Black Mage Change thoughts

[Rongway]

IcyHot spell is very neat, and seems to replace F1 and probably B1 too.

The antipodal spell looks like you get a single charge of it every time you successfully switch directly between Umbral Ice III and Astral Fire III in either direction. It also refreshes the timer on the element gauge when you use it, in either element.

Freeze didn't reset UI's timer, though,

But it granted three hearts.

so that's probably the new ice spell's job.

Blizzard V did switch to Umbral Ice III.

... And that same spell had to be what triggered the new fire, which they also swapped to AF3 with - but it's distinct from F3? I wished they'd shown a little of the new mechanics around it, because it's not easy to tell what's going on there.

Interestingly, Fire V switches to Astral Fire III and becomes the firespammer, eliminating the burden of maintaining Astral Fire during firespam. I'd bet it has an increased MP cost to compensate, so that it can only be cast, say, four times before Despair, even with hearts.

With the change to Enochian, Blizzard IV and Fire IV are "always" available. My best prediction regarding Blizzard V and Fire V are that you most certainly have to have successfully performed a proper element swap (three stacks to three stacks) in order to use them. That is, the first time you cast Blizzard III and Fire III in combat, they are Blizzard III and Fire III; but if you do a full rotation without dropping your element, you get Blizzard V and Fire V. Additionally, I would not be surprised if you also need to use Antipodes before your element drops. If you allow your element to drop, use Transpose, or fail to use Antipodes before switching, you're back to Blizzard III and Fire III+IV.


So basically:

Blizzard III (UI3)
Blizzard IV (hearts)
Fire III (AF3, Antipodes charge)
Fire IV spam
Antipodes somewhere in the fire spam (enable Blizzard V)
Despair

LoopStart:
Blizzard V (UI3, Antipodes charge)
Blizzard IV (hearts)
Antipodes (enable Fire V)
Fire V (AF3, Antipodes charge)
Fire V spam
Antipodes (enable Blizzard V)
Despair
goto LoopStart;



with Thunder and Polyglot spells when appropriate.

Additionally, I would not be surprised if you also need to use Antipodes before your element drops. If you allow your element to drop, use Transpose, or fail to use Antipodes before switching, you're back to Blizzard III and Fire III+IV.

This I think brings up an interesting question. What would stop us from taking advantage of the mechanic and just opening with Fire III > Blizzard III to gain immediate access to Antipodes and Fire V? Might they have included some other condition as well, such as a minimum time spent in an element?