Quote Originally Posted by Tint View Post
Sooo much text... well, I'll just comment on your first post:



Well I don't agree that they should change Despairs or F4 / B4 cast times, but you are right that it would make the optimal use of Triplecast more flexible.

But the whole change to F2 / B2 and Freeze? Hell no, you try to fix more than what it broken.

Especially when your Blizzard 2 is just a worse version of the Freeze we already have. And your change to Freeze is unnecessary when Fire 2 grants full AF stacks. The reason that spamming Freeze is more effective than using Fire 2 is because we lose too much damage when we single target switch with Fire 3 into AF. Fire 2 (under AF3) does more damage than Freeze.

All what is needed is a way to build AF3 with an aoe skill wich doesn't burn away all your mana. And Fire 2 could become that skill. With that simple change the 35-50 Freeze spam would end.


And trying to Make Blizzard 2 viable is a waste of time, because there is just no need to fit a weak extra skill into UI. When we have a slow mana tic we already can use another Freeze, a Thundercloud Procc or a Foul.

Blizzard 2 becomes the go-to way to recover stacks after a death? With only 80 potency? Sorry, but even the Freeze we have now with it's 100 potency is weaker than Blizzard 3, except when you can hit more than 1 target of course. And even in AoE it would still be better to start with Freeze, even at a 4 second cast, because you will need the Umbral Heart for double Flare afterwards.

Just upgrade Blizzard 2 into Freeze so we can get rid of that useless extra button.
Even leaving Blizzard 2/Freeze completely alone, or making Blizzard 2 into an aoe which upgrades directly into Freeze at 35, I would still definitely give F2 the same cast time and MP cost as F1 (in addition to making it grant full AF stacks somewhere around level 68) so that the calculus of which to use on multiple targets at lower levels is more straightforward.

Right now, I'm pretty sure that Freeze is a better recovery tool than Blizzard 3 because of the umbral heart it gives you - you end up with one fewer F4 in your first post-death astral cycle but it's better than sitting through a long-cast Blizzard 3 and then casting Blizzard 4 for only +2 umbral hearts (and therefore a gain of only one extra fire spell, rather than effectively two where one is Despair). Given the 80 potency, a UI3-granting Blizzard 2 probably wouldn't make for a better recovery tool than hardcast or swiftcast B3, so it'd be relegated to the relatively rare but not nonexistent case of "you're doing your AoE rotation and have just cast Freeze but don't have a Polyglot or Thundercloud proc up."

Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
Most of your post reads as nonsequitur, honestly. Obviously there is a difference between minimizing the kit down to one or two buttons to spam over and over, and streamlining it so tools with redundant functions don't bloat the kit.

We don't need extra "options" for every niche case, like 2 targets or 3-second burst or "freshly raised" recovery periods. Those are scenarios that an experienced player would anticipate and tools they would either only pull out a fraction of the time or go out of their way to avoid using in the first place, much as we avoid Scathe now so long as we have alternatives. Tools specifically designed for those become (at best) safety nets for bad play, and (at worst) buttons we feel penalized having to push.
We just need tools for practical purposes -- focus-fire, and multi-target -- and the ability to use them unimpeded. If they also happen to cover the niche cases, even better, but it shouldn't be their core justification for existing, and as a friend of mine once said, "failure to improve a ridiculous circumstance doesn't nullify [a tool's] benefit across all reasonable extents and circumstances."

