Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Drinking game, grab some lemon juice and take a shot everytime anyone says anything about "as intended" on the job that has been near freeflowing since 2.0.

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https://media1.tenor.com/m/UarrS11BA...epic-lemon.gif

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Originally Posted by Doublejho

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https://media1.tenor.com/m/gyXilM_nu...-team-epic.gif

I get it, the frustration. Square could have put some effort into making non-standard feel more like the new standard for this expansion vs deleting it in favor of longer, more strict fire phases. Many players are confusing tracking server tics for complexity. It wasn't complex having to occasionally add, or omit GCDs to ice phase, it was tedious and out of our control. Could they have made changes to eliminate this need for external mods to track mana tics? Absolutely they should have. Could they have made the erratic on the fly choices to go between ice and fire for rapid optimizations before bosses leave, or for more optimized burst phases a new standard streamlined way of playing blm? Absolutely they should have. The design choices were subtractive. Should we be mad that tracking mana tics is gone? No that's a bit absurd, that wasn't what was complex about non-standard play, that was a bother.

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Originally Posted by Milkbeard

Should we be mad that tracking mana tics is gone? No that's a bit absurd, that wasn't what was complex about non-standard play, that was a bother.

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I don't think anyone cares about or enjoys the mana-tick nonsense we have right now. People are (rightfully) upset at the loss of flexibility and depth the changes will bring to the job.
I'm not going to reiterate what's been said, I'm just addressing this point specifically because I genuinely feel no one cares about the mana-tick tracking (and I haven't seen this sentiment expressed anywhere).
At worst people are worried about regenerating mana between phases with all the cutscene forced downtime SE keeps adding to high-end fights these days.

should have mentioned i was replying to the OP

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Originally Posted by Cyth_

To this effect, here are the changes I believe have a very high liklihood of damaging the job:[LIST=4][*]MP recovery now requiring casting Ice spells - This single almost entirely kills Non-Standard play. It removes many options on how a player can approach their Umbral Ice phase, such as cleverly utilising Transpose and unaspected instant cast spells such as Paradox, Xenoglossy and Thunder III. MP recovery occuring arbitrarily based on server "ticks" can be unintuitive, but the proposed solution is extremely heavy-handed. Alternatives would be to keep MP recovery unchanged from it's current behaviour, allowing current tick behaviour to continue in addition to the proposed change, or ideally having *any* non-fire spell cast during Umbral Ice to grant MP. Either of my latter suggested changes retain the "ease-of-use" desired without closing down an entire playstyle.

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I read this is as being in favor of mana ticks, however, upon rereading, I'm seeing that they were on the same wave length-ish. My bad

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

At worst people are worried about regenerating mana between phases with all the cutscene forced downtime SE keeps adding to high-end fights these days.

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Which fights we talking about? Is there not usually enough time to umbral soul for all the ultimates right now? I know the bosses leave first, but there's usually some GCDs to get those souls in? I'm coming from blm as literally just being an alt. I think I've only progged one ultimate as blm and cleared two of them on it? (red mage main in them all really) Idk maybe I need to recombobulate my thoughts on this. I might just be in favor of the mana regeneration change but not expressing it in a more concise and thoughtful manner.

I mean idk, instead of giving us that fire soul nuke, if they would have made it an ice nuke for doing 2 GCDs in ice,(or I guess even entering ice from at least dispairing in fire) would we not have just been given the essence of non-standard play in a less mana tick-dependent way? Genuine BLM dabbler here so don't roast me too hard. I personally wanted to play more blm this expansion but the non-standard play was a major turn off, and as far as I played it, it was pretty literally just mana tick tracking incarnate. How many lines could we really do without tracking ticks?

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Originally Posted by Milkbeard

Which fights we talking about? Is there not usually enough time to umbral soul for all the ultimates right now??

