BLM QOL suggestions to make Enochian less punishing

[dinnertime]

It being punishing and easy to screw it up is why black mage is allowed to have such high dps. If you want to make it easier to play then you must lower the dps as a sacrifice. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

It's not even that hard to play. In fact, the reason why it's allowed to have high DPS is because it offers little to no utility. This is the same for Samurai. Both of them offer the highest DPS currently.

[Acidblood]

I don't see why you thinking losing Eno is more harsh now than before. ...

While I agree that the lock-out time for Enochian in 3.X could be a bit harsh (especially if the boss disappeared right around the 25-30s mark), that could have easily been fixed by simply lowering the rescast time; say 45s... instead they seem to have been under the impression that casting Blizzard IV once every 20-30 seconds was some major burden.

Using your examples:
In 3.X:
Did you lose Eno after the first 30s?
- Yes, Fire 1 spam for ~25s, curse, start over and remember for next time...
- No, by the time your refreshed Eno ends it'll almost be back up... go into UI, get your MP back, cast Thunder, pre-cast Fire III, re-up Eno, and off you go again at full steam.

In 4.X:
Did you lose Eno after the first 10-12s?
- Yes, Fire 1 spam for 15~20s, curse, and cut your rotation short next time just to be sure....
- No, chances are Eno is back up, but... still (generally) best to be in UI, get your MP back, cast Thunder, re-up Eno, cast Blizzard IV, cast Fire III and continue... waiting the full 30s for Foul to re-build.

So yes, it is faster to get back into, but it is WAY more punishing to drop out of, even if it's only for 0.1s...

Which really sums up the whole issue; the punishment is now too severe for the frequency and ease with which AF/UI stacks, and now, by extension, Enochian, can be dropped. So either:
1. The punishment for dropping stacks needs to be much less (as it used to be pre-4.0) or...
2. The frequency and / or ease of dropping stacks (or Enochian if it was once again a seperate buff) needs to be reduced.

Neither of those changes would reduce what a skilled BLM is capable of, but either of them would make BLM much more enjoyable to play.

[Acidblood]

It being punishing and easy to screw it up is why black mage is allowed to have such high dps. If you want to make it easier to play then you must lower the dps as a sacrifice. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

SAM says Hi.

Also, I don't want to make it 'easier' to play, I just want to make it a bit less punishing; the difference being that BLM should still have its current skill ceiling, just without the threat of being banished back to level 50 every ~10 seconds.

[RyeMinx]

*snip*

You basically just confirmed my point...

So in the case that you royally screw up and lose Eno very early in your rotation, 3.X takes longer to get back into your rotation than 4.X. The amount of time that has to pass to reactivate eno after a screw up is far less with 4.X, since at most you have to wait 17s. Compared to at most 30s with 3.X. So 4.X is less punishing in this case.

In the case that you mess up with Eno ready to reactivate, 3.X and 4.X have the same punishment. You need to go back into UI, and start your rotation over again, you lose dps because you had to restart.
You can't say losing Foul is a punishment for 4.X and not 3.X. If there was a Foul timer in 3.X, it would be just as bad to lose Eno back then as it is now.

It is BEYOND easy to keep AF/UI stacks. 2-3s of extra leeway for movement is enough. If you have to, skip a Fire 4 to keep the stacks up. And if you desperately HAVE to... use transpose. Yea you kinda have to restart your rotation, but it keeps your Foul timer going which is the best thing.

Summing up:
1. You are more punished still in 3.X than in 4.X
2. It is super easy to keep AF/UI stacks up.

[Acidblood]

*snip*

My point with 4.X is that, once you do get Enochian back, there is more re-build to do now than in 3.X, and that you generally should / need to do that re-build up regardless of how long you dropped Enochian for... and Foul absolutely does count, as it does now exist (i.e. if they keep piling mechanics on top of Enochian, at what point does it become 'too punishing' to drop?)... but agree to disagree, as you seem to count total Enochian up-time* far more highly than the potential frequency and severity of dropping it (which from an overal DPS stand point is probably correct, but from a fun and gameplay standpoint I can't agree).

Edit: *And even then it's tenious, because if you dropped every Enochian (as unlikely as that would be), you are looking at only 2 * 13 = 26s of up time per minute in 4.X vs. 30s of uptime per minute in 3.X

[Ferrinus]

Enochian, Fire 4, and Blizzard 4 should be on the same button, just like in pvp.

Also, Leylines and Between the Lines should be on the same button.

Also, I'd like to see Transpose's cooldown brought back down to 10 seconds so that juggling astral/umbral is less annoying and so that playing a sub-40 BLM feels better, but I appreciate that that could mildly alter the 70 aoe rotation.

[Waliel]

It being punishing and easy to screw it up is why black mage is allowed to have such high dps. If you want to make it easier to play then you must lower the dps as a sacrifice. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

That's not how it works. Difficulty doesn't have any weight in potential DPS, as was said on record. The reason we have high DPS is because we provide literally nothing else to the party but damage, and we're behind SAM because we're ranged.

