BLM Changes Are Fantastic. The timers were so annoying. Thanks FFXIV team ! :)

I'm seeing a sea of only negative posts about the BLM Changes. So, I'm posting a positive thread to ensure Yoshi P and team are aware that some people are actually pumped about the changes :)

black mage got shot

You already had every other job you could play for the sake of simplicity, that wasn't enough for you? Also Yoshi P and his team aren't babies that need to be coddled. You're seeing a sea of negative posts because the changes are truly abhorrent.

If you wanted a magical DPS with barely any casts and no timers you literally had 3 other jobs and 4 healers to choose from the fact that you decide to say this after BLM changes leads me to think you never had an interest, and of course, you are baiting.

In short: Opinion discarded.

Am actually massively impressed.

I don't like the changes still, but they're well done insofar that if you could already play BLM before, ~nothing changes. You roughly press the same buttons in roughly the same sequencing. As far as pretty deep-cutting changes goes, well done I suppose.

Of course, I have to trust them on that full-casting would not work for future fights (I guess they mean savages), but in that context, this is worlds better done than even my most positive expectations.

No they're not fantastic. I ran a level 70 Ivalice raid today. 90% of the raid I only pressed a single button. Whenever Manafont was up, I just spammed like 12 Fire IVs in a row with no breaks. And I could basically move constantly between triple cast and slide casting.

BLM now feels like WHM without the heals or Summoner without the Summons.

That's your opinion, and you're allowed to have it. Thank you for your contribution. Personally, the timers were a nuisance more than anything. It didn't add to job identity or complexity, it was just annoying, and clunky.

I don't think anyone though that yoshi p and team were babies that needed to be coddled. But, I think it's only fair that they see that some (maybe even most) people are pumped about the changes. People use the forums mostly to complain, so it's necessary to have a pool of opinions from both sides.

The overwhelming sentiment from the player base based off forums, discords (check BLM lounge in balance) and Reddit: This is a bad change. I tend to lurk in these places and check the ongoing sentiment of the players. There's an extremely minute few people who like all these changes. I suggest you break out of your bubble and delve into some of these discussions because it is not just "a bunch of people complaining on forums".

You want fast casting with no timers? Go play WHM. Go play RDM. Go play SMN. No need for BLM to also be in this state.

Even the mainsub can’t bring themselves to like the changes. One person posted that they ended up really liking them and the top like 200 comments are just “what is there to like about NU BLM”

with the timers gone, there is no point to cast fire 1/3 or paradox anymore. Kinda rips the heart out of the class but this was done so they could keep up the difficulty nothing more. Honestly now there are too many mechanics when you have to pay attention and not cast at all or it gets you killed.

They need to decide if they are gong keep these changes then blm needs a rework no more paradox and maybe merge fire 1 into fire 3 or something.

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Originally Posted by Grimr

with the timers gone, there is no point to cast fire 1/3 or paradox anymore. Kinda rips the heart out of the class but this was done so they could keep up the difficulty nothing more. Honestly now there are too many mechanics when you have to pay attention and not cast at all or it gets you killed.

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You cast Paradox for Firestarter. You never wanted to cast Fire 1 or 3 mid-cycle anyways. Nothing changed, except that you're a bit free where in the cycle to use Paradox now, which helps a lot with intermittent movement.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

You cast Paradox for Firestarter. You never wanted to cast Fire 1 or 3 mid-cycle anyways. Nothing changed, except that you're a bit free where in the cycle to use Paradox now, which helps a lot with intermittent movement.

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I think what they meant to say is "Fire 1 no longer has a point at Lv60+ up to Lv90 when you learn Paradox, because Fire IV has the same MP cost, more potency and Fire I doesn't guarantee firestarter for transpose Fire III lines like Paradox does, therefore you just use Fire IV 7x instead of 6x because you no longer need it to refresh Astrla Fire".

