I'm having a hard time understanding how people enjoy the BLM...

[RiceisNice]

hat would also bring BLM back to being the needlessly simplistic short-rotation job that it was in 2.x. No thanks. I agree that something should be done to allow them a bit more freedom of movement, but the entire class is based around standing still and torching things. That shouldn't change.

Make surecast allow for move-casting, and traited swiftcast to lower cooldown for BLM.

Though this also makes room for new abilities in 4.0 to fill in that short coming instead of making them stronger at what they do; an ability rewind themselves X seconds, including the state of mana,, hp and buff durations, or a toggle freeze the duration of their buff timers at the cost of lowered damage.

The timer mechanics added to Dragoon and some other jobs really feel like unneeded additions to the rotations of classes. There is a motto in life that applies to just about everything we do, whether it's free time or not: Keep it simple! Things can be challenging without having dozens of abilities / timers to manage, and it would be much better if people could focus on something simple to maintain instead of having to almost always eye the ability bar just to keep track of where they are at.

I feel that flows just fine with how DRG plays. You definitely do not want a job to regress in what they can do (BRD) or feel largely the same compared to what was already there. It was a trap they fell into for WoW's wod expansion; my hunter played the same from 90 on the road to 100, and I actually got bored during the leveling process.

Even then, the design of something like BotD and Enochian does not "punish" you for failing it (people still seem to use this word wrong), because you're not suddenly going to do less dps for failing those buffs, compared to not using it at all. Of course it's not the case in savage or EX, but at that point you're sorta expected to be performing really well in the first place...

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

I am new to BLM (Had not played it since 1.0 when I got it to 50 before I started playing it a little again now) and I am a little bit curious. If they are so dependant on knowing the fight more than most jobs etc. Does that mean if you do it perfectly you are amongst the top DPS? I mean I play it because it is fun, but I have no idea how BLM stacks up vs other jobs. Most jobs seem pretty cool, but what is BLM good at? Like what makes them stand out when comparing to other jobs? Single target dps, AoE, utility or what is their thing?

[Marianno]

@Rumpelstiltzkin, their ST dmg is what makes them stand out. The sheer amount of dmg to a single target that BLM is capable of if played correctly can rival that of a monk and surely surpass a DRG.

[Daemius]

Gonna parrot other people here, the job gets much easier once you commit your rotation to memory. 3.0 made us become adaptable and pro-active in our playstyle. 2.x was pretty ezpz. Now you to have think on your feet. If you get targeted with an aoe you have to dodge you have to adjust your rotation to that either by cutting a Fire IV or casting Bliz IV early, among other things. It's not that bad and doesn't hurt our dps that badly. Even if you get completely screwed and get stuck in 2.x rotation you still do alright. Having prior knowledge of the fight cuts down on this a lot as others have said.

Apocastasis is not a fringe utility spell. Use it, it's pretty good. Helps with progressing thru harder content.
Same with Aetherial Manipulation, make a focus target macro for it and you're golden. Try practice using it in Hullbreaker HM when you get snared by the final boss, it works wonders.

[Fyce]

I am new to BLM (Had not played it since 1.0 when I got it to 50 before I started playing it a little again now) and I am a little bit curious. If they are so dependant on knowing the fight more than most jobs etc. Does that mean if you do it perfectly you are amongst the top DPS? I mean I play it because it is fun, but I have no idea how BLM stacks up vs other jobs. Most jobs seem pretty cool, but what is BLM good at? Like what makes them stand out when comparing to other jobs? Single target dps, AoE, utility or what is their thing?

At 60, BLM is tied to one very punitive mechanic: Enochian.
Enochian is a buff quite allows you to use Fire IV (your highest direct damage spell) as well as Blizzard IV (a spell which refreshes Enochian's duration, but with 5sec less than its previous maximum). This buff is on a 60s cooldown.
Blizzard IV can only be used under Umbral Ice, and Fire IV when under Astral Fire. While it's not really restrictive for Blizzard IV, it's harder to maintain Astral Fire to continue casting Fire IV since that skill doesn't refresh your Astral Fire. Therefore, you have to squeeze a Fire I inbetween your Fire IV casts to keep Astral Fire.
In short terms, your very basic rotation is: Enochian, Fire III, Fire IV, Fire IV, Fire (to refresh Astral Fire), Fire IV, Fire IV, Blizzard III, Blizzard IV, then repeat from Fire III until you need to use Enochian again.
(Obviously there's some variations with the opener, Fire III procs and Thunder... but I just wanted to give you the baseline.)

