Any chance of an Enochian qol fix?

[RiceisNice]

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To me, it seems like it fails in all of these points. The way Black Mage feels in 3.0 as opposed to 2.0 is that it's exactly the same class, only now you need Enochian up as often as possible. Nothing more. We got Fire IV and Blizzard IV, which feels exactly the same as Fire III and Blizzard III back in 2.0.

The functionally of the IV and III spells are completely different. Enochian doesn't lock you out of previous skills either, infact you still need to use fire I to maintain astral during your fire IV casts.

While people have their own reasons for disliking the new abilties, I don't necessarily agree with your points on how the IV "feel exactly the same" or rendering 2.0 skills obsolete, let alone changing the functionally of III because it's purpose hasn't changed from what it did in 2.0; swapping from astral/umbral into 3 stacks of the other.

[StouterTaru]

What is Enochian (and the other new changes to Black Mage as well) bringing to the job? How is it making the job more interesting or fun to play? How is it further extending the basis of the job that we got in 2.0?

To me, it seems like it fails in all of these points.

I see BLM and BRD in the same boat post-expansion; before the job required juggling two balls, and now it's juggling 2 balls and a cleaver.

What is it bringing? More challenging play for increased damage.

Is it more interesting or fun? Different strokes for different folks.

How is it extending the basis of the job from 2.x? The old job was using 5 spells for 99% of your ST casting. Now those 5 make up about half the ST casting, with 2 new ones weaved in for the other half. I would call that extending the basis of the job.

[Kabooa]

Enochian's primary function is removing the RNG from optimizing black Mage damage. You don't rely on proc effects to maximize your damage; You rely on juggling timers, which barring a bad string of ground-death-effects being targeted at you, is completely on you (and your ISP).

Enochian removes your reliance on Thundercloud and Firestarter for maximum damage. Pretending it's a burden or some fail of design is completely off base.

It accomplished exactly what it meant to do, and the sheer amount of power you get from the 52-60 abilities can hardly be classified as a burden.

[Kailii]

Well it does change the feel though. While relying on procs for max dps may be frustrating if you're the kind of person who parses all the time, it was the feel of the class. Now it's a timer based class, and that is a change. In particular Thunder feels bad to use. I understand that Thunder is now a dps use to keep use now vs at 3.0, but Enochian makes its use feel more constrained, as now you are not only relying on a TC proc, but a TC proc at the right moment, which is awkward at best. Before any proc is a good thing, but now its all about using procs at the 'appropriate' moment, which makes them feel less procy. Of course the addition of Sharpcast is supposed to ameliorate that, but if this the design they want for blm, why not just make those things automatic and remove the crutch?

As for keeping with old spells, well this game will need a button pruning sooner rather than later, with certain classes (ninja) I feel have too much already. Spells should be condensed, but the nonsense stuff blm gets from 30-50 should totally be looked at.

And going forward if they want to give blm a rotation, give us a magical spell chain, skill chains are fun, Aion's Sorc which had magical skill chains is my favorite mmo caster.

[Aomine1992]

I think the BLM rotation is fine the only gripe I would say in being able to properly avoid things and to keep Enochian up is to have blizzard IV just extend the buff to 30 without the subtract 5 thing but nevertheless you change accordingly to your situation use Enochian and helpful skills when it's appropriate I can't tell you how many times I see others pop Enochian as soon as the Boss jumps or goes invulnerable....

Not to make it seem like I'm better then anyone but I'm only ilvl 188 on my BLM and out dps BLMs at much higher gear lvls simply cause they are not managing their CDs appropriately....

[Ishkar]

The functionally of the IV and III spells are completely different. Enochian doesn't lock you out of previous skills either, infact you still need to use fire I to maintain astral during your fire IV casts.

While people have their own reasons for disliking the new abilties, I don't necessarily agree with your points on how the IV "feel exactly the same" or rendering 2.0 skills obsolete, let alone changing the functionally of III because it's purpose hasn't changed from what it did in 2.0; swapping from astral/umbral into 3 stacks of the other.

Well, I can accept that it doesn't feel the same (to some). That would be personal differences I suppose, which makes it very hard in terms of pleasing everyone, as is usually the case with these sort of things. To me it just felt like Fire III was our heavy nuke, something that felt really pleasing to hit the enemy with. And now that is what Fire IV means, while Fire III has lost that status.

And while I may have worded it wrong before in relation to skills being obsolete, what I meant is that when you have Enochian up, your Fire III's only purpose is to switch back to / refresh (with proc) Astral Fire, whereas it had a much more active part of our rotation before, both actively and passively (i.e. it meant more to players to cast the skill). Of the jobs that I play (and admittedly there are many that I haven't touched), their post-50 skills complement and improve upon their old rotations without diminishing aspects of your old rotation, for the most part. I have to bring up Dragoon again as an example, where Blood of the Dragon keeps your old main rotation intact but extends it with a fourth skill to a combo, and Geirskogul which is a completely new oGCD addition independent from your other skills. As a bonus it also makes your jumps stronger (but Enochian actually similarly increases your total damage, so we can ignore the jumps aspect for this conversation). Using Chaos Thrust/Full Thrust doesn't feel any less interesting/useful as it did before. For Paladin, our new skills give us access to two new combos that we can alternate with our previous combo, and a few oGCD that provide additional utility that also reinforce earlier job mechanics (Sheltron has good synergy with Shield Swipe, for example). None of these new skills overshadow our previous skills as I feel is the case with Fire IV.

