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

[Archwizard]

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.

I too would love such periods, although based on experience those would just be taken as times for tanks to use their LB.

(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...)

But if they're going to make it so jobs like SMN, RDM and DNC have group healing as part of their utility...

[Lauront]

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

For its long CD, it is a rather meek effect. I'd be happy if it granted a Polyglot shard or, indeed, reset Sharpcast, as both functions would be useful given that it's a CD used for burst phases.

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.

Well, you'd think that's where they're headed given the changes they're making to healers - at least, it ought to be the direction they're taking, if they really want to make healers focus more on healing.

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.

I'm not quite sure why they're opposed to simply designating certain jobs as support DPS, especially since this has unofficially been the case for a while now, although it's DNC which will be reprising the role in 5.0 more than any other job.

[Archwizard]

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.

Shurri, I love you, but you gotta stop editing in your responses to posts made after yours -- most of us only know a response has been made when the post count goes up. I just reread obsessively when the thread's too quiet for too long.

But it does lead us back to problems with other job kits like RDM, DRG and Ranged, who either lack personal defenses or only have group defenses they can't stack.
For other jobs though, like SMN, SAM or MNK, it would give actual reason to regularly use their defensive stances.

But, that's for another thread.

[Shurrikhan]

Shurri, I love you, but you gotta stop editing in your responses to posts made after yours -- most of us only know a response has been made when the post count goes up. I just reread obsessively when the thread's too quiet for too long.

But it does lead us back to problems with other job kits like RDM, DRG and Ranged, who either lack personal defenses or only have group defenses they can't stack.
For other jobs though, like SMN, SAM or MNK, it would give actual reason to regularly use their defensive stances.

But, that's for another thread.

I'm sorry, but I got provoked into another spurious debate and ran out of daily posts... T.T

I feel like Bard and Machinist could sufficiently, and more compellingly, make do with external support alone for an initial blast and recovery thereafter. So long as we've enough jobs to take point-guard and those either able to take defensive stances or receive them externally in between, I think that's enough.

Personally, I don't want to see overly stackable (I know that's... vague and/or circuitous) raid defensives. I'd rather not create non-participation just by virtue of having X jobs in play. Enough to allow something when X is present, but otherwise only enough to mitigate its effect, is fine, but creating a checklist of direct counters to mechanics is, imo, not.

I don't think we can afford to put off paradigmatic changes "for another thread" when so relevant to future designs, though. These are real concerns, and while we can make temporary or stop-gap measures as well, for a nearer sake of realism, we should still always have an eye on a more comprehensive and cohesive goal.

[Lauront]

Interesting... based on the playthrough during the LL, Freeze does not just remove AF but applies UI3.

[Kabooa]

Interesting... based on the playthrough during the LL, Freeze does not just remove AF but applies UI3.

But we've known this since the last liveletter. :O

[Lauront]

Not as far as I'm aware, since there was confusion on that topic.

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.

So looks like we know how it's going to resolve now.

[Archwizard]

Not as far as I'm aware, since there was confusion on that topic.






So looks like we know how it's going to resolve now.

We were aware based on the Job Actions trailer. Kalise was just quick to point out the tooltip had yet to be updated to that effect.

[Lauront]

Right, thus "confusion on that topic".

[Kalise]

Okay, so now we know that Freeze is going to shift directly to UI3 - It also appears to now be TAoE instead of GTAoE (Unless Yoshi was using a macro during the LL)

Shame that BLM is going to be even more a slave to server ticks though, given that now even the ST rotation will start UI with 0 MP due to Despair. I noticed during the LL that swapping into UI still occasionally had times where Yoshi was at 0 MP for 1-2s during which time, you're screwed unless you have a Polyglot stack to spend... Won't that be fun? Periodically having to sit on your hands because server tick screwed you over!

Also, I was doing some thinking and some math and think that due to the way the new 15s AF and Despair's cast time works (With Despair being a 3s cast which is accounted for exactly by the 3s extra AF timer) there might be a situation where a new rotation is meta, one where it can be heavily punished by ping.

I.e.

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

With enough SpS to get Fire IV down to a 2.4s cast, the above rotation is possible, with 0.45s to spare after the Despair (5x Fire IV at 2.4s = 12s and 3s * 0.85 = 2.55s) making the rotation very ping reliant due to only having ~half a second of leeway (Which some Paladins already have issues with for Requiescat as they have about 0.5s of leeway with Holy Spirit x5)

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

Is an alternate rotation, that is stronger than the standard one where you extend AF with Fire I and use Blizzard IV to get enough MP for 6 F4's during AF.

Ideally, you'd want to try and stack SpS to get a 2.3s cast Fire IV (Thus a ~2.5s cast Despair) which will give you a 1s leeway for a 5x Fire IV rotation. Still kind of tight... But ultimately superior to the "Standard" rotation.