I'm having a hard time understanding how people enjoy the BLM...

the rotation at level 60 is absolutely atrocious... granted, it doesn't involve many buttons, but the amount of stuff that can go wrong and punish your DPS harshly is so ridiculous it's not even funny. So we know it's Fire IV-Fire IV-Fire...etc. Now, my question is, what happens if in that Fire an AOE that can kill you forces you to move, or an add attacks you and interrupts you, or an add dies before you can land the cast, or a boss turns you into a doll/frog...or I'm sure I'm missing a lot other possibilities lol, you lose AF3, and then you are forced to do what? Shartpcast fire - Fire III proc - Fire IV? XD, hell? Sorry but this is horrible xd. It almost feels like going blind to a fight as a level 60 BLM is like commiting suicidal. So many things that can go wrong and many many of them aren't even in your hands.

So my question ...are BLM players happy with this class at level 60? In the next expansion, would you prefer a BLM rotation similar to the 2.0 or the 3.0?

To answer the question first, 3.0 rotation by far. Without Enochian it's spam fire til OOM, blizzard, refresh thunder and hit anything that procs.

I always describe Blm having the easiest rotation by far, but hardest dps class to execute that rotation at a high level while utilizing your very much under rated utility.

Black mages need extreme raid awareness (more so than tanks imo) to put up high dps numbers. Knowledge of what types of attacks are magical/physical, when bosses will disappear, (and how long for) and precise timing depict the true skills of a black Mage. It's a job that's easy to understand but difficult to execute and a mastery level. Hope this helped.

3.0 is pretty much the same as 2.0 rotation. Just 2 more attack buttons. In extreme raids you just require fight knowledge. Once you have that it's cake. I mean instead of spamming fire 1 and then throwing out a blizzard 3, it just amounts to Enoch cycles spamming F4 and F1 and throwing out a b3 and then a b4 and back again. Not a big change. And AoE rotation? No changes whatsoever.

Can't understand the flair of Summoner in comparison. I find the playstyle of fancy oGCD's and waiting for thing to die to DoT's the most boring playstyle ever conceived.

The problem is that the newest style of "difficulty" goes against BLM's design, whereas the old one did not.

In Gordias, it was "how hard can you mash buttons while executing some mechanics?"
In Midas it is "how many mechanics can you execute in rapid succession while maintaining halfway decent dps?"

The problem is, if a BLM is doing ANYTHING other than casting, they are doing ZERO dps... Okay, maybe the Thunder dot, but thats it. So the new raid approach of "dodge aoes, run to locations, click on shit, etc" doesnt just "not mesh well" with BLM, it is a hard counter to BLM's fundamental dps requirement.

Now you could say the same thing for BRD and MCH, which is where the next counterargument comes in. BLM has to constantly keep track of 2 timed buffs. If either falls all, you are not just forced into a lower dps rotation (like DRG), you are actually left with your thumb up your ass for several seconds. No other class realistically has the danger of having their attack just fail due to a buff wearing off on every 4th cast! (Yes I know, SMN and DWT, but thats 1 ability per 60 seconds)

The question is, how do you propose to fix something which is by definition a hard counter to BLM's most fundamental mechanic (always be casting)?

One easier to code solution would be to take Apocatastasis (one of THE least used job abilities in the game), and have it do the following instead:

Instant, OGCD, no cost
60s CD (maybe 30 seconds)
Upon activation, stores your current self buffs, increasing their duration by 5 seconds, and prevents stored buffs from ticking down. Press the button again to reapply stored buffs to self. (Only works on AF, UI, and Enochian)

So what does this mean and how is it useful?
The idea is that when you know you are about to be screwed by mechanics, you can activate this ability to take a snapshot of your buffs and extend them by 5 seconds (long enough to get off any cast). The cost is that you willingly stripped yourself of all your self buffs and have to work from nothing.
Realistically this means that if you know there is a heavy movement phase coming up and you cannot dp any real dps, store your buffs and run.
If the boss will become untargetable for the next 10-20-30 seconds, store your buffs and have them ready for later.

Now then, how about a more difficult solution? A more fundamentally game mechanics changing solution?