How in god's name they (devs, QnA team, etc) haven't noticed that is beyond me.

Im glad you can enjoy a job for its visuals.

you found them annoying and clunky because you didnt play the job. literally every blm player that actually enjoyed the job for what it was liked having to actually use their brain sometimes. u can play literally 3 other casters for the braindead experience u wanted lol

i am sorry for all blm and feels their lose (as a former ShB smn), but i do actually like the change and do make me want to play more blm.

Change is not always for the best (at least not for the veteran) but it was made to make it more popular to low / mid core players i do think :x

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Originally Posted by Mecia

Im glad you can enjoy a job for its visuals.

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That's the only reason to pick a job anymore is for its visuals.

Nothing of substance, but if you like how job look you pick. Wonderful game design.

The changes were needed for the sake of the game. Since it's kinda stupid for one single job to hold back the entire game's encounter design due to being so slow, static and dependent on timers.

Almost everyone agrees that the new faster paced encounters in the new raid series is extremely good.

On a very important side note: I chuckle at the people completely invalidating your opinion and frankly anyone's who didn't like the old blackmage. Cuz ofc it doesn't matter if you want to *specifically* play blackage. Classic official forums toxicity, lol smh.

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Originally Posted by RulerOfPotaoes

The changes were needed for the sake of the game. Since it's kinda stupid for one single job to hold back the entire game's encounter design due to being so slow, static and dependent on timers.

Almost everyone agrees that the new faster paced encounters in the new raid series is extremely good.

On a very important side note: I chuckle at the people completely invalidating your opinion and frankly anyone's who didn't like the old blackmage. Cuz ofc it doesn't matter if you want to *specifically* play blackage. Classic official forums toxicity, lol smh.

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1) It isn’t one job holding back the game. The most immobile class is SCH and the most immobile damage caster prior to these changes is RDM. BLM has been extremely mobile for 2 expansions now

2) if encounter designs only answer To boredom is “go faster” it’s flawed encounter design because it doesn’t allow casters to play to their fantasy. Some of us like casting long big nukes and being forced to constantly run around the arena isn’t terribly great to our fantasy. Like I’ll say that while I like M5 the fact that the dance mechanic interrupts casts yet the boss moves so that melee will have the boss next to their spotlight is obvious design that isn’t catering to casters

“Just go faster” isn’t compatible with a game that has half its classes be casters and people enjoy playing said casters

yooo great opinion pal anyways where is the dislike button

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Originally Posted by RulerOfPotaoes

The changes were needed for the sake of the game. Since it's kinda stupid for one single job to hold back the entire game's encounter design due to being so slow, static and dependent on timers.

Almost everyone agrees that the new faster paced encounters in the new raid series is extremely good.

On a very important side note: I chuckle at the people completely invalidating your opinion and frankly anyone's who didn't like the old blackmage. Cuz ofc it doesn't matter if you want to *specifically* play blackage. Classic official forums toxicity, lol smh.

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Why do you assume it was holding fight design back? BLMs have done every encounter including Barbariccia and TOP.

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Originally Posted by OliverQ

Why do you assume it was holding fight design back? BLMs have done every encounter including Barbariccia and TOP.

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Because that's the reason given. Like, you can disagree, but that doesn't change the fact that the devs - from all we can know - changed it because, in their perspective, it held encounter design back. "Future fights would not be doable if you have to cast a lot" <-- paraphrased, but that's the stated reason.

Do I agree? Not really, because of the next part. But it's the reason they gave. /shrug

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It isn’t one job holding back the game. The most immobile class is SCH and the most immobile damage caster prior to these changes is RDM. BLM has been extremely mobile for 2 expansions now

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That is true, and I wish more people understood this. It's been a long time since BLM was "the casting caster". That has been Red Mage, for a while now (I'd contest SCH because while suboptimal you could always switch to instant spam and be fully mobile). I mean I assume mid-term they'll take at least 1 charge of Triplecast away again now, since that was a bandaid solution to a problem that no longer exists.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Because that's the reason given. Like, you can disagree, but that doesn't change the fact that the devs - from all we can know - changed it because, in their perspective, it held encounter design back. "Future fights would not be doable if you have to cast a lot" <-- paraphrased, but that's the stated reason.

