7.2 BLM Praise Thread

This thread is for those who prefer 7.2 BLM over its predecessor. I personally do not understand why pushing buttons in sequence needs to have artificial difficulty (or as I call, “fake fun”). Your Astral/Umbral timer does not add anything substantive to the game. As of 7.2, your rotation has not changed AT ALL. The ONLY thing different is a number on the screen. Actually, something did change: you’ll finally be able to do mechanics! Your party members will be so happy with you that they’ll let you back in Party Finder.

Now, I know what you all are thinking: this was YOUR class, right? You in The Balance Discord who hoard “theorycrafting” “strategies”? You don’t want those “other people” playing “your” class. If BLM becomes a class for plebeians, you’re no longer special. Is that it?

I’ve been playing this game for over nine years. Black mage has never been difficult. You chose to make fake fan theories and write a whole book based on babble from The Balance Discord server. Well, guess what? It’s my class too. I’m not in your Discord, never have been, never will be, and most importantly, I don’t care about your “theorycrafting” or your “meta”. Black mage is the press-fire-then-ice class. That’s it.

If you don’t like it, please unsubscribe. Better yet, please liquidate The Balance Discord and all associated publications. This game belongs to the people.

Your post is coming off a little combative. I am glad you like the changes. For me personally, I feel like part of the fun of games with multiple classes is you get a totally new gameplay experience picking another class. The changes in 7.2, to me, feel like they were specifically aimed at making BLM more like the other classes because its gameplay was too much of an outlier (they basically said as much when they explained why they did this).

For me personally I enjoyed the old BLM because I found myself totally bored playing the other classes and the game would start to feel like a chore for me. My personal experience was, I come from a background of playing other MMOs at a high level and I started playing FFXIV with a real life friend, and while I was part of their static that raided I was generally not in the same league as the other players (I was used to playing with much more hardcore players that would wipe very infrequently, in WoW anyway). The net result of this was, we would wipe on fights many many times and having raided before as Monk and BLM, and on Monk I was just so bored. On most fights I would literally press the exact same sequence of buttons at the exact same time, every wipe. Like at timestamp 2:36 into the fight I would use Demolish, every wipe, every time (this is just an example, not a real timestamp/statistics/etc). And there wasn't really any room for improvement, I was always doing the optimal button press sequence. On BLM I felt like I would learn from each wipe and figure out better ways to do things and it was fun to try different ways to approach the fight. This was fun for me, and if I was forced to play Monk I would not have enjoyed the game. This is just my personal experience. While I enjoyed playing at a high level and doing high damage, it was only because this was the only thing that was fun for me, especially in a static with real life friends that I did not fit in with, and kept wiping.

This is less a praise thread and more of a having an agenda against the Balance thread.

For a thread that's meant to praise the new BLM, you don't praise it all.

I'm not part of the balance discord. I looked at once and went "lol nope". I've done just fine in extremes as BLM without needing to "optimize".

The 7.2 changes make BLM like everything else. I played it for a reason. It was satisfying keeping the timer up and dodging the mechanics. Now it's just spam one button because there should be no fail states ever, right? There's no tension anymore. And if you didn't want the tension, then there were other jobs. Nothing in this patch screams to me that we needed to get rid of the fail states. It I thought the raids were frustrating and unfun even going in as phys ranged for "constant movement". All I could think k of was how at least if I was playing old BLM, I could at least enjoy doing my best to optimize and figure out when it's safe to sit to cast my long spells and not.

I don't mind the timer being gone. My only problem with it is that Paradox and Fire 3 feel off. The point of those skills is to refresh the timer, so if they don't plan to revert, maybe change those spells to do something else. I would personally think it's cool if they remove Firestarter and add a second skill to Paradox, which would give more reason to push Paradox. Paradox is Fire and Ice; it could be awesome to have a follow-up of Lightning and Fire.

Paradox needs to do something else, like maybe when used in UI it can "deep freeze" the umbral hearts and make them last twice as long(effectively being 3 extra umbral hearts without changing the job hud element). Then when in AF it can give 3 stacks of astral soul. I think it should also have AoE potency and make the AoE rotations enable twice as many casts of flare stare + flare.

Right now that's the only real thing that gets me about BLM design, paradox should be an AoE spell and it should do more than it does now.

Maybe this can all relate to 8.0 changes, and maybe the big spell will be an UI equivalent of flare star that is only usable when you have all "6" uses of umbral hearts active. Much longer AF phases + a UI finisher.

Overall though, the job is in the best place it has ever been.

'artificial difficulty'? i think people said the same about positionals... but what would non-artificial difficulty look like?

in the end its a case of everyones preferations. 20 jobs and its somehow not possible to have jobs for different preferations. xD

I love when people say “you can’t roll your face on the keyboard” is “artificial difficulty”

Not being able to just dump out xeno’s with no thought is not artificial difficulty, hell why does xeno even exist anymore? Why are you being rewarded for doing nothing at all. Actually having a use for paradox and fire 3 procs is not artificial difficulty. Actually having a reason to not stockpile triplecast is not “artificial difficulty”

By this logic the entirety of “true difficulty” is “can you maintain ABC” which gets boring real fast, ask the healers

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

This thread is for those who prefer 7.2 BLM over its predecessor. I personally do not understand why pushing buttons in sequence needs to have artificial difficulty (or as I call, “fake fun”). Your Astral/Umbral timer does not add anything substantive to the game. As of 7.2, your rotation has not changed AT ALL. The ONLY thing different is a number on the screen. Actually, something did change: you’ll finally be able to do mechanics! Your party members will be so happy with you that they’ll let you back in Party Finder.