Every time you fail to deal damage with a spell due to an interrupt, immunity or a buff falling off, your next spell has its cast time reduced by 2.5 seconds.
Make it a trait and call it "Caster's Rage".
So, did the boss become invulnerable for a phase transition? Rage! And cast that B4 instantly saving Enochian.
Did an "aoe of death" spawn under your feet? Start moving, start casting, break the cast because you are moving (you still eat the GCD). Rage! Instantly cast F1/B1/T1/F3(UI)/B3(AF) while moving, or F4/B4 with only a short stop.
Did the boss decide to move JUST out of your attack range HALF A SECOND before your spell finished? RAGE!!! And chase that bastard down with an instant hit!

Will this fix the problem of being left buff-less when some mechanic prevents casting for more than 12 seconds? Sadly no.
To address that we'd need the first solution. Or if that is deemed too difficult, something simpler.

"Caster's Clarity"
60s CD.
Applied a fresh 30s Enochian, 12s AF3, AND 12s UI3. (The next Fire or Ice spell has a 50% cast time reduction, and will determine whether the AF or UI buff remains.)

That's basically your "get out of jail free" card. You can use it as an opener (if you are extremely lazy), or as a way to deal with all the times that mechanics fuck up your carefully orchestrated dps rotation.

You know, just something to make BLM not take SUCH a massive hit on any remotely complex fights...
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That or make Enochian a stance...
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Make Blood of the Dragon a stance too...
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WM is a stance...
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It kinda makes sense doesnt it?

BLM has four buttons with "Additional Effect: Caster ignores mechanics". If you can't mechanics, firing one of these cooldowns will help minimize the time that you have to spend dealing with mechanics.
And since someone wanted to mention Apocatastasis, if you think Apocatastasis is underused, you're doing it wrong, since Apocatastasis has "Additional Effect: Target ignores mechanics."

At Heavensward launch, the rotation was ten times tighter, but since they set Enochian (the ability) to a fixed 30s duration and extended the elemental buffs to 12s, things are great. If there's anything to complain about right now, it's that the Ley Lines radius is 1y, maybe 2y, too small for placeLeyLines-parkOnOneSide-dodgeToOtherSide.

I'd always mained BLM, and find it thoroughly unenjoyable since the 3.0 changes for the OP reasons. It's simply ridiculous to be expected to be running from point a to point b, having bosses vanish/become untargetable or able to target/hit them for 0. It's also a strech to say you have to know precisely when this is going to happen, when it happens based on the time it takes for an unknown group to dps something. At least mch/brd have an option to revert to 2.0 and keep moving/attacking. a BLM cannot move in any situation, 2.0 or 3.0. They have random procs only (and you're not getting that if you can't cast either). Every encounter seems to be designed to screw BLMs cooldowns in some manner or other. (even leylines, when you need to jump from platform to platform, or move from point A to point B - everyone else takes their buffs with them, we have to leave them behind on the ground). Yes, it's better than it's original 3.0 form, but it's still a dog.

Or that moment when the boss becomes immune and you Fire III it and realize that your UI3 didn't turn into AF3...it simply vanished into thin air (bug or intended?). As a BLM it feels like your role forces you to entirely focus targets with big pools of health, whenever I try to kill an add there's always the "what if he dies before I get to cast that Fire" feeling that makes me want to hate myself so much.
Now this is just my opinion but enochian shouldn't be there, because you already have to put up with these:

1 - Ley Lines makes you more static.
2 - Fire IV and Blizzard IV have long casts, so again, less mobility.
3 - Fire IV does not reset AF3, which makes the rotation a bit risky at times.
4 - Sharpcast and where to use it.

Enochian imho is overkilling it. Maybe just give Blizzard IV this trait instead -> replenish all your mana instantly, need to be in UI3. This way, you'd either Blizzard IV/Thunder after Blizzard III depending on if you are focusing a big pool health target (boss) in which you'd use thunder or an add and need burst damage in which you'd use blizzard IV.

The usual spouted nonsense from people who don't know how to BLM.

Learn the fights. Learn which moves you can ignore with ward/wall. Learn which you can't. Learn phase changes so you know when to use/refresh enoch. Learn when you are likely to absolutely have to move, and plan your procs, swifts and teleports (and at absolute worst, Scathe XD) around it

Apoc probably isn't used very often. This isn't because it sucks, but a lot of BLMs for some reason decide to ignore this awesome ability in their toolkit

BLMs sure are the least mobile of the dps, but to say they can't move at all is pretty silly. The whole challenge of BLM is learning how to keep your movement to a minimum, by planning ahead

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

The usual spouted nonsense from people who don't know how to BLM.

