BLM Suggestion

I'll keep this short. Please make recasting Enocian refresh or extend AF and UI. It would improve proc management and help with high movement fights. No direct dps increase.

If nothing else disable it's use while you're already under the effects of Enocian because there is no circumstance under which you should do that given it's current design.

At the moment, it almost feels like a bug because you can cast it at 1s left on AF or UI and immediately lose it for the next 30s. Granted, your fault for using it but also as a game designer who takes pride in your work, you really should care when there's a weird mechanic like this (wtf moment).

Why not just use transpose if you know you won't be able to get the spell off for UI or AF3? I hardly drop eno-chan at all that way if it is heavy movement phase and triplecast/swiftcst are down.

1. Transpose is a dps loss. It flays my soul to use it in this manner.
2. Swiftcast and Triplecast won't help with proc management. This will since it functions like transpose but doesn't switch the buff and doesn't drop it to rank 1.
3. My point is mainly that it feels broken. You'll note the alternative was to disable the button if for no other reason than not fat fingering it.

I really wish they'd change Enochian back. Enochian is easier to fall off now rather than harder. You were never at risk of it falling off in your fire phase before, so you could ride the line all the way down to the last moment and have an ice spell go off right as AF dropped, do your ice rotation, and refresh enochian with no risk. Now, you can't ride that line in AF anywhere near as much because it falls off so easily, and the spell speed issue at the start of a new expansion means you have slow cast times again so it feels like you got nerfed and makes riding the line in AF that much more annoying.

Not to mention the random dropping of enochian with 5+ seconds on the timer left. This changes didn't make it easier to keep it up, but harder. We basically went from having to manage a 20-25 second timer to a 12 second one. Additionally we've been forced to always cast thunder 3 instead of thunder 1 now, which takes longer so makes the rotation tighter. Then all fights are designed extremely Blm unfriendly, much movement, losing boss target,...
I was really happy with the lv60 enochian. Why change something that was never broken?

They made the cast times the same for T1 and T3 (T1's cast time).

I personally haven't experienced the random drop offs. The only thing I don't like is that, with buff timers, 0s means you still have time. With the job gauge, 0 is you're out of time. This is based on how they're rounding for buffs vs job gauges. Buffs floor. Job gauges ceil. The inconsistency is annoying but whatever.

Is this the thread for BLM suggestions? Because I have two of my own:

Can Between the Lines replace Leylines on the hotbar while leylines is active? It'd be nice to not have to find a keybind for a utility ability that is only able to be used while an un-extendable buff is up.

Can the Transpose cooldown be lowered by 1 second, or extend AF/UI by a second? Having only a one-second window to hit transpose can be awkward when trying to keep AF/UI during phase transitions or when moving about in dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Kaebora

Is this the thread for BLM suggestions? Because I have two of my own:

Can Between the Lines replace Leylines on the hotbar while leylines is active? It'd be nice to not have to find a keybind for a utility ability that is only able to be used while an un-extendable buff is up.

Can the Transpose cooldown be lowered by 1 second, or extend AF/UI by a second? Having only a one-second window to hit transpose can be awkward when trying to keep AF/UI during phase transitions or when moving about in dungeons.

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Sure. All suggestions are welcome. I like both of your suggestions.

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Originally Posted by Aysen

1. Transpose is a dps loss. It flays my soul to use it in this manner.
2. Swiftcast and Triplecast won't help with proc management. This will since it functions like transpose but doesn't switch the buff and doesn't drop it to rank 1.
3. My point is mainly that it feels broken. You'll note the alternative was to disable the button if for no other reason than not fat fingering it.

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OK. I re-read the initial post. Basically, you want recasting eno-chan to redo the AF and Ui times to 13 seconds.

The suggestion for leylines to be merged with between the lines is a brilliant and simple way to reduce ability bloat further. Great suggestion.

"No dps increase" my ass, your sugestion is clearly made for you to not need to transpose (and lose dps) in a tight situation.

As I said. BLM is fine. Adjust your gameplay.

Fire IV and Blizzard IV should switch around depending on if you are in UI or AF.
I heard the timer gets more lax if you get more SS OP. The ilvl314 gear really lacks in that. I am facing the same problems right now but who knows how it'll be with new gear packed with SS and actually melded with SS.
My gripe also is the MP pool. If I'm in UI and go T3-F3 or B4-F3 and don't get an MP tick inbetween T3/B4 and Fire3, I effectively lose out on a Fire IV. While they adjusted the cast time on T3, the MP cost is quite huge now for a thunder spell. Getting unlucky with no involvement of mechanics can end up in a DPS loss. That shouldn't be a thing. Reducing B4 MP cost and T3 MP cost would be a solution. Raising max MP by 1000 would be a solution since it'd not give you enough to cast an additional Fire IV but give you enough to let you cast what you are supposed to cast and keep your rotation smooth. Without having to worry about lucky MP ticks.

