM is never supposed to be this high-damage job. They give BLM such high numbers so it can make up for the fact that the average standard rotation player will fumble and lose uptime during the mechanics they create for the fight. And the damage will be equal to that of other casters in the end. EW was the first time I raided as BLM and some fights felt like no one gave a thought about how BLW would solve that. "Let's make them run back and forth nonstop for a minute! Who, BLM? They will figure something out, I dunno."

Of all the changes in DT, I only welcome Fire Paradox being instant and always giving Firestarter. Everything else is horrible.

I'm sure this has been said by some but I highly doubt non-standards existence hurts the vast majority of BLM players and FFXIV players as a whole who don't want to engage with it or don't know of it's existence.

The changes feel targeted towards limiting skill expression and it's very frustrating feeling like this game and it's community don't welcome players who are into that kind of thing. If someone was being a toxic elitist about optimization in the past that, in my opinion, is an issue with the toxic person not job design. The vast majority of players who like to optimize aren't toxic, and no change to job design will change how a toxic individual treats others.

I can understand the pressure to streamline for past decisions that made raiding scenarios difficult to engage with as a new player like aggro management, and TP management. This change however is targeted toward a personal optimization for the BLM player that is optional and there if they want to explore that aspect of the job. It in fact can help players be more consistent with handling mechanics like Pantokrator and the final phase of TOP.

While I'm sure job balance is something that could rise as a concern, the DPS gains from non-standard have never been so big that the job drastically outperforms it's intended, standard version. It's a very minor gain.

The death of non-standard feels very pointless and I fail to see anything positive come from it.

Also, the changes made to kill non-standard feel very clunky and not very thematically consistent.

The smoking gun to me is the paradox changes. The spell is aesthetically both ice and fire yet it has now become exclusively a spell used in fire to kill non-standard.

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Originally Posted by Bloody_Kenny

I still don't understand the process of thinking behind removing non-standard. If it is not the intended way to play, then what is the intended way then? My tinfoil hat theory is that in the eyes of devs, BLM is never supposed to be this high-damage job. They give BLM such high numbers so it can make up for the fact that the average standard rotation player will fumble and lose uptime during the mechanics they create for the fight. And the damage will be equal to that of other casters in the end.

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The intended way is to maximize fire 4 use. Nonstandard is a consequence of a decision made back in HW where the devs wanted to: Reduce the amount of spam of any 1 button you did on a class (SMN was a huge offender of this in ARR,) and 2, co-opting old design elements to achieve this, in this case the timers (and fire 4 not refreshing them.)

ARR had nonstandard due to the fire 1 rotation, bad netcode, and server MP tics. HW had no nonstandard. The only thing nonstandard about SB is that the BLM community couldn't agree on if you should sharpcast thundercloud or firestarter. Thundercloud was more damage, firestarter safer. The first instance of nonstandard creeping into the class again is from Shadowbringers with the discovery of hypermeme. Hypermeme became a thing because the classes rotation is structured around the timers. And unfortunately, because of the timers needing to finally be 15s from SBs 13s and HW's 10/11s durations, it enabled this exploit's eventual discovery. Fun fact, the original timers for thundercloud and firestarter were something like 8 and 12 seconds. They kept extending it to make it more user friendly, and accidentally re-enabled an ARR nonstandard once firestarter hit 30s.

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EW was the first time I raided as BLM and some fights felt like no one gave a thought about how BLW would solve that. "Let's make them run back and forth nonstop for a minute! Who, BLM? They will figure something out, I dunno."

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This is why I think EW is the worst expansion the game has had since heavensward. They designed the fights with this high-octane 'move move move!' fight design that wasn't even really seen in UWU. I ended up roughly estimating the raw amount of movement done in all of TEA during boss uptime, and found that you literally moved less during all 18 minutes of TEA than you did during a 2 minute stretch preceding and including purgation. I could go on and on about how Endwalker basically reversed the difficulty.

