Regarding the newest Blackmage changes

Blackmage is by far one of my favourite jobs to play, yet the new changes leave a sour taste in mouth tot he point of filling me with concerns about the general gameplay experience.

My main issue lies in the changes that have been done to umbral ice, basing the mp recovery on ice spells used rather than the server ticks spend within that state. The change was made in order to fix the issue of inconsistent timings in which your mp would reach the maximum, which has already been fixed by the introduction of paradox in my mind.

It's become easier than ever to allow for enough time to pass so your mp would refresh to full every time by the time you'd naturally want to transition to the fire phase regardless of server ticks. It also allowed for deep and interesting optimization strategies, which revolve around skipping casting ice spells alltogether with the aid of transpose and non ice filler spells including paradox. But this aspect of the job has now been made absolete due to being forced to cast ice spells in order to gain mp which is a big shame in my eyes and took away a lot of excitement I've had for the expansion.

Not to mention that now you're unable to recover mp while being idle in umbral ice between dungeon pulls, until you learn umbral soul at the late 70s.
The only use for transpose is to convert a fire 3 proc into skipping the need for casting a weak fire 3 to swap into astral fire but that's about it.

Blackmage will lose a large portion of skill expression and creativity, along with the risk reward factor that came from using your resources to squeeze out more damage, instead of using them for movement needs. But now there is no way to recover the required amount of mana without casting a set sequence of spells. There will also be no use of going into fire with non full mp depending on how the new job gauge works, doubling the amount of creativity that has been taken away from us.

Okay, rant over. How do you guys feel about the changes tho?

Did they say it would 'wholly' be unable to gain MP back from umbral ice tics, or just that it would be 'assisted' by gaining additional MP from Blizzard spells under it?

If it's the former, in my mind that's a change on the levels of egregiousness in terms of how the job functions in lore up there with ACN losing its DoTs, SCH losing a fairie, SMN its Egis, AST not being able to manipulate time at all or WHM having all its spells stuck in light mode even though we're back from the first, gameplay-aside.

Hell, even BLM PvP moved away from generating MP from casts directly like it had in StB/ShB; that version of BLM is only relegated to NPC controlling duties... Until Dawntrail!

Unsure personally, this could lead to new non-standard rotations and strats for BLM, but also as you said loses the fun ice phase skips strats and unalligned leylines.
I think it will depend on how this whole mana regain feels to use which we won't know until we use it the make or break really depends on how much mana we get back. There could be new strats that come to surface like not recovering full mana and switching enough to get high enough damage for uptime before a non-damage period in a boss for example. I will say if I had to redesign mana regain with a gun to my head I wouldnt limit it to only ice spells and have it that all damaging effects you send out give you mana, but yeah i really dont know how to feel yet.

TLDR; Unsure, lean towards being uneasy about change but have to play before i know.
also lmao BLM was reworked way more than Dragoon was.

I hope that they at least allow non-ice spells cast during umbral ice to regenerate mana. If you could also generate it with a Thunder 3 or a Xenoglossy, that would go a long way towards keeping the flexibility that the job currently enjoys.

Fairly positive about the changes myself, keen to see more information about it in the coming days should more info appear.

I think you forgett the natural mp regeneration of the charas, who is normaly blocked by the fire spheres of the blm.
Mean: If you are in your ice phase, should you have the naturaly mp regeneration (what will probably now be slower as before), the mp reg over time skill (for, when you are running around). And than, the fixed mp regeneration of the ice spells.
Im neutral to that.
It ruins the idea of beeing as good as possible be a pure fire mage. But, Ice feeled allways like the unwanted little brother, who you want to have away as fast as possible. Maybe, they extend the use of the ice phase somehow. It feels allways a little bad, that you dont need ice 1 ever, after you learn blizzard. Because, its the stronger ice spell with no drawbacks (except casting time).