I have Ley Lines and Between the Lines macroed together, since it only works with Ley Lines active, that solution works just fine for me.

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Originally Posted by Inuk9

"No dps increase" my ass, your sugestion is clearly made for you to not need to transpose (and lose dps) in a tight situation.

As I said. BLM is fine. Adjust your gameplay.

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Thanks for your feedback. I believe I said no "direct" dps increase. Additionally, I did say that it would help improve dps by helping with procs and high movement. Ultimately, balancing this change would be up to the developers. If they feel they need to nerf some potencies to accommodate, so be it. Furthermore, I said it would be okay if it was just disabled as well.

BLM is in a good place and I'm not complaining. I'm making an observation and suggesting two possible solutions. Some quality of life improvements shouldn't be disregarded.

I hope this clears up my intent. Thanks again.

Find it odd, that you can't (swiftcast +) fire 1 if you're in any ice astral phase. You end up losing any astral, instead of getting a fire 1 astral.. and therefore lose enochian.

And that last second on enochian is unnerving as he'll.

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

Find it odd, that you can't (swiftcast +) fire 1 if you're in any ice astral phase. You end up losing any astral, instead of getting a fire 1 astral.. and therefore lose enochian.

And that last second on enochian is unnerving as he'll.

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Besides, forgot to mention (can't edit posts on my mobile), its wierd how often you end up with exactly "zero" mp left after fire 4 or other moves (NOT flares).., you can't even scath or foul or blizzard 1...

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Originally Posted by Inuk9

"No dps increase" my ass, your sugestion is clearly made for you to not need to transpose (and lose dps) in a tight situation.

As I said. BLM is fine. Adjust your gameplay.

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It isn't. Per SEs own definition they gave under Yoshidas account for the high dps numbers for SAM, BLM should be top DPS not SAM.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...80#post4263080

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■Balancing DPS Roles■

I already touched upon this in my previous LIVE letter, but I'd like to take the opportunity to clarify balance among DPS roles.

Recently, samurai damage has been the subject of much debate, prompting many comparisons between jobs. In bringing samurai in line with other jobs, however, we not only look at solo damage values, but take all of the following into account:

Damage dealt when solo.
Susceptibility to mechanics (jobs affected more by mechanics deal slightly more solo damage, and vice versa).
Ability to raise a full party's total damage.

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BLM is the only dps job without any form of job specific party buff, while being behind in dps compared to RDM which has heals, battle rezz and physical dps buff.

We can also use another metric. In the top 25 speed clears of Lakshmi and Susano there were 0 BLMs, this is btw the only job that was not part of the top 25 speed clears of Lakshmi and Susano.
In the top 50 Clears there was a single BLM.

I agree with some of the positive changes to BLM. Also, since now we sorta have perma Enochian, Fire IV's potency got reduced. To compensate, we should get Astral Fire to increase to 30 seconds instead of 13 seconds. That'll give us time to run around, do mechanics, and still be able to use Transpose if necessary. :D

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Originally Posted by Kaebora

Can Between the Lines replace Leylines on the hotbar while leylines is active? It'd be nice to not have to find a keybind for a utility ability that is only able to be used while an un-extendable buff is up.

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+1 for this great suggestion, mostly qol, but it would makes a lot more sense to merge the two.

For the rest of the improvement, i would day:

- Expand AF timer by a few second, so we can breathe while doing mechanics.
- We need to add 350MP to our max MP so the 6 FIV rotation can be a thing without having to wait a random server tick.
- Restore FIV and BIV old potency! We as BLM dont bring any DPS increase to the group, so there is no point to bring a BLM if we cant do more than a RDM. We should be where the SAM is, DPS wise.

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Originally Posted by Alkel

+1 for this great suggestion, mostly qol, but it would makes a lot more sense to merge the two.

For the rest of the improvement, i would day:

- Expand AF timer by a few second, so we can breathe while doing mechanics.
- We need to add 350MP to our max MP so the 6 FIV rotation can be a thing without having to wait a random server tick.
- Restore FIV and BIV old potency! We as BLM dont bring any DPS increase to the group, so there is no point to bring a BLM if we cant do more than a RDM. We should be where the SAM is, DPS wise.

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You would need 360mp to use blizzard 3 and if you don't want to wait for the mana tick to use foul I think you need 600mp. I don't think 350 mana would do anything for the mana tick.