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TOP p1 to p2 transition (you can only do Transpose > Umbral Soul once unless you end p1 on a Blizzard III instead of a Despair) and p5 to p6 (same thing) are what I had in mind, in terms of recent fights. Like I said, technically, you can end your burst on the tail end of a fight with Blizzard III (and, if needed, into a Blizzard IV) instead of a Despair... but that incurs a damage loss (and BLM is probs the only job who needs to worry about nonsense like that).

I actually agree with your latter point btw, I'd have preferred a new ice nuke to make UI more interesting. The ice phase has been heavily neglected, and making it more interesting might make people less inclined to try whatever they can to skip it. The only new ice spell we've got since HW was Paradox and they're removing it...

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Originally Posted by Milkbeard

Which fights we talking about? Is there not usually enough time to umbral soul for all the ultimates right now? I know the bosses leave first, but there's usually some GCDs to get those souls in? I'm coming from blm as literally just being an alt. I think I've only progged one ultimate as blm and cleared two of them on it? (red mage main in them all really) Idk maybe I need to recombobulate my thoughts on this. I might just be in favor of the mana regeneration change but not expressing it in a more concise and thoughtful manner.

I mean idk, instead of giving us that fire soul nuke, if they would have made it an ice nuke for doing 2 GCDs in ice,(or I guess even entering ice from at least dispairing in fire) would we not have just been given the essence of non-standard play in a less mana tick-dependent way? Genuine BLM dabbler here so don't roast me too hard. I personally wanted to play more blm this expansion but the non-standard play was a major turn off, and as far as I played it, it was pretty literally just mana tick tracking incarnate. How many lines could we really do without tracking ticks?

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Umbral Soul is a level 76 ability so it's literally impossible to use it in UWU or UCOB, and some of the TEA and TOP cutscenes take away control of your character, so no Umbral Soul there either. I'm not an ults gamer and I'm not sure about DRU.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

https://media3.giphy.com/media/IDGNY...giphy.gif&ct=g

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4 likes on this post, reading the thread it's the same tiny handful of people complaining about the changes. Very desperate for social media traction you know?

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

I actually agree with your latter point btw, I'd have preferred a new ice nuke to make UI more interesting. The ice phase has been heavily neglected, and making it more interesting might make people less inclined to try whatever they can to skip it. The only new ice spell we've got since HW was Paradox and they're removing it...

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Yea paradox is now truly a paradox, it has literally nothing to do with Ice anymore. It might be one of the most astral fire spells you can do in astral fire now. Firestarter proc? instant? refreash AF? yea they kind of dropped the ball with this unexpected rework.

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Originally Posted by wildvenonat

Umbral Soul is a level 76 ability so it's literally impossible to use it in UWU or UCOB, and some of the TEA and TOP cutscenes take away control of your character, so no Umbral Soul there either. I'm not an ults gamer and I'm not sure about DRU.

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But you have manafont already at lvl 30? It bring you full mana and stacks every two minute? That may bring BLM advantage at low lvl content

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

4 likes on this post, reading the thread it's the same tiny handful of people complaining about the changes. Very desperate for social media traction you know?

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Here's another thread of complaints. But you would know if you did your research.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...l-kill-the-job

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Originally Posted by Sunako

But you have manafont already at lvl 30? It bring you full mana and stacks every two minute? That may bring BLM advantage at low lvl content

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In addition:
How many MP did whe need? 1200? 1600? 800 MP for Blizzard 3 to come into 3 stack ice phase. And than 400 or 800 more mp, for Blizzard 4 (dont have in mind, how much mp that take).
By my test a few days ago, did i reached it in a few seconds, who would covered in the sequence. Even faster, if whe use the dream skill.
Ok, it is ppossible to have a bad timing, that you has full counter fire phase, who has to take of first. But i think that scenario would be rare or the sequence would be long enough, to cover up the needed mp (esspecialy, that whe dont have much of that kind of scene in lower lvl, except for first time cut scene). The only time where mp regeneration is maybe truly slow would be in the completly early lvl. But i dont think, that even there would it make so much of trouble (mostly a longer ice phase).

