Astral Fire/Umbral Ice timers are actually bad mechanics at a meta level.

[Ferrinus]

The game's always going to contain a most ____ class, whether damaging, easy, sensitive to movement, whatever. Currently, BLM is probably the most affected by having to move, but it has a ton of tools to use in response and if well-prepared can probably manage more uninterrupted movement than some other casters - RDM can spend half rather than a third of its GCDs running around, but has less ability to make those mobile GCDs happen back to back. So BLM gets to maintain its siege tank identity (which is good - jobs should be distinctive) but break its limits where it really counts.

Separately, "rotation" is a misnomer here. You lose out if you don't know your spell list or tool kit or array of options or whatever perfectly, because, thanks to its unique design, BLM has a set of strategically-distinct GCDs and oGCDs whose usage you need to adapt to the situation, even if there's an AAA-B-AAA-C sequence you'd prefer to do if you weren't under any pressure.

[Taranok]

The game's always going to contain a most ____ class, whether damaging, easy, sensitive to movement, whatever. Currently, BLM is probably the most affected by having to move, but it has a ton of tools to use in response and if well-prepared can probably manage more uninterrupted movement than some other casters - RDM can spend half rather than a third of its GCDs running around, but has less ability to make those mobile GCDs happen back to back. So BLM gets to maintain its siege tank identity (which is good - jobs should be distinctive) but break its limits where it really counts.

Separately, "rotation" is a misnomer here. You lose out if you don't know your spell list or tool kit or array of options or whatever perfectly, because, thanks to its unique design, BLM has a set of strategically-distinct GCDs and oGCDs whose usage you need to adapt to the situation, even if there's an AAA-B-AAA-C sequence you'd prefer to do if you weren't under any pressure.

Here's the thing. You remove the timers and none of that changes. Remove the timers as is, right now, and you will still do every AF phase outside of burst as 6 fire 4s, 1 paradox, and 1 despair. You will, still, modify it to make sure you don't, say, blizzard 4 before the boss jumps. You will still be punished through unplanned movement. That is the thing. The skill ceiling will still be the highest in the game because the majority of the skill ceiling is in sitting still, casting, and planning your oGCD abilities around the movement phases you need.

The 2 oldest, and worst, features of BLM are the timers and procs. Both of them are holdovers from the original, vastly different ARR design. Back when transpose was 15s, AF/UI lasted 8 seconds, and the class played closer to a RDM than it does the modern BLM. Remove both of those and you can free up so much of the design to do something actually interesting with the class for once.

Just as how removing greased lightning allowed the devs to add masterful blitz to Monk and make the class the most interesting it has been since ARR. I'm not, and never have, just asked for removing timers. But I am getting really sick and tired of people defending an awful mechanic because they can't imagine a better class than what we have. And in order to move the class forward, you have to rip out every last tiny bit that is actually holding it back. And the timers are the biggest thing restraining the classes future and making the class unapproachable to most players.

[Makrar]

But I am getting really sick and tired of people defending an awful mechanic because they can't imagine a better class than what we have. And in order to move the class forward, you have to rip out every last tiny bit that is actually holding it back. And the timers are the biggest thing restraining the classes future and making the class unapproachable to most players.

I always got the impression that Black Mage design was well liked by most. I think you're looking for a solution for a problem that doesnt exist. Theres some small issues but the AF/UI timers isnt remotely one of them (Slightly undertuned in DPS and damage profile that runs counter to the 2min burst window design pushed on this xpac)

[Taranok]

I always got the impression that Black Mage design was well liked by most. I think you're looking for a solution for a problem that doesnt exist. Theres some small issues but the AF/UI timers isnt remotely one of them (Slightly undertuned in DPS and damage profile that runs counter to the 2min burst window design pushed on this xpac)

The way I see it is people who enjoy a class, such as myself, don't critically think about the class, try to digest what's good or bad about the class, and then deconstruct its problems. I've mained the class off and on since ARR. I've seen the ARR design, which was a proc based thing. The HW design, which I had to set the class down for a month upon getting fire 4 because of how much it altered the rotation. Then came back to it at the tail end of HW and liked it. The SB design, which fixed a lot of HW faults while trying to address core issues (lack of mobility) by adding triplecast. ShB, which is when the timers were stretched to the breaking point in the rotation, where your ad hoc movement abilities couldn't be used ad hoc. And finally in EW, where everyone heralded a nigh-useless change as a huge QoL improvements while haphazardly trying to fix a rotation that the devs heralded but clearly didn't want (hypermeme), and not addressing the core issue timers creates while also introducing new issues, such as Manafont drifting being an actual problem or being able to do a transpose firestarter proc due to the 30s duration. Something that hasn't been part of the class since A Realm Reborn.

Here's the thing about Black Mage. The true issue with the class. The class is so difficult to learn and understand that it naturally self-selects very, very specific people to play it. People who can get over the astronomical gate-keeping timers. It took me, by my own admission, literal years to even parse exactly what I didn't like about the class. And once I had realization of the mechanic that was making the class so frustrating and annoying to play despite doing just fine on the class (as in, cleared Kefka, cleared Neo-Exdeath, Titan Savage, and several phases of ultimates before people want to push me onto an actually good class, all without dropping timers) that I started trying to actually show people this flaw.