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The above does not help you support your cause! If you want people to take you serious you have to take others serious too...even if you feel otherwise about the issue that is being discussed.
Glad you are happy with the current BLM...I know I can't make it work xd.

This is funny, because in 2.x I largely ignored BLM because it appeared so oversimplified and dull. With Enochian and the other new stuff introduced in 3.0, I'm very much thinking about playing it a lot more since it's more complex and thus more enjoyable to me. Sure, the recent raid mechanics don't really agree with BLMs, but there's a lot one can do to mitigate that - Aetherial Manipulation and Manaward/Manawall are extremely underutilized by a lot of players, with some BLMs not even having them on their bars.

I was a DRG main for a very long time though, so with 3.0 also having introduced Blood of the Dragon, I'm used to juggling timers and being frustrated when things go wrong. But if BLM doesn't feel right for you, then by all means give SMN a try instead. Higher mobility but arguably less rewarding, I'd say.

BLM gets a lot easier once your basic rotation becomes muscle memory and you start learning a set of responses to being interrupted.

For example, if you have to run around on your second f4, maybe just skip it and move on to the f1 to keep astral up, since you know the astral timer is coming up. Also no need to check the eno timer at this point, since you're back on track. Use swiftcast and teleports to cheat occasionally. You'll only need to manually check things when you start pushing limits ('I got interrupted but it was only a second and I think I can still get that f4 off...') or things just go terribly wrong and you need to reset things.

You'll occasionally be knocked out of eno entirely. Revert to your lv50 rotation and wait out the timer. It happens. Monks have been dealing with this sort of mechanic forever.

As another poster mentioned, one of the other "issues" with BLM is our love for High-HP targets.
We are punished rather harshly for not finishing a cast, be it due to movement, buffs expiring, or the target dying or being immune. Of course you can say this for all casters, but show me a caster, or any class, that can lose a primary buff 2.5s AFTER they make the decision to use it? It is one thing to not be positioned correctly for a potency bonus (like DRG), it is another to not reapply your rotation buffs due to an event that occurs well after you pres the button.

One often proposed solution, which to be fair was partly implemented, is to frontload the effects of all our spells. (The partial implementation was that they are applied ~90% of the way through the cast)
This means that like DRG (for example), a BLM can begin casting Fire, instantly get the AF refresh along with the GCD starting, and not lose their place in the rotation regardless of whether the cast finishes or not. (You still eat the GCD loss so breaking a cast is still punishing)

This would have some repercussions for the standard AoE rotation, as you will not be able to squeeze out an extra tick of UI while slow casting F3, but we'll deal with that... Not like BLM is AoE king anymore anyway.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

BLM gets a lot easier once your basic rotation becomes muscle memory and you start learning a set of responses to being interrupted.

For example, if you have to run around on your second f4, maybe just skip it and move on to the f1 to keep astral up, since you know the astral timer is coming up. Also no need to check the eno timer at this point, since you're back on track. Use swiftcast and teleports to cheat occasionally. You'll only need to manually check things when you start pushing limits ('I got interrupted but it was only a second and I think I can still get that f4 off...') or things just go terribly wrong and you need to reset things.

You'll occasionally be knocked out of eno entirely. Revert to your lv50 rotation and wait out the timer. It happens. Monks have been dealing with this sort of mechanic forever.

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I'm so with you on this. Also, let me tell you my story:

In v2 I mained whm and blm. I loved the healing power of whm and the boom-boom power of blm. I know it felt like a dull job for some, all this fire spam and the ocasional ice-mages to make us lol. But I loved it, it was simple, powerful, and very fun without much head-squeezing. Just like whm, or you heal, or you nuke, not much thinking or preventing unlike sch which required more knowledge of mechanics, when to cast succor and why, fairy managing... and smn I found just boring. All these dots and wait for the ocasional fester, and the pets were just meh. More like a dotter than a summoner I thought.

Then came HW. Getting my mages to 60 was my first goal and of course I kept on with my beloved whm and blm. Whm still was awesome and even more so as I got to 60... until I met astrologian. The beauty of the spells, the cards, the choice of being almost a whm and almost a sch within the same job! I fell in love. You can imagine what happened to my whm >_> yeah, stored, substituted by ast.