My complaining about the blm is, that it looks like, as if whe are pressing fire4 even more now, as before. I would like to have some variation in his move set (like a firewall for a line aoe attack or so). A extended ice phase could give this maybe.
In addition did it not looked for me, as if the ice phase is truly longer now as before. It looked for me very fast over and was going back to the fire phase.

The other complain i have is more the Leylines.
Its a nice idea, to summon the lines back to you, if you are forced to go out of it.
But. i would miss the option, to jump to the leylines. Because, it could help with movement over the arena or to evade some aoe attacks (like the scorpion thing in the last dungein, where you could place the lines, and when the sand is coming, can you move instantly to the lines and are out of the danger zone).

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Originally Posted by LolaLou

It also allowed for deep and interesting optimization strategies, which revolve around skipping casting ice spells alltogether with the aid of transpose and non ice filler spells including paradox. But this aspect of the job has now been made absolete due to being forced to cast ice spells in order to gain mp which is a big shame in my eyes and took away a lot of excitement I've had for the expansion.

Okay, rant over. How do you guys feel about the changes tho?

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I don't get this logic. Being able to ignore core parts of your kit is deep optimization? It's no wonder they made this change. It's more like a glitchy interaction that broke the design of the job that people were getting away with rather than what I would call "deep optimization".

Personally this simplifies job expression of skill and makes it standard to use the full kit. We have these spells, you should want to use them the two times you have to use them. It's a loss that it was more optimal to not use the spells than it was to use the full kit.

To me this is a win.

The other changes I am a huge fan of too. More spamming explosions during fire phase, and a big fire nuke that looks modern for both single target and aoe fire.

The thing is that they didn't 'fully ignore' parts of their kit, like it sounds at first, they are just able to at certain specific circumstances that the system allows for. And it's not easy to pull off effectively always, and that's what's fun about it. You really learn a fight more closely because the job itself tackles each encounter slightly differently when compared to most other jobs in the game.

From the Dev's perspective though, yeah, they mostly don't like 'unintended' rotations, it's why StB Tornado Kick MNK was gutted, Anatman was thrown on the GCD and likely why MNK is getting changed further in DT, so there's some history to it. But, spending less of your time in fire and more of it in ice has been how BLM was intended to work since over a decade ago at level 2, when THM unlocks fire 1. It's very intentional.

But tell me, when do you use Scathe, that's part of your full kit, right? And what would you consider 'deep optimization', seeing as just using every spell in the same prescribed order seems to be closer to it than what BLM has now?

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Originally Posted by Post

The thing is that they didn't 'fully ignore' parts of their kit, like it sounds at first, they are just able to at certain specific circumstances that the system allows for. And it's not easy to pull off effectively always, and that's what's fun about it. You really learn a fight more closely because the job itself tackles each encounter slightly differently when compared to most other jobs in the game.

From the Dev's perspective though, yeah, they mostly don't like 'unintended' rotations, it's why StB Tornado Kick MNK was gutted, Anatman was thrown on the GCD and likely why MNK is getting changed further in DT, so there's some history to it. But, spending less of your time in fire and more of it in ice has been how BLM was intended to work since over a decade ago at level 2, when THM unlocks fire 1. It's very intentional.

But tell me, when do you use Scathe, that's part of your full kit, right? And what would you consider 'deep optimization', seeing as just using every spell in the same prescribed order seems to be closer to it than what BLM has now?

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When do you use cure 1 on white mage?

I really think we need to know more about the changes in BLM before judging. There is already a thread claiming that the MP regen change will kill the BLM. I doubt BLM will be in a bad place and I am anxious to see what the full set of changes are.

to be honest I am a little bit confused about most thing but I will say this moving Ley lines is a really good add to blackmage

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Originally Posted by LolaLou

Blackmage will lose a large portion of skill expression and creativity, along with the risk reward factor that came from using your resources to squeeze out more damage, instead of using them for movement needs. But now there is no way to recover the required amount of mana without casting a set sequence of spells. There will also be no use of going into fire with non full mp depending on how the new job gauge works, doubling the amount of creativity that has been taken away from us.

