So with all of this consolidation Why do we still have 4 different Fires?

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Originally Posted by alimdia

They do different things, therefore no reason to merge them.

The whole point of the consolidation is merging skills that do the same thing, not merging skills that share the same name.

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I understand that sentiment of what you're trying to say but I do want to point out that this is not entirely true. On Ninja, Dancing Edge and Shadow Fang did wildly different things (DoT vs. slashing debuff) and they merged those into one thing so it's plausible that they could have done the same on Black Mage spells, even though obviously they chose not to.

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It's only redundant because you're ignoring the Astral Fire (which keeps Enochian up, by the way) and the Firestarter proc Fire grants, whereas Fire IV is just a single target spell that does massive damage (260 potency in SB + Astral Fire III damage buff) you can only use while under the effects of Enochian and Astral Fire (of which it does not keep up).

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Both of which could easily be incorporated into Fire 4's effect, since both ways you're still going for the same thing -- damage on a single target. That's pretty much what I've been saying all along. Keep up.

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Originally Posted by AlphaDragoon

I understand that sentiment of what you're trying to say but I do want to point out that this is not entirely true. On Ninja, Dancing Edge and Shadow Fang did wildly different things (DoT vs. slashing debuff) and they merged those into one thing so it's plausible that they could have done the same on Black Mage spells, even though obviously they chose not to.

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Shadow fang was a third combo chain that no other melee has. This gave ninja 4 combo chains: Aeolian edge, Dancing Edge, Armor Crush, and Shadow Fang. Giving you a lot to keep track of on uptimes. All this maintenance often led to ninja falling behind on dps compared to mnk and dragoon, but their utilities is what kept them relivent. This change is mostly to ease all the micro-managing ninja already has to do.

Blm is the opposite of this. They just need to keep astral fire/umbral ice up and what Fynlar said that you clearly ignored.

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Originally Posted by AlphaDragoon

I understand that sentiment of what you're trying to say but I do want to point out that this is not entirely true. On Ninja, Dancing Edge and Shadow Fang did wildly different things (DoT vs. slashing debuff) and they merged those into one thing so it's plausible that they could have done the same on Black Mage spells, even though obviously they chose not to.

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The goal by Yoshida's words were to lower the skill floor and trim skills that weren't used often, the merge of dancing edge and shadowfang were meant to lower the skill floor as ninja had too many combo branches (4 of them), after the merge Ninja is more in-line with other jobs. For BLM you don't have the same button bloat issues as with ninja, you're already hitting a very small number of buttons, people in this thread just want combat to devolve into spamming 1 button to win.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Both of which could easily be incorporated into Fire 4's effect, since both ways you're still going for the same thing -- damage on a single target. That's pretty much what I've been saying all along. Keep up.

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And again you keep ignoring the changes happening in 4.0, what you propose is to turn 3.0 BLM back into 2.0 BLM, what they are doing in 4.0 already solves the skill floor issues and BLM has no ability bloat issues to warrant going back to only caring about 3 buttons.

I seriously don't get the appeal for lazy gameplay.

Okay question, when was the last time you had to do sastasha, tam tara or copperbell as BLM? Do you consider your gameplay experience at level 16 BLM to be better than level 60? Because I've never met anyone who enjoyed BLM at 16 and would prefer it over level 50 or 60.

I would rather see Fire I turn in to Fire III while keeping F1's cast time/cost and gaining F3's potency and instant three stack effect, same with Blizzard 1 and 3. I'd even go as far to say that when we get F4 and B4, those should replace F1/F3 and B1/B3 entirely and keep the shorter cast times and give three astral/umbral stacks. That would bring it more in line with classic final fantasies where once you learned the higher ranks of a spell you basically "graduated" from using lower tier spells and used the higher rank almost exclusively.

Edit: I hear what people are saying when they say they don't want blm to become a "one button class" again and I get that, but at the same time don't demonize simplicity. There's nothing wrong with different classes having different skill floors/ceilings and I actually find blm's relative simplicity at 50 to be a lot more enjoyable and refreshing than the all of the different timers at 60. But again, purely personal preference, your mileage may vary.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

The whole point of the consolidation is merging skills that do the same thing, not merging skills that share the same name.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Yeah but the point of this consolidation is trimming skills that have no use-snip

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Originally Posted by Nestama

It's not really a lack of imagination, but rather "why fix what isn't broken?"-snip

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You see, this is what they had said previously, that they would remove infrequently used skills implying they wouldn't change rotations much, and they haven't changed BLM's rotation much. Thing is though, if you look at some of the things they have removed

• Touch of death, Mutilate, and Phlebotomize

• Bio, Combust, Aero (no longer separate lv. II)

• Stoneskin I & II

• Miasma II

And then compare to some things they didn't remove

• Freeze

• Tri-Bind

• One-Ilm Punch (totally changed effect though)

• Arm of the Destroyer

• Fists of Wind

You'll see that's not really what they did. The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of the inclusions and exclusions of things to remove are weird. The DoTs are just upgrades, but just upgrading (for example) Bio to Bio II isn't the same as upgrading Stone II to Stone III, both dots can be up simultaneously, while you cannot cast Stone II & III simultaneously. Likewise, in a poper rotation, Mutilate, Touch of Death, and Phlebotomize should be up constantly and removing them does change those jobs rotations, albeit only a little. They have obviously decided to keep a bunch of CCs, like Sleep and Tri-Bind, despite the last time I remember even seeing them used was in a <50 dungeon where the tank had left and we wanted to keep going.