This implies that if something in the fight prevents you from refreshing your Enochian timer with Blizzard IV, then the buff will fall and you'll have to use the old 2.0 ARR rotation, lowering your DPS by a good amount, until you can use Enochian again. Same thing goes with your Astral Fire, if you can't cast your Fire I to refresh it, then no more Fire IV for you, and you'll probably have to swith to Ice to refresh Enochian and then start over.
This means that your actual rotation depends 100% on fight mechanics like bosses invulnerability frames or movement heavy moments. If you don't know when these mechanics happens, you're almost guaranteed to fail your rotation at some point, getting heavily punished on your DPS at the same time (which doesn't happen with other jobs... at least not that much).

This is further supported by another skill, Ley Lines, which is a ground AoE that boosts your casting speed by quite a high amount. Since the AoE stays on the ground and you have to stand in it to be buffed, it means that you aren't really free to use it whenever you want, or you'll take the risk of having to step outside of it due to a mechanic. It won't completly obliterate your performance, but it's still pretty important.

Indeed, most of the other DPS jobs has to have some knowledge of mechanics not to screw things up, but BLM it at a level where its own rotation it completly tied to the encounter its facing. Other jobs can improve their own rotation to be more effective, like the MNK with its stacks, DRG with Blood of the dragon, or even SMN with its aetherflow stacks... but BLM has to know the fight before even thinking about optimization and improvements.


The upside it that you get rewarded with a very high DPS overall if you get it right.

[Shurrikhan]

In the next expansion, would you prefer a BLM rotation similar to the 2.0 or the 3.0?

Going by what precedent ideas I've seen in game, in 4.0 I'd like to see something similar to 2.0's double quick-cast and mana-shadow (before their removal around 2.1), with 3.0's added risk-reward system of Enochian.

All in all, I like what's been added with Enochian. I think it could be better, but it works. I would have preferred that Enochian be a ramping buff, rather than a stance to which Fire IV and Blizzard IV are locked. Rather than losing access to those two spells, you drop off the ramping buff you've gained thus far. Something of that sort. Equally painful, but less jarring to one's rotation. That's just a spit-ball though, and would mean you see Fire and Firestarter procs even less, which I imagine you might not like. (Plus, there would then be balancing issues due to Fire IV's comparatively low mana cost.) There are quite a few little concepts for BLM I'd have loved to have seen demo'd on a public test server, but without seeing them in action, I wouldn't be absolutely certain as to whether or not I'd like them, and moreover it'd be hard to fully explain to others how the ideas might affect gameplay.

The Astral/Umbral duration increase to 12 seconds was already a tremendous QoL change. The alternative that I thought I might have preferred would be to simply have Fire IV and Blizzard IV only check for Astral/Umbral (and perhaps Enochian) at the start of the cast, equating to mostly the same effect on single-target rotations. But all in all, I like that we can choose to push something else with the added 2 seconds, rather than only having more Enochian spell lenience. What I disliked about the 3.0 gameplay that change and quite a bit of spell speed (for a less played alt, at least) has mostly fixed.

All in all I'd like a few more reasons to situationally drop Enochian early, just as I'd have liked more reasons to end my burn phase early back in 2.0 (and even now), perhaps in timing with mana ticks or the like. But it definitely works.

[NovaLevossida]

snip

To add on to this, on the MogTalk caster episode, all the raiders in there agreed that when content first lands, SMN is much easier to play than BLM because it requires less knowledge of the fight to optimize, but BLM's efficiency spikes after the player has had time to learn everything about the fight.

[Maero]

I am new to BLM (Had not played it since 1.0 when I got it to 50 before I started playing it a little again now) and I am a little bit curious. If they are so dependant on knowing the fight more than most jobs etc. Does that mean if you do it perfectly you are amongst the top DPS? I mean I play it because it is fun, but I have no idea how BLM stacks up vs other jobs. Most jobs seem pretty cool, but what is BLM good at? Like what makes them stand out when comparing to other jobs? Single target dps, AoE, utility or what is their thing?

Yes that would be correct in that blm is very close to the top, smn has better aoe now over us however.
We are a nuker basically and yes mechanics could become an issue but it's from knowing the fight that we overcome this.
Blm is very close to Monk.

[Moomba33]

I prefer simpler jobs myself.
I stopped playing BLM in Heavensward after getting it to 60 because I find managing the new rotation a pain.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

To add on to this, on the MogTalk caster episode, all the raiders in there agreed that when content first lands, SMN is much easier to play than BLM because it requires less knowledge of the fight to optimize, but BLM's efficiency spikes after the player has had time to learn everything about the fight.

Thanks everyone for helping me get an idea of it all. I just have to ask about this though because it sounds to me like a lot of jobs are better for progression whilst BLM is good for things you already have on farm status or am I misunderstanding?