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Welcome to a club called "every other job design."

I don't think non-standard play is dead completely - we get different amounts of charges for the new gauge depending on the spell used so I think the focus of nonstandard will shift to manipulating how you fill that gauge to get access to the new nuke. I would have preferred if we could regain mana with any gcd in UI personally. I'm only really concerned by the complete lack of any mana regen for any type of downtime we might encounter. That's gonna make everything from overworld mobs to high end raid phase transitions etc a nightmare -_-

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

I don't think non-standard play is dead completely - we get different amounts of charges for the new gauge depending on the spell used so I think the focus of nonstandard will shift to manipulating how you fill that gauge to get access to the new nuke. I would have preferred if we could regain mana with any gcd in UI personally. I'm only really concerned by the complete lack of any mana regen for any type of downtime we might encounter. That's gonna make everything from overworld mobs to high end raid phase transitions etc a nightmare -_-

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What we saw was: Fire 4 gave 1 charge. Flare gave 3. Manafont appeared to give full mana + 3 umbral hearts, which lets you double cast flare. At 6 stacks, you can super flare/meltdown/whatever it is.

What we don't know is: If manafont buffs flare (so you always double flare,) if there's overcap protection (appears to be no,) if it makes flares instant (can't say, too lazy to bring up vid,) or if casting at fewer stacks will generate a weaker superflare/meltdown.

Nonstandard will always be used for odd situations like weird boss jumps, and I wouldn't be surprised if short cycling exists in some form. But I'm just happy standardized nonstandard is dead. The game is better off with it gone.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

What we saw was: Fire 4 gave 1 charge. Flare gave 3. Manafont appeared to give full mana + 3 umbral hearts, which lets you double cast flare. At 6 stacks, you can super flare/meltdown/whatever it is.

What we don't know is: If manafont buffs flare (so you always double flare,) if there's overcap protection (appears to be no,) if it makes flares instant (can't say, too lazy to bring up vid,) or if casting at fewer stacks will generate a weaker superflare/meltdown.

Nonstandard will always be used for odd situations like weird boss jumps, and I wouldn't be surprised if short cycling exists in some form. But I'm just happy standardized nonstandard is dead. The game is better off with it gone.

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To the instant flare:
No its not.

You can see, that the mage used triple casting to use 2 flares and then shot the new explosiv fire Ball instantly to.

The rotation looks to be now: using triple cast at the start, to shot very fast fire4. Than use paradox (who looks to be now instant to, or, switch cast was used), shoot fire4 again, until the shards are full.
Use the new Fireball and despair.
Recover your stuff with manafront. Use triple cast again to shot 2 Flairs and the new spell to.

Imagine if flare is back into single target BLM standard.

I really doubt they've made fire paradox instant, that would make 0 sense and it would ruin your astral fire phase specially with low/mid sps. Most likely you get an instant after using the new ability that reposition the lines. New thunder has cast time in benchmark but in this trailer it has not, we'll see what happens about that.

About the MP, yes, it can potentially kill the non standard but we literally don't have any clue what's going to happen, you can see a MP regen effect after the blm uses B4, but how much is it, 5000?10000? Does ice paradox give MP? what about using thunder/xenos during ice? We just don't have enough information to just say "bro non standard is gone, ggwp 8.0 waiting room"

I would also be really sad if they get rid of non standard as it allows you to be creative in some scenarios, you have the option to do something different, it's not just about 2% dmg increase, it's more about you just have more options to handle mechanics, like imagine you have to do TOP P1 without non standard, you can technically still do it, but it would be a pain in the ass.

Also if you only get MP from ice spells, what about downtime? Imagine boss goes away and you finish on 0 MP, use tranpose and then what, don't get mana? I'll assume umbral soul will give you MP per usage or something.