Now, they could have removed that whole pile of DoTs to simplify those other jobs, as they simplified the timer for Enochian (shared with AF/UI). That seems a fair way to simplify the jobs and "close the dps gap." Then when looking to consolidate abilities, all the levels of Fire are separate enough to be kept, so they did. But there is no reason to use Fire I over Fire III when in UI3, there are scant times you save a firestarter proc and cast fire I (not IV) again, and not having Fire III at the beginning of a fight wouldn't change much (though that could also be part of the trait and not be an issue). They could easily consolidate Fire I & III and it would make minimal difference.

On Fire IV:

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Originally Posted by Felis

Fire 1: to keep Astral Fire up
Fire 4: let Astral Fire run out

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This does seem to be what SE was going for given the change to Enochian. They totally changed Blizzard IV's effect, and made enochian much easier to maintain while retaining the original rotation. It keeps some risk of Enochian falling off if you aren't careful, but the timer is combined with another timer you already had to pay attention to.

All this does NOT mean they should have combined Fire I, III, and/or IV, or that combining them would be better. They could have, and it wouldn't be out of place since BRD & MCH are getting big re-tools, everyone is getting new skills, they said there were consolidating some skills, and since, you know, it's an expansion and all. I personally think it's weird they didn't combine any of them, but this setup still works.

Blm gets blizard at level 1, fire at level 2, transpose at 4, thunder at level 6. I do consider such a change out of place because the request is the same as asking BLM to go back to level 6 gameplay.

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But there is no reason to use Fire I over Fire III when in UI3

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Because that's not the reason why fire 1 exists, of course there's no reason to use it outside its intended purpose.

Fire 3 exists to apply astral fire 3 and for procs.
Fire 1 exists to extend astral fire timer.

So in UI3 you use the AF3 applier (and not the AF extender), when AF3 is running out you use the AF extender (and not the AF applier), if you get a proc you use the proc to boost damage and give you free movement, these skills exist to make BLM management more engaging than just pressing 1 button that does everything. The only skill that serves little purpose is blizzard 1 just because BLM gameplay revolves around staying in AF as long as you have MP, but staying in UI the least you can while your MP regens.

Merging the AF extender and AF3 applier would ease gameplay, but for what purpose? BLM has no button bloat issue, and gameplay would turn worse with the removal of procs.

Merging AF extender, AF3 applier and mini nuke would be no different from blm at level 6, which is probably the most boring class in the game.

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Originally Posted by SomeRandomHuman

Shadow fang was a third combo chain that no other melee has. This gave ninja 4 combo chains: Aeolian edge, Dancing Edge, Armor Crush, and Shadow Fang. Giving you a lot to keep track of on uptimes. All this maintenance often led to ninja falling behind on dps compared to mnk and dragoon, but their utilities is what kept them relivent. This change is mostly to ease all the micro-managing ninja already has to do.

Blm is the opposite of this. They just need to keep astral fire/umbral ice up and what Fynlar said that you clearly ignored.

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I didn't "ignore" it because I'm not advocating that they need to change or prune Black Mage's skills. It was irrelevant to what I was talking about and I think you're missing my point.

I was saying is that the literal statement of "The whole point of the consolidation is merging skills that do the same thing" was false. They chopped off or changed properties for several skills in this game that weren't "doing the same thing as others". And because of that they could have plausibly decided to prune Black Mage skills if they felt they needed to, it wasn't 100% off the table or anything but obviously they didn't feel they needed to. I don't think any Job was 100% immune to change during this rebalance, anyone could have ended up different or pared down.

And just to make it clear, I don't really think Black Mages needed adjustments to reduce the number of Fire/Blizzard spells, having played one on my alt.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Fire 1: to keep Astral Fire up
Fire 4: let Astral Fire run out

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Now that I've seen this argument a little clearer, I can agree that consolidation would defeat what devs want the job to be.

It's for the same reason SMN has 4 Ruin spells: they serve different purposes and have a relationship to one another as you go up a tier, beyond 'more damage'. In SMN's case:

Ruin - filler spell you use when DoTs are up (or when you can't use Ruin III because of MP)
Ruin II - when you need to move/weave in oGCDs
Ruin III - DWT filler; outside of DWT, filler upgrade to Ruin (when you have the MP for it)
Ruin IV - proc replacement for Ruin/Ruin III