If your argument from the beginning had been "I want Flare to return to purely being a finisher across all levels, so here's my proposal to use Fire 2 until a certain percentage of our MP where we Flare, and some adjustments that would make Fire 2 a useful filler before the final burst, much like our single-target rotation with Despair," I might still have disagreed with you but I would at least have respected your opinion and efforts.
Instead, you argued for Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 to gain redundant functions in end-game, not for the purposes of expanding or smoothing out the kit (quite the opposite, in fact, since you nerfed the smoothing tools we have to push tools we don't need!), but wholly in order to justify their continued bloating of the hotbar. All of this because you "don't want" to use Flare as a transition tool because it "feels bad", but still "want" symmetry with the ice rotation obliging you to keep Blizzard 2 as long as Fire 2 exists, while using fictitious examples as empirical data. Well, with the way our phase transitions work something will "feel bad" either way, and what you want is about as valid as what anyone else wants -- which in my case is in direct opposition to you -- so let's just cut to the chase and call that argument unproductive.
This isn't about creating options for every niche case, but for giving each spell on our bars some kind of use. Use of Fire 2 to swap into AF3 without costing any MP is an obvious one, and I've already explained why simply replacing Fire 2 with Flare isn't possible.

You still seem confused as to what I am proposing and why. "Use Fire 2 until a certain percentage of MP where we Flare" is how our pre-68 AoE rotation goes, and is specifically the example I used to demonstrate why a buffed Fire 2 would obviate Freeze spam during the level range at which Freeze spam predominates. Our level 80 rotation doesn't need to use Fire 2 as filler/primary damage dealer with Flare as an exclusive finisher; the Freeze, Fire 3, Flare, Flare, Freeze, Fire 3, Flare, Flare... cycle works very well.

The only problem with our AoE, and it's a problem that a buff to Fire 2 would neatly solve, is that on a specific number of enemies which isn't at all obvious from spell tooltips casting Fire 3 becomes a damage loss. A Fire 2 which also maximizes your AF3 stacks would solve this, and in a way that isn't redundant with any other spells because it could do this at no MP cost. Flare cannot and should not be able to do that for the same reason that Despair shouldn't be able to replace Fire 3 for swapping on single target - this would both obviate classic, well-established spells and also constitute a substantial damage buff to AoE in the former case and single target in the latter.

Incidentally, "feel bad" is your phrase, not mine, so I don't know why you're putting it in scare quotes. Casting weaker transition spells in preparation for more powerful marquee spells is, in fact, what makes BLM feel good to play. It doesn't "feel bad" to cast Fire 3 on three or four targets before casting Flare on them.

And now you're trying to use the line "confusing examples" between mid- and end-level rotations when you literally said you don't care what our rotation becomes at mid-level? Reads like backpedaling to me.
This is a lie. I said I was prepared to have a particular spell fall out of use for a stretch of levels so long as it was useful long-term, but would prefer to change that spell so it was always useful for as long as you had it (in Freeze's case, by simply having it always cost 0 MP by default).

You've repeatedly stated that Flare is working as intended, but the only actual verification of that is... the way things currently work in-game, which is the definition of circular reasoning, and solves nothing when "the way things work" is in direct opposition to "the way their tooltips say they should."
The devs have never said "Flare doesn't actually cost all of your MP, but rather burns a percentage of your MP as a separate effect on cast, which is why it's unaffected by Aspect Mastery" -- no, Flare lists "all" of your MP as the Cost, and if that's the intended effect then that should be a corrected tooltip that needs fixing yesterday.
Either things aren't working as intended because they defy the tooltips, or the tooltips are wrong and players are using spells in unintended ways, and I have zero reason to trust another player pushing their own agenda to tell me it's the latter.

I have no problem with buffing B2 and F2 for the leveling process, but if they're still phased out by end-game, they don't need to exist in end-game. A trait upgrade will not only allow them to live on in spirit, but save us bar space and/or the trouble of going back into our A&T menu whenever we level sync. Don't overcomplicate it.
The tooltips are misleading, but the spells are clearly being used primarily as intended because in the several patches since the release of Shadowbringers nothing has substantively changed how Flare and Despair interact with Umbral Ice. I say "primarily" because I don't think that an obscure number-of-enemies breakpoint between using Fire 3 to transition and Flare to transition was ever intended, and if it was intended then it shouldn't have been because it's just too opaque to figure out when you are or aren't supposed to be doing it. (I also don't think Freeze becoming the only AoE spell we use for levels 35-49 was done on purpose, either).