Why does Enochian have to be a pain in the neck?

[Xisin]

The parse positions more often than not show which dps had to do mechanics more (vacums taking a dump on whatever dps draws the short straw, stuff like that) if i dont get vacumed in A4 ya, I'll top it. A1? I top that one too. its a great turreting fight. It's not as bad as you'd like to say it is. A2 is fairly undisputed toward smn, so is A1 ( I think)

The only REAL problem I have with blm atm is limit breaking, we are by far the most punished dps for lbing, hell i think i lose dps by just thinking about metoering, smns get off easy here with their dots.

[Yeldir]

I give up, Xisin. You're either avoiding my questions or have comprehension issues that make you impractical to speak with over anything complex. Subsequently, I can't discuss this with you, and I mean that in a literal sense - the discussion cannot happen, because you can't or won't answer questions that are essential to the point I am trying to make.

[Leonus]

I like to call out Dragoons as an example of this, not as a mark of shame, but because their class is honestly exactly everything it needs to be. Their damage is good, the crit buff they bring to raids is stellar, and their class mechanics demand attention for them to operate at their peak, but a single missed chain doesn't necessarily grind them to a screeching halt - they have a "second chance" with their rotation, as it were.

I am genuinely curious about what you mean by "second chance". For my own benefit, I would like to know how it differs from blm.

[Xisin]

Link to parses, please.



You still haven't answered my questions. I will restate them. I would like specific answers.

Do you think it's OK for Black Mage, a pure DPS class with zero support capability besides EFAE (and, to make Sora happy, rarely Apoc), to be substantially more complicated and demanding than most melee classes, while being flat out inferior damage to them?

I haven't answered this question because we disagree on the basis of it, I don't think blm is any harder or easier than the melee, right off the bat there we disagree, I also disagree that blm is inferior damage. You make assumptions that I think are incorrect in this question.

Do you dispute the idea that Black Mages do less damage than melee classes of equal skill in single target environments and more or less level playing fields? (Single target means you're hitting one thing the majority of the time, plus thundercloud proc rotating, even if there's more than one target to choose from.) I'll ask this one another way, to help you answer: Do you feel like you are doing as much or more damage as melee classes in these encounters?

I answered this already. It depends on the fight, in A1, Ravana, parts of A3 we do, A4 is based entirely off who lucks out on mechanics... Other fights we don't

Do you dispute the idea that managing astral ice, astral fire, enochian, our mp bar, and thunder casts/procs, coupled with our lengthy cast times on everything, makes Black Mage a more difficult class to play than those same melee classes?

Again, I don't think it is any more or less complex, other dps get punished for screwing up, the only time our punishment is severe is if we screw the pooch on the first enochian rotation and that is most likely because you interrupted a cast, got greedy and did the full rotation anyway when you should have ended the chian with 1 fire 4 less, resulting in you dropping out of AF before you finished the blizzard 3 cast. Difficulty is entirely subjective, it's a flimsy argument to run with and no this job isn't difficult for me. I haven't played a melee class in HW so I can't offer an educated opinion on the difficulty of dragoon, monk or ninja other than what my static mates have to say about it.

Happy? I never really avoided any questions. After looking at your lodestone you can't really be the judge of class difficulty either, you seem to strictly be blm atm. How far have you progressed? your lodestone achievements are blocked.

[Geardagas]

I've been considering leveling BLM after AST is done and was looking for info on how people feel about it, but i feel the need to say that whoever said that a bard's first song priority is paeon is quite silly.

My song priority has been, and always will be, requiem. I strategically turn it on and off to keep it going for as long as possible while popping battle voice at key moments. It is, as xisin said, a DPS' job to learn every fight and plan ahead in order to maximize their contribution to the party. It could be said that requiem is my song mechanic.

If there are no casters, i generally dont sing until i see the healer's MP get dangerously low, or if someone asks for paeon (which is almost never in HW). Using Paeon at the start of the fight would be a really, really dumb thing to do. I'm doing so much DPS now that I feel like my damage contribution is more beneficial to the group than using paeon and ballad just because it's there.

