Scathe

So like... Scathe is just a really bad spell, right? You almost never want to touch Scathe outside of extremely niche circumstances. Now, I'm not advocating to remove Scathe or buff it so much it becomes part of BLM rotation and heavily alters it.

However, it could be given a minor buff so it becomes a viable learning/emergency tool:

Additional Effect: Extends Astral Fire or Umbral Ice duration by 6s to a maximum of 15s

By extending AF/UI a bit, it allows Scathe to be a decent tool to recover for forced movement while progging or learning the job. It also works if learning BLM forget to refresh AF/UI and there's not enough time to do so with a regular GCD. It's still far more effective and less of a loss to preplan movement and cooldown usage, but it could save BLM from dropping their AF/UI completely and having to restart their rotation.

Then again, it might just promote bad BLM who run around spamming Scathe at the drop of a hat to maintain their AF/UI...

They've needed to increase its potency for a while now as well. It could be a 300 potency spell and it would still be pretty heavy punishment for unplanned movement. Though as I brought up in my own thread, I'd rather just remove AF/UI timers at this point. They're a legacy holdover mechanic from a time long since gone, the class would be better served just flat out removing the timers.

I don't think Scathe should be more potency than Fire I, especially if it has the effect of extending AF/UI.
Fire I is 180 potency, while Scathe has an 'effective' potency of 120 (100 +20% of 200).

You could maybe increase the potency to 150 (with a 20% chance of 200 still for an 'effective' potency of 160), or alternatively increase the chance of doubling to 50% or 60%.
That, along with a 3s refresh of AF/UI, would make it functional without disrupting the BLM rotation.

alright I try to explain this one.

Sharpcast can trigger from scathe and fire I. but sometimes.,as a black mage you have to move out those dangerzones. when you do. you can sharpcast + scathe while your moving and reply thunder or proc a fire 3. and continue your combo when you go off

a lot black mages forget aether manipulation exists. were they can instantly warp to allie and bring there laylines with them. while also forgetting sharpcast is thing an fire 1 isn't only way to proc it. alot people say scathe is bad dont put it on your hot bar. but there are sitations you will use it over fire 1 specially if the fight requires alot movement

scathe is used just depends on situation.

Scathe doesn't have a cast time. fire 1 does have a casttime

sometimes as a blackmage you dont have time to hardcast

Scathe was only really used for these situations

I think there is nothing wrong with Scathe, it certainly has its place in the BLM kit. Extending Astral Fire or Umbral Ice with it seems like a pointless change, since Fire1/Ice1 already serve that purpose, and quite well too.

If BLM would need any kind of change, then Aether Manipulation allowing you to jump on objects/non-hostile NPC's outside of Party and maybe even shareable Leylines at increased Cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I don't think Scathe should be more potency than Fire I, especially if it has the effect of extending AF/UI.
Fire I is 180 potency, while Scathe has an 'effective' potency of 120 (100 +20% of 200).

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Fire I's potency under Astral Fire III is 324.
Fire IV is 540.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I don't think Scathe should be more potency than Fire I, especially if it has the effect of extending AF/UI.
Fire I is 180 potency, while Scathe has an 'effective' potency of 120 (100 +20% of 200).

You could maybe increase the potency to 150 (with a 20% chance of 200 still for an 'effective' potency of 160), or alternatively increase the chance of doubling to 50% or 60%.
That, along with a 3s refresh of AF/UI, would make it functional without disrupting the BLM rotation.

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Considering at level 90, fire 1 is literally being removed from the core rotation, not sure it matters that Scathe would do more damage at that point. Especially since you're usually swapping out a Fire 4 at 540 potency for a scathe, not a fire 1. Also as brought up, fire 1 is still more potency anyways.

Remember, that's the important thing scathe does. It doesn't stop you from casting a fire 1, it stops you from casting a fire 4. And at 90, fire 1 isn't used. You'll still get that paradox off, but the fire 4 is what's dropped from the rotation. Hence even at 300 potency, it's still a 240 potency hit. This is, of course, ignoring maim & mend and enochian's buffs, but it's still relative.

For comparison, Summoner, currently, drops about 40 potency. Scholar drops 90. WHM drops 180 (if they resort to Dia spam for movement). RDM is...I don't actually know, but think it's in the 1-200 range where, currently, the first 3 in any given 2m cycle are 'free' due to manafication timers.