Before EW, difficulty was mostly "Hard telegraph, easy solution." The solution typically didn't require a lot of movement to get into a solved state. EW has been mostly "Easy telegraph, hard solution." You know what to do very quickly, but executing on it is absolutely awful. I have had more mechanics fire out of order, or failed mechanics because I didn't react fast enough because the entire expansion has been absolutely awful with even 100 ping if it's slightly unstable. The tolerances are too tight, even on the so-called 'easy' fights.

Here's hoping the devs remember that there's an entire role in the game that wants to actually sit still, and cast, and that movement is anathema to what makes this playstyle fun.

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Originally Posted by Bloody_Kenny

I still don't understand the process of thinking behind removing non-standard. If it is not the intended way to play, then what is the intended way then? My tinfoil hat theory is that in the eyes of devs, BLM is never supposed to be this high-damage job. They give BLM such high numbers so it can make up for the fact that the average standard rotation player will fumble and lose uptime during the mechanics they create for the fight. And the damage will be equal to that of other casters in the end. EW was the first time I raided as BLM and some fights felt like no one gave a thought about how BLW would solve that. "Let's make them run back and forth nonstop for a minute! Who, BLM? They will figure something out, I dunno."

Of all the changes in DT, I only welcome Fire Paradox being instant and always giving Firestarter. Everything else is horrible.

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The intended way is simply: shoot up all your mp in fire Mode, switch to ice to recover it, and than shoot it away again in fire Mode.

They added than some extra in the ice phase, for increasing the fire phase (ice shards).
The big problem was only, that aside of that, was ice spells more or less useless. Because the mp came over time was it possible, to fill up your gauge, and still had only be 6k mp (happens to me sometimes, that i was ready for fire phase switched, and noticed than, that the mp wasnt full yet).

This weekness is now removed. Ice spells gives the shard and it looks like, that you need on higher lvl only 1 ice spell to be ready again.
They improved the wanted way and choiced the most logical way (let ice spells recover the mp). Its even stronger, as I tought (at last, if they dont change the number to release).

It looks now, like it should have been the whole time.
Why should illogical playways, who want to ignoring half of the setting of the class, be the wanted way of the class?
That it was probably the better way, was mostly a "mistake" from the system.

So, I've personally identified 4 actual pain points in BLM going into DT, some have already been discussed.

1. Button Bloat
2. Timers still existing
3. Manafont having no overcap protection
4. No on-the-move MP recovery before 76/umbral soul.

By my best count, assuming current tooltips are actually correct on all available buttons, BLM is currently at 27 job buttons. This is raised to 32 if you add in all role actions, and to 36 with food, pot, limit break, and sprint, which are reasonable things to have quick access to. No comment on macros since that's open ended.

We can safely remove lucid dreaming (mostly,) sleep, blizzard 1 (if you don't do duty roulettes) and Scathe (ignoring duty roulettes/TEA.) 32 buttons is an extremely large amount of buttons for any class. This is the same territory as SAM, AST, and PLD and needs addressing.

Timers existing is, once again, a holdover of the old ARR design slowly co-opted into future expansions. Now that all nonstandard lines, including transpose firestarter, are dead, this should just be removed as a thing. No one can do anything but the intended solution because that is the best DPS at-a-glance. Paradox and fire 3 are a DPS gain over (or neutral with) fire 4. AF1 is 10% instead of 40% bonus fire damage so transpose/firestarter loses damage. Obviously mana tics on casting ice spell. There is no reason for these timers to still exist, just remove them already.

Manafont having no overcap protection means it's either going to waste a lot of DPS from clipping mana, or drift like absolute mad. Unless you take the third option of, you know, having very precise spell speed builds to cleanly loop such that there's always a flare star when manafont comes off cooldown, which would truly be the death of BLM's gear variability.

