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

[Sethra]

Either that or blm are supposed to face tank aoes using their wards, except in A4 because the orbs are physical damage.

Except that they nerfed the wards. I wonder if Enochian was easier to maintain during development testing (full refresh from Eno and Bliz IV), but they were afraid it was OP during dev testing on dummies, but without real testing on movement heavy fights. That, or making life very difficult on high movement fights was a deliberate if unbalanced design choice.

[StouterTaru]

I don't think that this is an entirely unfair claim. BLM derail very easily. Like for example on a F4-F4-F1, if you get interrupted at all, you can lose astral III, or you need to sacrifice attacks entirely. Same with any delays in the second enochian. Melee combos have several second windows to use the next attack, and even greased lightning requires a lengthy pause to fall off. Numerically BLM might be fine, but there's some QOL frustration that seems fair to at least raise as a point of discussion.

Simple solution in heavy movement fights: don't use F4 back to back unless you have a firestarter proc, and then you can knock off 3 in a row if you have the MP. Slight dps loss, no risk of AF3 loss.

[Viviza]

Simple solution in heavy movement fights: don't use F4 back to back unless you have a firestarter proc, and then you can knock off 3 in a row if you have the MP. Slight dps loss, no risk of AF3 loss.

That's correct, but not really my point? I'm going to pick on monks again because they haven't changed too much since 50 and I'm familiar with that.

If a monk has to move for an AOE, they can pick up where they left off. They only have to rethink their combos if they lose more than a few seconds. If a blm has to move for an aoe, they might need to cancel an F4 and use an F1. They might have their F1 disrupted and need to swiftcast an F3 to get astral iii back up, they might not have swiftcast, and have to hardcast F3, but now MP consumption is abnormal and they have to worry about losing time when swapping back to umbral and finding themselves under the MP value they need to use B4. Now enochian maybe falls off if you timed that wrong. Or you timed it right, but mistimed the regen tick, and you're in astral iii with 8,000 mp. You drop a F4 off but find yourself 5 MP too short to use B3, so you convert, but the tick isn't coming for B4 and enochian has 5 seconds left you might not have time to wait and cast B4 but you try anyway and enochian falls off 0.5 seconds too soon and cancels your cast so maybe B3 hardcast to start recovery faster or would thunder be better and F3 after and aaaargh. And so on.

There are a lot of balls to juggle by managing an aspect, a timer, and mp values, all with specific conditions to refresh them in timely manners. It's easy to acknowledge that yes, this is fragile. I'm not saying that you are wrong, only that the views of others are reasonable. Some BLM embrace this as a challenge, but others get frustrated at all the work to keep it all in order.

[Kenji1134]

There are a lot of solutions to the rotation QoL issues that would be fairly simple to implement. Here are some options:

1. Mana abnormalities. Under Enochian, F1 and F3 cost the same as F4. (Maybe add F2 in there as well, so all Fire series spells cost the same under Enochian). Now you can throw in an extra F1 when needed without becoming unable to get in 4 F4's due to mana. You will still be limited on how many F4's you can get in as you will eventually have to refresh Enochian.
In effect you have 11319 MP and 30s of Enochian. W/ all Fire spells costing 1768 you can do 6 Fire series spells, leaving you with 711 MP, enough for B3 and nothing else. Atm if you need to add an extra F1, say 4-1-4-1-4 instead of 4-4-1-4-4, then you are forced to trade an F4 for an F1, 176.4 pot/sec traded for 136.1 pot/sec, a 22% loss.
If everything cost the same, then you could throw in that extra F1 and still have enough for 4 F4's and B3. The issue will still be that you must swap to UI for B4 with enough time to refresh Enoch.

2. Timing issues. As I have suggested before, one of the easiest ways to fix a lot of the timing issues in the AF phase, is to either provide a 2nd effect to F4 which makes the next F1 instant cast. Or make F1 automatically instant under Enochian. Or possibly the single easiest solution to ALL the timing and movement QoL issues w/ BLM... Make our personal effects FRONT-LOADED.
Instead of having our effects be applied when the spell hits, make them apply when we start casting. Suddenly we can refresh everything on time, even if we have to dodge, however we still lose out on damage.