Currently, BLM loses 440 potency for casting scathe. And most of the meme strats revolve around not casting fire 1 specifically because its DPS scales so abysmally. That's probably the entire reason the devs finally made fire 1 worth casting in the AF phase in EW, because they got tired of the meme rotations.

Honestly, I've been in the "just make Blizzard 1 instant and replace Scathe with Drain" boat for a while now.

I mean, at least Drain would be useful for soloing and leveling, it would give another use for UI besides just restoring MP and future-proof B1 since we otherwise avoid it.

Potency is not the problem.
The problem is when using it in AF phase, it will screw your MP pool and result in less fire 4.
If anything, they should make Scathe costs no mp and has cooldown on its own instead, maybe make it 2 charges.

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Originally Posted by Kahnom

Potency is not the problem.
The problem is when using it in AF phase, it will screw your MP pool and result in less fire 4.
If anything, they should make Scathe costs no mp and has cooldown on its own instead, maybe make it 2 charges.

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A change like that would render BLM almost completely helpless in a 1vs1 scenario where you're fighting a enemy with alot of HP and serious dmg output (higher Deep Dungeon floors, for example).

BLM relies alot on casting Fire 1/Fire 4 into Scathe for kiting or to finish said enemy off when it is below 1% HP, so that you dont have to cast another 2,5sec Spell just to get the Job done.

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Originally Posted by Kahnom

Potency is not the problem.
The problem is when using it in AF phase, it will screw your MP pool and result in less fire 4.
If anything, they should make Scathe costs no mp and has cooldown on its own instead, maybe make it 2 charges.

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Part of the reason you still wouldn't want to rely on it once you get to optimizing your damage on the job. Using Scathe will cost a Fire IV and be a low potency hit, but will keep AF/UI from dropping so you don't lose your rotation or Polyglot timer. Have to determine which price is steeper: dropping AF/UI or using Scathe?

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

Part of the reason you still wouldn't want to rely on it once you get to optimizing your damage on the job. Using Scathe will cost a Fire IV and be a low potency hit, but will keep AF/UI from dropping so you don't lose your rotation or Polyglot timer. Have to determine which price is steeper: dropping AF/UI or using Scathe?

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I know that, Last time I used Scathe was in stormblood, I believe.
Even they remove this ability in END, it won't effect me one bit.

I think it'd be good if they buffed Scathe a bit to make it more useful as an emergency filler or compromise spell, so keeping its MP cost and damage but making it refresh Astral/Umbral (or just add a few seconds) would fit well. That way if you're in a bad spot you can weigh whether it's better to maintain your place in your current cycle or to just ripcord out with Transpose.

I'd raise the potency of Scathe to match Ruin 2 as it is now on Scholar, but not refresh the Astral Timer. It doesn't benefit from Astral Fire but if you absolutely have to move and keep DPS, it'd at least be tolerable. Or make it a new Drain spell. I miss Drain.

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Originally Posted by Leidolf

I'd raise the potency of Scathe to match Ruin 2 as it is now on Scholar, but not refresh the Astral Timer. It doesn't benefit from Astral Fire but if you absolutely have to move and keep DPS, it'd at least be tolerable. Or make it a new Drain spell. I miss Drain.

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And this is a big part of the reason why Scathe is awful. To fully put scathe into perspective, it could be 400 potency (before eno/maim and mend) and it would still be a massive potency loss. And at that point, it would approach parity with Scholar. Scholar is -90 potency to ruin 2. Since Scathe competes with fire 4, not fire 1/paradox, putting it at 400 potency would make it the equivalent to losing about 82 potency compared to fire 4. (540 / 2.8 * 2.5 = 482 potency, which would be our baseline for comparing a 2.5s GCD to what it's costing you.) So slightly more favorable than SCH's loss of potency. This would still make it the single most expensive loss that wasn't casting a second fire 1, but if you're comparing the potency to another class, you're already on the wrong footing for trying to balance it.

The problem with 400 is that BLM in EW will average about 167 pps, and at 400 for scathe, it's at 160. You could almost approach parity with the full rotation by just chain-casting scathe, which would be an interesting option but would still require maintaining AF/UI for enochian, but you'd have to keep it roughly in this ballpark or you're just not going to do enough damage to justify it even as panic movement.