When I talk about the class with my friends, the first thing the non-mains bring up is how difficult the class is to play. When a class is difficult to play, it's usually not the skill ceiling they refer to, but rather the skill floor. When I refer to class difficulty, I usually stick to ceiling but I try to state it's the ceiling I'm referring to. For example, Samurai is a difficult class to master, but not a difficult class to play. If you fire every cooldown on cooldown, you'll do decently well even if you haven't mastered its finer points. Black Mage is a difficult class to play, and a difficult class to master. Just to get past the gate you have to scale a cliff. That's what the timers are. This is the difficulty they refer to when talking about BLM. I've tried bringing some of those friends in to bring up this point, and the BLM mains casually ignore them because, why address someone who's not a master of the class already?

And the amount of times I hear friends talking about dropping timers while leveling or learning or going into X content, the more I realized how big a problem the timers actually were. But as I said, BLM self-selects people who can scale the cliff. Every single person who defends the class or says it's perfect, literally never once has thought about the cliff they had to scale to play the class. Worse yet, others use it as a method of gatekeeping. "I scaled the cliff and did fine, you should too!" Everyone else, those who can't scale the cliff, level the class and leave the class. I still see people at level 80 who spam fire 3 one after another, or blizzard 1 over and over. This classes skill floor is astronomically high. If you have no idea what you are doing, even reading tooltips doesn't teach you how to play the class. I never had this problem because I could step over the cliff. But every single time I had to deal with it, it got progressively more and more and more and more and more frustrating and annoying to deal with. If I take a break and come back to the class, every time I drop the timers it grates just a tiny bit more. Every time I try to fit the class into a new fight, it gets slightly more annoying. This annoyance grew to the point where I had to basically try to find what was creating this problem, and what needed or could be done to fix it. Because, by my own admission, this is my main class. I love it. But the straw that broke the camel's back was spamming Umbral Soul 100 times in a single dungeon between pulls because I needed to maintain the timers. That's when I started realizing just how flawed the class was.

As I said, it took me years to even recognize this problem was actually a problem. So there's a reason why I'm so belligerent in trying to raise awareness of this problem. And I use Monk as my prime example because Monk is the closest class to sharing BLM's actual structural problem. I didn't hear a single monk main complaining about Greased Lightning, because, like Black Mage, it self-selects out people who don't like the mechanic. I am a paradox in this regard, because I didn't self-select out of the class, but came to realize just how harmful it was to my personal enjoyment of the class. As well as how harmful it was to other people's enjoyment of the class. When I hear constant complaining on discord while leveling classes with a friend who is on BLM about dropped timings, and I specifically draw their attention to this fact, it becomes far clearer. The timers are an actual, massive problem on the class. It's just a problem the playerbase hasn't realised because you either recognize it as a problem early and swap classes, or don't reccognize it as a problem because it's the barrier for entry into the class. You either bounce or you stay.

This is made moreso clear when I try to get other people to enjoy the best aspects of this class. It is an absolute thrill doing pixel perfect dodging of mechanics, minimizing movement, outsmarting the bosses mechanics. That is the joy of the class. That is what makes me want to play it more. But the timers are just there to provide structure to the class, and they're the yoke the class has to drag around to get to the fun. Just like monk, when you remove the yoke, the class is freed up to be so much more than it currently is.

Because I remember Monk. No one complained about it beyond the class not getting anything new that was useful. They repeatedly extended the timer because people kept dropping it. They had to extend it more as they changed the class. No one complained because the people who would self-selected out. It's a gatekeeping mechanic. You must be this tall to enjoy Black Mage. Dropping out the skill floor of monk actually made me enjoy melee for the first time since stormblood launched. Not dealing with the yoke of that class is the first time I've enjoyed Monk since ARR.

And I know, with certainty, because it was done with monk and summoner and machinist, that it can be done with Black Mage and actually massively improve the class. And just as with Monk and Summoner and Machinist, when you remove things holding back the class, which are almost always things that have their design dating back to ARR, the class massively improves. Across the board this has been true on almost every single class in the game. Why are you so afraid of improving BLM?

[VentVanitas]

And I know, with certainty, because it was done with monk and summoner and machinist, that it can be done with Black Mage and actually massively improve the class. And just as with Monk and Summoner and Machinist, when you remove things holding back the class, which are almost always things that have their design dating back to ARR, the class massively improves. Across the board this has been true on almost every single class in the game. Why are you so afraid of improving BLM?

Again with your stupid MNK bullshit. Stop blatantly being ignorant just for your agenda. You can see just from the first page of this board how much people are disappointed by the three jobs you listed, MCH and SMN especially. They're all living examples of what happens when you remove any and all tension/urgency from a rotation. Stop trying to pass off their reworks as objective improvements. You can argue they have their fans, but that doesn't mean other jobs need to follow their example.

[Taranok]

Again with your stupid MNK ********. Stop blatantly being ignorant just for your agenda. You can see just from the first page of this board how much people are disappointed by the three jobs you listed, MCH and SMN especially. They're all living examples of what happens when you remove any and all tension/urgency from a rotation. Stop trying to pass off their reworks as objective improvements. You can argue they have their fans, but that doesn't mean other jobs need to follow their example.

I bring up monk because it's actually the closest thing to it. You're claiming I'm ignorant when all available data shows the Monk population is rising and I subjectively think the class is in a stronger position while you claim, baselessly, that it's not. So please, why the hell should I take you seriously on this?