The big advangte i simply see with the new ice phase is, that the blm has now the ability to come back into its flow extrem fast. Even, when his mp wasnt recovered completly, to passiv regeneration. It looks even now as the fastes recovery ability from all Mp-using classes (ok, most other classes like healer or other caster need less mp for there spells, as the Blm).

The only big down side i see with that option could be, that you are forced to use a ice start rotation. Or, you did a very short fire start rotation to come back into the flow.
And the missing of ice paradox is sad for running moments (like again Thal, or the air plane by Nier3 or this parasite boss in Pandae). But, is it even truly good to be able to attack while running? Ok, it create some dmg. But, the character has a drive to stop or to run a little to the target (even with a range chara like Archer or caster), if you do a attack action. I was sometimes hit by a aoe attack, because, my chara maked some unwanted movement. Only, because i pressed a attack action and was near the aoe attack.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

Here's another thread of complaints. But you would know if you did your research.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...l-kill-the-job

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Stop falling for the bait!!!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...ed71e1b6aa800&

Reminder that non standard hasn't been completely removed. It's the current non standard lines that for most of them become obsolete, but there is actual new ones even within the media tour build, just watch Eksu's videos if you want to see some examples. Not sure how deep the new system can go ofc, but it feels more like a reframing to me than a complete deletion.

The current main problem right now to my eyes is the rigid flare star gauge. Would work a lot better if it behaved like SSS on MNK, with potency increasing the more you have stored.

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

Here's another thread of complaints. But you would know if you did your research.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...l-kill-the-job

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Again, a small handful of posters and largely the same people posting here. Then several others who are supportive of the changes.

I'm not even baiting you, just keeping it real with you. Change is inevitable. Black mage is supposed to be turret caster, the difficulty and mastery has always been around knowing the encounters so well that you can maintain uptime and avoid mechanics with really big brained positioning and limiting movement to the bare minimum while you cast as many devastating fire spells as possible. The devs don't like that people are getting around that difficulty by adjusting their rotation dynamically. Black mage is not about pulling out the right non-standard lines that you've memorized from reading external guides.

I get that you're upset, I get that you don't like playing black mage the way it was designed and intended to be played. It's just inevitable that the job will change if the people at the top are avoiding to play the job the way the devs want it to be played. It would be like if samurai was able to play optimally by using hagakure instead of iaijutsu to spam shinten. Would that be good for the game? So innovative such a clever use of game mechanics, so big brained.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

Snip

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Speaking of bait, apparently that Gamesradar 7.2 "job review start deadline" was a mistranslation, so my hopium just went up in flames.
Reminds be of 4.0. Here's to a few minor patches of misery again :D

Maybe in 3 years BLM will be interesting again as they say on focusing on making the jobs interesting, i don't see any big changes coming because they clearly don't listen to feedback as you can see when they remove Kaiten.
For me all the fun and uniqueness of the last job that you really need to think is gone, you just have a linear rotation like every job in the game and thats it.

Some people here that loves to talk about ultimates and job optimization and don't even do endgame content in the first place, just like to be on the opposite side to annyoing people.

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Originally Posted by Valence

The current main problem right now to my eyes is the rigid flare star gauge. Would work a lot better if it behaved like SSS on MNK, with potency increasing the more you have stored.

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To support that idea, they need to significantly buff Flare Star, because with current potency the Flare Star itself is slightly stronger than Despair (350p>340p). So if you split it its total current potency for set potency per sticker (58.3p~), you still want 6. Even with 5 stickers, the total potency will be lower than Fire IV, making it a useless button to press. Of course, numbers can be adjusted, but considering the damage they set for this spell in the first place, it doesn't feel like devs want it to be something that high in damage (granted, it is still the strongest fire spell in the kit).

Probably what I prefer is for stickers to go from phase to phase, so you do not have to spend them in the same Fire cycle. But I worry that this may cause some misalignments where you have to cast Flare Star in some weird place to prevent overcap.