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The devs have also said more times than I can count that they are adding x healing actions (to whatever class take your pick) because the healing is going to be increased

Spoiler alert it literally never gets increased

The devs have shown multiple times that they will make the change then retroactively attempt to justify it with no action on their “justification”

In which case, what would be your explanation? It's the job Yoshi P plays himself, is he getting old and struggled personally with the outdated design?

Like, of course it might be a different reason, but just "so noobs can play it" isn't actually something that motives a dev (other stuff to do, no time anyways, more pressing issues). In this case it'd have to be a manager who has a personal pet peeve and hence clears the backlog and prioritizes "Make Black Mage easier to play!". Otherwise it would not happen.

It could be a host of other reasons, but none of those would be something not communicatable by marketing:

* Fight design will no longer fit <-- we are here
* Future engine changes don't work with the internal mechanics on a code level.
* Something inherently broken about the implementation.
* Upcoming full scrapping and re-impelementation of the job requires some pre-work. <-- this is just about the only reason where I can see why you'd want to not talk about it yet
* Lots of player feedback how the job is annoying to play. <-- we know they say this independent of whether it's the actual reason or not, and they did not, so that's food for thought
* A Black Mage died, once, and Yoshi P took personal offense.
* Needed to rework a job, ran out of ideas, and nobody knows where the code for Scholar is kept so they couldn't do that one no matter how much the job could use it.

There's just no reason they would not just name, tbh. Except that one. I suspect that as always the encounter designers got the first dibs on every design decision, and they said "Screw Black Mage holding us back since Shadowbringers, take cast time off or be laid off" or something to that end.

Likely the same reason they flatten any job, because it makes it temporarily more popular due to the flood of people who sub 10 parse it in dungeons giving it a second chance

They just can’t say that’s the reason “yeah stuff you mains who like it it’s not popular enough with the WHM is hard crowd so we are changing it. When people flood to it in 7.2 and RDM ends up abandoned we will rework RDM as well”

I know most players only care for raid performance of a job, but for me the changes are great as the timers were extremely tedious in situations when you have multiple enemies to kill that die relatively fast.
Im actually excited to take blm to deep dungeons now, it feels like proper job in them now. Less cast time also plays well for situation when its you who has the aggro (aka soloing), allows for stagger kiting that other casters could do without issue.

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Originally Posted by ThurinTurambar

I know most players only care for raid performance of a job, but for me the changes are great as the timers were extremely tedious in situations when you have multiple enemies to kill that die relatively fast.
Im actually excited to take blm to deep dungeons now, it feels like proper job in them now. Less cast time also plays well for situation when its you who has the aggro (aka soloing), allows for stagger kiting that other casters could do without issue.

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And it will be! for the 3 days that you play it before never touching it again until 8.0.

Congrats bub. You're exactly who the changes were meant for.

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Originally Posted by NitsuLeviathan

Congrats bub. You're exactly who the changes were meant for.

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When you're this angry about a video game that you can't even let someone else be happy about it, you really ought to take a step back. And I don't just mean from the forums.

This threads should be in frontpage!

As a very casual BLM player... (As in, I level it to max last because I'm lazy, awful at it,and dread it! :rolleyes:)

...this was a surprising but welcome change. No longer did I have to say "Well there goes another polyglot!" because I ran out of time trying to dodge too much crap. Looking at you, Vanguard.