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Originally Posted by Tingaling

You would need 360mp to use blizzard 3 and if you don't want to wait for the mana tick to use foul I think you need 600mp. I don't think 350 mana would do anything for the mana tick.

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Yea, im not sure to remember the exact number, but you got the idea :)
+360 mp to not fall @ 0 mp, and having more to be able to cast foul immediately after Blizzard 3 would be pure gold!

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Originally Posted by rxnin

I agree with some of the positive changes to BLM. Also, since now we sorta have perma Enochian, Fire IV's potency got reduced. To compensate, we should get Astral Fire to increase to 30 seconds instead of 13 seconds. That'll give us time to run around, do mechanics, and still be able to use Transpose if necessary. :D

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Yeah, and let's make enochian never drop in a fight. Oh yeah, we also could use a pentacast ability so we don't have to deal with more mechanics, and why not have Foul avaiable at all times? So our rotation can be Blizzard 3>Foul>Foul>Foul>Foul>Foul>Foul>Foul>Foul.....

Id be happy with just a bonus 600 mana and maybe 15 secs on the astral/umbra since its a very tight fit for 6 f4's in normal rotation without any ogcd's. You know, 2 seconds for leeway movement. It's not a huge buff but it'd get your rotation out without waiting for the tick before you start F3(which i never do) and a big QoL upgrade overall. Other than these two, BLM feels fine overall. The damage on black mage is fine imo. So far in the story mode raids I sit at 4.2k+ dps on v1/4 and I don't think it really needs to be higher than that. I'm sure some samurai's beat me but we're supposed to be second to samurai because we have the benefit of range. That's just my 2 cents

Keeping enochian while going through your rotation is already too easy. If you happen to risk losing AF/UI just hit Transpose. Yes, Transpose is a DPS loss but clearly it would be the player's fault/lack of skill for letting the AF/UI timer get to that point.

I agree that BLMs should be doing more damage over RDM given that we have no raid utility. I'd suggest they give back the 20 potency they took off Fire4 or maybe even increase it further. We should be doing more DPS than an RDM on a perfect run. I don't care if I have to work thrice as hard on a fight if that means being able to outperform RDMs by 500+ DPS.

The issue is the steep punishment BLM has for messing up, versus the dps loss of "safe play".

To play aggressively in order to maximize dps (3 F4 per F1) you run the risk of completely losing AF and Enoch if a mechanic forces you to move during your F1 cast. The only way to prevent that is to refresh AF/UI more often than required, Transpose to save your stack (which often means a short fire cycle and the awkward slow cast re-windup), or losing your buffs outright and hoping that Enochian has refreshed.

I am not saying that BLM is "the" most punished class when it comes to buff reapplication, as Monk probably takes the longest to refresh their's, but for BLM the sum of those buffs is +80% from AF3, +5% from Enoch, and effectively + (260/180)/(3/2.5)=20.4% main spell potency... which comes to a total of (1.8*1.05*1.204) 228% of normal damage when fully buffed vs unbuffed.

So yeah, show me a class whose output drops by 56% when they lose their buffs.

Gosh, no offense, but all these threads seem to have suggestions that ultimately boil down to making BLM very easy to execute.
We ain't RDM guys, and I sure hope we'll never be. Having to work the extra mile for our dps is one of the most attractive aspects of the job (and why I've always defended we need a seriously high dps ceiling to make up for it).
The fact our dps drops that sharply if we play wrong is, imho, part of our identity.
You need to put your heart into this job to shine in it (similar to SMN and MCH now, or so I'm lead to believe).
This is the chessmaster job- you need to have a rigorous plan, to know every possibility and solution beforehand, to predict everything.
And is it glorious when it works out and you laugh as a mechanic comes around and it's all already set so you never stop casting.

My little silly tirade aside, imho we need only this:

- 600 base MP so we're not at the mercy of mana ticks;
- 1 more second on AF/UI (bringing us to 3.2+ levels relative to our rotation);
- A mechanic in which using Fire with an Umbral Heart stack extends AF for an additional 1~2 seconds (allowing us to go F4x2>F>F4x4 if we need to due to mechanics (aka if you have churning blowing up on the third cast and you need to use Fire or you lose AF III, for example));

Give me this and my 20 potency on the IV spells back and I'm probably happy.

Also...

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Originally Posted by soslinky

Keeping enochian while going through your rotation is already too easy. If you happen to risk losing AF/UI just hit Transpose. Yes, Transpose is a DPS loss but clearly it would be the player's fault/lack of skill for letting the AF/UI timer get to that point.

