Please fix mana ticks to their previous state (BLM)

Well guys, we should make a thread to call the attention to this fix...

Please roll back the changes to mana ticks under UI (Umbral Ice) buff.

The change was unnecessary, sure, it will fix flare double casting (which wasn't THAT great anyway). But it is NOT the way to go.

Flare glitch should have been fixed a different way (for example, make it consume mana the moment it becomes a succesful cast, this would also fix the latency issue where transpose would take you to UI, and then flare hit after returning you to AF with no mana and no transpose, or where Convert would give you the mana back before Flare consumed it, leaving you again with no mana and no cd).

New mana ticks break the synergy black mages used to have, now we are just silly normal casters, and we have to waste time, in a boring way, waiting for the mana tick, and if we want to be efficient just ridiculously keep track of the clock timer and sycn with it so we can know when our ticks will hit.This ruins part of the black mage experience, where one would learn to time yourself with your spells, knowing exacly when you would get your mana since the time you casted that blizzard spell.

So please all those Black Mage fellows out there, let's unite together for our common interestes.


P.S.: It would be nice to know wether taking advantage from UI3 and AF3 to cast TWO spells of the opposite aligment in half the tiem was intended or not, and if they plan to bring this back, as it gave us a nice niche, having us cast two fire spells or blizzard spells in a row when switching "stances (UI3/AF3) in order to maximize our damage.

And wether this was fixed on purpose or got broken with the fix to how AF3 and UI3 react. Was this in fact caused by Flare exploit (where a player would cast a second flare under the 2x cast speed buff for a an actual hit with the damage buff from AF3 given by the first flare, by timing the UI3 tick so it hits after flare consumes mana)? If this is the case, then again the fix should have been implemented in a dfiferent way. This way breaks our synergy as class overall.

I thought the ticks had changed. It just wasnt going as smoothly as normal. Now i know im not the only one who noticed.

Gonna quote myself from The Black Mage Rotations.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

Unfortunately, it's not just double casting Flare that's the problem.
They don't want us to get the reduced cast time on two spells.

Can we stop talking about "syncing"? Nothing changed with the ticks. It is like you said, UI/AF changes 85% into the cast of Fire III/Blizzard III. It has nothing to do with the way the mana ticks.

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Also going to source Yoshi:

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Yoshida: For black mage, there's a bug related to casting speed which has put its DPS ahead of other jobs. In patch 2.1, we'll be fixing this, which should put the overall DPS of a black mage on par with that of other DPS jobs.

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http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/119...w-with-Yoshida

There's no other casting speed "bug" he could be talking about. And talking about casting speed has nothing to do with double flare.
This change was meant to hit two birds with one stone. No double reduced casting speed on *any* two spells and no double flare (since you change to between AF and UI before the cast even finishes).

You know it was a bug fix, right? It was never intended to work that way, and was FIXED. They aren't going to un-fix a bug just to make it easier for you to recover mana.

A bug is a bug, we just have to learn our way around it I'm afraid.

Hmmm... What was a bug fix? Fixing the flare ticks, where the bug is the flare consuming the mana and giving you the AF3 buff too late? Or where the bug that caused us to cast two spells with the UI3 buff but second one hitting under AF3, was caused by AF3 being applied late...

I fail to see how synchronizing the mana ticks is related to that, other than well, it would help fix them, and also break our player's sync with our character, instead of their internal clock.

This is a lame fix, they should have made it towards AF3 and UI3 buffs are more responsive (this would also make firestarter be more responsive as well, since it would be fixed by making spells hit faster, or apply buffs and effects when casted succesfully).

So please enlighten me. Because to me them fixing those 2 issues is fine, I don't care, though double dipping fast cast was fine and fun. But really, this just breaks our sync with our character.

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Originally Posted by NeruMew

I fail to see how synchronizing the mana ticks is related to that, other than well, it would help fix them, and also break our player's sync with our character, instead of their internal clock.

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Goodluck with this thread guys, I'm out.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

Goodluck with this thread guys, I'm out.

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responding to what you said earlier, if UI changed faster, on the contrary, mana ticks should happen earlier, not later. So how do you fundament what you're saying that all the switches are happening earlier?

or if anything, we should still have enough time to get our mana tick through, cause UI timer would start counting earlier, and at the same time AF would stop it earlier as well, if both spells have the same cast time. Then the phase difference should not affect the time gap to get our mana tick.

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Originally Posted by NeruMew

responding to what you said earlier, if UI changed faster, on the contrary, mana ticks should happen earlier, not later. So how do you fundament what you're saying that all the switches are happening earlier?

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I am not 100% that Blizzard III changes to UI faster, but I am 100% sure that Fire III changes to AF3 before the cast even finishes.
Easily testable and I even spotted with yoshi's titan video. I paused the youtube and got him midcast with FIRE III and no buff even though his UI3 buff had 8 seconds remaining when he started the cast.
This is the case on live, and you can confirm it yourself. You will lose UI3 during the cast of Fire III and get AF3 afterwards.