And this is all while trying to consider Scathe's current MP cost and how it fits in with AF/UI timers, which is another reason why I want AF/UI timers gone, but that's secondary in this discussion because the problem is, even making Scathe 300 potency per GCD would still be nowhere near enough to make it worthwhile, and you're asking for a mere 200 potency to make it equivalent to Scholar, while also doing nothing for the AF/UI timers.

At that point, provided I'm not dropping AF/UI, it's better to flat out do nothing and try to recover the standard rotation than it is to use scathe, which is the entire reason people don't use scathe to begin with. Straight up make an Aetherial Manipulation macro, hard clip the GCD to get where you need to go in 5-700ms, and go right back to casting would be more favorable than casting a scathe that's not at least 300 potency.

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Originally Posted by Leidolf

I'd raise the potency of Scathe to match Ruin 2 as it is now on Scholar, but not refresh the Astral Timer. It doesn't benefit from Astral Fire but if you absolutely have to move and keep DPS, it'd at least be tolerable. Or make it a new Drain spell. I miss Drain.

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Ooh I love this, actually. If a trait upgraded Scathe to absorb HP it would at least make for a nice soloing tool.

Honestly what they should do with Scathe is Unlock the enochian timer at a lower level and make scathe a low level version of xeno

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Originally Posted by zcrash970

Honestly what they should do with Scathe is Unlock the enochian timer at a lower level and make scathe a low level version of xeno

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If we're going this route, can we seriously just fix the bait-and-switch of the class and give the fire 4 rotation from a lower level? Nothing sucks harder than leveling a class, experiencing 59 levels of something you love, and then hitting level 60 and realizing the class you leveled is not at all like the class actually is. You could actually do it semi-easily.

Make fire 1 and blizzard 1 operate like the PVP versions of the skill. At 35, blizzard 3 and fire 3 become your UH generator and high-burst long(ish) cast time MP dump. At 60, upgrade blizzard 1 into blizzard 3, blizzard 3 into blizzard 4 (remove blizzard 1 outright at this point). Replace fire 1 with fire 3, fire 3 with fire 4, the rotation returns to normal (Also, likewise, Fire 1 is removed at this point).

Benefits: Fewer buttons on the bar, fixes the bait and switch by applying it at a sufficiently lower level, makes the class feel like it's leveling up by replacing older abilities with newer ones as you level.

Drawbacks: Would need a potency rebalance, 2 buttons would be removed where 1 is important to the non-EW rotation, what happens with firestarter?

If we go the route of making Scathe a low level Xeno, and fix the bait and switch in a way that screws with firestarter, we can also consider other things: The class 'needs' more movement. What if there was a trait at level 54 named: "Sharpcast" that used the paradox mechanic to makes spending a paradox a guaranteed instant? That is, we already have the core 60+ rotation solidified from 35 at this point, so the first fire 1 (54) or fire 3 (60+) or Paradox (90+) was instant cast. We salvage the mobility Sharpcast provides and move the caster slightly more towards mobile, but keep the core Fire 4/blizzard 4 rotation slow. Then we just need to do something to clean up thunder 3. Maybe make it a guaranteed proc after 6 tics, or just making the sharpcast trait flat out increase the proc rate to, say, 13% (~68%chance to proc) or 15% (~75%)

Combine this with removing AF/UI timers to make learning a very difficult rotation at lower levels easier to understand, combine Transpose and Umbral Soul into a shared button, and we've made a significant dent in the classes bloat while slightly dropping the skill ceiling (Sharpcast does provide some challenge to master without being critical to master), a second slight drop from making an easy always available movement skill in a redesigned sharpcast (The devs want more mobile content anyways), but still keep the core rotation, and drop the skill floor out from under the class.

All while providing the core level 90 rotation as low as level 35, just like how Summoner is going to be in EW, just like RDM is, while keeping as much of the identity of the class as possible.

And, because of all the refining done to the rotation, and having at least 5 buttons removed (Scathe, upgrades, Sharpcast, trait, Blizzard 1/fire 1, directly upgraded/replaced, Transpose/Umbral Soul) there's a ton of room to try something truly unique for the first time since fire 4 was added. Plus, with 2 guaranteed instant casts per rotation (You get the paradox in both directions), we can add some more oGCDs with easier-to-fit timing. I guess that's also a slight skill ceiling drop, but this class already has an astronomical skill ceiling, it can afford to lose some if it means actually giving the rotation a pass.

