Please do not take away BLM's timers.

They truly make the job *feel* like Black Mage, and not every single other caster without it. It currently still has an identity within the casters and I would hope they would want to keep it.

Unsub. Quit this trash game.

This game will never become good again without falling off a cliff.

"Please" implies a willingness to listen on SE's part. But your pleading will get nowhere. The developers have grown arrogant, and they keep some veterans chained to the game with lies and deception. They promise "improved encounter design" and "improved job design" while backstabbing you by gutting everything even more.

The developers and Yoshi P do not respect you as a player. So I'd advise you to quit. Ultimately your wallet is your strongest weapon.

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Originally Posted by HonoIkazuchi

It currently still has an identity within the casters

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That isn't allowed.

Bold of you to assume they want to retain identity lol.

It's quite amazing (and saddening) to see how a job, praised as the best designed one in the previous xpac, with an identity centered around being a turret, having to manage inner timers that made the use each spell a meaningful choice and a flexible rotation thanks to clever use of the mana regen systems, has lost everything in less than 1 year of a new expansion.

When times are so bad people are clinging to "cycling back and forth between 600 slightly different fire and ice spells" as the good ol' days of incredible job design.

/s (kinda. I've played a lot of BLM but I've always thought it could use a little more variety)

Too late, theyve already decided that the way to fix the BLM and PCT problem is to just turn BLM INTO Picto.

I understand why they did it (to increase the amount of people who play it due to it being easier), but the result is that it's the same as all the other jobs and rips the soul and identity from it.

They need to ask: what is their endgame? To make all jobs exactly the same? And if that's the aim then they may as well all be one job.

People never played BLM much relative to other jobs but it's one of those things you play when you want to challenge yourself. Just like how a lot of people might not get the Necromancer title or do an Ultimate, but it's something that's always there to do when you're ready to challenge yourself. And these changes make it just a different coat of paint from other casters.

I never minded the 7.0 changes as a casual BLM because they kept the timer, but removing this and the long cast times is what really obliterates its identity.

One thing I will say is that PCT is a bit like a mini-BLM with the paint buff and I can see why they might want to make it on par with how PCT is, but the whole point of them being different jobs is to be actually different.

Unfortunately, they are deaf to community feedback. Complaining has not worked for any job. It's like they live in a different universe.

This one took the air out of my lungs. Any hope I had for the future of job design is gone.

Job team, what the hell are you doing? I know the devs don't care about the forums, but come on. NO ONE wants this. Nearly EVERYONE is against this.

I don't really participate in these forums but I just wanted to say that I am unhappy with the changes shown on-stream so that my voice is somewhere.

I made a forum account just to post this.
I will be unsubbing if these changes go through. All of the excitement I had for the next raid tier is gone. I have played this game for years and fallen in love with BLM, I love the unique challenge it presents. I don't know if this will reach the ears of those it needs to, but I'm sorely disappointed in the direction that led them here, and I can only hope they take this feedback seriously.

I'm so tired of this, man... BLM is the only caster I've enjoyed playing. Why do all 21 battle jobs have to play at the exact same level of play?...

Taking the timers out of MNK is what killed it for me, so I'm only imagining BLM's upcoming changes will have the exact same effect for me. Ugh.

I think it's pretty obvious - the DT jobs team has someone different assigned to BLM who's insecure about how much people enjoyed nonstandard EW.

After having had to bear the ignominy of public displeasure about removing that and having to add back in Paradox-Ice, then to be drubbed for how atrocious Flare Star feels as an addition, and further having to be humiliated about clearly not having taken into account how Despair's timing was extremely tight due to Paradox-Fire refreshing the timer immediately but locking you in to the GCD, a mistake that could only be made by someone who clearly did not play the job at even a basic level...

The redesign is just spite. Which, I mean, whatever. There's no other lack of games to play, and my life isn't harmed by refusing to return to a product petulantly produced.

Sorry but currently BLM player sentiment is making PCT players feel bad. Making BLM as bland and as easy as PCT/SMN is the only solution. They really just do not want to make PCT players feel bad.

Genuinely though, BLM is the only caster I enjoy. SMN feels boring, PCT is boring, RDM feels clunky. BLM Felt just right. I enjoy the job when I play casters. Maybe we're overracting but I doubt it. It just feels like they keep dumbing down jobs.