This means you can't get the double reduced cast time and you can't get mana back after casting flare, hence no more double flare.
The consequence of this is that our UI3 phase is now shorter. Before our UI3 phase lasted even after the Fire III cast allowing us to be fully topped off.
Now it ends before the Fire III even finishes, which is a significant reduction.

Before, when you were unlucky with ticks, you'd still at least get a tick after Fire III.
Now that's not possible, so if you're unlucky with ticks you will not be at full mana.
However, it's clear they never really meant for us to get anything from UI3 after casting Fire III.

The mana ticks were not synced and that is false information lead by someone who casually watched the live letter and said that.
Then it got spread even though those of us who watched the youtube video and analysed it carefully conclusively disproved it.
Now the patch is live and anyone can test it, but people are still talking about syncing when the ticks are, in fact, as fast as they always were.
Our UI phase is just shorter because the transition is quicker.

I am 100% sure your own test could not have conclusively proven that UI3 ticks are longer.
I am also sure you did not really look at your UI/AF buff when casting fire 3 to transition to AF3.

EDIT:
The fact that you can get ticks almost instantly after switching to UI3 disproves any notion that the mana ticks have changed (where people mostly say it takes 3 seconds for every tick).
Also, the ticks have always been on server time.
Go back to any of the Black Mage threads and this has been said repeatedly. It always ticks every Eorzea minute.
People have been trying to figure out if they could use that to their advantage since launch.

It ticks likes that before 2.1 and it ticks like that after.
This is how it's conclusively proven that mana ticks were unchanged because we already have a timer for them.
Coupled with a change to the AF transition that we haven't fully calculated yet, there's no reason to believe it has anything to do with mana ticks.

It doesn't change the fact that this is in fact a half assed fix, that ends up breaking other things along the way. And you should see it yourself that the way you describe things just ask for problems.

I haven't done extensive testing, I can just tell you from playing that ticks seem completely unreliable. doing this change to AF3 and not UI3 would just be stupid. (well meaning, diong this for AF stacks and not UI stacks).

What if I cancel the cast? well, in that case I guess we are all relying on the broken fact that I can move out with 60/70% my cast complete and still get the cast off, and watch my cast bar complete even as I am running.

So, adding more broken mechanics into already broken ones. Sounds about the right way to do things, doesn't it?

Added: My question is, now that we are at it, why don't get get our firestarter buff when we actually cast our spell, or wait! about 80%ish of our cast done, that way, we would be able to que it up when we should... or well, keep it broken an add a stacking capability to two, fixing this issue where we keep losing firestarter buffs because they get renewed on the next cast.

On a side note, I am not complaining about our DPS, while others got buffed and we may have gotten a slight nerf, we are still fine. But seriously, broken much?

I'm not trying to defend the change. I still don't have a full opinion on it. Either way, I don't feel it can be considered perfect by any means.

I have noted that it changes to AF3 at the point where you can't break your cast. Accounting for server delay means it's actually transitioning when the cast goes off but we don't know it yet. However, there's a delay between the buffs which never happened before.
I don't believe you can interrupt your cast before the transition though. At least I can't.

They could've given the same treatment to Firestarter but then we would face some other nerfs. I imagine they didn't want to adjust us that much so they just did this.
I don't know if the change to how long our UI phase is, is intended or not.
It may be that it was lasting too long than it was intended when it was designed (which they should've noticed).

Either way, we have to adjust.
Casting Thunder III or Thunder II+Scathe will give us full mana. If the game launched like that, it wouldn't have been an issue. We're just accustomed to something else.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

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Finally someone explained this "synch" thing. I saw what you say and i was having hard time figure out what the "synch" was about

Yeah, not impossible to adapt, we are not broken in terms of numbers, etc etc, It still sucks, and yes, if we were to take advantage of every firestarter proc we would get more dps out (not THAT much, but a significant small amount).

It just sucks honestly. And yes it would be near impossible to do so, idk if it's fail proof but usually casts go off at about 70% regardless (for these lenghts anyway).I havent had the chance toe xtensively test it nor adapt to it, obviously the more we play the better we'll adapt, and yes longer casts etc etc are like that.


Something that pisses me off a lot though is sometimes if I had long duration on thunder too, I would B3 and instant F3, that would still get me the mana tick from UI3 and leave me well high on mana (about 70%?). Now this is still doable, but it's not realiable, I could do this with 0 margin for error, now it's clunky, granted I'm still getting used to it and just by playing some I minimized this to happening once rarely, but it still sucks sometimes miscalculating and seeing you get the tick too fast and losing time over it, sure, no big difference in the end numbers, but come on, breaks the fluid gameplay of BLM, I was never one to wait for mana ticks solely, with the short exception of a switch between UI3 from B3 just casted to using a firestarter proc back into AF3. bBut well, it does completely suck when you try to switch back right away, and see you missed your calc and are like DERP, pseudo OOM (still enough mana to B3 again) but derp, i just b3 f3 for nothing, cause I have to b3 again and wait for tick again. It hurts.