TLDR: We just don't have enough information yet to claim anything, but wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to remove non standard with all this "ease to play" stuff they've been introducing, making all classes even more brain-dead.

Im worried about more instant casts as thats potentially telling of what kind of fights we're up to.

I guess it would have been too much to hope that they could integrate the six-star into the main gauge. I really liked that it was one piece unlock a lot of the other jobs.

With regards to not regening MP in Umbral Ice was that said? Or could it just be that you don't regenerate at the accelerated rate in Umbral Ice anymore?

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I guess it would have been too much to hope that they could integrate the six-star into the main gauge. I really liked that it was one piece unlock a lot of the other jobs.

With regards to not regening MP in Umbral Ice was that said? Or could it just be that you don't regenerate at the accelerated rate in Umbral Ice anymore?

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It was written on one of the powerpoint slides so less likely to be a victim of bad phrasing. It said mana will be recovered by ice spells INSTEAD of over time.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

It was written on one of the powerpoint slides so less likely to be a victim of bad phrasing. It said mana will be recovered by ice spells INSTEAD of over time.

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I figure it can be done one of a few ways:

1) BLM gets a trait that says you no longer regenerate mana normally and then ice spells have a Regenerate Mana effect on them.
2) BLM gets a trait that says you no longer regenerate mana while in Astral or Umbral phases and ice spells have regenerate mana on them.
3) BLM loses accelerated mana in Ice phase but keeps normal regeneration and ice spells have regenerate mana on them.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I figure it can be done one of a few ways:

1) BLM gets a trait that says you no longer regenerate mana normally and then ice spells have a Regenerate Mana effect on them.
2) BLM gets a trait that says you no longer regenerate mana while in Astral or Umbral phases and ice spells have regenerate mana on them.
3) BLM loses accelerated mana in Ice phase but keeps normal regeneration and ice spells have regenerate mana on them.

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Of those 3 possibilities, number 3 is the least annoying, but I still don't like it much heh. Personally I think it would be better if the accelerated mana was kept and supplemented by extra mana regen from ice spells. It would mean downtime isn't annoying for all levels of play, Spellspeed variations and mana ticks are not so troublesome and also doesn't scupper non-standard as we know it currently. I hope they lower the level we get Umbral Soul and also adjust the way it works so it freezes at full stacks. Personal gripe for me but I have it macro'd to R3 which also adjusts window size so when I'm doing any content with loot drops I sometimes get myself trapped rapidly rescaling the loot window or the readycheck instead of refreshing US lmao

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

Of those 3 possibilities, number 3 is the least annoying, but I still don't like it much heh. Personally I think it would be better if the accelerated mana was kept and supplemented by extra mana regen from ice spells. It would mean downtime isn't annoying for all levels of play, Spellspeed variations and mana ticks are not so troublesome and also doesn't scupper non-standard as we know it currently. I hope they lower the level we get Umbral Soul and also adjust the way it works so it freezes at full stacks. Personal gripe for me but I have it macro'd to R3 which also adjusts window size so when I'm doing any content with loot drops I sometimes get myself trapped rapidly rescaling the loot window or the readycheck instead of refreshing US lmao

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I have a feeling it's #3, though #2 is also viable. And while you didn't get frustrated by mana ticks, I did all the time. I always seemed to be half a tick off, and it was annoying. It's actually why I'm all for this, though I acknowledge I don't play non-standard and for the players who do, it's a loss. That said, for any given job non-standard play is going to be at risk since by definition you're outside the designed usage of the job. Even standard job usage isn't safe from expansion to expansion, nor would I want it to be because it would introduce a lot of constraints on the job design and prevent them from moving the game forward.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I have a feeling it's #3, though #2 is also viable. And while you didn't get frustrated by mana ticks, I did all the time. I always seemed to be half a tick off, and it was annoying. It's actually why I'm all for this, though I acknowledge I don't play non-standard and for the players who do, it's a loss. That said, for any given job non-standard play is going to be at risk since by definition you're outside the designed usage of the job. Even standard job usage isn't safe from expansion to expansion, nor would I want it to be because it would introduce a lot of constraints on the job design and prevent them from moving the game forward.

