So with all of this consolidation Why do we still have 4 different Fires?

[Eloah]

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I think the logistics of my question were a bit lost on you. Now I am not saying you don't have a point, but the main notion was to make the game play easier for players of all levels... how many times have you encountered an Ice Mage or someone who spams Fire III?

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Plenty of people have already expressed sentiments they were expecting with the upcoming job changes, as well as what would of made sense, without changing BLM core design or gameplay. Anyone who automatically states "they do different things" is catering to the devs lack of imagination and ingenuity, that they were able to place into other jobs, some even too much.

[Nestama]

It's not really a lack of imagination, but rather "why fix what isn't broken?" Nothing happened to the Fire spells because what can SE do? They could easily rework the Thunder spells because all they had going for them was 'does more damage and all have a chance to proc' (so now odd numbered Thunders are single target and even numbered Thunders are AoE). Fire, however? They all have something specific going for them. They're not like Stone, Bio and Malefic, which all just do more damage.

You can't make Fire become Fire IV, as that would effectively make them a level 50 BLM at level 70... and potentially OP (SE would need to lower Fire IV's potency to either match, or do less than Fire III).

BLM is arguably the easiest Job to play at 50 and with these new changes coming in SB, even easier to handle (since you now only need to keep Astral and Umbral up and not worry about Enochian falling off) at 60 and 70. If you encounter a player who spams Tier III spells over and over again, then you just need to teach them how to play the Job optimally. If they resort to "my sub my way" or ignore you completely, then boot them. They clearly don't want to learn how to play an easy to learn Job.

[Hasrat]

You could, but that's if you take the MP cost out of the mix.

Why does MP cost matter at all? Current spells already adjust cost depending on astral/umbral. Would it be so far out to have this hypothetical "upgrading Fire/FireIV" adjust itself similarly?

[Nestama]

Fire IV has already lost some potency (280 now, 260 in SB) due to the changes SE is making for BLM. If they made it so that you can effectively go back to doing a level 50 rotation, then SE would need to lower the potency further (lower than Fire III's 240), as well as increase the MP cost and lower the cast to match Fire's MP cost and cast time. That is a massive nerf to BLM.

Fire at level 70: 1440MP, 180 Potency, 2.42 Cast
Fire IV at level 70: 1200MP, 260 Potency, 2.91 Cast

[Hasrat]

That doesn't really explain why they need to adjust anything? Idk, not 60, so maybe I'm missing something. But MP cost already adjusts as needed, as well as cast time of F3/B3 under UI3/AF3.

If they're just talking about adjusting MP/cast time under buff, how would that really be so difficult, and in need of any nerf?

Fire at level 70 base stats: 1440MP, 180 Potency, 2.42 Cast
Fire at level 70 with Eno active: 1200MP, 260 Potency, 2.91 Cast

But like I said, admittedly I'm not well versed for this debate. Just not quite understanding why "they have different stats" means devs couldn't swap them out under buff effect.

[Nestama]

Enochian never wears off unless you let Astral and/or Umbral fall.

[Ferth]

I think the logistics of my question were a bit lost on you.

This is entirely possible.

Now I am not saying you don't have a point, but the main notion was to make the game play easier for players of all levels... how many times have you encountered an Ice Mage or someone who spams Fire III?

Though, personally it has been a really long time since I've encountered someone who was so clueless about the job as to be casting only Fire 3 or only Ice spells. I certainly can't imagine anyone playing that way for long without a certain element of willfullness not to do it right, at which point why should they be catered to? Yeah, it sucks for the people they play with, but if people have attempted to help them play more effectively and they've chosen not to making the class easier isn't going to make them any less obstinant.

[SilverObi]

I think the logistics of my question were a bit lost on you. Now I am not saying you don't have a point, but the main notion was to make the game play easier for players of all levels... how many times have you encountered an Ice Mage or someone who spams Fire III?

Literally never. But it is a good go-to strawman argument. Aside from preemptively poo-poo'ing the obvious answer, it would require changing how each of those Fire spells work as people have already said.

[alimdia]

I don't get the request for a consolidated fire spell, this is worse than 50 BLM, a consolidated fire would devolve into

fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - bliz 4 - thunder 3 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - bliz 4 - thunder 3 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - bliz 4 - thunder 3 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - fire 4 - bliz 4 - thunder 3

You can say that the current rotation isn't hard, but at lest with fire 4 not touching astral fire, fire 1 being the cheaper astral fire refresh and fire 3 being the choice for procs and initial AF application combat can be a bit more complex than just spending the entire battle hitting one button.

You could reassign the current effects to new skills, but then you're not accomplishing a consolidation, you're basically renaming them.

[Fynlar]

The only sort of consolidation I would have done with regard to BLM is to just replace Fire/Blizzard 1 with Fire/Blizzard 4 while Enochian is up, and actually allow those spells to affect Astral/Umbral like their tier 1 counterparts would.

Yes, it would simplify the rotation and make BLM more powerful on account of never having to use Fire 1 just to maintain Astral during Enochian, but that's really about all you could do that I can think of to consolidate the spells without drastically changing their effects.