This game is also played by people who love BLM for its identity and uniqueness, hear us out.

Making Despair instant has been the beginning of the end. It's not an overreacting, stop simplifying the game!

Maybe this is what Yoshida talked about in the mobile game's announcement, about how they'd been designing the main game to be easily translatable to mobile.

FF14 Devs, please don't remove the timers from BLM.

Right now, BLM is the only job I still care about. With the other jobs, it mostly feels like my rotation is this static, unchanging series of buttons to press, entirely detached from what the enemies, boss, or my teammates are doing. Personally, I don't find that engaging. That's why I play BLM, because it's the only job where when I play it, I feel like I still need to dynamically make strategic choices, and that's where I find my engagement in FF14's combat.

That's in large part due to the timers, which add an additional layer of complexity to deciding what spell to cast at what time. The fact that I don't know for certain which spell I'll be casting next until I've taken the timer into account is what keeps BLM feeling dynamic and interesting to me.

And that's the same reason I like the long cast times: committing to a long cast is a risk, and if the situation changes before that cast finishes, that presents a situation where I'm encouraged to re-evaluate my strategy. Perhaps I should cut my losses and cancel the cast, losing the time I spent casting but gaining the ability to do whatever else needs to be done. Or perhaps I should finish the cast and accept whatever new consequences await me. That's an interesting decision to make that keeps combat feeling engaging, and the shorter the cast time, the less this is possible.

Part of what's cool about a class-based game like FF14 is that different players will gravitate towards different play styles. By providing a diverse array of experiences, all manner of players can find something that's suited to their tastes, all while still playing the same game together. Unfortunately, many classes seem to be becoming more similar and losing the differences that make playing them unique. Right now, BLM is the only class that I enjoy. For players who don't enjoy the experience that BLM is offering right now, they have access to every other class. By making BLM more like these other classes, the game will lose the distinct experience that only BLM is currently offering, and what it will get in return is more of what it already has. And that's going to leave players like me, players who have loved the way BLM kept them on their toes for a decade, with nothing to engage them.

Please reconsider these changes.

I want to add my voice to this. Moreso than just the timers, the fun of Black Mage was the long, powerful cast times and skillful Astral and Umbral timer management, which was easy enough to work around once you got familiar with the class. BLM felt just fine in 7.1 and doesn't need to be changed. Please, reconsider the changes you made to BLM in 7.2 and keep BLM the way it is.

I only hope that no one plays blm with these changes and more people realize the development team is full of BS for the future of this game

I registered on the forum just to leave this comment.
Please read to the end, especially if you are belong to the SE.

I really don't like what SE are doing with battle jobs.
I remember the times when we had the old SMN, and back then its rework seemed like a very sad decision to me: the old summoner may have been weird, but it was difficult and interesting, and I liked it. Like the AST, who simply had its night phase taken away (why? who benefited from this? was it really necessary to adhere to the rule "we can only have an equal number of shield and regen healers"?). I don't remember the old MNK, maybe the EDW monk became better, but the fact that in DT you took away its timers (which kept the monk player in suspense) in my opinion destroyed the job.

And now you came for my favorite job too.
I remember the times when BLM had an Enochian button, but okay, maybe this nerf was worth the convenience. In EDW BLM became better because we got a beautiful button replacing Fire1, and also a very beautiful button that gives a stack of Polyglot. Back when the Pandemonium raids came out, we still had mana tics that forced you to rely on feelings and strictly control the time you were in the ice phase, and it was great, it was wonderful. I fondly remember the savage raids that I played on this job. I really liked challenging myself.

But what have we seen since the release of DT?
I strongly disagree with people who think that BLM was ok in 7.0, IT WAS NOT.
They cut off mana tics from the job (by which deleted time management in the ice phase), gave it an awkward unnecessary Flare Star (that greatly simplified time management in the fire phase), gave it portable Ley Lines (?!), and made Despair an insta-cast (?!?!?!?!). Despair was one of those buttons that kept the soul of BLM inside it. That great moment when you have 3 seconds left on the gauge, you have to cast Despair, but a voidzone is already spawning under your feet - that's what black mage means. A strategic approach to your gameplay, an attempt to predict the timings of mechanics that will happen in the next 30 seconds. That's what BLM meant to me.