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Sorry if I wasn't clear I do actually think mana ticks are a problem which is why my proposed solution [ a combination of the mana regen we have now AND the regen from ice spells so that a combination of manatick and ice spells could refill mana instead of just ice spells as the proposed changes outline] is the best of both worlds for a wider range of player skill.

To be honest they could also have made it work with a timed dot ala embolden: swap to Umbral Ice, you get an umbral buff that starts with for example 10 stacks and consumes one every X seconds, regening 2500 MP each time, and swapping to fire deletes the buff. As for UI 1 and 2, they could continue regening less per tick: 1750 per stack on UI2 and 1000 per stack for UI1. Numbers totally arbitrary, but you get my drift. Unreliable shitty server tick design removed, but Umbral ice still regening on its own.

How would you all feel if blizzard 4 and high blizzard 2 just ended up giving 100% mana pool in one cast? The devs know that ice phase is supposed to feel fast and snappy. Why wouldn't they make it that way? There's a lot of bad faith and a lot of attachment to annoying mechanics in this community.

If Blizzard IV gave full MP it would kind of defeat the point of Umbral Paradox as a filler spell. it would make more sense to me if it did half each or about 6000mp each to cover for additional MP spending (primarily Thunder) or put the Lion' share on Umbral Paradox/Blizzard I.

(High) Blizzard II is the AOE version of Blizzard III, I assume you meant Freeze (Umbral Heart generator)?

That said, two extra comments:

1.) Players are attached to mechanics like Transpose and non-standard play as they break monotony in their gameplay without being mandatory, as pulling it off correctly requires more experience with the job. I'm sure we both will find things annoying about this game, but generally I don't wish for things to be homgenized and sterilized when others enjoy it.

2.) Agreeing with everything the devs do and never criticizing them is 100% optional to play this game.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

If Blizzard IV gave full MP it would kind of defeat the point of Umbral Paradox as a filler spell. it would make more sense to me if it did half each or about 6000mp each to cover for additional MP spending (primarily Thunder) or put the Lion' share on Umbral Paradox/Blizzard I.

(High) Blizzard II is the AOE version of Blizzard III, I assume you meant Freeze (Umbral Heart generator)?

That said, two extra comments:

1.) Players are attached to mechanics like Transpose and non-standard play as they break monotony in their gameplay without being mandatory, as pulling it off correctly requires more experience with the job. I'm sure we both will find things annoying about this game, but generally I don't wish for things to be homgenized and sterilized when others enjoy it.

2.) Agreeing with everything the devs do and never criticizing them is 100% optional to play this game.

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Yeah freeze, got the two mixed up. How do you view paradox as a filler spell lol, it is a huge potency instant cast. It makes sense to use it every umbral ice cycle. There is no defeating the purpose of it.

1) So the devs should pander to people who find their game monotonous instead of those who are enthusiastic about playing it the way they intended it to be played? Sounds like a strange sense of entitlement. You want to be rewarded for being disassatisfied with the experience as it is intended to be played? Can we just stop using the word homogenized and to a lesser extent sterilized? These are buzz words that have no basis in reality. It's like people are incapable of actually criticizing so they just throw out random words like "monotony" "homogeny" "sterilized" without actually backing it up.

2) Yep?

Room for skill expression is important in any gameplay environment and BLM has been good about that in that it has basic rotations that are easy to follow and fancier ones that abuse transpose and Paradox procs to squeeze out higher numbers.

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Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

Yeah freeze, got the two mixed up. How do you view paradox as a filler spell lol, it is a huge potency instant cast. It makes sense to use it every umbral ice cycle. There is no defeating the purpose of it.