[Cynfael]

If there are no casters, i generally dont sing until i see the healer's MP get dangerously low, or if someone asks for paeon (which is almost never in HW). Using Paeon at the start of the fight would be a really, really dumb thing to do. I'm doing so much DPS now that I feel like my damage contribution is more beneficial to the group than using paeon and ballad just because it's there.

Side note and further derailment:

Good healers love Foe Requiem. It drives me bonkers when BRDs sit on their MP while I contribute a nice chunk of DPS. Some of these BRDs are just terrible and sing for no one, ever; some of them just go through the dungeon saving MP for a Ballad that I never, ever need.

[Geardagas]

Side note and further derailment:

Good healers love Foe Requiem. It drives me bonkers when BRDs sit on their MP while I contribute a nice chunk of DPS. Some of these BRDs are just terrible and sing for no one, ever; some of them just go through the dungeon saving MP for a Ballad that I never, ever need.

I've been playing bard since 2.0 and not a single healer has ever asked me for requiem, nor has any non-healer suggested that I should keep requiem up for the healers, nor do I ever see any other bard keeping requiem up in a casterless group. I can tell you this, though: if a healer wanted requiem and asked for it, they'd get it in a heartbeat. Maybe you should say something to them, lol.

[Duelle]

Right now the 2 biggest problems are that if either Enochian or AF/UI drop during your F4/B4 cast, you lose the cast. And that the rotation basically demands that you skim the very edge of the timers in order to output enough dps to warrant using the new spells... Versus just taking the 5% bonus and basically using the old rotation, replacing B1 w/ B4 as filler in the UI phase.

The source of this issue is that F4/B4 in no way help you maintain the buffs required to keep them going. This is understandable as SE wants us to continue using F1 during the Enochian rotation. The issue is that you need to fit 2 F4's and an F1 into 10 seconds. 2*3+2.5 = 8.5s, that seems fine in theory. Add in the 0.5s initial latency after switching into AF3 before you can cast F4, we now have 9s. Add in 100ms latency between casts and we have 9.3s out of a 10s timer... Watch any BLM executing the "perfect" Enochian rotation and you'll see how AF3 ends up with 0-1 seconds when it is refreshed. IE its being refreshed as it falls off.

If the concern is losing Fire IV casts amidst the madness, I say keep Fire IV/Blizzard IV gated behind Enochian, but make them instant cast with a cooldown. Not something terribly long. Maybe 6 seconds. This way you get use out of the spell without getting screwed over by cast time, BLMs get something they can use while moving that is not lolScathe, and can plan how to squeeze it into your rotation while giving a bit more leeway while also requiring some planning (you might actually be able to get Thunder III in there, to boot).

The simplest solution is to add something which helps perpetuate AF/UI and Enochian across various abilities.
As Yoshida hinted at in the Live Letter, making the Thunder spells add ~3s to Enochian would allow us to readily incorporate them into the rotation.
Subsequently we could add a secondary effect to F4 which makes the next F1 instant cast with the original mana cost. This means you could throw as many as 3 F4's in a row, then instant cast F1 to refresh the AF3 timer... However you'd still be limited to 4 F4's per cycle due to mana constraints, so there is no dps increase under ideal conditions, however you can refresh AF3 much more readily, AND you are not as punished by movement since every F4 gives you an instant F1.

Since part of the problem is movement, why not change Enhanced Scathe to do something that help on that end? Have it add 5 seconds to AF/UI when used, or hell, have it extend Enochian in some way. Maybe both? >.>

[Cynfael]

I've been playing bard since 2.0 and not a single healer has ever asked me for requiem, nor has any non-healer suggested that I should keep requiem up for the healers, nor do I ever see any other bard keeping requiem up in a casterless group. I can tell you this, though: if a healer wanted requiem and asked for it, they'd get it in a heartbeat. Maybe you should say something to them, lol.

You need to play with more active healers

I actually have a polite macro for Foe request. What's sad is that I initially made it for use on my BLM because I couldn't get any DF BRDs to sing without asking.

[Noira]

As a healer I love it when Bard sings Foe's I like to dps. :3