However, something really good about this came out. No more feeling "guilty" from going back to AF3 from UI3 with a firestarter proc, losing that amazing doubledip fast cast. Now it's all the same. ^^

And in fact if you want to add some different spell right away after switching 8which yes, is not optimal, but can still happen) you still don't lose that double fast cast (CAUSE IT AINT THAR, derp!).

What is annoying, once again, is how broken some mechanics are, and instead of fixing what's broken, they just pile more up on top of it.

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Originally Posted by LetBloodline

Finally someone explained this "synch" thing. I saw what you say and i was having hard time figure out what the "synch" was about

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I think a lot of BLMs don't understand what "syncing with the server timer" means.
I get the impression a lot of people think being on the server time means things happen every three seconds.
Well it does mean that, but it means much more than that.

Every dot in this game, every UI mana and healing regen buff...they all tick at exactly the same time.
In ET(Eorzea Time) 1 minute = 3 seconds. All those things tick according to ET.
This means the SMN who is fate farming in Costa has his dots ticking the exact same time as the one doing Coil.
It's weird, but that's how it is.

BLMs don't deal with dots much, so a good few can ignore this completely.
BLMs were always synced with the server and this does not mean that it takes a full 3 seconds after you change to UI3 to get a tick.
It means every Eorzea minute you get a tick, that's very different.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

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Originally Posted by LetBloodline

Finally someone explained this "synch" thing. I saw what you say and i was having hard time figure out what the "synch" was about

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I think a lot of BLMs don't understand what "syncing with the server timer" means.
I get the impression a lot of people think being on the server time means things happen every three seconds.
Well it does mean that, but it means much more than that.

Every dot in this game, every UI mana and healing regen buff...they all tick at exactly the same time.
In ET(Eorzea Time) 1 minute = 3 seconds. All those things tick according to ET.
This means the SMN who is fate farming in Costa has his dots ticking the exact same time as the one doing Coil.
It's weird, but that's how it is.

BLMs don't deal with dots much, so a good few can ignore this completely.
BLMs were always synced with the server and this does not mean that it takes a full 3 seconds after you change to UI3 to get a tick.
It means every Eorzea minute you get a tick, that's very different.

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This can be seen when you would transpose for example, sometimes the mana tick would take split a second, or another times would take up to those 3 full seconds.

Either way this system is bad, I can see thunder duration getting derpy, sometimes suppose it says duration left 3.. switches back to two, and almost one secnod later, or well about 3/4 to say a figurative number, it goes back up to 3. (this is the effect of your client desyncig, and syncing back with the server afterwards)

As you said, maybe we always were, difference is that before, we had enough spare time to make sure those ticks ALWAYS happened, now it's more of a roulette, unless you're either super obsessed and able to sync an inner clock with that, or well, you're just that good that yo can do it and time your spells perfectly according to that. usually all this timing and syncing is something that gets build up internally (inside of each player, just biological stuff).

I still don't like it, and wanna complain about it. Cause it was much better the way it was before, and no, not because of the numbers, but because of that 'feel' you get when playing it. I love being able to just cast without split second wait time (unless ofc, dodging mechanics). Feels fluid enough.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

I think a lot of BLMs don't understand what "syncing with the server timer" means.
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It's not what i meant
I know full well that tiks are synched with server. I didn't get why ppl are talking about patch 2.1 change the "synch" of ticks when the real effect is shorter UI

Now i know it come out from an error during live letter

The issue/question that I have is with this change being done the way it is (ie. 85% of the way through the cast or whatever) then does that mean that your determination of whether or not you hit the target is being checked client side as opposed to server side? Or is that "roll" being done server side at the start of the cast.

Because here is my issue with this... the way this change was made has one, totally upset the way we regen mana. Bug or not, I am not trying to say the change shouldn't happen, just that it did change. To the degree that when you hit UI until the time you go back to AF is no longer "long enough" to let you guarentee that B3->T2->F3 gives you back full mana and 2 ticks. Before the patch, you had to have some absolute terrible timing (or have both an instant cast of thunder AND fire 3 up) in order to go "too fast" and not get all your mana back. Now, on almost every single cycle of B3->T2->F3 I have to add in an extra .5 to 1 second of "just stand there" in order to get the mana tick to be full.

Second, this change still does not affect a "miss". What I mean by that is, if you cast B3 and are not at hit cap, and therefore get a "miss" you still retain your AF3 stacks and consume the mana. So this brings up the second biggest peeve I have with this class, and that is when we find out if we have Firestarter. I assumed we had to wait until our attack hits the target it gets checked server side, and then returns back the result before we find out what happens. With this change it tells me at least on some level (no matter how this is being calculated) that they know the "result" of our attack before it hits the target. So then why can you not give us the firestarter proc when we finish the cast, as opposed to when it hits the target?