1) So the devs should pander to people who find their game monotonous instead of those who are enthusiastic about playing it the way they intended it to be played? Sounds like a strange sense of entitlement. You want to be rewarded for being disassatisfied with the experience as it is intended to be played? Can we just stop using the word homogenized and to a lesser extent sterilized? These are buzz words that have no basis in reality. It's like people are incapable of actually criticizing so they just throw out random words like "monotony" "homogeny" "sterilized" without actually backing it up.

2) Yep?

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Sorry when I meant to call Paradox a filler spell, I meant it as one of the spells currently used to use while the MP ticks are running. That' why I thought it would be better if Paradox generated MP over Blizzard IV, also because it overlays over Blizzard I essentially.

As for your other response, I'm going to keep it as simple as I can.

For a start, I think you are overusing "the way it is meant to be played" argument a bit there, because this isn't a zero-sum game we are playing and both standard and non-standard are both perfectly viable, or simply put: it is okay to have more than one way that is correct to be played, just like it is right now. Standard is correct, non-standard is correct, no player will give you crap for not doing non-standard if you play standard just fine.

Second, I rather have people be listened to that have a genuine understanding of current and possibly past iterations of their job and seek to keep the jobs interesting by expanding viability, not narrow it down to the one correct way.

Lastly, about the choice in "buzzwords" - you have been actively positioning yourself against people criticizing specific changes the past few days and keep preaching how great it is and would be that they take down the last few jobs with unique alternative gameplay. Homogenization is exactly that, to make everything the same and honestly if you can't stand "buzzwords" being used to describe in shorthand what we see things as, learn to cope with it. There should be more, diverse ways to play a job, not less.

Also, are you honestly not one bit surprised that people you argue with seem to actively disagree with you since the Dawntrail Job Action liveletter? Sure, a few here and there may agree with you and you make good points on occasion, but your post history is public and I see you rarely in agreeance with other players.

By 8.0 Ley lines will no longer be a circle on the ground to stand in, but a self-buff for your status bar. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Cidel

By 8.0 Ley lines will no longer be a circle on the ground to stand in, but a self-buff for your status bar. :rolleyes:

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Gross. /10char

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

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It is okay for non-standard rotations to exist sure, it's just a game of course it is okay. It is no longer going to be the case going forward and it's not the way the devs want the game to be played, nor people like me.

So homogenization in your opinion is making it so all the wildly different jobs have standardized rotations that flow properly as the developers intended them to? All jobs having good system design is homogenization? What? At the end of the day, you're still not understanding what homogenization actually means but at least I understand where you are coming from with that remark now. Homogenization by your definition is a good thing, because it means they're succeeding at making all the rotations make sense and work as intended. I'm not struggling to cope with you using that word, I just didn't understand it because it's clearly not based in reality if you play the different jobs in this game. They're all very different in flow and feel. I'm all for "homogenization" if it means the rotations become well designed and standardized. Standardized doesn't mean boring or easy, it just means that there is a correct way of playing them and the developers succeeded at optimizing their intended rotation.

The way I would use homogenization is if all jobs had the same flow and feel, which is never going to be the case in this game. The homogenization boogey man goes hard in some parts of this community but that's all it is.

Why would I be surprised? I'm not trying to create an echo chamber. If someone says something good themselves, their post will stand on its own. I will probably like it, but I don't have to make another post just to pat them on the back or state what they've already stated again. Even if I could dislike posts on the forums, it wouldn't be a productive way of addressing opinions I disagree with. The whole point of engaging on these forums is to engage in debate. I'm not here to make friends or socialize, I'm here to have discourse over the direction of the game. That's just the nature of forums. What's the point of making a post just to agree with someone else?

I'm more concerned about manafont being an I win button on blm

While I can understand that people who enjoyed the non-standard BLM style are sad, I think being forced to preserve the non-standard rotation would set a dangerous precedent that would severely limit their design space.