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

[Kalise]

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

SMN too.

I mean, unless you call Physick healing for like 400-500 HP at level 70 a "Sort of self-heal" or their new Phoenix skill with a whopping 20 potency HoT (Will it scale of INT at least? Who knows...)

To be honest... They literally could just turn Scathe into Drain. Make it instant cast. Replace the crappy RNG bonus damage with a higher base damage and some life gain. And the useless skill becomes somewhat useful (If, of course, it was changed to have a somewhat meaningful heal attached to it, outside of Eureka's ridonkulous scaled damage).

If SMN's Physick also starts to scale with INT for them again, then all jobs would have at least a form of self healing (With Casters all having spammable healing vs physicals both relying on CD's)

[Sylvain]

I'm personally quite happy with the change.
I wasn't expecting BLM rotation to change much as it was, imo, good.
I really enjoyed BLM in the latest patch, ShB just adresses the few issues and frustration it had.

We now have a proper aoe rotation
We have a finisher (altough 3min on convert is quite overkill imo...) and for one I like how it looks. (the animation may be a bit too swift perhaps...)
Xenoglossy with the AF duration increase litterally solve the few remaining movement issue we had and the stackavle foul is both a blessing for foul management. I mean, I was already sometime squeezing 2 foul within 1 TA, with that change I'll probably be able to squeeze 3 of them ^^

Some traits are clearly filler such as 30s Sharpcast and 15% enochian.

I definitely think BLM core game play is now set in stone and beside few new quirck I would not expect any new mechanic to be added to the job for a very long time.

(perhaps improvement the thunder / thundercloud mechanic)

[Lauront]

Yes, you can see how much better Despair looks when you run the video a little slower, as compared to its actual animation.

[Archwizard]

SMN too.

I mean, unless you call Physick healing for like 400-500 HP at level 70 a "Sort of self-heal" or their new Phoenix skill with a whopping 20 potency HoT (Will it scale of INT at least? Who knows...)

To be honest... They literally could just turn Scathe into Drain. Make it instant cast. Replace the crappy RNG bonus damage with a higher base damage and some life gain. And the useless skill becomes somewhat useful (If, of course, it was changed to have a somewhat meaningful heal attached to it, outside of Eureka's ridonkulous scaled damage).

If SMN's Physick also starts to scale with INT for them again, then all jobs would have at least a form of self healing (With Casters all having spammable healing vs physicals both relying on CD's)

This I can get behind.

Honestly, if it was a situation like "Drain: Instantly deals unaspected damage of [150-200ish] potency and heals for [100-150%ish] of the damage dealt" it would probably be set for a decent instant skill. BLM doesn't need a clone of Vercure or Int!Physick, and it honestly should be a little harder for BLM to self-heal, but making it also an instant should help tons.

[Shurrikhan]

This I can get behind.

Honestly, if it was a situation like "Drain: Instantly deals unaspected damage of [150-200ish] potency and heals for [100-150%ish] of the damage dealt" it would probably be set for a decent instant skill. BLM doesn't need a clone of Vercure or Int!Physick, and it honestly should be a little harder for BLM to self-heal, but making it also an instant should help tons.

I'm still curious what the actual point of the self-heals would be here. They're not going to make any difference in real content unless stronger than Bloodbath or Second Wind, which can only really help to ignore infrequent minor raid damage and can be rendered superfluous by a single preemptive M2 or Diurnal AH.

So, is it for leveling? I consistently take less damage leveling casters, of any them, than Melee by the mere fact that I can deal more damage (in the absence of positionals) and from such starting range that they're dead not long after having reached me, if they even reach me at all. Unless leveling with significant downtime between each pull, Second Wind and Bloodbath combined cannot even net the same sustain HP security that merely being a caster allows. BLM has a bit more trouble soloing boss FATEs than RDM or SMN, but with even an underleveled DPS chocobo I can still abuse AM and proc-mobility well enough to get through them.

So if we're to make leveling easier, why do this to casters alone? And why aim for skill parity instead of performance parity (which, they already have)? Why aren't we simply looking at surrounding systems instead, such as returning suppression or crowd control mechanics or even just increasing the % HP gained per server tick in (and perhaps out) of combat?

Or, if it the point really is raiding, and you want to give Casters, too, that 'hope for the best', usually superfluous self-healing -- leaving only Ranged, now, to go... cry in a corner? -- just make Physick scale with the greater of Intelligence or Mind (but make Might and Mend only affect damage), push Vercure level to an earlier position and perhaps bump it to 400 potency (but, again, not affected by Might and Mend), and buff Manaward back to Mana Wall levels.

...

I guess my concern is just that there's a difference between fixing issues whereby a kit was convoluted or inapplicable in a large range of fights and... its own, reasonable difficulty. The point of an expansion should never be, in and of itself, to make playing the job straight up easier, yet that seems to be the running them of Shadowbringers BLM.

To keep you alive in 24 man raids when your whole party, including your healers, died again to some mechanics and you have to wait that the other partys raise your healers.

Also when your healer died at a dungeon boss.

Then, why aren't we also giving this utility to Ranged? In dungeons and raids, there's only raid damage and raid+tank damage, which, admittedly gives Melee an advantage, however minor. But, if that's so great a disparity that we must increase Casters capacity by the same (such that both RDM and BLM, and soon SMN each have greater survivability than any Melee), why are Ranged left out?

[Tint]

I'm still curious what the actual point of the self-heals would be here.

To keep you alive in 24 man raids when your whole party, including your healers, died again to some mechanics and you have to wait that the other partys raise your healers.

Also when your healer died at a dungeon boss.