Now, I know what you all are thinking: this was YOUR class, right? You in The Balance Discord who hoard “theorycrafting” “strategies”? You don’t want those “other people” playing “your” class. If BLM becomes a class for plebeians, you’re no longer special. Is that it?

I’ve been playing this game for over nine years. Black mage has never been difficult. You chose to make fake fan theories and write a whole book based on babble from The Balance Discord server. Well, guess what? It’s my class too. I’m not in your Discord, never have been, never will be, and most importantly, I don’t care about your “theorycrafting” or your “meta”. Black mage is the press-fire-then-ice class. That’s it.

If you don’t like it, please unsubscribe. Better yet, please liquidate The Balance Discord and all associated publications. This game belongs to the people.

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People who spent enough time on the job and got good with it did mechanics even with the timer. Every class in the game is nobodies class. If you hate the balance sure by all means

I would not even bother posting anything positive regarding 'any job' in the official forums.

Official forums has always been well known for being mostly bitter and negative about any job changes.

There are good things about the changes and some bad. But you'll never get the very small, but very loud group of ppl from official forums to focus on anything positive.

As an important note: *I'm saying this as someone who believes that the game's community has a lot of toxic positivity atm*

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Originally Posted by dairymoose

Your post is coming off a little combative. I am glad you like the changes. For me personally, I feel like part of the fun of games with multiple classes is you get a totally new gameplay experience picking another class.

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Ah, and you got that fix out of pressing "static rotation A" instead of "static rotation B" like you did on, say, Red Mage. That makes sense. I can see the "totally new gameplay experience" that provided.

/s, if that wasn't obvious enough...

(discussing gameplay differences in a game lacking 3 out of 4 types of class design is just absurd, they're all gameplay-wise the same? >.>)

Back to the topic, yeah I kinda agree. It's weird to no longer have at least 2.5s of casting, but the job definitely doesn't feel this outdated any more, which it previous quite did comparing all other ones (and since changing all of those to fit BLM more to then adjust all fight design was utopian for understandable reasons, this made sense). It also puts a bigger focus on "building up to Flare Star", which is cool given it's superb visuals.

So yeah, overall really nice. Mostly it's the same sequence of the same buttons, everything feels a bit faster, and you no longer instantly feel like you would not be letting your group down if you had just brought any other caster the moment a fight requires you to do stuff other than standing and casting.

I’m just tired of all the BLMs crying and whining. They’ve been doing this on repeat since Stormblood any time they’re not the best in slot option.

I don’t care about their agenda, but it’s so annoying how every facet of conversation regarding balance or heck even the game rn is either somewhere between Black Mages malding or Wuk Lamat. Guys, they don’t care, they didn’t care when Kaiten died and they’re not going to care now.

While I agree that Paradox feels a little out of place now since it isn't needed to keep your timer rolling.. I'm quite enjoying the changes myself. The faster cast speed means my boom class booms more boom per minute. Being able to deal with mechanics easier is just upside even when we had several tools to deal with them before.

Black Mage plays fantastic now, even the PvP changes were great.

Still suffers from Buttonbloat though.

I love the changes to Black Mage

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Originally Posted by Arohk

Still suffers from Buttonbloat though.

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I mean, for sure. But that's a problem all jobs have, tanks and healers included. FFXIV is a game of having too many buttons do too similar things with each one feeling individually too weak to care.
(this is why we notice impactful-feeling buttons such as Picto Hammer, BLM High Thunder or such, their animations/vfx promote them to this status as their effects cannot, being buried in a sea of ultimately samey effects)

It's a problem that I'd love to see solved (less buttons with more meaningful uses!), but it has to be a game-wide thing to do, otherwise some jobs would feel really bad that had not gotten that treatment yet. Note also that this doesn't mean doing the Summoner stuff. The Summoner change could have been good, had the reduction to just a handful of buttons been used to create meaningful gameplay from the - on paper - rather interesting major->minor cycle. Which it does not, and hence it all feels pretty bad. It could have been great and in fact fairly involved as gameplay, but the devs seem not interested in doing that, which is extra shameful as here was a job that could have exemplified depth of gameplay without complexity of button interactions, the pinnacle of gameplay development after all.

Im someone who like the new changes mostly.
The only thing where i changed my mind a bit over the days is the spellspeed. Ok, i have 1,88 ct in average, maybe i am a bit faster. But it feels now truly a bit to fast with the casting.
I like the faster speed visually and for mechanics, where you has to move a lot or has little casting time. In addition was the blm a bit slow previously.