Blm... I farmed Bismarck and Ravana X until I hated them. I did all my important fights on blm. I followed rotations seen on guides and videos, by people nuking dummies and never really understood what I was doing. I then became disheartened, like you guys. I thought, damn, I only really can do good damage at the beginning of fights, but when I have to move or the boss depops (damn Ravana) I have to go back to 2.0 rotation and fall from position 4 to 8 in the party list. I wondered, how can SE create such a job that requires so much attention on buffs and stacks, and so little movement? With the game being all about dodging and moving and jumping out of red telegraphs and such, come on SE!
So while my boyfriend kept on blackmaging, I switched to smn. I found it suddenly a lot more rewarding, the boom-boom effect was there again with deathflare, I could melt groups of mobs while the dots were still active, and it was a lot more movement forgiving.

So tl;dr, I switched my mains from whm and blm to ast and smn. I even complained about blm in these forums. But these days I've decided I want to give it another chance. Now I'm practicing again on our dummie, this time understanding what I'm doing, and I will do the 24 mans today as blm. My weapon is the upgraded eso staff, so I will work now on getting the primal one. But I will give it a try. It was my love in 2.0 and I see no reason to not have 3 mains :)

So people, please give it a try, ignore the haters and elitists who bash you for low dps. Practice, be comfortable, start with a basic opener, and adjust as you go. Cross every bridge as you reach it, not before. It's ok if for whatever reason you have to go to 2.0 rotation. Understand what you are casting and why, so you can change whatever you feel is wrong. It's a very challenging job, but it's also just as rewarding.

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

We are punished rather harshly for not finishing a cast, be it due to movement, buffs expiring, or the target dying or being immune. Of course you can say this for all casters, but show me a caster, or any class, that can lose a primary buff 2.5s AFTER they make the decision to use it?

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Yep, the other caster, smn, I lose stacks and deathflare chance on Echidna every bloody time. Or Cuchulain when he summons his puddings, Tree/Dog when they do their LoS thingy, Ravana when he jumps or untargets (wtf SE?), the bloody spider in Weeping City, last boss in said City... pretty much a lot hehe. The general party/alliance dps is greater every time which pushes the moment bosses turn invulnerable or detarget or dissappear even more.

I stopped BLMing for the very reasons in this thread.
It was frustrating as hell to lose Enochian or F3 or B3 due to silly mechanic.

I now NIN and find the playstyle both more interesting and less frustrating.
Though I'm still learning to cope with occasionally dropping Huton.

I am sorry but mostly agree with Randy here. However i will say if one does mess up, blm is probably the job that gets punished the highest.
There are some fights were a boss will go away and re-appear 20 or so seconds later so you may loose your enochian but it really comes down to knowing the fight.
Also if you all did not know, leylines= instant mechanic about to happen were you lay them down, haha
With all this said though i do not find other jobs as rewarding as blm

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

Learn the fights.

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While true, it's nevertheless a complete U-turn from 2.0's BLM, which is by far the first reason why people dislike 3.0's BLM.
In ARR, you could just know the very basics of an encounter and still do great DPS. In Heavensward, you need to know 100% of the fight and do lengthy experiments to know "how many Fire IV can I pop in this phase?". If you don't do that, you'll probably do very average DPS and be constantly furstrated because of dropping enochian all the time.

This change surely adds a great layer of complexity the job didn't had before, but a lot of people didn't asked for that.
2.0 BLM felt rewarding to play. You were happy each time you had a proc and liked how much freedom this system was giving you. You could answer mechanics on the fly with it.
3.0 BLM is only "rewarding" after getting a lot of an encounter experience, when you finally finish theorising about the correct rotation to use during the whole encounter. There's almost no room for improvisation.

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Originally Posted by Bebekurenai

Yep, the other caster, smn, I lose stacks and deathflare chance on Echidna every bloody time. Or Cuchulain when he summons his puddings, Tree/Dog when they do their LoS thingy, Ravana when he jumps or untargets (wtf SE?), the bloody spider in Weeping City, last boss in said City... pretty much a lot hehe. The general party/alliance dps is greater every time which pushes the moment bosses turn invulnerable or detarget or dissappear even more.