3. The Durations Fix... Make AF3 last 12s, UI3 last 12s, Thunder spells add 3s to the duration of AF, UI, and Enochian (no penalty for using Thunders), and if a spell is past 50% of its cast time when a required buff drops, let the spell finish.
Hey, they did it for Monks when Monks claimed they were overly punished for disconnecting for more than 1 gcd, do the same for BLM.

The real question is, Are The Devs Listening?
Have they really tried BLM in the endgame's movement heavy fights, with things becoming untargetable for periods of time. For a BLM, moving at the wrong time means you risk messing up your buff timing. Having your target die at the wrong time, or losing your target in general, means messing up your buff timing.

Personally, I think the best solution to all of this would be frontloading the buffs.
I think people realize that as a caster you are expected to lose dps when you have to move. This is the punishment that casters get in exchange for being able to hit targets from 25y away.
The concern is that with Enochian, in addition to breaking or delaying a cast due to movement, we are also punished by potentially losing the buffs which enable our 60 rotation, which means having to seamlessly switch to the 50 rotation, and likely end up with an unfavorable combination of buffs and mana for doing actual dps.
If the AF, UI, and Enochian refresh effects were applied the moment we press the corresponding spell, then almost all of the buff punishment issues would go away... Note that I say "almost". If you have nothing to hit or the boss is invulnerable, you will lose your buffs. If you personally fail to refresh things at the right time, you will lose your buffs... and you are bad and you should feel bad...

See, the rotation would not suddenly become idiot-proof, which is what I think the devs are afraid of happening, but BLM would simply not be AS punished by mechanics as it is now.

[StouterTaru]

say 4-1-4-1-4 instead of 4-4-1-4-4, then you are forced to trade an F4 for an F1, 176.4 pot/sec traded for 136.1 pot/sec, a 22% loss.

This is another huge issue with BLMs, looking at the big number all by itself. 22% damage theoretical turret damage loss translates to real world dps GAIN.

How much of a loss is that to the overall rotation, 3-4%? And that's assuming you never have to cancel due to mechanics, which is the entire reason you make that change.

Harder hitting slower spells give you less time to react, meaning you will lose more dps from interruptions than using faster spells. Also with time lost from movement, it helps you get to that 2nd B4 faster.

[raelgun]

@ Madddonius -

Nice of you to call people out in a condescending manner.
"Git Gud" all you want, it wont change the fact that Enochian is shit and people are changing classes because of it because if you aren't using Fire IV then you're stuck using Fire 1 which puts our dps sub par compared to others at 60

Whats stopping you from getting better at mastering the mechanic?

Its funny that the people who are getting better at the mechanic arent complaining but the ones that arent are. What is stopping you people exactly?, an easy class to play is a boring one, skill play is very much needed in this game.

There is a easy mode alexander for people that struggle, savage mode demands all players are good anyways.

[raisetheglass1]

As well I think a difference between a "bad" blm at 50 and 60 is that at least at 50 you could feel like you are playing it correctly and it's a matter of optimization and familiarity. Here it's a struggle to even play it correctly and when you mess up its very blatant and in your face.

I wonder if that's a good thing, though? It seemed that BLM especially was a class that was played very poorly by some members of the populace. You've all seen the Fire 3 > Blizzard 3 > Fire 3 Black Mage, so maybe the fact that it's pretty obvious when things are going wrong--maybe that's not a bad thing?

[Psycofang]

nerfed the wards. I wonder if Enochian was easier to maintain during development testing (full refresh from Eno and Bliz IV), but they were afraid it was OP That, or making life very difficult on high movement fights was a deliberate if unbalanced design choice.

Its also a problem that their defensive capabilities that would allow aoe tanking got nerfed.
It counters the current issue instead of alleviating it.
With the old wardings pre 2.4 nerf we could prepare ahead of time but now its situational, short and not as effective for virtually no reason.

A caster that doesn't work half as hard for most or more of our dps says to me that the development team is paranoid of CERTAIN classes or they do this on purpose to add..."depth".

Im mot sure, I can do great dps in all turns I know the tricks, slide casting, the whens and when nots but I dont enjoy this.

Not one bit.

Ill give it a little more time before I make a final call, call me bad or sling as many git guds as you feel.

