Blizzard II nerf for BLM too severe

[SirGazuntai]

I believe Blizzard was changed for 1 of 2 reasons. PvP, or FATE's. When I leveled my BLM (my first class I FATE grinded with) I saw so many people complaining about me and the other BLM being able to tag everything with such ease and no loss to MP (yet no-one complained about Arcanist and such spamming Flash. xD). Lowering the damage so much makes it almost useless to use on your own, as Freeze used to be. However, if 20 people in a FATE are spamming it? 50 Potency is much better than 100 in this instance.

I can't really think of a situation where Blizz II would have been overused in PvP. You have to get close to be able to use it, and being close to someone usually results in you not being able to do anything. Binding someone who's right next to you seems useless unless you predict them running away before you Swiftcast Flare.

Blizz II wasn't really a huge part of any rotation, either. People have claimed it was nerfed because it was part of some huge DPS Flare rotation, but removing this from that rotation would barely affect the DPS. I strongly believe it was meant to balance FATE's, since now all DoM classes have Blizz II while everyone has Flash. I'd rather 50% spammed Blizz II than 100% spammed Flash and nothing got done. Though, I honestly couldn't care. The only times I used Blizz II was against Tonberry on last boss of WP, but now I just use Flare or Freeze.

[Waliel]

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 100/3=33.33~ potency per second.
New Blizzard 2 is 50/2.5=20 potency per second.
Old Blizzard 2 is 100/2.5=40 potency per second.

I wouldn't call less than 7 pps exactly a huge nerf, but anyway, Freeze is a lot better than Blizzard 2 for AoE now. The aiming is a moot point after the first cast if mobs are not moving, and if they are, you would also have to re-position yourself for B2.

No, it was almost the highest AoE DPS in a dungeon, if not the highest AoE DPS. Balanced by having to be in melee range in squishy armor.

Blizzard 2 spam was the worst AoE DPS rotation you could do.

[O-Deka-K]

...nobody claimed that Blizzard 2 spam did more damage than Fire 2 spam.

Blizzard 2 spam was the worst AoE DPS rotation you could do.

Reading this thread over again, I can see that OP never specified any rotation, which implied that they were talking about B2 spam. I took it as meaning that B2 was part of a very good, known AoE rotation (B2-B2-F3-Flare-Transpose).

I don't think anyone would claim that B2 spam was a good rotation. It was close to being the worst rotation.

[sakraycore]

Fire 2 can not be spammed, blizzard 2 can. You run out of MP super fast if you just spam Fire 2 and then you're gonna be OOM.

It's also been stated earlier that blizzard 2 is a part of the highest AoE rotation, and it can also be spammed by itself if needed, whereas fire 2 doesn't even have that option. Blizzard 2 can also hit mobs more spaced apart since you can be in the middle of them whereas you would miss all of them with fire 2.

Blizzard 2 also doesn't need a target; there is a reason it's used in FATEs and not fire 2. The same properties that make it so good at tagging is also what makes it so much more reliable than fire 2 in terms of actually hitting everything you want to hit.

All in all it's a heavy nerf, which is slightly mitigated by freeze which is just a worse skill all-around.

[Allyrion]

Fire 2 can not be spammed, blizzard 2 can. You run out of MP super fast if you just spam Fire 2 and then you're gonna be OOM.

It's also been stated earlier that blizzard 2 is a part of the highest AoE rotation, and it can also be spammed by itself if needed, whereas fire 2 doesn't even have that option. Blizzard 2 can also hit mobs more spaced apart since you can be in the middle of them whereas you would miss all of them with fire 2.

Blizzard 2 also doesn't need a target; there is a reason it's used in FATEs and not fire 2. The same properties that make it so good at tagging is also what makes it so much more reliable than fire 2 in terms of actually hitting everything you want to hit.

All in all it's a heavy nerf, which is slightly mitigated by freeze which is just a worse skill all-around.

It sounds like you want to get into territory that would make the nerf even more justified.
That is, Blizzard II was a 100 potency attack every gcd that actually regenerated your resource.
MNK and BRD AoE is less than this, uses a mob for targeting like Fire II and kills their TP.

So BLM spamming their worst aoe rotation (in terms of potency, but not in convenience for stuff like fates) was above 2 other classes.
Spamming one ability should never give even decent damage. Thank you SE.


Additionally, with fate scaling you have time to do full rotations now. So you wouldn't have Blizzard II spammed post 2.1 even if this change didn't happen.
Not that fates matter much when balancing.

[Dale]

Fire 2 can not be spammed, blizzard 2 can. You run out of MP super fast if you just spam Fire 2 and then you're gonna be OOM.

You are missing the point.

Yes, it uses up more MP because Fire2 is done in Astral Fire rather Umbral ice. Of course. But Fire2 does more damage, so using Fire2 over Blizzard2 will do more damage... unless for some silly reason the black mage refuses to change into umbral ice and just sits there doing nothing with no mp.

It's not a heavy nerf. Blizzard2 was never our best source of damage. It might have been part of some bugged rotation using flare. But it was flare that was doing all the damage. It wasn't blizzard 2.

And people use Blizzard2 in fates because doing lots of damage is rarely important. You are just trying to "tag" as many things as possible before it's over like you say. Which blizzard 2 can still be used for.

So your argument as to why this was such a heavy nerf is not convincing. At least not for me.

[Allyrion]

It's not a heavy nerf. Blizzard2 was never our best source of damage. It might have been part of some bugged rotation using flare. But it was flare that was doing all the damage. It wasn't blizzard 2.

And people use Blizzard2 in fates because doing lots of damage is rarely important. You are just trying to "tag" as many things as possible before it's over like you say. Which blizzard 2 can still be used for.

Both points can't be stated enough.

Particularly for the former, the rotations that include Blizzard II were a means to an end. It was just nice that Blizzard II did some aoe damage getting to UI3 for the reduced Flare cast.
Those rotations was centered around Flare's damage.

[Flaeb]

People who say Blizzard 2 was not good in our AOE rotations have no clue what they're talking about.

[Exstal]

There's no reason to use Blizzard II now that Flare bug has been fixed though..

[Allyrion]

People who say Blizzard 2 was not good in our AOE rotations have no clue what they're talking about.

No one is even saying that.
This thread got pointlessly derailed into a discussion on Blizzard II spam.
People are only saying that Blizzard II was never the center point of any decent damage rotation.

The best rotation (pre 2.1) was
Fire III > Flare > Transpose > Blizzard II > Blizzard II
But that rotation would still be considered based on Flare rather than Blizzard II.

Freeze plays the same role as Blizzard II.
Unfortunately that rotation was still also based on the getting a second reduced cast time which they have fixed.
That's a completely different issue though.