[Archwizard]

I'm still curious what the actual point of the self-heals would be here. They're not going to make any difference in real content unless stronger than Bloodbath or Second Wind, which can only really help to ignore infrequent minor raid damage and can be rendered superfluous by a single preemptive M2 or Diurnal AH.

My line of thinking with self-healing skills is that they should provide a space for actual healers to do their job rather than substituting them in a raid environment. More punishing than your attack spells, but not to the point with current Drain where you have to spam to the exclusion of actual attacks in order to survive an encounter.
For surviving in raids, BLM already has Manaward, although I expect that much like Vercure a self-heal would have a niche use in emergencies like "Doom if you don't reach max health" or "set party HP to 1", or when you're far in the back taking a beating while the healer is focusing on the tank. It's still better for the healer to heal you while you continue attacking (because the reverse is absurd), but you could... help.

But yes, primarily it would be solo content like leveling, yes, I do think Physick should scale with Int for SMN (especially with Energy Drain no longer healing), and no, I don't think self-sustain in solo content should be exclusive to casters -- but it is worth noting that Ranged and Melee have access to Second Wind and Bloodbath, on top of higher base survivability, so running into a quest with a particularly difficult enemy (like, say, Zenos for the 17th time) doesn't often have you spending nearly so much of the encounter on minimum health.
The number of experiences I had leveling through the MSQ as BLM in Stormblood gave me some appreciation for Drain (and Sleep, too), even if it has garbage output and Vercure has completely spoiled me going into Shadowbringers.

[Kalise]

why are Ranged left out?

Buff Second Wind then (Well... Dancer already has a heal to be fair)

I've felt for a long time that Second Wind could do with some love. It's great at low level, but it scales like absolute crap.

Low level it can fully heal you and it steadily scales into some pathetic like 5% heal or something at level 70 still with its 2m CD... Even though it's supposed to scale on attack power, it doesn't feel like it >.>

If you REALLY want to, you can actually give rDPS some actual healing skills. I.e. Give Bard a regeneration song to heal allies *Cough*Nature's Minne*Cough* and give Machinist a Healing Beacon/Triage Beacon (Some sort of deployable medical station that will heal allies in an area) or medkit (A new lunchbox attachment that pulses out a direct heal)

Then you get some extra sustain for rDPS. With the caveat that it's less available than Caster sustain, but can aid the party as a whole.

[Llugen]

Manafont should also grant you a polyglot imo for 3 minutes cooldown, if not even more than that. Especially since they stack to 2 now.

Other ideas:

reset the cooldown timer on Sharpcast
outright give you a Firestarter and/or Thundercloud
Also refresh your Astral Fire

[Shurrikhan]

My line of thinking with self-healing skills is that they should provide a space for actual healers to do their job rather than substituting them in a raid environment. More punishing than your attack spells.

Now that I can definitely appreciate. Minimal "theft of role tasks" (doesn't personally matter to me, but I can understand why others would be offended by it), but impactful when used. Solid.

Monk and RDM already do this to varying degree, and I would love to see that built upon and made integral across the majority of classes. For some, that could be a matter of banking/timing, such as using a charge of Life Surge (if it were to have two; else we're just as confined by LS as by HT before) on a non ideal skill to get its HP bonus when you need it most. For others, a matter of stance. And others still -- a matter of time (Vercure) or resources (Energy Drain being much more effective for healing when HP is low but MP is high, and vice versa, for instance). That would offer considerable flavor and identity while still improving how many different 'shades' or 'paradigms' of play we can see in raid content and how well we can adapt to unconventional situations or solo leveling.

Heck, I'd actually love to see more periods of damage intake where healers are not enough on their own unless there's been raid shields from tanks and healers have their CDs at the ready; short of that, the non-tanks themselves must play defensively just before and/or curatively just after. Mm. Makes for good food for thought.

Buff Second Wind then (Well... Dancer already has a heal to be fair)

I've felt for a long time that Second Wind could do with some love. It's great at low level, but it scales like absolute crap.

If you REALLY want to, you can actually give rDPS some actual healing skills. I.e. Give Bard a regeneration song to heal allies *Cough*Nature's Minne*Cough* and give Machinist a Healing Beacon/Triage Beacon (Some sort of deployable medical station that will heal allies in an area) or medkit (A new lunchbox attachment that pulses out a direct heal).

This is true. It almost makes one wonder why we don't have self-healing Abilities (not Spells) scale with Vitality somewhat, instead of merely our Attack Power. I also don't know why Bloodbath was removed from Ranged Actions (save, I suppose, to make room for Palisade).

Personally, I'd much prefer to see Bard's healing as an actual song, with Bard being returned to a Support class where its support is an actual impactful choice rather than merely a free strew of extra abilities to be used as near as event-possible to on cooldown. And I still miss the Promote function for Machinist, though I'd prefer it remain secondary in raid support (as in, cast on your raid, rather than on a given target that the raid is then attacking or being attacked by [target-support]). I'm still not sure why the devs decided to gut support functions rather than improving upon them.

I'd love to see three songs with doubled, (more subtly) rotation-affecting benefit to the Bard himself that his rotation could play around but in a way that's still secondary to the support of the raid and its key targets.

(Unless somehow the periods just came too frequently for that, but in such a case you'd have to worry about everyone else not having enough defensive CDs...)

That's the trick, though, isn't it? If they run only off of stance, spammables (costs greater-damage uptime), or bankable resources, you can never really be "out of defensive CDs". Long CDs like Manaward, Second Wind, or Bloodbath would have issues, but if we actually expand on the native kits instead... no problems.