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No no I completely disagree with this! SMN is nothing like BLM... every time you use an aetherflow stack your aetherdam refreshes to 30 seconds! And you have 30 seconds before you use your third stack of aetherflow until your aetherdam runs out to cast dreadwyrm trance (you can use it immediately after having 3 stacks or wait a bit, up to you). The thing is...if you use your dreadwyrm trance and wanna make sure you won't miss out on that deathflare, you can always cast it instantly, but your rotation doesn't change entirely because boss goes immune or because you do not land a cast XD.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

No no I completely disagree with this! SMN is nothing like BLM... every time you use an aetherflow stack your aetherdam refreshes to 30 seconds! And you have 30 seconds before you use your third stack of aetherflow until your aetherdam runs out to cast dreadwyrm trance (you can use it immediately after having 3 stacks or wait a bit, up to you). The thing is...if you use your dreadwyrm trance and wanna make sure you won't miss out on that deathflare, you can always cast it instantly, but your rotation doesn't change entirely because boss goes immune or because you do not land a cast XD.

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That's incorrect. I play both, and as a Summoner, a boss going invulnerable or disappearing can make you waste an aetherflow ability. And then it's not only losing out on Dreadwyrm, it's waiting for Aetherflow again to be able to start over. Both have very similar issues, but SMN has the more mobile leg up for them. But as several others have said in here, the way to do it effectively is to know your rotation and have awareness of the fights so you know the right times to pop those cooldowns and get the most out of them. No one walks into a new fight with no problems, the folks that make it look easy spent hours learning the fights to be able to do good dps with them.

To answer your original question though, I love the 3.0 playstyle of BLM versus the 2.0 one. You have to actively participate and pay attention in every fight. In 2.0 you could just go on automatic and never have to think about anything other than procs. I've loved the new version since the first time we got to see exactly how it all worked together.

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Originally Posted by rblyell

That's incorrect. I play both, and as a Summoner, a boss going invulnerable or disappearing can make you waste an aetherflow ability. And then it's not only losing out on Dreadwyrm, it's waiting for Aetherflow again to be able to start over. Both have very similar issues, .

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No way... you can't put them on the same level, not even close. A boss going immune or disappearing right in the same second you spend one stack of aetherflow is rather coincidence and bad luck, not saying it cannot happen, it happens, but it's very easy to avoid. Meanwhile, a BLM is screwed over a million of mechanics that turn simple boss fights into a chess game. A boss disappearing or going immune, a not landed cast because an add dies too soon, an add interrupting a cast (either autoattacking you cause tank lost aggro or moving out of sight), a boss disabling you, a lethal aoe forcing you to move, phase transitions...I could go on...

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Snip

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A boss disappearing or going immune, a not landed cast because an add dies too soon - As you learn a boss fight you learn to use abilities to accommodate the mechanics, same goes for monks (Greased lightning) and Machinists (Wildfire).

an add interrupting a cast (either autoattacking you cause tank lost aggro or moving out of sight) - I don't even understand how that's a valid point, the same goes for any caster class, dps or healer. There are next to no mechanics (that cant be avoided) that will interrupt your rotation. Master use of Aetherial Manipulation and learn how easily mechanics can be avoided and/or cheesed.

a boss disabling you Wat. Name one mechanic in this current raid tier that does this that wouldn't effect any other class just as drastically as a BLM.

a lethal aoe forcing you to move Two words- Aetherial Manipulation. Orrr slide casting with proper spell speed.

phase transitions Back to my first point, monks, machinists and black mages all suffer from the same types of losses. You just learn to lessen the impact as you learn the fight. All have the burden of needing to learn the ins and outs of a fight to master it.

People only hated the BLM changes because it wasn't braindead easy anymore now that they slapped an easy to manage buff timer and called it a day for Heavensward. It's more centered around Fire 4 spam and Enoch upkeep over fishing for Fire and Thunder procs.

Flare was only nerfed to make Summoners not feel underwhelming with Deathflare. Which IMO is still underwhelming anyway.

Thing I often find with SMN, Painflare and Deathflare is that you rarely if ever NEED continuous aoe.
BLM is continuous slightly spiky aoe, F2x2 -> Flare -> wait for mana and buffs -> repeat, on a 12s cycle.

For SMN every minute you can throw a Bane and 2 Painflares, followed by a Deathflare.
Yes your aoe is down to dots after that, but I have seen SMN in ARF (makes for a decent unified baseline) jump to 2.4k aoe dps on the early trash pulls, and ride that out for a good 30-40 seconds.
By that point I will catch them as BLM doing aoe, and they jump ahead again at the 1 minute mark.

So perhaps Deathflare in and of itself is not AS seemingly overwhelming as Flare (if you ignore the -10% per mob), but the fact that you can burst down trash is more viable than doing an infinitely sustainable (yet amusingly slightly subpar) aoe rotation.

