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

[Lauront]

I wasn't expecting anything huge but this is literally just Foul 2.0 and ST Flare, and neither is visually impressive on top of that. You could've spent one trait upgrading them for single target uses, maybe upgrading a consequence of Fire IV usage for Flare and simply scale down how effective Foul is in AOE situations whilst making it instant and upping the potency, given how Polyglot is the limiting factor on its usage anyway. Virtually all the QoL stuff could've been rolled into lower level traits whilst consolidating spells like Fire IV/Blizzard IV into one.

Aside from some of the things Kalise mentioned, with the expansion theme being what it is, and BLM's historic ties to void magic, I was hoping for a darkness power up phase building off Entropy which accrues as the BLM shifts between phases. Maybe that's not to be since they don't want to take BLM in that direction, although I struggle to see what would fill such a niche for a caster outside of bringing in a new one and then potentially treading on the existing casters' feet, and it does seem to be a waste of that niche.

The QoL stuff (aside from Freeze removing AF rather than enabling UI) is pretty good, and the job will become more mobile as a result, and having something to do between phases a bit more meaningful than Transpose, but we've already gone through 4 years where the rotation is more or less the same, and this is another 2. Fire I not being phased out somehow was a disappointment. Even something as straightforward as this would've been great, especially since you could amend it a little to be the spell that upgrades Flare to Despair. There's lots of possible routes they could've taken besides, and now you have the Sharpcast CD reduction and UI/AF extension anyway to make it viable, albeit adjusted to fit whatever cast times they went with.

That said, it's not the only job in this position, and I'll probably just play it on the side whilst maining SMN, since I'm not a great fan of the RDM changes either and still like BLM better.

[Kabooa]

We have two conflicting builds for Despair that we've seen. Whether or not a new rotation is possible depends entirely on which version we get.

[Lauront]

The one I'm aware of is this - which was the other?

[Kabooa]

The one I'm aware of is this - which was the other?

Despair's had screen shots of 3.0, 2.0, and 1.5 casting times. As the media tour was using an older build than the live letter, it's not clear which one we'll be getting as a final cast time.

[Llugen]

The changes to the job make sense and mostly sound nice overall, fixing several of the issues that I was mainly concerned with about the class and potentially adding more depth to it:

-AOE rotation will be much less frustrating and no longer relies on Transpose (for the love of all that is good and holy)
-being able to charge hearts/umbral ice during downtime
-better access to instant casts for movement and/or weaving with lowered sharpcast timer (although I think I would like to see sharpcast "charge" to 2 or 3 uses) and xenoglossy uses
-potential to better utilize burst windows if played well (Despair and Xenoglossy casts could be saved for Trick Attack/buffs windows for better optimization than we currently have without having to worry about MP clipping or other rotational issues)
-increased Astral timer will allow more leniency with Thundercloud procs, although I would still like to see the value of Thunder III especially be higher

I'm still very concerned about BLM's lack of recovery/support tools relative to those of RDM and SMN and the implications of that in progression (let alone ultimate), on top of it sounding like BLM will require even more planning ahead than it currently does, to say nothing of extended movement phases. This is still something that I would like to see rectified in some way. In this interview with Yoshida and GoldenTot from the media tour, he explains at length that there was strong consideration for changing the function of Verraise, but ultimately decided not to touch it, which is saddening to me.

Also, depending on -just- how powerful the increased enmity is from the new tank stances, I'm very nervous that it will be a mistake to remove Diversion from BLM (and all the jobs for that matter; the ranged physical role doesn't look like it has a dump at all, which is concerning as well), if not only because putting a veteran BLM in a dungeon with a newbie/undergeared tank will probably create issues.

Oh, and I'm also quite disappointed that we are stuck with Fire I for another 2 years... sigh.

[Archwizard]

Also, depending on -just- how powerful the increased enmity is from the new tank stances, I'm very nervous that it will be a mistake to remove Diversion from BLM (and all the jobs for that matter; the ranged physical role doesn't look like it has a dump at all, which is concerning as well), if not only because putting a veteran BLM in a dungeon with a newbie/undergeared tank will probably create issues.

Worth noting that the cooldown of Lucid Dreaming has been halved, which should hopefully help the BLM in that scenario (particularly as AF's lock on Refresh effects make this LD's primary use for BLM).

Though at the risk of beating a dead horse, I still would like to see Drain returned to BLM in a buffed state to at least improve its personal recovery in solo content.

[Numenor1379]

Have you realized that with the loss of Drain, BLM is the only DPS class without some sort of self-heal?

[Kabooa]

Have you realized that with the loss of Drain, BLM is the only DPS class without some sort of self-heal?

Oh no.

Drain.

Whatever will we do.

[mario710]

Oh no.

Drain.

Whatever will we do.

Annihilate the enemy before they annihilate you.

[Lauront]

If it were something like an arcane version of Bloodbath, I'd be keener on it.