Please look forward to manafont breaking BLM's itemization and showing up in 7.1 as something rush-patched because it's going to be a very, very big problem for the class.

And, finally, as discussed, not having umbral soul before 76 will make low level dungeons feel awful as you run while the tank is building a pull but aren't damaging yet because of the movement, and using triplecast while moving is just not worth it.

Honorable mention for Alzadaal's Legacy and having timers get force dropped because the devs wanted fun vignettes but forgot BLM exists. Again. Woo. Can't wait to see how bad that will be with blm post DT.

I took a careful look at Rinon's Youtube video about the Dawntrail Black Mage and noticed that Fire III deals ~13k damage when cast from neutral state, and then that Blizzard III deals around 13k damage when cast to swap from AF3 to UI3, and then that Fire III deals around 13k again when cast to swap from UI3 back to AF3.

This indicates to me that the Aspect Mastery III tooltip is probably not misleading, and once you're level 35 or above, you don't actually suffer a damage penalty for casting opposite-element spells. This means that Transpose-Firestarter isn't a damage gain (or a damage loss) compared to just using Firestarter procs in the same astral cycle that you generate them. I have to assume there's still some sort of typo or accidental deletion in the base Aspect Mastery tooltip, though, because it'd be very silly for AF to be all-downside until level 20 or whatever it is.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

And, finally, as discussed, not having umbral soul before 76 will make low level dungeons feel awful as you run while the tank is building a pull but aren't damaging yet because of the movement, and using triplecast while moving is just not worth it.

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The funniest/saddest part of this is that Triplecast is ... a level 66 ability, which appears to be unchanged! In all content through ARR and HW, Black Mage has their single use of Swiftcast and nothing else, which is now going to need to be used for MP regen in dungeon pulls.

Black Mage having no MP in Baelsar's Wall and St Mocianne's Arboretum and Dun Scaith. Absolutely brilliant.

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

What? You liked that they removed choice and freedom? The standard rotation didn't change.

A free fire proc is nice, but every change they made was in service of gutting the job

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Sadly non-standard play is not popular with the main players and especially in JP (casually). The vast majority of players prefer a standard rotation you don't deviate from because its easier then having a priority dps system where you have to make decisions, most people just want a linear simple to follow path for every single job.
Look at blue mage its not popular because outside of the standard idea of the burst phase and opener you are free to press any button you want.

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Originally Posted by Ianmaru

[/I]

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i cannot get over how aggressively bad your stance is here, it truly does baffle the mind

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

What? You liked that they removed choice and freedom? The standard rotation didn't change.

A free fire proc is nice, but every change they made was in service of gutting the job

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I like that they removed non-standard from the game, yes. The standard rotation isn't enough to justify playing blm in the top end content. It's a disservice to the team.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

I like that they removed non-standard from the game, yes. The standard rotation isn't enough to justify playing blm in the top end content. It's a disservice to the team.

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So your stance is that skill expression is bad and the only skill expression in the game should be people not messing up a basic rotation?

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

I took a careful look at Rinon's Youtube video about the Dawntrail Black Mage and noticed that Fire III deals ~13k damage when cast from neutral state, and then that Blizzard III deals around 13k damage when cast to swap from AF3 to UI3, and then that Fire III deals around 13k again when cast to swap from UI3 back to AF3.

This indicates to me that the Aspect Mastery III tooltip is probably not misleading, and once you're level 35 or above, you don't actually suffer a damage penalty for casting opposite-element spells. This means that Transpose-Firestarter isn't a damage gain (or a damage loss) compared to just using Firestarter procs in the same astral cycle that you generate them. I have to assume there's still some sort of typo or accidental deletion in the base Aspect Mastery tooltip, though, because it'd be very silly for AF to be all-downside until level 20 or whatever it is.

