Black Mage Change thoughts

[MrSmiley]

The fact that it's so easy to maintain Enochian is exactly why button pruning for skill disparity is a good thing. All it's there for is to punish an inexperienced player with up to 30 seconds of Fire 1 spam. That kind of brutal lockout is not a fitting consequence for, say, being raised after death, scrambling to reactivate Enochian, and then accidentally swiftcasting an opposite-color spell just as you're trying to restart your rotation.

If they wanted to add more skill-testing elements they could introduce mechanics where you get bonuses for refreshing Astral/Umbral proportionate to how close to falling off it is or something like that. As it stands the actual Enochian button adds nothing good to the game.

This, its a really pointless button. The primary "punishment" of dropping enochian outside of dropping it in literally your first rotation is losing your polyglot buildup, which still exists.

[Orbus]

I agree, I'm just surprised anyone thought of it as a skill gap problem or that removing the need to manually activate enochian would make any difference in how the class plays.

[catofsnake]

I think raelgun was somewhat able to help illustrate my own feelings, it's not that they removed enochian, it was the reason they gave (closing a skill disparity) that made it feel weird. If they had said that the reason for removing enochian was that it had become a fluff skill interchangable with the fire/ice timer, i'd have been fine with it and no one else would bat an eye.

[MrSmiley]

I think raelgun was somewhat able to help illustrate my own feelings, it's not that they removed enochian, it was the reason they gave (closing a skill disparity) that made it feel weird. If they had said that the reason for removing enochian was that it had become a fluff skill interchangable with the fire/ice timer, i'd have been fine with it and no one else would bat an eye.

I do agree the reason they gave was pretty weird, but considering they ignored all the things that skill disparity WOULD effect I kind of wonder if something was lost in translation.

[Ferrinus]

Skill disparity is actually a better reason than QoL to remove Enochian as a button. On the QoL side of things it's just saving us a button press per fight. On the skill disparity side of things it's potentially locking players out of their workhorse spells for up to 30 seconds. As someone pointed out, you already lose polyglot progress for dropping Enochian, so potentially having to wait for Enochian's actual cooldown is just rubbing salt in the wound.

Unrelatedly, something just occurred to me: I hope the new antipode spell hits in an AoE so we don't have to skip it when fighting multiple enemies.

[Ferrinus]

Another thought: there's a slightly goofy way they could keep the Fire and Blizzard buttons relevant and also avoid button bloat.

Instead of there being a dedicated antipode button, they could make Blizzard become antipode while you're in fire stance, and Fire become antipode while you're in ice stance.

[Sensyon]

Not sure if it has been brought up, but does it seem like the new Fire V/Blizzard V spells are for AoE? In the trailer, after they show the single-target F4 rotation, They cast B5, which does what B3 does. Then Thunder 4. Then they cast Freeze, which now does what B4 does. Then 3 F5 spells, one to go to Astral Fire 3, then 2 more, which uses an Umbral Heart each, behaving like F4. Then Triple-cast Flare? Are two of the 3 new spells for an AoE rotation? Or am I missing something?

[AziraSyuren]

Enochian management hasn't been a meaningful part of BLM's gameplay since HW. Its loss is greatly appreciated because it means I'll have to deal with slightly less awful players on a day to day basis.

Making things easier isn't always bad.

[Ferrinus]

I think that Fire V is essentially going to be an AoE version of Fire III (but with a cast time and MP cost that makes it practical to use as a filler attack), and likewise for Blizzard V/III. So, you use F5 to swap to fire mode against multiple targets, and then you cast more F5s for straight damage output, and then you feed your final heart to Flare.

The triple Flare is interesting because I have no idea that enables it. I was wondering if maybe Flare could consume the fire+ice crystal like it does an umbral heart, but I rewatched the trailer and the crystal goes untouched. So presumably there's a trait that gives a free Flare under certain circumstances, or makes Flare consume only a fraction of your MP twice after spending a heart, or something.

[Rongway]

The triple Flare is interesting because I have no idea that enables it.

It wasn't new; DemoBLM used Manafont after the second Flare, as is current custom. You can qudaruple flare with:

Fire III (Triplecast) > Flare (Swiftcast) > Flare (Ether HQ) > Flare (Manafont) > Flare