Thise complaining that BLM gets punished the most by mechanics, think a lot like this, Melee deals 0 DPS when away from the boss. When it comes to something like buffs, no buff is bigger effect on DPS than MNK losing GL3, which is a 30% damage boost and 15% attack speed boost which is essentially a 1.43% boost to damage, compared to enochian which is a 5% boost and another 17% from F4 vs F3, for a total of 22.5% damage increase. Also with AF3 with its 87.5% damage increase. The difference is that BLM can apply both of these with one click, while except for PB every 180 seconds GL3 requires up to 9 attacks to get back. The only thing I feel they should do is to change surecast from saving a cast instead of damage to allow you to cast when moving.

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

Learn the fights.

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seriously, for this to be enjoyable and not an exercise in frustration, you need to learn the CLASS, and be able to put those skills to use the first time you step into a fight. BLMs don't particularly want to feel like the spare leg at the ass-kicking party whenever they step into new content (nor should they be expected to). I'd prefer to see eno as a stance like WM, and ley connected to me and not the ground (if ley allowed others to step in and buff as well it would be fine, but it doesn't). Yes, that would probably require some de-buffing of spells to even things out, but it would remove most of the pointless guess-work we're supposed to endure.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

seriously, for this to be enjoyable and not an exercise in frustration, you need to learn the CLASS, and be able to put those skills to use the first time you step into a fight. BLMs don't particularly want to feel like the spare leg at the ass-kicking party whenever they step into new content (nor should they be expected to). I'd prefer to see eno as a stance like WM, and ley connected to me and not the ground (if ley allowed others to step in and buff as well it would be fine, but it doesn't). Yes, that would probably require some de-buffing of spells to even things out, but it would remove most of the pointless guess-work we're supposed to endure.

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That would also bring BLM back to being the needlessly simplistic short-rotation job that it was in 2.x. No thanks. I agree that something should be done to allow them a bit more freedom of movement, but the entire class is based around standing still and torching things. That shouldn't change.

Enochian if it were to be like a stance i am sorry but the job would be so broken it would not even be funny (nor fun)

The timer mechanics added to Dragoon and some other jobs really feel like unneeded additions to the rotations of classes. There is a motto in life that applies to just about everything we do, whether it's free time or not: Keep it simple! Things can be challenging without having dozens of abilities / timers to manage, and it would be much better if people could focus on something simple to maintain instead of having to almost always eye the ability bar just to keep track of where they are at.

As a BLM main, I've found that one needs the following in order to be successful IMO...
1. High SpS
2. Fight Knowledge/Awareness (Moreso than a tank/healer)
3. Party member knowledge--silently gauge your party members dmg output to determine how far you need to go on adds (subjective: standard F2 rotation w/ENO refresh w/B4)
4. Boss/enemy skill knowledge: which skills can be eaten with proper shields. I love being able to simply withstand moves that give you confusion with proper shields in antitower lol.
5. Need to always be casting and learn when/where to place ley lines. These things come with practice and time.

With these skills I thoroughly enjoy burning everything to the ground and outdpsing pesky melee who love to eat unnecessary dmg with no shields. Less mobility is fine but you as the player need to develop a more calculating mind. Justy opinion, so feel free to disagree.

Also, I think BLM is fine as it is and I would not want them to change it. In 2.x I stopped playing it because I got tired of fishing for procs and playing BLM would simply put me to sleep. I mained SMN then as it was a little more complex with keeping up with timers to some degree. With 3.x BLM I thoroughly enjoy how it is now. Not to mention, going into dungeons with plenty of tanks and melee dps who go "oh great, another weak BLM" seeing them go crazy and leave the dungeon after seeing the might of those continuous F4's is so awesome to me. I can't tell you how many tanks have simply left the dungeon because of jot being able to keep hate over competent BLMs its too funny. So, yes keep BLM as it is. I love the burst. SMN turned me off bad this expansion.

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Originally Posted by seekified

hat would also bring BLM back to being the needlessly simplistic short-rotation job that it was in 2.x. No thanks. I agree that something should be done to allow them a bit more freedom of movement, but the entire class is based around standing still and torching things. That shouldn't change.

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Make surecast allow for move-casting, and traited swiftcast to lower cooldown for BLM.

