Dispensers of fiery explosions, light me up... with your ideas for BLM in 5.0

[Lauront]

Basically... Add a Despair to the end of AF phase. Replace Foul with Xenoglossy in the ST rotation. Replace Blizzard IV with Freeze in AoE rotation.

Welcome to the next 2 years.

Yup... some QoL changes, a couple of been there, done that spells, and that's it. Good thing SMN is looking more interesting.

[Kalise]

You...Freeze to transition in the AoE rotation.

According to the skill description, you do not.

As that will kill your Enochian by putting you to neutral state (With 0 MP to boot)

Since Freeze still says "Generates Umbral Ice or removes Astral Fire"

Only B3/F3 state they both generate and remove to allow an actual transition.

[Kabooa]

According to the skill description, you do not.

As that will kill your Enochian by putting you to neutral state (With 0 MP to boot)

Since Freeze still says "Generates Umbral Ice or removes Astral Fire"

Only B3/F3 state they both generate and remove to allow an actual transition.

Then we have two conflicting builds from a similar time frame - The job trailer which can clearly see Freeze being cast from an AF state, and the tooltips the content creators got to capture. These are both likely from the same general time period / test build, so I'm not sure how that's going to resolve.

Either way, hardly makes a difference.

[Ferrinus]

Enochian, FireIV, and BlizzardIV should just share a button like in PvP. Otherwise I think the 5.0 black mage looks pretty good.

I do wish they’d done something with FireII and BlizzardII, like making them both strike at range and grant some kind of per-target-hit bonus that makes them worth weaving into AoE rotations. Or B2 could restore HP on hit and act as a Drain replacement or something.

[Lauront]

Yeah, it's a bit strange that they didn't merge the abilities in that way (and not just in BLM's case) but I guess they aren't too concerned about button bloat just yet for most jobs. Particularly since many new abilities are being added through trait modifiers, or in some cases, as replacements for others.

[Raldo]

Why do we still even have the Enochian buff? Enochian could just as easily be a trait. Pushing the Enochian button is not fun or useful. SE did away with all of the uninteresting "push button, get buff that lasts forever / long duration" actions (Darkside, Straight Shot, Hot Shot, Heavy Thrust, etc.), so why is Enochian still here?

[Innolis]

Why do we still even have the Enochian buff? Enochian could just as easily be a trait. Pushing the Enochian button is not fun or useful. SE did away with all of the uninteresting "push button, get buff that lasts forever / long duration" actions (Darkside, Straight Shot, Hot Shot, Heavy Thrust, etc.), so why is Enochian still here?

Probably because its the only mechanical complexity the class has. Mind you, I hate managing Enochian too but outright taking it out would make the class brain dead to play.

What I still don't get is how Between the Lines is an actual skill and not a passive for Leylines. I know other classes have it worse, but I hate having to manage so many buttons.

[Archwizard]

What I still don't get is how Between the Lines is an actual skill and not a passive for Leylines.

Not sure what you mean by that, unless you mean like, having Ley Lines' button turn into Between the Lines when it's active?

[Archwizard]

Basically... Nothing changes.

ST Rotation is:

Fire IV > Fire IV > Fire IV (> Swiftcast > Fire IV > Manafont) > Fire I > Fire IV > Fire IV > Fire IV > Despair > Blizzard III > Blizzard IV > Thunder III (> Xenoglossy) > Fire III

AoE Rotation is:

Flare > Flare (> Manafont > Flare) > Freeze (> Foul) > Thunder IV > Fire III

Basically... Add a Despair to the end of AF phase. Replace Foul with Xenoglossy in the ST rotation. Replace Blizzard IV with Freeze in AoE rotation.

Welcome to the next 2 years.

Yup... some QoL changes, a couple of been there, done that spells, and that's it. Good thing SMN is looking more interesting.

To be fair, I don't really know what you expected otherwise, aside from maybe some group utility (casters rather got shot in the foot there).
Without a major rework to the rotation (which they already did once and are happy with how it is now, so the only further change would be for the sake of change), there wasn't really much more to add to it outside QoL, unless they made a new Fire spell you can only cast as a proc (in which case you're looking at Firestarter redux).

And to be honest... the "I want to spam Fire IV" isn't even a broken part of it, it's the "I don't even want to use Xenoglossy/Thundercloud/any support skills in Astral Fire" that is. (And if they'd made Enochian Thunder casts refresh AF, it'd be all over for F1.)

What we got is pretty much exactly what I expected out of it -- Flare in single-target to end AF (the clone is close enough), a passive to make transitioning into UI3 free after Flare (disappointed they didn't name it Absolute Zero but w/e), a "Meditation" copy to freeze our Enochian timer, a new effect to consume Polyglot, more tools for movement phases. All things that have been suggested in this thread, and more or less came out as requested.

Also, with the extension of phases to 15 sec, pooling of Polyglot and reduction of Sharpcast's CD to 30 sec, I'm surprised the sample ST rotation doesn't include Xenoglossy (with a possible second) and some proc every time -- without Triplecast or Manafont F4, the rotation as written is 37 sec long.

[Kalise]

To be fair, I don't really know what you expected otherwise, aside from maybe some group utility (casters rather got shot in the foot there).

Some sort of evolution of the rotation, outside merely the addition of a single Despair at the end of AF phase and swapping Foul for a "New" spender that is just slightly more powerful (And instant cast)

For example:

* A new conditionally worthwhile skill to use during UI.

* A replacement for Fire I as an AF extender (Potentially being a new skill that consumes Umbral Hearts and unlocks a new Fire skill that's better than F4 so AF would be F4 > F4 > Extender > New Skill > New Skill > New Skill > New Skill > Despair - Maybe fewer "New Skill" spam if it costs more MP than F1/F4 because hey, why not make things cost different amounts in AF?)

* A new Polyglot spender that takes advantage of the ability to pool up to 2 of them and does something different that actually makes usage a choice other than "This one is for ST and that one is for AoE". For example, something like the Magic Boost logogram that can let you set up a burst phase with your other spells

* Literally anything to make Thunder III not terribly designed so it's a DPS loss outside of having a Thundercloud proc that happens at the right time... Such as making Thundercloud no longer being 20s duration but lasting until your next Thunder spell cast (So Sharpcast > Thunder will let you guarantee some procs, irregardless of how long you spend doing your rotation)

* Updates of Fire II and Blizzard II so they're not total and complete wastes of space (Especially given that ShB has shown them putting more emphasis on making all other jobs AoE rotations better... Yet, F2 and B2 are still useless garbage)

I.e. Not necessarily a "Major rework" to the rotation, but some actual evolution to it other than "Here's a single new spell to put into it, have fun playing 99.99% the exact same rotation for 2 years while every other job gets fancy new skills and upgrades to their rotations"