In other positive news, it seems like in the build Yoshi-P was showing today, Manafont has a 100s cooldown. A small win for fellow BLMs.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

Speaking of bait, apparently that Gamesradar 7.2 "job review start deadline" was a mistranslation, so my hopium just went up in flames.
Reminds be of 4.0. Here's to a few minor patches of misery again :D

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I didn't expect anything tbh.
The second I saw DT wasn't changing CD timers I knew it was unfixable, all these changes are just related to the 2 minute meta cancer thats been attached to the game since EW. Never expect improvements until you see CDs timers becoming more varied again, its the same with the cope around encounters becoming better. They won't be it will be beholden to everything being patterned around 2 minute bursts.

What i wonder:

The current potency says, that high fire2 is going down to 100.
How much is than normal fire 2 for lower lvl?
Fire 2 at lvl 75 is allready 100 potentie. When its evolved form has the same number, would it mean, that fire 2 would only be 60 or 80. What looks very weak for a aoe "rotation".

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Originally Posted by Keichi

What i wonder:

The current potency says, that high fire2 is going down to 100.
How much is than normal fire 2 for lower lvl?
Fire 2 at lvl 75 is allready 100 potentie. When its evolved form has the same number, would it mean, that fire 2 would only be 60 or 80. What looks very weak for a aoe "rotation".

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You can't take media tour potencies as gospel truth. We need to see the values on the live version. So don't worry too much about that yet.
(Unless some official notes came out in the meantime, but I think not)

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Originally Posted by Keichi

What i wonder:

The current potency says, that high fire2 is going down to 100.
How much is than normal fire 2 for lower lvl?
Fire 2 at lvl 75 is allready 100 potentie. When its evolved form has the same number, would it mean, that fire 2 would only be 60 or 80. What looks very weak for a aoe "rotation".

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Yes, as of Media Tour build, the potency of Fire/Blizzard II is 80. Ofc, numbers probably going to be tweaked. Because, with Media Tour potencies, using High Fire/Blizzard II is unefficient damage vise. It deals more damage to go like Transpose - Freeze - High Thunder II/ Foul - Transpose - Flare x2 - Flare Star - Transpose. I would use like, High Blizzard II once to start the rotation, and the just forget about both High spells, unless they buff them.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

Stop falling for the bait!!!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...ed71e1b6aa800&

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I was losing half of mind in those conversations. Thankfully no more

I actually can't believe they murdered BLM like this. I also can't believe people who don't play the job (and barely play the game!) are happy to celebrate as if they are gaining anything from such a unique and interesting class being gutted. A vibrant community had formed around black mage exploration and optimization, and we were excited and ready with all sorts of ideas and tools to approach the new version of the job. Now there's nothing. Nothing at all, everyone is leaving.

Anyone who does not understand what the flexibility and interesting parts of the job were that are now completely gone, this is a good place to start reading about it: https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/jobs...dvanced-guide/

It is very clear by looking at the people in both sides of the argument, which side has the players that love and play the game. And it is sad.

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I also can't believe people who don't play the job (and barely play the game!) are happy to celebrate as if they are gaining anything from such a unique and interesting class being gutted.

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Haha this is how things work around here. Its happened at various times to the healers and tanks, for me it was when they gutted the phys ranged in one sweep for Stormblood, and then of course the infamous summoner rework in Endwalker.

In fact I distinctly remember some of you from back then. What goes around comes around eh? My condolences and welcome to the club.

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Originally Posted by itu_

I actually can't believe they murdered BLM like this. I also can't believe people who don't play the job (and barely play the game!) are happy to celebrate as if they are gaining anything from such a unique and interesting class being gutted. A vibrant community had formed around black mage exploration and optimization, and we were excited and ready with all sorts of ideas and tools to approach the new version of the job. Now there's nothing. Nothing at all, everyone is leaving.