Though this also makes room for new abilities in 4.0 to fill in that short coming instead of making them stronger at what they do; an ability rewind themselves X seconds, including the state of mana,, hp and buff durations, or a toggle freeze the duration of their buff timers at the cost of lowered damage.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

The timer mechanics added to Dragoon and some other jobs really feel like unneeded additions to the rotations of classes. There is a motto in life that applies to just about everything we do, whether it's free time or not: Keep it simple! Things can be challenging without having dozens of abilities / timers to manage, and it would be much better if people could focus on something simple to maintain instead of having to almost always eye the ability bar just to keep track of where they are at.

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I feel that flows just fine with how DRG plays. You definitely do not want a job to regress in what they can do (BRD) or feel largely the same compared to what was already there. It was a trap they fell into for WoW's wod expansion; my hunter played the same from 90 on the road to 100, and I actually got bored during the leveling process.

Even then, the design of something like BotD and Enochian does not "punish" you for failing it (people still seem to use this word wrong), because you're not suddenly going to do less dps for failing those buffs, compared to not using it at all. Of course it's not the case in savage or EX, but at that point you're sorta expected to be performing really well in the first place...

I am new to BLM (Had not played it since 1.0 when I got it to 50 before I started playing it a little again now) and I am a little bit curious. If they are so dependant on knowing the fight more than most jobs etc. Does that mean if you do it perfectly you are amongst the top DPS? I mean I play it because it is fun, but I have no idea how BLM stacks up vs other jobs. Most jobs seem pretty cool, but what is BLM good at? Like what makes them stand out when comparing to other jobs? Single target dps, AoE, utility or what is their thing?

@Rumpelstiltzkin, their ST dmg is what makes them stand out. The sheer amount of dmg to a single target that BLM is capable of if played correctly can rival that of a monk and surely surpass a DRG.

Gonna parrot other people here, the job gets much easier once you commit your rotation to memory. 3.0 made us become adaptable and pro-active in our playstyle. 2.x was pretty ezpz. Now you to have think on your feet. If you get targeted with an aoe you have to dodge you have to adjust your rotation to that either by cutting a Fire IV or casting Bliz IV early, among other things. It's not that bad and doesn't hurt our dps that badly. Even if you get completely screwed and get stuck in 2.x rotation you still do alright. Having prior knowledge of the fight cuts down on this a lot as others have said.

Apocastasis is not a fringe utility spell. Use it, it's pretty good. Helps with progressing thru harder content.
Same with Aetherial Manipulation, make a focus target macro for it and you're golden. Try practice using it in Hullbreaker HM when you get snared by the final boss, it works wonders.

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Originally Posted by Rumpelstiltzkin

I am new to BLM (Had not played it since 1.0 when I got it to 50 before I started playing it a little again now) and I am a little bit curious. If they are so dependant on knowing the fight more than most jobs etc. Does that mean if you do it perfectly you are amongst the top DPS? I mean I play it because it is fun, but I have no idea how BLM stacks up vs other jobs. Most jobs seem pretty cool, but what is BLM good at? Like what makes them stand out when comparing to other jobs? Single target dps, AoE, utility or what is their thing?

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At 60, BLM is tied to one very punitive mechanic: Enochian.
Enochian is a buff quite allows you to use Fire IV (your highest direct damage spell) as well as Blizzard IV (a spell which refreshes Enochian's duration, but with 5sec less than its previous maximum). This buff is on a 60s cooldown.
Blizzard IV can only be used under Umbral Ice, and Fire IV when under Astral Fire. While it's not really restrictive for Blizzard IV, it's harder to maintain Astral Fire to continue casting Fire IV since that skill doesn't refresh your Astral Fire. Therefore, you have to squeeze a Fire I inbetween your Fire IV casts to keep Astral Fire.
In short terms, your very basic rotation is: Enochian, Fire III, Fire IV, Fire IV, Fire (to refresh Astral Fire), Fire IV, Fire IV, Blizzard III, Blizzard IV, then repeat from Fire III until you need to use Enochian again.
(Obviously there's some variations with the opener, Fire III procs and Thunder... but I just wanted to give you the baseline.)

This implies that if something in the fight prevents you from refreshing your Enochian timer with Blizzard IV, then the buff will fall and you'll have to use the old 2.0 ARR rotation, lowering your DPS by a good amount, until you can use Enochian again. Same thing goes with your Astral Fire, if you can't cast your Fire I to refresh it, then no more Fire IV for you, and you'll probably have to swith to Ice to refresh Enochian and then start over.
This means that your actual rotation depends 100% on fight mechanics like bosses invulnerability frames or movement heavy moments. If you don't know when these mechanics happens, you're almost guaranteed to fail your rotation at some point, getting heavily punished on your DPS at the same time (which doesn't happen with other jobs... at least not that much).

