BLM and Scathe and Blizzard

It's a nit-picky thing, but I hate that we still have Scathe and Blizzard rotting on our hotbars (and Blizzard you do want to keep on your hotbar in case you get down-synced).

So, first Scathe:
- Delete Scathe
- Remove the cast time from all the Thunder spells.
- Thunder 1 increase base potency to 100, decrease the dot potency to 25. Same overall damage.
- Thunder 3 increase base potency to 100, decrease the dot potency to 30. Same overall damage.

For Blizzard, change Umbral Soul to a trait that modifies Blizzard with the following:
- While in Umbral Ice, Blizzard costs no MP, grants 1 Umbral Heart, and can target yourself, but deals no damage if it targets yourself.
- The targeting for Blizzard would work much like healing targeting, as in if you have a legal target that's not you, it hits that, otherwise, it hits yourself.

Maybe it's a bunch of work just to clean 2 skills off my hotbar that don't need to be there in endgame content, but it was a thought.

My idea for keeping Blizzard relevant is a little more annoying: when you have Paradox ready, only the opposite-element spell's button becomes Paradox; the same-aspect spell stays as-is. So you use Blizzard to cast Paradox in fire mode, and Fire to cast Paradox in ice mode. This is technically a flexibility increase since you might, hypothetically, want to be able to use a weak 2.5gcd spell to push a bomb or something while saving your 500-potency 2.5gcd spell for a real target.

Noooo, don't delete Scathe... I swear I used it in my level 60 SB's Job quest scenario to kill 1 HP enemies...

Just remove it from the bars. :(

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Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

Noooo, don't delete Scathe... I swear I used it in my level 60 SB's Job quest scenario to kill 1 HP enemies...

Just remove it from the bars. :(

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This is generally a bad design. You don't want actions people don't or can't reliably use. Also BLM is desperately in need of a real QoL pass, a skill floor drop (mostly AF/UI timers) and its leveling experience cleaned up to give it its core rotation at a lower level anyways.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

My idea for keeping Blizzard relevant is a little more annoying: when you have Paradox ready, only the opposite-element spell's button becomes Paradox; the same-aspect spell stays as-is. So you use Blizzard to cast Paradox in fire mode, and Fire to cast Paradox in ice mode. This is technically a flexibility increase since you might, hypothetically, want to be able to use a weak 2.5gcd spell to push a bomb or something while saving your 500-potency 2.5gcd spell for a real target.

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I wouldn't go this route. Actually, I'd go a different route. The end result would be removing AF/UI timers, giving the class its core rotation at level 35, upgrading fire and blizzard 1/3 into 3/4 respectively at 58/60, make fire/bliz 1/3 do double duty both for stance swapping and as your filler, merge Freeze and Blizzard instead of having separate buttons for it (cast twice still), and taking Scathe and making it a level 35, 40, or 50 spell that works as a low level Xenoglossy. Remove sharpcast and make it a trait that guarantees the first fire 1/3 of any rotation is guaranteed instant cast and does enough more potency to make it better than fire 4 in DPS (so you always do it), and just give either 3 additional umbral hearts (stacking to 6) from the first fire 1/3, or making bliz 3/4 give 6 UH (else give just 3 so you always want to fire 1) while also making it so you need umbral hearts to cast fire 3/4s.

If done correctly, you can massively drop the skill floor, maintain most of the current skill ceiling, and make the class vastly more approachable to lower skill/lower effort players. Because the majority of the classes difficulty comes from sitting still and hardcasting fire 4s/despairs, it manages to maintain the majority of its difficulty in all content because it would still be heavily punished for unplanned movement. And you'd effectively remove about 5 skills. Fire 1, blizzard 1, scathe, freeze, and Sharpcast. Why Sharpcast? Because it's already a boring ability on the point of obscelesence and even Amplify, also a really boring ability, manages to be more practically useful. They could literally make Thunder 3 and Fire 1/paradox a guaranteed proc and I doubt it would change much in terms of how the class currently plays in my eyes.

If such a dramatic reimagining of the leveling experience and foundation of the class were done, it would also leave room for a real mechanic that is actually fun and interesting to be added. Something like taking FF11's elemental chain mechanic, but applying it to Black Mage internally alone. And it would also just make the class less frustrating to play while mostly maintaining its high skill ceiling.

While we're at it, I think I'd kinda like to see Firestarter and Thundercloud procs stack. Always feels bad when you don't react fast enough, or plan to work it in later, and you get an extra proc or two before you get to use it. Feels like wasted potential, but also feels like using procs instantly isn't the best idea, either.

Removing Astral/Umbral timers would be extremely bad for the job unless those timers were replaced with some other mechanic that forced you to make improvisations and substitutions in your ideal rotation in response to interruptions, and any such mechanic that wasn't a ticking clock would just be vastly more clunky and inelegant.