I agree that BLMs should be doing more damage over RDM given that we have no raid utility. I'd suggest they give back the 20 potency they took off Fire4 or maybe even increase it further. We should be doing more DPS than an RDM on a perfect run. I don't care if I have to work thrice as hard on a fight if that means being able to outperform RDMs by 500+ DPS.

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I have some AF upkeep calculations in another thread (the BLM needs love one) that would put this claim into perspective. "Your own fault" here translate to "you didn't stop your AF rotation halfway and lost one or more Fire IVs because you had to move". Since, you know, we have a window of ~1s to do stuff. Yup, that's our opening, 1s in a AF phase that lasts 20.5s.
A good BLM will keep these to a minimal, but god, is it constricting/sluggish at times.

I believe you can macro leylines

Like
/micon "ley lines"
/merror
/ac "let lines"
/ac "between the lines"

If lines is on cool down it will cycle though to btl

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Originally Posted by Genoreaper

I believe you can macro leylines

Like
/micon "ley lines"
/merror
/ac "let lines"
/ac "between the lines"

If lines is on cool down it will cycle though to btl

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Wouldn't this mess you up if you happen to press this macro, proceed to cast fire4, then you suddenly get interrupted because your macro is set to cast between the lines?

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

The issue is the steep punishment BLM has for messing up, versus the dps loss of "safe play".

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So yeah, show me a class whose output drops by 56% when they lose their buffs.

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Pre-SB losing Enochian would be as shitty as it would get. But now, thanks to the increased AF/UI time, Transpose, Tri-cast, or even Swiftcast, getting back Enochian will take you 3seconds (Any Fire/Blizz spell that gives you stacks). Of course, losing Enochian would still penalize you but it isn't as big compared to HW times.

As for a class whose output drops when they lose their buffs, SMN is now king.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

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This is actually not necessarily true.
Before, if you lost AF and had 4 seconds left on Enochian you were done for, and would be locked, at worst, 40ish seconds out of it (unless you just used the cd and dropped it immediately, in which case I ask "what the hell are you doing).
But Eno dropped because you lost AF/UI.
Now... it's the same? If you use Eno and lose AF/UI, you can still end up being locked out of it for 15~20 seconds.

Sure, you can hit transpose and preserve it at the cost of dps.
But before you could also keep Swiftcast for any "oopsies" and as long as eno had 5ish seconds on it, you were saved.

In either case, losing AF/UI was the issue. In some cases, this is better now (because transpose), but in others it's worse.
If you get gaol'd by Susano EX, you're 100% losing AF and Enochian with it, for example (and it feels extra bad if you had the Polyglot timer on like 25s and just narrowly missed on a Foul charge).
That's absolutely frustrating in new BLM.

Sorry, I may have chosen my words poorly. What I meant to say is that thanks to the new tweaks to the AF/UI timer and the safety net which is Transpose, it increases the frequency of Enochian being available when you need to use it, i.e. after getting Gaol. This is in contrast to Heavensward Enoch being on CD every 3 AF cycles thus screwing you over if you lose it in between.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

Wouldn't this mess you up if you happen to press this macro, proceed to cast fire4, then you suddenly get interrupted because your macro is set to cast between the lines?

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I don't think so? Because it's not a autorun <wait> macro. I use a few similar ones on my classes I'll test at home after work bUT should only activate when pressed, if lines is off cooldown, it will activate. If lines is on cooldown when pressed it wI'll use the second ability.

I used this also with combo skills

Just tested it out and it works like a charm. Thanks!

edit:
Scratch that, it sometimes won't activate. Ah macros, they never work properly when you need them to.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

Just tested it out and it works like a charm. Thanks!

edit:
Scratch that, it sometimes won't activate. Ah macros, they never work properly when you need them to.

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Can try adding a <wait ."Whatever the global cool down is">

Also did you try spamming it or cast run away like real fight then hit again?

I'll work with it after I get out, now just theorizing. Won't be perfect but should help with bloat

I wonder, what are the odds of adding to the Enhanced Enochian Trait that while Enochian is up, using F4 gives you a buff that makes the next F3 instant, but does not remove the mana cost. Sort of a nerfed Firestarter.

An F4 enhanced F3 will be detrimental to the fire rotation via a higher mana cost, but it means you have the option of sustaining Enochian during a short movement phase. Of course at the end of the fire rotation you will probably not have enough mana to cast F3, so this is not a catch-all "make blm super easy" enhancement, but an option to trade some mana and potency for a stack refresh while running.

Of course a normal Firestarter proc will overwrite this new one, so the normal turret rotation is unaffected, but this would add a safety net to BLM for the myriad of movement heavy fights.