After adding Flare Star and insta-cast Despair, this class became boring for me, so I refused to play it. NOT because PCT appeared, but because BLM itself started having problems.
And now it seems to go into oblivion, and will remain the same ghost of its former self, like summoner, astrologer and monk.

I'm seriously considering unsubscribing if the patch notes will confirm our fears about such a rework of BLM.

You will be given one button to press and you will enjoy it

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Originally Posted by Oreste

I registered on the forum just to leave this comment.
Please read to the end, especially if you are belong to the SE.

I really don't like what SE are doing with battle jobs.
I'm seriously considering unsubscribing if the patch notes will confirm our fears about such a rework of BLM.

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Believe me, this forum has had regulars saying how they don't like what is happening with battle jobs for looks at imaginary watch ... I've lost count of the years but they were doing it in Stormblood.

The most acknowledgement I think I saw of this was:
- At the launch of Endwalker, they said they understand people want 3.0 jobs back (obvious reference to the forums) but they are happy with where they got them in 5.0 and wanted to continue it in Endwalker.
- At the launch of Dawntrail, they acknowledged healers wanted more attacks so added an extra one every 2 minutes.
- Right before Dawntrail suddenly acknowledging loads of things that have been said for years on the forums, and admitting removing stress had removed the fun.

Their community team apparently read the forums but they don't provide any indication if they do. Developers are far more likely to read the specific forums such as the DPS forums because of how posts shuffle through the General forum fast before they are likely to even see them.

I personally found 7.0 BLM alright because I only play it casually. For a casual BLM, the changes were useful but it upset people who actually mained it. But removing the timer and the Fire IV cast times, combined with how it highlights what to press now, effectively kills what is unique about it and turns it into a glamour for the other casters.

Unfortunately, there is precedent that what we observe in streams is what is changing. There is no chance they will revert it before the patch because they have a 2 week final QA period and there is less than 2 weeks now.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Developers are far more likely to read the specific forums such as the DPS forums because of how posts shuffle through the General forum fast before they are likely to even see them.

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k, now I'm thinking to go whine on the DPS forum

I recently watched a youtube video that was grading which jobs were the hardest and I was struck by them all being my favorites: GNB, AST, MNK, and BLM. I gravitate towards the more complex jobs. Even if I have not mastered them all I like there to be something I can improve on over time in different parts of the game. DT gutted MNK and BLM my two most played jobs. Their EW versions felt much better to me. I stopped playing BLM outside of PvP due to the changes. I was planning on getting back into BLM in 7.2 assuming all the changes would have been settled, but now BLM looks like its getting dumbed down again. If you're changing BLM again because not enough people are playing it now, it is because you keep making changes to the job every chance you get and some people are waiting for changes to stop first. I didn't care that there are jobs like PCT that are easier to play and do more damage. The only people that complain about PCT are those who use or rely on the opinions of people who use third party apps. Those who fixate on 'my job isn't doing as much damage as that job' are whiny insecure players who don't know what fun is. These types are never content. There should be jobs that are at every end of the difficulty spectrum. If all jobs are easy to play then there will be no reason to play FFXIV anymore because jobs are the thing that players spend the most time with. You take your job with you everywhere. Being able to do roulettes at all levels and have a job that makes them more interesting and fun is important. SE's obsession with making 5% of the game harder and harder (Savage and Ultimate) while making the rest of the game easier and easier (making sure every job can easily do Savages and Ultimates) is probably what is lowering your player numbers more than anything else.

If you want to make absurd changes to 7.x BLM go ahead and add it as a new job, but restore 6.x BLM which you murdered. There is no reason you cannot have two schools of MNK or BLM in the same game and actually see which is preferred. If you continue on your destructive path you may as well change the name of the new job to Bland Mage while you are at it.

:mad:

Dear Creative Studio 3,

Your obsession over "metrics!! metrics!! metrics!!" is killing the fun of the game.