[chidarake]

hmm so many things your missing about how to play 4.x blm it seems if you think that dropping enochian is very easy to do.

first of all I have 2 characters both leveled in blm both with varying spellspeed stats and I can tell you right now even at lower spellspeed it is easy to not only maintain enochian but also quad cast fire 4 into bliz 3 at the back end of the rotation without leylines.

one of the first things you need to learn about current blm is that if you have to move you have to do one of two things, either drop a fire4 or transpose to maintain foul timer. this is assuming you cant swiftcast or use triple cast. (could be a phase you need them for coiming up shortly or maybe already used them)

dropping the fire 4 is a dps loss but not as much of one as losing your timer so easy choice. there is a caveat to this though. if you can finish the fire 4 and your going into umbral but will lose enochian but foul timer is either just finished or will finish then just use fire 4 and bliz 3 as normal refreshing enochian after bliz 3 to maintain the damage buff. (losing only the damage buff on the bliz 3 cast) if your foul timer is nowhere near finished transpose.

however if you have to transpose it does not mean you need to cast bliz 3 bliz 4 thunder again, you can go straight back into fire with a slow cast fire 3 (not as slow as the mp reset of going through bliz) or swiftcast fire 3 and continue dpsing although chances are the slow cast is better cus you will most likely get a mana tick.

you have to learn to accommodate the timer as unlike in 3.x you cant cast a fire or bliz spell and have astral/umbral drop and reapply and maintain enochian like you could in 3.x you always have to be able to finish your cast or transpose.

also another thing you need to learn is not to sit at max range because if the target moves and your on a refresh cast theres a very good chance you will not finish that cast and hence lose enochian and the foul timer along with it.

it seems to me less an issue with the game and how the timers work and more to do with your experience and how you approach the job in its current state

personally I dont find blm that punishing except in very movement heavy fights and then only to the degree that you dont know the fight at that point. and you cant argue that blm must know the fight to do well as its been like that since the start of 2.x as any movement is a dps lose for blm but now we have better tools to help with that

I think the more you play blm and think about what you are doing and why you are doing it the job becomes very forgiving it just takes some time to get use to it as it plays quite differently from the others jobs including the other casters.

[TsuKoj]

Learning a fight and it's rhythm and intricacies is the fun part of blm to me. Blms all about consistency. After the few times through a phase of a fight keeping enochian up isn't even a thought anymore since blm is about planning out your casts, positions, cooldowns to the fight, and with the way the current enochian works, it stays up naturally. You should already know how many casts into a fight the knock back is coming, you should know when an aoe might/might not be targeting you. Savage/extreme fights are so scripted you can know all your casts/movements cooldowns before you even engage the boss.

And yes it kind of sucks for dungeons and Normal mode where the aoes are more random in where/who they target, but your just throwing flares/fouls/thunder4s out in dungeons the majority of the time, and in normal where luck is a major factor to your personal dps, throwing out a transpose once in a while or a swift fire 1 doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

I find it a unnecessary to change a core mechanic that would very likely affect multiple parts of the job(for example they'd have to keep in mind how it affects aoe rotations or if someone comes up with some janky 2 astral fire rotation) for what becomes even less than an after thought after a couple runs into a fight.

A couple tips though if your having problems with phase transitions, know when the transitions are in your rotation so you can preplan it. If you know a stun is coming up, throw out an early fire 1/blizz 3 to keep your timer longer than the stun duration(susano ex), If you know a knockback is about to happen move your fire 1 up in your rotation and time the cast so the knockback sort of slidecasts you so the fire 1 goes out as your moving back. You can also triplecast + surecast and your knock back invul won't be removed from the casts since they are instant. Plan your leylines, it's worth holding it for a couple seconds(for me it's between 5-10) if you know an aoe is coming up so you can use it as mobility. And if you know an aoe can target you at a certain time, always pop your triplecast there regardless if you got targeted that time or not so you have consistency in your cooldowns, it's a slight dps gain even if you didn't need it that specific run.

Ps - also forgot to mention transpose is shorter than af/ui so you can transpose back and forth during long phase transitions to keep it running. Exdeath during decisive battle is the only spot Ive had to do it though.

[Eli85]

Preface: I can perform optimally as a BLM in 4.0 and I do not need changes to succeed.

Now that that's out of the way.

Good suggestions OP but I would like to see these two instead:

->Enochian baked into AF / AI;
->Leylines becomes a castable buff, rather than being placed on the floor.

In the first case, Enochian is just busy work, as I believe someone else posted. Yes, there are ways to "save it" in not optimal situations, but it's more a hindrance and / or a pain than being compelling gameplay.

Leylines being a buff, to me, is more a reflection of the current fight mechanics and how much moving we have to do. I don't see the need to punish BLMs who drop Leylines at inopportune times.