My suggestion is to increase the timer for the astral or umbral stack from 13 to 15 secs.

A few things id like:
1.

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Originally Posted by TheCoker

My suggestion is to increase the timer for the astral or umbral stack from 13 to 15 secs.

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This. The fact that 6 fire IVs is now needed for top dps we have very little leway for messing up. Bringing the timer up to 15 will make it a lot less stressful to keep up plus it allows better use of thundercloud procs.

2. On the topic of enochian refreshing AF/UI, Id say that if it did that Enochian should be back to 60 seconds as having what is practically the effect of casting a fire/ice spell on ogcd is too strong to be only 30 seconds.

3. Transpose should be a 10 second cd if the stack timer isn't extended to 15 seconds. Having 1 second to use transpose sucks during mechanic heavy fights or phase changes. While it didnt have much use once you got fire/blizzard III and werent using flare, its become essential yet again due to how enochian works. It may be a dps loss but its not AS MUCH of a dps loss as dropping enochian and losing a potential foul.

4. If we are going the route of utility, Leylines should give 5% spell speed up for others not under the effect of Leylines. It's small, but currently we are somewhat lacking in magic dps increases, a fair bit of raid utility is focused on buffing physical damage. I know its an aoe magnet, but we have between the lines, which leads me to...

5. As someone early int he thread suggested, make Between the lines replace leylines when leylines is up. Its just such a silly oversight that's almost as bad as impact being a different skill from jolt II.
On the topic of reducing button bloat, I love how pvp mades Enochian turn into blizzard IV when in UI and fire IV when in AF, This cuts down on 2 buttons!!

6. Make Manaward activate faster. Its simple really, I feel it has a slower activation than anything else in this game.

7. This is my last one. Give us 600 more mana at level 70. That's it. This lets us cast blizzard III and foul if we get the bad side of a mana tick, so we can still cast 6 fire IVs instead of 5

I think potencies are fine, they were reduced to make up for the inclusion of other skills. Fire IV got nerfed cause instead of 4 (sometimes 6) you get 6 (sometimes 8) casts. Flare and Fire II got nerfed for including Thunder II/IV and Foul.

@NinjaDecoy
#1, #2, and #3 - I feel that the current timers are fine given that we are able to fit everything in AF while starting off at rock-bottom SpS levels for 4.0 (scaled). If the SpS stacked Omega gear is any indication, further patches will make it way better. Also, at what point do we suggest tweaks to the timer til it reaches "holding enoch is so ridiculously easy that I can maintain AF/UI stacks even if I intentionally place myself in a bad position".

I do however support #7. I hate that my DPS output is being hampered by something totally uncontrollable.

As for the potency buff, I'd like my 20 potency back. Turret BLM should not be as easily out-DPS'd by a healing, raid-buffing, dead-raising mobile caster with an absurdly simple DPS rotation that has no penalizing buff timers to maintain and possesses procs that expire in 30secs.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

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I myself don't have issues holding enochian while also doing 6 fire IVs (almost) always, however even just a slight buff to anything that affects our timers would be good to have, didn't mean for it to sound like i was stacking all of my suggestions.

You do make a good point for the potency, I for some reason keep forgetting that RDM is insane right now in comparison to other casters. I however do not believe it should be nerfed, but instead blm should be buffed be it by increased potencies, better timers, or utility added to current abilities (leyline utility suggestion). If they did nerf RDM it should only be small potency decreases just to make up for its huge utility and survivability.

True. I do wish people would stop clamoring for nerfs to RDM. While RDM is truly outperforming BLMs, nerfing them should be the last resort. If there is a way to achieve balance by buffing BLM/SMN up to RDM's level then they should exhaust that option first.

What I would think if I were an RDM main getting clobbered by a nerfbat-wielding Yoshi-P yelling 'BLM 2 LOW DPS= U 2 OP!': "SE designed RDM's kit alongside BLM's rework. They released both kits at the same time as every other DPS kit. This leaves me to believe that the problem isn't RDM's damage but is actually the pathetic DPS being made by the one and only turret DPS. Why not just admit they made a mistake and tweak that broken BLM class to get it to my level and leave my class alone?"

The amount of salt I expect RDM mains are going to crank out upon getting nerfed would be enough to pop Levinthunder and spawn Ixion.

A majority of players hate getting their own classes nerfed, it doesn't matter if it's justified or not, it's a downer and pushes people away. A properly executed buff on the other hand is a more positive change. The beauty of a BLM potency buff over changes to buff timers or whatnot is that the class remains one that properly reflects through its DPS output a player's excellence, or mediocrity.