[Drakor]

Okay i finally read through all this 15 Pages and now i unleash my wall of text, hope it is readable.
Also if i got any Facts wrong or something like this, please correct me.


First of a bit about "Me and the Blackmage":
I'm playing the Blm since 2.5 Changed from Bard around that time.
I changed because Bard was "too boring" for me and i like the way of optimising the Blackmages DPS with good movement/holding on to procs and stuff like that.

Fast forward to now. I love the Enochian an the mechanic behind it.
I did every fight up to A1S as a BLM by now, several times and i never found myself in a situation where i dropped AF/UI or Enochian that was not duo to my own fault.
Even tho i need to admit that Neverreaper is "shit" and if RNGesus really hates you and you get "stunlocked" by the tornados you will lose it duo to mechanics. I guess the same goes for Bis Ex in the second phase.

I always found a way to walk around certain mechanics and after about 4h of A1S i am Nearly able to never let my Enochian drop. Still struggling with the adds and uptime of AF/UI and Enochian.



I read several times that people don't have fun with the new rotation and they prefer the 2.x one. Aslong you don't want to beat Alexander savage you can simply use the 2.x rotation with the new buffs (Using enochian as a simple CD like Raging Strikes).

I did with my ilvl 188 blm (everything except 1 ring and Chest ilvl190) and pulled about 970 dps (i guess 1000 is possible, i choked a bit) at the dummy (also i didn't refresh enochian with blizz IV waht would not be to much of a trouble).
This Should be enough for the content outside of Savage. (Im unsure about Rav Ex tho).
If you still want to go on about how less fun BLM is or how bad it is, consider a Class change. I heard bowmages/Machinist are kinda like the 2.x BLM.

The other thing i read often was the DPS a BLM can output compared to Meele.
As far as i remember it always was that meele dps have a higher DPS then the caster (ranged).
Ranged have the advantage from being able to attack from about anywhere and don't having a positional.

You actually should compare the Blackmage to the other available Magic DPS role, the Summoner.
The Blackmage is harder to play, and also being punished harder for mistakes.
But therefore Blackmages put out a higher (single target) DPS then the Summoner.



Also yes, Blackmage has gotten way harder and in "perfect" execution it is on a difficulty level with a meele now.
In 2.x Meele was harder then the Blackmage, atleast thats how it was for me.
Now the meele difficulty has increased a bit. The Blackmage difficulty alot, but dou Meele being harder then Blackmage before they are on about the same difficulty level.



I would be really dissapointed if they would do changes to the Enochian/Fire IV/Blizz IV i really enjoy it the way it is.

But what SE actually could would be something similiar they did to the Dragoon and the positionals. (Talking about the lowered dps loss if executed wrong.)
(I also didn't put much effort into the numbers it was more of a Brainstorming thing)

Option 1: Make Fire IV castable outside of enochian (with a lowered potency, i'd say around 200) and when Enochian is active it is the usual 280. (Just Fire IV not Blizz IV).

Option 2: When "canceling" a Fire IV Cast you still do damage but with a lower potency (something aorund 150 or 200 or so). Making the movement less punishable.
But i don't know if this could work given how FFXIV works.

But i would not prefer any changes. I like it a lot how it is right now.



And i also think the whole "git gud" thing is totaly viable. The Class works fine. The Mechanics works fine, proven by several players.
I don't like to go up to someone and just say "get good" it implies that they are (currently) bad.

Rather tell people that for a high DPS amount they need to put (alot of) work into the class the rotation and stuff. This goes for every dps not just the BLM. (This also does not implie that people are bad just that they didn't put in as much effort as others)

"Relevant": http://i.imgur.com/0Lceauv.jpg

Disclaimer: Just to clarify, no i don't think of myself superior to anyone i know there are many better player then me. If anything in this post made you think that, i apologies for putting it wrong.

Thanks for reading.


Edit: Thanks for the advice Duelle!

[Duelle]

Okay i finally read through all this 15 Pages and now i unleash my wall of text that i can't unleash because it is way to long and i would need to do like 5 post for it (4383 symbols).
So if you are intressted i did a Pastebin for it: http://pastebin.com/Cu9GwLTN

Cut and edit it into your post. You can edit a post to be more than 1000 characters.