Blizzard II nerf for BLM too severe

[NeruMew]

Earth to Sakray, Freeze is Essentially old Blizz 2 now o.O Meep meep! Same spell, same effect, just now Blizz 2 is changed for cross class... /facepalm Not to mention SCH and WHM would have a stupidly Strong fast cast AoE with the potency increase from Cleric stance, look at the larger picture~

Earth to Knoahl.... Freeze has a 3seconds cast time and Blizzard II has a 2 seconds... Hellooo?? "Meep meep!"?

never liked freeze to begin with. two reasons:
1: impossible to cast to where you like it to be without use of a mouse.
2: it still has slower casting time that doesn't sync with GCD.

And please fix the mp tick, SE. You ruined one thing while you were fixing the other thing.

They might be too prideful to admit it.

[Sylari]

I don't see how a relatively minor nerf to the class that was the undisupted king of AoE is that crippling.

The UI and MP tick changes? yeah, those are a bitch.. But the blizz2/freeze change is pretty trivial.

[Dale]

I have always preferred Fire2 to Blizzard 2 also, at least for damaging purposes. So I'm not sure why people would say blizzard2 did more damage than Fire2 in Astral Fire. That hasn't been my experience.

I found blizzard2 useful for kiting around lots of mobs. That's where I believe it really shined. But I never considered it an optimal form of damage.

However, I do think the nerf to blizzard2 was unnecessary. It was probably to balance out summoner like one poster suggested. That was likely the real reason. .

But I think the Freeze improvements are a fair trade off. So over-all, I think this patch has been good for our class and the harm it's done grossly exaggerated.

[Hitokirinomad]

I have always preferred Fire2 to Blizzard 2 also, at least for damaging purposes. So I'm not sure why people would say blizzard2 did more damage than Fire2 in Astral Fire. That hasn't been my experience.

Not to be mean, but it's very obvious to see who was playing sub-optimally before, and who paid no attention to Theorycrafting. Go look at the 800 'BLM AOE Rotation' threads, and you see that Blizz 2 nerf was a significant reduction to the *optimum* AE rotation. Not the one that used a lot of Fire 2, but the one that did the most damage, and coincidentally, put you closest to harm (F3 > Flare >Transpose >B2>B2>F3). I agree it was nerfed because it was given to all the mage classes...but it was given to all the mage classes for PvP, which is not a good trend (nerfing PvE skills for PvP balance).

[NeruMew]

I don't see how a relatively minor nerf to the class that was the undisupted king of AoE is that crippling.

The UI and MP tick changes? yeah, those are a bitch.. But the blizz2/freeze change is pretty trivial.

Sadly they won't acknowledge their mistake on the UI ticks. (AF switching faster now than before while UI staying the same, giving you less time during UI phases)

[Biohazard901]

Earth to Sakray, Freeze is Essentially old Blizz 2 now o.O Meep meep! Same spell, same effect, just now Blizz 2 is changed for cross class... /facepalm Not to mention SCH and WHM would have a stupidly Strong fast cast AoE with the potency increase from Cleric stance, look at the larger picture~

No, it's not the same.

[Kevin949]

Freeze still sucks compared to old blizzard. 3s for 100 potency vs 2s for 100 potency. Like I said, nerfing blizzard by 50% makes freeze look better, and will make people use it but there's no point of making blizzard II completely useless.

Freeze is also in no way a replacement for what old Blizzard 2 was/is. It is a pbAoE that requires no targeting vs a ranged AoE that requires targeting, and has 50% shorter cast time which is especially useful in PvP which is why I'm guessing it was nerfed. If that's the case, just nerf it for PvP, and keep the PvE version same as old version.

Freeze keeps you out of the red though which was a danger for blizzard 2 and also required you to run to the mobs, and you're telling me that running didn't take a couple seconds (the difference in cast times between blizzard 2 and freeze)?

And if it's so hard to aim, just enable the option to auto-cast ground targets at your mouse cursor position.

[Dale]

Not to be mean, but it's very obvious to see who was playing sub-optimally before, and who paid no attention to Theorycrafting. .

From the sound of things, it was more like taking advantage of a glitch in the system rather than playing optimally. Though I suppose you could argue exploitation is a form of optimization.

Fire2 does more damage than blizzard 2. It always has. It definitely does now. That was my point. Even before this update, if I was to spam Fire2 vs your Blizzard2 I would have done more damage assuming we were equally geared.

Now rather blizzard 2 was involved in some glitched rotation that took advantage of a bug in the game design that allowed for double flares or w/e doesn't really have anything to do with what I was at least trying to say. Because that is besides the point I was making.

Blizzard 2 was never a source of optimal damage. So if this patch has severely hurt your damage as a Black Mage, I can assure you it's not because Blizzard 2 does less damage now.

[O-Deka-K]

Fire2 does more damage than blizzard 2. It always has. It definitely does now. That was my point. Even before this update, if I was to spam Fire2 vs your Blizzard2 I would have done more damage assuming we were equally geared.

This argument makes no sense, because nobody claimed that Blizzard 2 spam did more damage than Fire 2 spam. The claim is that B2-B2-F3-Flare-Transpose did more damage than B3-F3-F2(spam) or B3-F3-F2(spam)-Flare-Transpose, which it did. The last rotation could be stronger if you had enough spell speed to pull it off one tick sooner than I could. I couldn't do it with 471 spell speed.

Actually, I did some math and some testing (pre-patch) and a slightly stronger rotation would have been B2-B2-F3-F2(spam)-Flare-Transpose. However, the timing for this was very tight, so if you missed the mana tick your DPS would drop significantly. The B2-B2-F3-Flare-Transpose rotation had more forgiveness in case you had to dodge.

[IAmPotent]

Freeze has 0 utility. Period.



It's a good thing you don't know what the word, "same" means. Otherwise, there would be a problem here.

Blizzard II - 1.85s, 100 potency (2.0) => 50 potency
Freeze - 2.78s, 20 potency (2.0) => 100 potency

You also have to *aim* Freeze. That'll cut down on usage time. Not to mention >Sleep< is far more useful and pretty much works on everything you need it to.

Blizz2's cast time may have been 1.85 secs, but the GCD is 2.5, so you have to go with the GCD, because you're not going to be casting anything between 2 Blizz2's or a Blizz2 and the next spell.

I guess it's good you know the cast times though.