Black Mage was the one class in Endwalker that I could truly say I "got"
It's not that it was the only one I understood, (not much on Scholar to get in the first place) but it was the only one with the types of challenges I enjoyed. I'm not good at keeping track of lots of long timers to hit cooldowns on the dot. but I can certainly judge distances and short term timeframes.
If Black Mage was a 10/10 in Endwalker, then my second favorite, Red Mage was a 7/10 to put it into perspective, and most others hover around 3 to 6.
This change, if it actually makes it to live, will take away pretty much every last thing I enjoyed about Black Mage up to this point. I'm on a break from the game, but still allowed here because I was an idiot and took too long to decide whether to cancel my sub or not, causing my 6 month to lapse. I don't even know if I'll want to come back knowing that this is what they did to my class.
It's honestly baffling just how much copium I've huffed in the last year about this.
"Black Mage is by far the best maintained job. I've got nothing to worry about"
"It's only the media tour, they've still got time to fix these issues. I never played non-standard anyway. Maybe it'll be fun"
"Well at least we got Ice Paradox back. that's a little better, I guess. Even if it gives us yet more free movement."
"So Despair is instant now, but at least now the fire phase isn't so restrictive at low spell speed. I don't like it, but it's at least better than it was before."
"I don't have to worry about 7.2. They've made massive changes already, and it's not nearly as bad as it was in 7.0. They're definitely done messing with it."
By the same scale, 7.2 Black Mage will probably be a 2/10. The only edge it has over Summoner is ley lines and Thunder. (Hear that CBU3? That's the next thing you want to cut.)

You can create all the unique encounters and quality of life changes you want, but at the end of the day, job design is the one thing that we all have to interact with. Being a master of a job in all scenarios as soon as you reach max level just turns it into something to keep your hands busy while you wait to find out the next safe spot to walk to in a fight. You might as well just let the game play itself, and mail us all a f-ing fidget spinner.
The whole point of having abilities to attack a boss with is so that we play an active part in winning against the boss. This sounds too obvious to point out, but they seem to not understand that making that as easy as mashing one button takes away that feeling entirely. There has to be a feeling that you play an active role in getting that health bar from 100% to 0%. And if they remove all wrong choices, what role do you play? Without the possibility of failure, there is no success.
Like I said, I don't know if I'll even want to come back to the game. I don't even know what game could replace this. Certainly not World of Warcraft. I gave up on it years ago, and at it's best, classes have been just "spam your filler while waiting for things to go off cooldown. occasionally you'll see a glowing button that you should press"
I watched bits and pieces of the live letter, and I just felt nothing. A year ago, I'd be hyped like crazy for Cosmic Exploration, or whatever that new Eureka was called. But now I just feel numb.
I came to this game for what it is, not what I could turn it into. Changing a game for people who don't even play it is just going to alienate your core fanbase, and win you customers who are more than likely to quit when they get bored.

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

I only hope that no one plays blm with these changes and more people realize the development team is full of BS for the future of this game

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I havent found mutch players going blm since endwalker.

Who the hell are these changes for?

Who are these changes catering to? The casual players? The raiders?? Is this supposed to be a counter to PCT? BLM has always been a niche job, if it's to increase popularity, then to whom? Casual players don't really care about playing it perfectly. Raiders won't care either, if PCT still do less or an equal amount of DPS than an BLM, PCT will still be a better pick because of its support abilities and buff.

People were playing BLM BECAUSE of its uniqueness, why reducing cast time? Why removing timers? I thought they were going to make jobs more unique? This is just SMN 2 with explosions. They are just stripping away BLM's identity
There are 20+ jobs in this game, what is the point of making a copy paste of every job with a different coat of color?

PCT will still outdps every other DPS in the next Ultimate anyway thanks to its muses, so this is all pointless
I'll just inhale an insane amount of copium and hoping this is some kind of weird dev build. But it's far too elaborated to be one

If this truly is what they want BLM to be, just don't. Nobody wants this. Nobody is happy with this. They can make a job more appealing to a broader audience without stripping its identity away. But are they truly capable of such thing?

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Maybe this is what Yoshida talked about in the mobile game's announcement, about how they'd been designing the main game to be easily translatable to mobile.

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Thats make sense to me.

