BLM in 4.0

[Sylvain]

Enochian was needed to give more depth in a sense to blm. No changes at all will come 4.0 other then perhaps removing certain abilities, perhaps surecast or manaward? Who knows what goes on in SE mind
I still find it absolutely silly casting fire on fire enemies, ice on icycles, etc...

The core gameplay will probably not change much, that is for sure.
I'm however expecting more lightning presence in our rotation. With the addition of FireIV, the dps gain from thundercloud is less noticeable. Also, as I said in my previous post with QoL suggestion, thunder1,2,3 plays exactly the same. Introducing new gameplay in those spell would be welcomed, such as making thunder2 an aoe DoT.

Regarding the elemental issue in your last line, this is unfortunately something every mmoRPG has to overlook unless they build a gameplay around these. In a soloFF, making a monster immune to one element isn't a problem as usually different element deal the same amount of damage. If you were to make a Fire resistant/immune monster, the BLM couldn't play. If u were to compensate by making it weak to Ice, then you would drastically change the rotation of the BLM as he would simply spam IceIV and it would require SE to take extra time balancing the weakness as it would either make the BLM too strong or weak on a single fight. Now if they were to do that, they couldn't simply stop on the BLM and they would need to do that on every element. This could result in making caster a non reliable source of damage as they would be too dependant on the boss nature. Just imagine how aweful it would be to have a boss "resistant to slash". What? Everytime you see a Dragoon or Ninja in your partyfinder you kick him because he has the wrong "dmg type"?

Don't get me wrong, it is silly, but in a community game you can't make things like that. WoW tried and the net result was that guild would simply not bring X class to Y boss because they had the wrong elemental type.

Alot of the people who say "BLM" is simple are those who have invested many many hours in this class. You can say things like "It's simple for me" but not things like "It's the simplest class in the entire game' lmao!! It's NOT simple, objectively when classes like Paladin exist.

I personally find HW BLM absolutely not easy. It is a very unforgivable rotation that you can easily screw up. (Unless you do FireIV, Fire1, FireIV, Fire). Loosing Astral Fire has a much more dire consequence than not keeping a DoT up for 2sec. I'm not even talking about loosing Enochian prematurely. ARR BLM however was peaceasy since there was absolutely no timer. It was impossible to screw your rotation... it would be like screwing your paladin theat rotation at this point.

I don't hate Enochian, but I don't think it added much in the way of challenge or fun factor since it's basically the same play style but with more buttons and less emphasis on procs (I actually rather enjoyed the proc-heavy style of 2.x BLM).

I find placing that Fire1 every 9sec very annoying, it breaks the flow. Like big boom, big boom, big boom... spark... And I agree, the loss of the FireIII is a bit sad. It was fun to have this big burst every now and then.

Also, why on earth would you want to get rid of Manaward? I get Surecast not being a frequently essential skill, but even that has an occasional use. I imagine the point of removing or consolidating abilities would be to reduce the number of hotkeys needed in standard play, not necessarily just to clean up the niche skills.

Both ward should simply be merged into a shield, there's no point in having so many defensive skills.
Surecast should be reworked to allow a cast while moving. The BLM being even more than before turret caster(as we proc less). Being able to do one cast while moving every 30sec would help greatly.
I'm not even sure I have surecast on my actionbar

[Cynfael]

Both ward should simply be merged into a shield, there's no point in having so many defensive skills.

This would effectively be a nerf unless the cooldown on the combined skill were exceptionally short.

Also, this is totally for cosmetic but, am I the only one bothered by the lazy naming of spells and attached to the old -ra-ga-ja ranking? This is so lame because the japanese version has it. (the JP name are official spell name.
Like
I : Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, ファイア, ブリザド, サンダー (Faia, burizado, sanda)
II :Fira, Blizzara, Thundara ブリザラ, ファイラ, サンダラ (burizara, faira, sandara)
III : Firaga,Blizzaga, Thundaga ファイガ, ブリザガ, サンダガ (faiga, burizaga, sandaga)
IV : Firaja,Blizzaja,Thundaja ファイジャ, ブリザジャ(Faija, Burizaja, サンダジャ？　sandaja?)

That part is a very old discussion. The ra-ga-ja naming convention isn't universal throughout FF games, and this dev team decided to stick with roman numerals.

I wouldn't be too surprised if they busted out ra-ga-ja for the bigger spells in the future, though. You do see it in-game already, but only for boss-level spells like Ancient Quaga.

[Sylvain]

This would effectively be a nerf unless the cooldown on the combined skill were exceptionally short.

This is true but as a BLM, the only one that currently truly matters in the spell one in a raid environnement. Unless there's been several case of physical unavoidable aoe, every aoe from bosses are spells. I don't think that the physical absorbing shield will help me survive a boss smashing me.
But yes they could also reduce the cooldown to compensate.

I personally find cooldown to be too long in FF14.
Imo it makes the player less incline to use the cooldown as they can only be used one or twice in a fight.
Also, making the shield a 30sec cooldown would greatly help the BLM problem of being a turret as he could tank the aoe instead of moving to avoid it more often. (I'm obviously not refering to OS mechanic or weakening one)

I wouldn't be too surprised if they busted out ra-ga-ja for the bigger spells in the future, though. You do see it in-game already, but only for boss-level spells like Ancient Quaga.

Please... the whole I II III IV is so lame and boring
Even other job have the system, like combust I II being コンバス　コンバラ　konbasu, konbara

[Cynfael]

This is true but as a BLM, the only one that currently truly matters in the spell one in a raid environnement. Unless there's been several case of physical unavoidable aoe, every aoe from bosses are spells. I don't think that the physical absorbing shield will help me survive a boss smashing me.
But yes they could also reduce the cooldown to compensate.

I personally find cooldown to be too long in FF14.
Imo it makes the player less incline to use the cooldown as they can only be used one or twice in a fight.
Also, making the shield a 30sec cooldown would greatly help the BLM problem of being a turret as he could tank the aoe instead of moving to avoid it more often. (I'm obviously not refering to OS mechanic or weakening one)



Please... the whole I II III IV is so lame and boring
Even other job have the system, like combust I II being コンバス　コンバラ　konbasu, konbara

hai hai wakatteru sa. We'll see if they bring it back in force at some point, but they've been holding out on us for some time already.

As for Manawall, there have been points in past raid cycles where it was awesome. Granted it received a nerf as far as big hits go in that it no longer mitigates 100% of damage, but being able to no-sell a physical mechanic is occasionally rather useful. Most unavoidable AoEs are magic, but that leaves a fair number of extra-wide physical damage cones and cleaves.

A 30 second CD would be too good, I think, but otherwise I'm generally a fan of shorter cooldowns since using skills more frequently is usually fun.