However, I do agree that Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 (or rather, spells equivalent to those) should appear much earlier in the leveling process. Ideally, you'd just learn "Dark Fire" and "Dark Blizzard" somewhere in the 20s or 30s, and those spells would upgrade to "Void Fire" and "Void Blizzard" at levels 60 and 58. The Void spells would just be the equivalents of the IVs we have now (300 potency, 2.8sec cast time), while the Dark spells would have the same functionality but slightly lower potency. As a bonus, this means that you could just have Fire II upgrade into Fire IV, and Blizzard II upgrade into Blizzard IV, instead of making up a completely new "High (spellname)" nomenclature.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

This is generally a bad design. You don't want actions people don't or can't reliably use. Also BLM is desperately in need of a real QoL pass, a skill floor drop (mostly AF/UI timers) and its leveling experience cleaned up to give it its core rotation at a lower level anyways.

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It's the opposite. Niche buttons are totally fine, people can just remove them from their hotbars for no loss. Removing them from the game hurts the class in niche cases for no gain.

Nothing really has to be done with B1. It can remain a niche skill. Forcing to be used more often just because it exists is a good way to tack on unneeded complexity.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

This is generally a bad design. You don't want actions people don't or can't reliably use. Also BLM is desperately in need of a real QoL pass, a skill floor drop (mostly AF/UI timers) and its leveling experience cleaned up to give it its core rotation at a lower level anyways.

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I use scathe to tack on that little bit of bonus damage when mobs are about to die all the time. It's used often and reliably. Granting AF from level 1 and removing active Enochian wasn't a big enough skill drop for you? No job should get all their tools at lower levels. The core rotation is switching from ice to fire while maintaining a dot which is present from lower levels.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

It's the opposite. Niche buttons are totally fine, people can just remove them from their hotbars for no loss. Removing them from the game hurts the class in niche cases for no gain.

Nothing really has to be done with B1. It can remain a niche skill. Forcing to be used more often just because it exists is a good way to tack on unneeded complexity.

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This. Truly niche skills are okay. Obligatory but clunky and unsatisfying skills (or, button-presses) are the problem.

I'm actually surprised scathe has lasted this long. Blizzard I can kind of understand, but scathe was kinda worthless in ARR outside of having something to attack with while moving, and with triple cast and what not its entire existence is kinda pointless now.

The other day I manages to screw up badly in a bossfight such that I had 200 MP and wasn't in either fire or ice mode. I dumbly hammered my Blizzard III key until I realized I couldn't afford to cast it... but could, after one more tick, cast Blizzard to jumpstart my MP regen.

Is there any reason Blizzard couldn't have been made to become Blizzard III at higher levels?

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Originally Posted by FrejyaAthenes

Is there any reason Blizzard couldn't have been made to become Blizzard III at higher levels?

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Mana cost and base cast time, but these are arguably niche and don't add too much to the job outside of "how did this even happen?" tier mistakes being slightly worse and eating exactly one more cast.

If you think that Scathe is useless, then you clearly havent been playing BLM to its full Potential yet. Fire 1/Fire 3/ Ice 3 into Scathe is the best you can do as BLM when it comes to kiting before you unlock Enochian in any solo Content and especially in Deep Dungeons.

i just use scathe if my enemy has like tiny bit of HP left and using fire 4 etc take too long to cast (and kinda overkill), at least i want to believe thats what scathe for

they should make it into a joke skill or something, like maybe when everytime you cast scathe, it has 1% chance to deal 2000 potency instead of 100 lol

They could make Scathe free, make Scathe refund MP on a kill, make Scathe refresh astral/umbral, or make Scathe refund a portion of its damage as HP to give BLM back some overworld sustain (maybe straight up turn Scathe into Drain).

Scathe is great when you solo a lowbie dungeon for WT

Scathe is holding the game together
we lose it another calamity is upon us

Don't delete Scathe just remove the mana cost.

use scathe in umbral ice on mobs that are chasing/when following the tank while they doing big pull. dont just spam umbral soul. and at lv90, ui paradox to refresh the ui instead of umbral soul. every little dps counts.
mob about to die in 1 hit, no other instants? squeeze a scathe in for that tiny bit of dps.
blizzard1? yea, useless after low level. you can use the fire1's paradox button.

Just add a trait to make Blizzard instant in UI around the level we'd get Scathe, make Paradox either instant or only change Fire's button, and replace Scathe with Drain.

(Not the version we had in Stormblood; amp up the conversion ratio considerably so it's a semi-passable self-heal, like 150-200 potency healing per cast. Hell, you could even give it Sharpcast's "double damage" effect if that affects the healing.)

Kill two birds with one stone on Blizzard's front, and even if you don't use Drain on bosses and raids, it'll still have personal utility for solo and open-world content. No worse than SAM getting four different self-heal and mitigation tools. BLM's the only caster with just one.

I think it'd be most elegant to give Blizzard a trait that makes it instant in Umbral mode at the same level you get Firestarter (while Scathe is replaced with Drain). That way both basic spells get a cast speed related passive of some kind, maintaining loose symmetry between the elements, and there's more consistency with the unique traits of umbral vs. astral Paradox.

Why can't Umbral Soul just set us into Umbral Ice? Just make it overwrite Astral Fire and be essentially a drop of timer if you don't pay attention to what you're doing? The big issue I've always had is needing to re-set up as a Black Mage, it's not like this change would suddenly remove skill from Black Mage; it would just make death or bad healers more tolerable. Shift into Umbral Ice when you get up and start regaining Mp.