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It all depends on how the potency numbers work out. It might be worth Transpose Fire3'ing simply to fit more F4s, Despairs, and Flarestars over a given duration instead of using an off-F3 and Firestarter F3.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Sounds way too complex to me, good thing it is being removed so everyone can strive to play their job to the fullest instead of just 0.0001% of the playerbase.

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what an utterly nauseating take, i can only pray you're baiting here for the sake of humanity

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Originally Posted by Doublejho

what an utterly nauseating take, i can only pray you're baiting here for the sake of humanity

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Ive been seeing their posts around a lot of the forums I think theyre probably a troll or a massive bootlicker. They just seem to want to argue against people for the sake of it and not for any discussion.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

So your stance is that skill expression is bad and the only skill expression in the game should be people not messing up a basic rotation?

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My stance is you should express skill through how you are able to prog content and how cleanly and consistently you deal with mechanics. Rotations shouldn't ever be the most complicated part of the game or even close. Encounters should always take the cake. That's where you should be expressing your skill.

Rotations should feel good to execute and be consistent. You should have a clearly defined execution to master, and you should expect yourself to master it through enough repetition. Then you can focus entirely on the true challenge of the game which is hard encounters. I feel like a lot of people who want for difficult and contrived rotations just don't do the hard content in the game or have done it so many times that it's all muscle memory for them and they're out of touch with what the game's difficulty really is.

Either way, the changes happened and they're not going back. You might just not be a good fit for this mmo. The japanese fanbase wants for rotations to be standardized for a good reason.

Also it's funny how you can only respond with vitriol and ad hominem at someone who is just enthusiastic about progress and refinement from the dev team. Get a better hobby.

Removing things from Job Classes that added nuance and personal engagement doesn't sound like progress and refinement to me.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

My stance is you should express skill through how you are able to prog content and how cleanly and consistently you deal with mechanics. Rotations shouldn't ever be the most complicated part of the game or even close. Encounters should always take the cake. That's where you should be expressing your skill.

Rotations should feel good to execute and be consistent. You should have a clearly defined execution to master, and you should expect yourself to master it through enough repetition. Then you can focus entirely on the true challenge of the game which is hard encounters. I feel like a lot of people who want for difficult and contrived rotations just don't do the hard content in the game.

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Do you do the hard content in the game? Did you clear TOP and Dragonsong? Because I did. On Black Mage, too! And I can tell you the DT version of BLM would feel horrible to play in both of those fights, and will feel horrible to week 1 prog with (hey, another thing you can check I did! I also did it in past expansions!). You talk with such authority about "skill expression through progression"- have you done early progression? Like, with week 1 gear and actually cleared a tier? Do you understand what benefits Black Mages in those scenarios? How these changes will (negatively) impact their ability to perform and adapt both to hard fights (TOP/DSR) and in early prog (where wonky strategies reign and dps out is actually important)? I don't think you actually know how those things play like, and you have no knowledge of the hardest fights in the game or early, difficult Savage prog. I'm open to being proven wrong, though :>

Your comment about the JP playerbase is just plain wrong. In fact, if you have some knowledge of Japanese, I invite you to check their DPS board- the SAM and BLM threads have a lot of traction in the past few days, and while I claim no expertise in their cultural nuances, some of the posts there feel very aggressively negative when coming from JP players (legitimately felt like something I'd read in our English forums!). I, naturally, took my time to Like! their posts, as they resonate with me (and, in fact, I started cleaning up my ShB BLM gameplay by watching Te Tu and wondering about what he was doing in some runs- I even messaged him on Yt and he replied every time!).

What you're saying is completely wrong, anyway. If the game had no rotation (like, all you did was move around) it would become completely trivial. Half of the challenge in this game comes from mastering your job and rotation.
Imagine saying something like "a weapon's moveset doesn't matter at all in Monster Hunter! It's all about learning the monster AI patterns and attack ranges" or "picking a good build and synergistic party doesn't matter in Baldur's Gate 3! It's all about how you navigate the encounter!". It's such a silly stance.