Anyone who does not understand what the flexibility and interesting parts of the job were that are now completely gone, this is a good place to start reading about it: https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/jobs...dvanced-guide/

It is very clear by looking at the people in both sides of the argument, which side has the players that love and play the game. And it is sad.

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Have you ever heard the saying? "Misery loves company"

people who are unhappy like to share their trouble with others

Well I poured one out for those that actually play BLM. I did some roulettes. But my smooth brain can only seem to play it as well as a RDM/SMN in terms of output (or 105-110% if I dont have to think about mechanics). I have failed (for someone who only plays it like once every 4-6 months for the lulz that isn't too bad I guess).

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Originally Posted by itu_

It is very clear by looking at the people in both sides of the argument, which side has the players that love and play the game. And it is sad.

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What's sad is you find the most uninteresting part of the job to be interesting and then try to gatekeep who actually loves the game. "No real black mage is against nonstandard" no real Scotsman type stuff.

Black mage has always and will always be about using a ton of fire spells in a row and then having a short ice phase to recover mp. It is not meant to be complicated. I feel bad for you because you spent so much time learning what is literally an insanely contrived and complex way of engaging with the job, and now it means nothing. It's a lot of wasted time but at least you got to enjoy it while it lasted? It should have been clear that it wasn't going to last since you read the nonstandard guide.

The craziest part is you are so entitled that you think everyone should accept being suboptimal just because they don't find it interesting to devote the same amount of motivation and commitment as it would take to learn something extremely meaningful to learn something like non-standard. It's a game, not a career, not an artform, it's a video game.

This whole "nobody has to learn non-standard to clear content, you can parse 99% with standard in certain fights" is such a bad argument. All it does is illustrate how few people play nonstandard proficiently too. A minority of minorities. Black mage players are already a small fraction of the community, then maybe 1% of black mage players actually played the way you view as the "only interesting part of the job". Of course the parses will reflect that, doesn't mean that anyone who cares about optimization is unaware. They look at that guide and say something like "this job is too complicated for me. I would never be able to play it right." And when you think about it, non-standard play is the only "correct" way of playing black mage through the lens of optimization. Maybe I am a bad player currently, but it doesn't change the fact that I strive to be optimal because that's what I enjoy. Even positionals on dragoon, I say I don't like them and wouldn't use them ever, but now that I am getting better at the fight I am engaging with I have started using them. Do I like positionals? No. Would I celebrate their removal? Yes. Are they on every single melee dps job? Yes.

Learn to adapt, it's a good life skill and now you're being forced to learn it.

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Originally Posted by Sunako

Have you ever heard the saying? "Misery loves company"

people who are unhappy like to share their trouble with others

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Who are you talking about here? The people who are miserable about change?

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Originally Posted by Keichi

What i wonder:

The current potency says, that high fire2 is going down to 100.
How much is than normal fire 2 for lower lvl?
Fire 2 at lvl 75 is allready 100 potentie. When its evolved form has the same number, would it mean, that fire 2 would only be 60 or 80. What looks very weak for a aoe "rotation".

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Welcome to Black Mage, the only class in the game that is constantly and consistently nerfed in older content because the devs have such limited room to grow it without making it overpowered or breaking its timer-based structure, that things have to be nerfed for other things to be added without being overpowered. Don't believe me? ARR (Flare single target rotation.) Heavensward (Ley Lines, including future expansions. Good arguments the fire 4 changes have been buffs,) Stormblood (foul,) Shadowbringers (Xenoglossy, for a time.) Now we have endwalker and losing paradox in ice, as well as the changes to thundercloud hurting pre-60 especially. It's honestly impressive that this class used to be one of the best DPS in every expansion, and has slowly become the worst in all older expansions. I think its only real holdout still is heavensward, where the fire 4 changes were kind of huge for it, namely going from 4/cycle to 6/cycle, doing more overall damage, at a slightly faster GCD.

It's kind of impressive how this is the only class that really has this problem. At a certain point the devs will give it the leveling rework it desperately needs.