But after the few days has i noticed, that he shoot his big spells a bit to fast. And has a differently feeling now. Maybe, they could change the speed to the middle of the old one and the new one.
In addition feels leyline to short now. I understand it. But it feels weird, because you has barely the time now, to resummon it or move back to it, should you had to move earlier.

The big + points is still the removing of the timers (where a increase to 20s could maybe had worked to). Because, you can now wait in your rotation, until the down time is over.
In overall do i like the new Version. But start to understand a bit the people who want it slower down to.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

This thread is for those who prefer 7.2 BLM over its predecessor. I personally do not understand why pushing buttons in sequence needs to have artificial difficulty (or as I call, “fake fun”). Your Astral/Umbral timer does not add anything substantive to the game. As of 7.2, your rotation has not changed AT ALL. The ONLY thing different is a number on the screen. Actually, something did change: you’ll finally be able to do mechanics! Your party members will be so happy with you that they’ll let you back in Party Finder.

Now, I know what you all are thinking: this was YOUR class, right? You in The Balance Discord who hoard “theorycrafting” “strategies”? You don’t want those “other people” playing “your” class. If BLM becomes a class for plebeians, you’re no longer special. Is that it?

I’ve been playing this game for over nine years. Black mage has never been difficult. You chose to make fake fan theories and write a whole book based on babble from The Balance Discord server. Well, guess what? It’s my class too. I’m not in your Discord, never have been, never will be, and most importantly, I don’t care about your “theorycrafting” or your “meta”. Black mage is the press-fire-then-ice class. That’s it.

If you don’t like it, please unsubscribe. Better yet, please liquidate The Balance Discord and all associated publications. This game belongs to the people.

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Either you never played BLM pre-7.2 or you're of a huge bad faith. The core rotation indeed didn't change, but all decision-making regarding the job is basically gone. Using Xeno during AF could be an issue with the timer, which again required some decision-making on the go. Now, you can just dump your Xeno stacks whenever you need mobility or to prevent orvercapping without a second thought. You needed to know when keeping Triple/Swift for mobility was needed and when you can just use them for DPS gain. Now it's purely mobility tools, use them as you need them. Paradox now serves no purpose, it's just an instant F4 that you dump whenever you need a little bit of mobility.

There's already 20 other jobs out there, most of them being already idiot-proof. Do people wanting a little bit of complexity really cannot have a single one ?

As for your weird rant about The Balance, I'm not even gonna say anything.

Only issue i see with the blm is cast times being shorter than gc, which breaks the flow a bit.

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Originally Posted by Yeonhee

Either you never played BLM pre-7.2 or you're of a huge bad faith. The core rotation indeed didn't change, but all decision-making regarding the job is basically gone. Using Xeno during AF could be an issue with the timer, which again required some decision-making on the go. Now, you can just dump your Xeno stacks whenever you need mobility or to prevent orvercapping without a second thought. You needed to know when keeping Triple/Swift for mobility was needed and when you can just use them for DPS gain. Now it's purely mobility tools, use them as you need them. Paradox now serves no purpose, it's just an instant F4 that you dump whenever you need a little bit of mobility.

There's already 20 other jobs out there, most of them being already idiot-proof. Do people wanting a little bit of complexity really cannot have a single one ?

As for your weird rant about The Balance, I'm not even gonna say anything.

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I am on the fence, I like the shorter cast time allow player to be a bit more “greedy”. However I do miss the timer and it does feel like something missing. However, I don’t think job complexity should be implemented by having to memorise the fight and keeping eye on boss HP bar.

I would prefer boss fight mechanics to be more reactionary than being a boss HP accountant. Unfortunately, we seem heading towards more and more the memory game

bro who hurt you

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I mean, for sure. But that's a problem all jobs have, tanks and healers included.

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some jobs are certainly worse than other when it comes to bloat, but black mage is one of the most overbloated jobs.

here are some solutions to help with this problem :

Transpose & Umbral Soul:

Make Transpose turn into Umbral Soul when Umbral Ice is Active.

Fire & Ice

Make Fire IV Turn into Blizzard IV and vice versa, depending on Ice or Fire stance. (same for the AOE version)

Flare Star:

Make Fire 3 turn into Flare Star when Astral gauge is full.


Scathe:

Useless skill, can be removed.

With the effectiveness of transpose -> fire 3 proc... I'd hate to lose transpose in ice

Do enjoy some of those thoughts on removing bloat though

After yet more time playing in the new content, given the amount of time where we are flying or dancing or constantlyyy moving. I am glad of the changes and I am finding the fights fun. I am still very curious to see what they do in 8.0 but that's an age away.

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Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

After yet more time playing in the new content, given the amount of time where we are flying or dancing or constantlyyy moving. I am glad of the changes and I am finding the fights fun. I am still very curious to see what they do in 8.0 but that's an age away.

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They won't do anything to it in 8.0, its like summoner when people had to cope and pretend that they would actually build ontop of the new design

What you see is what you get.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

They won't do anything to it in 8.0, its like summoner when people had to cope and pretend that they would actually build ontop of the new design

What you see is what you get.

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Damn, I remember that lol. All that building talk only to get a Bahamut reskin in 7.0.