As someone who I think is almost excessively positive about this game, even I really don't get why they keep doing this to every job. Why take away positionals from low level dragoon? Why turn Summoner into a little tikes baby's first colors toy? And why remove Black Mage's entire identity? Unless they're about to pull out some crazy specialization system in 8.0 that breathes new life into everything, I cannot understand why every job seems to only get more and more dull & homogenized with every patch. It's sad, and makes leveling jobs other than your main feel pointless since they all play just about the same anyway at this point.

Jobs are becoming more of an aesthetic choice than anything and that sucks.

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Originally Posted by Fellgon

I havent found mutch players going blm since endwalker.

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Yea, they’re making it easier so more people will be drawn to it like the summoner rework, and ai hope it doesn’t happen.

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Originally Posted by Bakubread

As someone who I think is almost excessively positive about this game, even I really don't get why they keep doing this to every job. Why take away positionals from low level dragoon? Why turn Summoner into a little tikes baby's first colors toy? And why remove Black Mage's entire identity? Unless they're about to pull out some crazy specialization system in 8.0 that breathes new life into everything, I cannot understand why every job seems to only get more and more dull & homogenized with every patch. It's sad, and makes leveling jobs other than your main feel pointless since they all play just about the same anyway at this point.

Jobs are becoming more of an aesthetic choice than anything and that sucks.

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They do it so they can keep certain raiders happy. Mind you not all or even most raiders even ask for this in the first place.

But because having jobs be unique/interesting means theirs more room for the job to be less viable in raids hence why every job is fundamentally the same job with barely any noticeable upsides and downsides, its just easier to balance and people complain less. They also want all jobs to trend to "easy to pick up and easy to use" so that people don't feel "left out" if they like a jobs aesthetic's but don't play its gameplay.

This is why we don't have other interesting things like selectable role actions, because people have argued "illusion of choice" so any sort of "build" Varity between the same job has been slowly took out.

We are left with this bland game with no real role fantasy or identity, jobs like dark knight are basically "Tank" BLM "Magic DPS" Ect. Theirs no longer a reason to even level up a job that shares the same generic category because they play the exact same and offer nothing unique.

Funny thing is when everything's super balanced, nothing is balanced, because now job choice has no meaning outside of which job has the tiny damage advantage, theirs no reason to pick a slightly worse dps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bakubread

As someone who I think is almost excessively positive about this game, even I really don't get why they keep doing this to every job. Why take away positionals from low level dragoon? Why turn Summoner into a little tikes baby's first colors toy? And why remove Black Mage's entire identity? Unless they're about to pull out some crazy specialization system in 8.0 that breathes new life into everything, I cannot understand why every job seems to only get more and more dull & homogenized with every patch. It's sad, and makes leveling jobs other than your main feel pointless since they all play just about the same anyway at this point.

Jobs are becoming more of an aesthetic choice than anything and that sucks.

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Hard to say because they don't COMMUNICATE about the future.

It's so sad seeing what has become of FFXIV battle jobs...

Do not question

CONSUME BAD DESIGN DECISIONS

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bakubread

Jobs are becoming more of an aesthetic choice than anything and that sucks.

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My guess, so at the end every job would be pick in high end raid day one.

It use to be a lot of threads about dmg out put and balancing when a new tier of raid drop. Not anymore

Not that I agree with this approach but this is the easiest way to keep their job easy and the raid community happy

Once upon a time, a lot of jobs had timers similar to Black Mage. At first it was Monk and Warrior, and then Dragoon joined in the mix in Heavensward.

In ARR, Black Mage wasn't know for its "long cast times". It was reliant on procs for mobility and swiftly casting spells. Those "long cast times" didn't come until Heavensward and were in periodic bursts as you literally couldn't maintain enochian indefinitely. Outside of those bursts, you were just an ARR Black Mage.

Because the job continued to change, albeit in small bits, was it possible to always be in "long cast time" phase. Some BLM mains in ARR didn't like HW changes to BLM. And of those that did, didn't like the changes BLM got in Shadowbringers. Black Mage is literally the last of the timer jobs in ARR (or DRG with HW) to still have it despite so many changes and updates making maintaining that timer easier and easier. At this point you have to end up in an incredibly specific situation to potentially lose it. It really doesn't serve a purpose anymore. Just a relic of what it used to be from 11 years ago.