This is further supported by another skill, Ley Lines, which is a ground AoE that boosts your casting speed by quite a high amount. Since the AoE stays on the ground and you have to stand in it to be buffed, it means that you aren't really free to use it whenever you want, or you'll take the risk of having to step outside of it due to a mechanic. It won't completly obliterate your performance, but it's still pretty important.

Indeed, most of the other DPS jobs has to have some knowledge of mechanics not to screw things up, but BLM it at a level where its own rotation it completly tied to the encounter its facing. Other jobs can improve their own rotation to be more effective, like the MNK with its stacks, DRG with Blood of the dragon, or even SMN with its aetherflow stacks... but BLM has to know the fight before even thinking about optimization and improvements.


The upside it that you get rewarded with a very high DPS overall if you get it right.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

In the next expansion, would you prefer a BLM rotation similar to the 2.0 or the 3.0?

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Going by what precedent ideas I've seen in game, in 4.0 I'd like to see something similar to 2.0's double quick-cast and mana-shadow (before their removal around 2.1), with 3.0's added risk-reward system of Enochian.

All in all, I like what's been added with Enochian. I think it could be better, but it works. I would have preferred that Enochian be a ramping buff, rather than a stance to which Fire IV and Blizzard IV are locked. Rather than losing access to those two spells, you drop off the ramping buff you've gained thus far. Something of that sort. Equally painful, but less jarring to one's rotation. That's just a spit-ball though, and would mean you see Fire and Firestarter procs even less, which I imagine you might not like. (Plus, there would then be balancing issues due to Fire IV's comparatively low mana cost.) There are quite a few little concepts for BLM I'd have loved to have seen demo'd on a public test server, but without seeing them in action, I wouldn't be absolutely certain as to whether or not I'd like them, and moreover it'd be hard to fully explain to others how the ideas might affect gameplay.

The Astral/Umbral duration increase to 12 seconds was already a tremendous QoL change. The alternative that I thought I might have preferred would be to simply have Fire IV and Blizzard IV only check for Astral/Umbral (and perhaps Enochian) at the start of the cast, equating to mostly the same effect on single-target rotations. But all in all, I like that we can choose to push something else with the added 2 seconds, rather than only having more Enochian spell lenience. What I disliked about the 3.0 gameplay that change and quite a bit of spell speed (for a less played alt, at least) has mostly fixed.

All in all I'd like a few more reasons to situationally drop Enochian early, just as I'd have liked more reasons to end my burn phase early back in 2.0 (and even now), perhaps in timing with mana ticks or the like. But it definitely works.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

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To add on to this, on the MogTalk caster episode, all the raiders in there agreed that when content first lands, SMN is much easier to play than BLM because it requires less knowledge of the fight to optimize, but BLM's efficiency spikes after the player has had time to learn everything about the fight.

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Originally Posted by Rumpelstiltzkin

I am new to BLM (Had not played it since 1.0 when I got it to 50 before I started playing it a little again now) and I am a little bit curious. If they are so dependant on knowing the fight more than most jobs etc. Does that mean if you do it perfectly you are amongst the top DPS? I mean I play it because it is fun, but I have no idea how BLM stacks up vs other jobs. Most jobs seem pretty cool, but what is BLM good at? Like what makes them stand out when comparing to other jobs? Single target dps, AoE, utility or what is their thing?

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Yes that would be correct in that blm is very close to the top, smn has better aoe now over us however.
We are a nuker basically and yes mechanics could become an issue but it's from knowing the fight that we overcome this.
Blm is very close to Monk.

I prefer simpler jobs myself.
I stopped playing BLM in Heavensward after getting it to 60 because I find managing the new rotation a pain.

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Originally Posted by NovaLevossida

To add on to this, on the MogTalk caster episode, all the raiders in there agreed that when content first lands, SMN is much easier to play than BLM because it requires less knowledge of the fight to optimize, but BLM's efficiency spikes after the player has had time to learn everything about the fight.

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Thanks everyone for helping me get an idea of it all. I just have to ask about this though because it sounds to me like a lot of jobs are better for progression whilst BLM is good for things you already have on farm status or am I misunderstanding?