Anyway, I won't argue that my vision on these mechanics are how others should see it, and I won't argue that Squenix SHOULD change anything. As I stated before there are always bound to be disagreements on things like this, and ultimately it is our own choice whether we accept these changes or decide to move on and try a different job. Similarly, however, I feel that people shouldn't dismiss the OP's (and others') point by saying that "it works" when we are all aware that it works, but simply don't find it to be an enjoyable or meaningful addition to the job's mechanics. It is then up to Squenix to figure out if they agree more with the group that does or the group that doesn't enjoy the changes.

[Sylvain]

I don't think enochian needs a fix but there could be some qol adjustement. Something like "after casting fireIV your next FireI casting time, damage and mana cost are halved." With this refreshing Umbral Fire after an unexpected move would be much easier.

[Ishkar]

Enochian's primary function is removing the RNG from optimizing black Mage damage. You don't rely on proc effects to maximize your damage; You rely on juggling timers, which barring a bad string of ground-death-effects being targeted at you, is completely on you (and your ISP).

Enochian removes your reliance on Thundercloud and Firestarter for maximum damage. Pretending it's a burden or some fail of design is completely off base.

It accomplished exactly what it meant to do, and the sheer amount of power you get from the 52-60 abilities can hardly be classified as a burden.

This is going back to arguing about different things. Functionality vs. Enjoyment, Failed Design vs. Interesting Design. I think most Black Mages who dislike Enochian are aware of its functionality, at least the ones who aren't too lazy to learn how to effectively use their job with the new skills. If your previous primary damage dealer, as well as your most powerful ability are now both only used to maintain a timer (Astral Fire) so that you can use your new most powerful ability (which, in essence, is just a stronger version of the other two), as functional and successful as the design is, it doesn't mean that it's a clever or meaningful addition per se.

Also, if the primary new function of the job, as you state, is to remove the RNG (which was the initial design for BLM), then that would basically be admitting to a bad initial design that needed a new mechanic to fix it. And while Enochian definitely succeeded at that, it didn't bring much more to the table than 'fixing RNG reliance' by shifting the focus to timers. It's not a burden, it's not a 'fail' (for the purpose that it was intended for) and if there are people out there that enjoy this new addition for reasons other than the fact that "it works," then that's actually great.

[Kabooa]

The initial design, as far as I can tell, for Black mage, given the story you get, the lore behind it, and the mechanics that represent it, is one of -instability-.

Look at the 2.0 Black Mage set up, look at the animations, look at the story. All of it points towards a class that is barely keeping it together; Raw power to the extreme that it is not only unpredictable, but dangerous. Seriously, look at the 'Black mage' spell animations. It screams "I hope this !#@%ing works".

That's the 'feel' of Black Mage I get. Enochian does not run counter to this; It is a mechanic that constantly is in danger of ruining everything I hold dear if something goes wrong. It is fragile stability in a class that is looking for excuses to break loose.

It is hard to quantify how a class 'feels', but, in my opinion, that 'feel' of constantly losing control for choices both within and out of my control is still there.

Are Fire4 and Blizz4 all that new and exciting? Not conceptually, no. They're about as exciting as Fang and Claw/Wheeling Thrust, or Warrior having duplicate abilities created with better potency for their DPS stance. (Now that was lazy.) Is Sharp Cast particularly interesting? No, but it does present different uses for different situations. Leylines is meh (but effective).

FF14 is not a game with a great deal of lateral thinking. It is one of the most tightly controlled games I have ever played. The player is given almost no room at all to break the game or do something particularly original, or solve a problem in a different way. And yes, that is disappointing. And yes, the job abilities introduced in Heavenwards, conceptually, are disappointing.

That doesn't change the fact that I enjoy the core concept of the Black Mage, and slaughtering things wholesale with fire is my primary draw to the class. They could introduce the most complicated, innovative, and fresh ways to do that, but I'm still essentially throwing fire into things faces, and I can't complain about that.

[Ishkar]

The initial design, as far as I can tell, for Black mage, given the story you get, the lore behind it, and the mechanics that represent it, is one of -instability-.

Look at the 2.0 Black Mage set up, look at the animations, look at the story. All of it points towards a class that is barely keeping it together; Raw power to the extreme that it is not only unpredictable, but dangerous. Seriously, look at the 'Black mage' spell animations. It screams "I hope this !#@%ing works".

That's the 'feel' of Black Mage I get. Enochian does not run counter to this; It is a mechanic that constantly is in danger of ruining everything I hold dear if something goes wrong. It is fragile stability in a class that is looking for excuses to break loose.

It is hard to quantify how a class 'feels', but, in my opinion, that 'feel' of constantly losing control for choices both within and out of my control is still there.

This is actually a very nice take on the job, and offers an interesting insight. Props. One day when I feel 'ready' to take up my staff again I will try to keep this in mind.