It's kind of amazing that they found a way to make it even worse in UWU/UCOB when during EW it was already at "are you CERTAIN you don't want to play SMN?"

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Originally Posted by wildvenonat

It's kind of amazing that they found a way to make it even worse in UWU/UCOB when during EW it was already at "are you CERTAIN you don't want to play SMN?"

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XIV'x complete disregard and abandonment of the enjoyment and replayability of low level content while both forcing people to replay it in the msq and touting it as enjoyable content is appalling. The leveling experience in this game is awful... might as well have slashed half of it if they insist on making jobs completely unbalanced and awful to play at lower levels.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

XIV'x complete disregard and abandonment of the enjoyment and replayability of low level content while both forcing people to replay it in the msq and touting it as enjoyable content is appalling. The leveling experience in this game is awful... might as well have slashed half of it if they insist on making jobs completely unbalanced and awful to play at lower levels.

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I appreciate that GW2 doesn't GAF that syncing down a max character makes older content "trivial" but not without consequence.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I appreciate that GW2 doesn't GAF that syncing down a max character makes older content "trivial" but not without consequence.

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And it also only makes "some" low level content trivial. You still get clapped by a lot of the miniboss enemies solo, despite having access to all of your kit.

I have a learning disability so learning and executing static rotations well in harder fights is difficult for me. playing anything outside of healers felt weird & awkward. but then I started playing black mage and everything suddenly made sense. things clicked from the start and I loved how fluid everything was. having a simple but flexible tool kit that changed depending on the encounter not only made things easier for me but brought depth that made things so fun. I loved getting a feel for the way the job worked on my own such as timers and mp regen ticks and what worked where, and it was easy for me to casually freestyle it effectively. I went from being made fun of by friends for doing so little damage on something like DRG or RDM to them being amazed at how good I was at this job they thought was so hard. and I was so confused because it felt like the easiest dps job in the game to me.

the changes making the job play more like a static rotation scare me. I don't know how much impact they will have but they feel like a step in the wrong direction and eat away at the unique job playstyle. I know im probably not like most players but I hope my experiences show that its not always good to have jobs work similarly.

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Originally Posted by etoilecat

snip.

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Try Picto. It's more fluid and does more damage before factoring in its raid buff... and it has a lot of cool raid buffs, including very good shields with HoTs on them.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

Try Picto. It's more fluid and does more damage before factoring in its raid buff... and it has a lot of cool raid buffs, including very good shields with HoTs on them.

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1.) Final potencies have yet to be seen
2.) Even based on current potencies, is this taking into account BLM's +80% on Astral Fire III (Fire spells) and +30% from Enochian trait (all damage including Fire)? Because there is a lot of "hidden" potency there.

Ok, i like the mp regeneration change and the more power of thunder (no Plan, if the dmg is truly higher now, the power is around double or triple as before, but, the proc did originaly base power + dot + full dot at once).

What i dont like much is the aoe part.
The blm looks to have lost a lot of power in the aoe section.
Flare and high fire is weaker. I dont now, if the fire buff include flare now or not (the first skill excluded it first, and i dont know, if flare count as fire spell).
And, flarestar is stronger as the preview mentioned (weaker as i hoped). But, the 65% dmg lose in aoe looks to hurt hard (ok, as a fire spell comes some boost).

The blm looks ok. But from upgrades do i like Drg and Paladin more.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

1.) Final potencies have yet to be seen
2.) Even based on current potencies, is this taking into account BLM's +80% on Astral Fire III (Fire spells) and +30% from Enochian trait (all damage including Fire)? Because there is a lot of "hidden" potency there.

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https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/pictomancer/

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

1.) Final potencies have yet to be seen
2.) Even based on current potencies, is this taking into account BLM's +80% on Astral Fire III (Fire spells) and +30% from Enochian trait (all damage including Fire)? Because there is a lot of "hidden" potency there.

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The finalized patch notes are out and people already had access to the final potencies for a while via certain methods.

The Balance discord knows how to math properly and factor in all those things.