Actually, it's made me want try and learn the rotation instead of just back and forth spamming whatever I can manage to get off while i wait for the next Triplecast to be up. :p

Okay, but in all seriousness. For people who don't play BLM but want to get into it, it's great not to have to worry SO much about beating the clock to get your Despair off. Now it feels like you just unload all your mana, rinse and repeat. Not so complicated and doesn't give the feeling like you are always missing your Thunderhead and Paradox casts because Enochian is expiring.

Just my 10¢.

With these changes at high levels, fire 1 and blizzard 1 have no more use at high levels and for the sake of cleaning up bar clutter, would like to see them turn into Fire/Blizzard 4 so you don't need to swap the 1's back onto the bar because Roulette gave you low level content.

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Originally Posted by PariahDoge

With these changes at high levels, fire 1 and blizzard 1 have no more use at high levels and for the sake of cleaning up bar clutter, would like to see them turn into Fire/Blizzard 4 so you don't need to swap the 1's back onto the bar because Roulette gave you low level content.

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This would unironically be great, assuming Fire IV inherits the 40% (or less) Firestarter from Fire I. Otherwise, guaranteeing Firestarter for Fire I at Lv60+ (trait) would work quite well and make it worth it for Transpose F3P lines (pre Paradox).

But yeah Blizzard I is sad, at least back then it had a Heavy (useful for DD/Exploration content).

Yeah they gotta do something about fire 1 and blizz 1 having no use. I never liked doing leveling roulettes with BLM as I would always forget to pop blizz 1 back on there.

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Originally Posted by Astraturnal

Yeah they gotta do something about fire 1 and blizz 1 having no use. I never liked doing leveling roulettes with BLM as I would always forget to pop blizz 1 back on there.

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It speaks of the lack of concept for the underlying gameplay loop (instead it was/is this hodgepodge of things that got bolted on over the years, it's not for no reason that we joke that BLM gets another thing tacked to their UI element each expansion) that Fire 1 / Blizzard 1 never upgrade into anything else.

Is there a different way to get paradox on the bars? Like you at least need fire 1 on your bars for paradox right? blizz 1 sure that's annoying but I just leave it on some unassigned bar space then shift it back onto my bars in the rare cases it is relevant.

What you're seeing is the vocal minority. The majority of people are actually in-game playing BLM, and enjoying the changes. People don't go to discords/forums/reddit to talk about how they like stuff (99% of the time), if they did, you would see that people actually like the changes. Take what you're seeing with a grain of salt, and actually take a look around.

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Originally Posted by Elliongrey

What you're seeing is the vocal minority. The majority of people are actually in-game playing BLM, and enjoying the changes. People don't go to discords/forums/reddit to talk about how they like stuff (99% of the time), if they did, you would see that people actually like the changes. Take what you're seeing with a grain of salt, and actually take a look around.

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“Dont look anywhere just assume everyone is enjoying it”

Your in game vibe check is even less reliable than checking the listening posts

Not wrong insofar that yesterday I could not find a single M6S group on Light without a BLM in it. I was grouped with a caster, hence us noticing how we could not join any groups in that combination. And clicking on them, it was always BLM. But of course that's the "new&fresh" bump which is expected.

And here i am sipping my tea watching this rage bait as i look at range dps wondering if yoshi-p even know wtf range dps means or range support means lol.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

“Dont look anywhere just assume everyone is enjoying it”

Your in game vibe check is even less reliable than checking the listening posts

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Not sure what you're quoting, but I can't imagine it's from anything I said. I never said that you should assume everyone is enjoying it. I'm simply saying you should leave your bubble of only seeing negative black mage posts, and get a more balanced view/take on how people feel about the BLM changes.

> Your in game vibe check is even less reliable than checking the listening posts

It sounds like you just want to believe that everyone hates the BLM changes, so there's no point in even having this conversation. I'm not oblivious to the fact that _some_ people are unhappy about the changes, but I don't think it's the majority. Like I said, if people went to the forums, discords, reddit to shout about their love for the BLM changes, you would see that a lot more people like them. But, we can't have balance - especially, on the internet.