Or you could just implement Scathe as a charge action with 2 stacks and a 30s cooldown and have Xenoglossy replace it if you have Polyglot available. Not everything needs a complete overhaul to help ‘fit’ one ability. ShB BLM’s levelling curve does a much better job establishing the transition from casino mage to its current iteration by using those umbral hearts in B4 and Enochian to get you used to their presence. Compared to HW BLM where not only was Fire IV jarring but the Enochian timer itself was a major roadblock that wasn’t even worth engaging with during the levelling process thanks to its diminishing returns. If I were to alter the rotation, I’d probably use AF Paradox and Manafont to add additional Umbral Hearts into the AF rotation, thereby extending it even further (probably by making you use a heart on Paradox itself to gain three more while Manafont just gives two outright).

No, it really doesn't Grimoire. The class pre 60 and post 60 is night and day different. And if we are fixing one ability, we may as well look at everything that can be improved. Even leveling down below 60 can be pretty jarring if you just got used to the rotation at another level, and I imagine once they new AoE rotation comes in and is actually refined to the point where you merely add things like Flare on as you go up in level, it will, too, be even more jarring when the ST rotation doesn't do that. I already still have to remember 3 or 4 separate burst openers and it's not a fun experience.

I've long thought that BLM should start doing the F1 vs. F4 dance at a much lower level.

Specifically I'd have BLM learn Enochian and a spell called "Dark Fire" at like level 20 or 30. Dark Fire would hit harder than Fire but not refresh AF. Then at level 60, Dark Fire upgrades to Void Fire, which is just a renamed Fire 4.

This would also mean that High Fire 2 could just be named Fire 4, as well as HB2->B4. Generally, the "dark/abyss/void" etc spells could only be used under Enochian and the appropriate elemental aspect, while spells just named Fire or Blizzard could be cast without preconditions. The end result would be functionally identical to the BLM we have now, but players would learn the basic dynamic of the job much earlier.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

No, it really doesn't Grimoire. The class pre 60 and post 60 is night and day different. And if we are fixing one ability, we may as well look at everything that can be improved. Even leveling down below 60 can be pretty jarring if you just got used to the rotation at another level, and I imagine once they new AoE rotation comes in and is actually refined to the point where you merely add things like Flare on as you go up in level, it will, too, be even more jarring when the ST rotation doesn't do that. I already still have to remember 3 or 4 separate burst openers and it's not a fun experience.

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See, to me that makes low level content more engaging, not less, while also letting players get used to each bit of nuance as it comes. But again, you also think the AF timer's a mistake where I don't, and that's ultimately where the crux of your complaint falls regarding Fire IV to begin with. My point was to highlight how the rotation surrounding Fire IV has been improved to help ease the player into that transition. If this were still Heavensward and still had to juggle the 30/25/20s Enochian refresh timers or Stormblood where you also had much less wiggle room on the AF timer for a significant portion of the expansion I might agree with you that it needed major changes, and I explained my reasoning on that above, but, to put it in context:

ARR BLM doesn't deal with it so people can instead focus on getting used to how the procs function and how the MP management guides the overall rotation in the first place. I've literally sat down with new players who constantly bungle this aspect because the MP values are tuned for endgame, not levelling, and I would agree that it is actively hindered because we don't have Aspect Mastery at level 1 (which is being fixed in Endwalker). Oddly enough MP scaling on BLM pre-ShB was better at allowing you to fix mistakes in ARR in particular. Pre-Flare you usually had a clean sliver of MP to work in Blizzard I, and below level 40 that helped a lot. HW's levelling process introduces Umbral Hearts and Enochian (which, again, will become a passive in Endwalker) so you can get used to how those work in isolation, and those mechanics aren't that difficult to understand. Fire IV is a big jump, but that factor is diminished when you consider why it's bookended the way it is. Stormblood doesn't significantly alter the rotation up until you get Foul/Polyglot access, and I would agree with you if you said Shadowbringers didn't add much.

90% of your complaints about the feel of lower levels ultimately vanish in Endwalker, particularly when you start looking at the AoE rotation changes. I do not think we need to worry about it. SE's clearly aware of what is a problem and what isn't.

Rather scathe just not cost any mp if anything, pretty much only reason why I dont use it is cause it eats up what could be F4s...