A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

[Kabooa]

Alright, so. Black Mage

All that MP fanangling is unneeded with just the "Independent UI tick".

UI/AF 3 do not reduce the GCD, only the cast time. The .625 Second deadzone between phase transitions would mean there's no risk of an MP deadzone.

Making the ice spells better at the expense of making F4 worse is horrible. We minimize Ice spells heavily. We only ever cast the one in UI: B4. Increasing B3's potency is an empty gesture beyond the very first cast. You have listed no changes regarding the damage reduction of Fire and Ice.

In the case that it is removed: We aren't suddenly going to use ice spells. There is no difference in time or cost between the two in spell tiers. Given the choice, we want to cast fire. Fire's bonus would have to be completely removed or reduced to the point of nullification to make it something to consider. Ice and Fire have the same exact cost regarding mobility, so given the choice you never choose Ice.

In the case that it stays: ^^^^^^^ Double down.

I will never use Scathe, stop trying to make me!

Phase lengths look exactly the same. 7 GCDs + FS in fire, 6-9 seconds in Ice.

Black mage turret is reduced for no concrete gain.

The UI tick does, however, make Spellspeed a 100% damage gain compared to now though, where it doesn't influence your UI phase at all. It is possible the UI tick will reduce Ice phase further which means more Fire uptime.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

I got it from reading it tbh. You still don't want to drop Enochian and go into the ARR rotation again, but going into ice early isn't as much of a penalty, not using B4 isn't as much of a penalty, and the increased fluidity of ice phase does increase your average DPS. Scathe does see use too still, though I wish they'd gone with letting it proc thundercloud/firestarter. I welcome the idea, just not the final dps numbers. I'd probably start at 30% for AF1 and add 20% for each stack thereafter, but that I think is a boost over the current dps rate. The MP value changes are nice but do very little when you factor in that the next expansion is going to break all of them all over again anyways.

The bigger problem to me imo is that Mana Shift got a meaningless 'buff' that only affects SMN and Refresh still wasn't nerfed. And all of the casters other than SMN got nerfed, and SMN's issues were just glossed over. The Sic change does nothing. Getting melee combos 6% faster, pushing RDM to use their oGCDs more for a minimal amount of gain and retuning Embolden to be backloaded instead of frontloaded is not gonna make up for losing all of that base damage either. Putting all of that focus on their spike window is not going to help them when they're not guaranteed to see it at specific times. They get one more GCD to flex for it. Big whoop.

And nothing changed about the actual problems with BRD. Equalizing the dps stats doesn't change that there are crit rate raid buffs and that piercing still exists, boosting crit for BRD just becomes flat out 20% better for them relative to everything else, and around 5% better for MNK, with no actual consideration for secondary stats being put in for the majority of DPS classes, beyond dump Speed. Speed is still the worst stat too. It does nothing to help with base resource management or positively affect rotation timing for most classes and remains doubly worse for healers trying to time pre-casts. Good job. You did it. Nothing changed. BRD and MCH also got a pointless AoE weaponskill range boost, because 'that's what they needed. Bard even got a giant AoE buff in Minuet! The QoL on Flamethrower/Rapidfire and AoE effect on Wildfire on MCH helps but does nothing to close the pre-existing rDPS or skill gap there either. That's a far bigger atrocity when it comes to ranged/caster dps balance at the moment. What gives?

The only way some of this 'might' be saved is with the right 5.0 boosts, but even that is a long stretch. None of this would help the current situation, at all.