Black Mage Change thoughts

[Archwizard]

Nothing has been confirmed yet. They could call it anything. Even "Antipode" *cringe*. (Antipodes should be referred to in pairs. The Greek singular of "antipodes" is "antipous")

Wait, are you shaking your fist at the heavens because that the headcanon name you just gave it is grammatically incorrect? Knowing full-well they've given no reason to expect that's even remotely its name?

The whole Hi-element thing was worth mentioning in the PLL because it was delivered in Japanese; this doesn't mean they're going to use the same naming in the EN localization, and even Aimi (the translator) doesn't always know the EN names for things when doing her translations. The only things that are clear regarding Hi/V spells is that they are upgrades to ファイラ/FireII and ブリザラ/BlizzardII and they are AoE (as per PLL, around 3h30m).

K, until we get official confirmation otherwise, I'm just gonna keep calling them the Hi-2 spells like we were told they are in the LL, particularly since it feels weird to give them the 5th rank knowing that Flare and Freeze outclass them and functionally are now the AoE equivalents to the 4th rank spells.

And it's just gonna be confusing to swap terminology back and forth.

I hope they're useful in single target rotations as well as mobbing.
I feel like we've got an abundance of aoe's.
We already hit like a ten ton truck in that area I feel like, and while fire4 has pulled its weight, after three expansions it's time for a new top dog spell that is used more than once per astral phase or held for mobility damage.

Going back to my original point, that's actually something that worries me.

The current AoE rotation is basically Freeze -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Fire III -> Flare -> Flare, repeat until TC or cooldowns are available. Tossing F3 in there feels tedious because it's not an AoE, but the rotation is otherwise fairly short.

The new AoE rotation is shaping up to be designed as Hi-Blizzard II -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Freeze (bump forward a slot if Foul's down and the UI tick delays MP) -> Hi-Fire II -> Hi-Fire II -> Hi-Fire II -> Flare -> Flare, repeat until TC or Manafont -- which is 100% AoE, makes two of our currently useless skills actually useful, and allows for nearly 1:1 instant substitution to get back into our single-target rotation... but takes twice as long to execute accounting for cast times, so you may not even have the time to use more than one rotation (or even ramp it all the way up to Flare once) before the pack dies.
It gives us more tools, but conversely, gotta wonder if they're worth being pushed to use them.
Unrelated sidenote, anyone else notice that the final Hi-Fire 2 had a shorter cast time than the second? Wonder what that's about.

We won't know if it's viable until the final potency values are available, but there's a potential alternative in just Hi-Blizzard II -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Hi-Fire II -> Flare, which would be more convenient if only because it's way shorter but also could force Freeze into the same slot that Fire/Blizz2 had until now (on top of rendering the QoL traits for our AoE pointless) and once again forces a pause if the UI tick is poorly timed before you can cast T4.

Plus I wonder if the FrostFire spell means the functional death of Firestarter as a trait (Freecure, anyone?), and of Sharpcast on anything but Thunder spells...