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

[Aetherdancer]

Very good players are capable of internalizing the AF/UI timers, and that's the skeleton of my argument.


Practice and repetition will allow anyone to do the same, and that's important from the perspective of feeling rewarded by achieving mastery.


Some players don't want everyone to be able to play BLM well. Actually, if you haven't practiced the job, I *want* you to not be good at it, and for it to be hard for you. The idea of the "good black mage" would be diminished by making it easier, and that's what removing the timers would do. The community knows there's a HUGE difference between good and bad BLMs, and some of us like it that way. Very good BLMs always leave contingencies for when certain unpredictable attacks force them to move. Muscle memory can only take you so far on BLM, and very good BLMs make the most of it. There's a lot of risk/reward calculation.


As a person who cannot play BLM well, I enjoy finding "good black mages" and respect them. The difficulty in mastering BLM is knowing the entire choreography of encounters and where and when to plant themselves. They require the party to adjust to them more than any other DPS, for example, standing away from them to prevent baiting AoEs onto them. Most BLM mains enjoy taking on this challenge. The reward for top level BLM has consistently been the highest rDPS of any job at most points in the lifecycle of the game, and the timers have been an integral part of this risk/reward structure.


There is no way for top level BLM play to remain unchanged if you remove the AF/UI timers. It WILL become easier. When the risk isn't there, the reward isn't as sweet. Not to mention the classical justification for why their damage has traditionally topped the charts, would no longer be there. They'd need to forfeit that. You'd need to add another layer of difficulty, not merely some changes that make their optimal rotation continue to exist in an identical state. I have an idea for this: something like a 15s oGCD that gives them a buff that allows them to double the cast time of their next spell in exchange for tripling its potency. Beginning a cast will consume the buff. Canceling the cast forfeits the buff.


Now I don't necessarily agree with the timers from a job-fantasy perspective. I also don't like how fire spells are always your best strongest elemental spells and how they work against fire enemies, etc. FFXIV BLM is weird like that thematically, but I think it's justified by the gameplay design.


If you're willing to consider adding some extra risk/reward to the BLM gameplay loop, I'd be willing to replace AF/UI timers with it. But the crux of my position is this: BLM is challenging at the top level. The timers are an integral part of that. Removing them will remove obvious and subtle gameplay challenges that are opportunities for skill expression. It will bridge the gap between average players and experts, that's not debatable, and that's the opposite of what we want.

[Ferrinus]

From beginning to end, every argument in defense of them has already been debunked. Arguments like "It would become a static rotation! It's intended to be fluid!", when it already is largely static and is clearly not intended to be fluid because every time BLMs come out with something new, the devs patch it out. The timer *clearly* exists to structure the rotation in the same way melee combos structure the rotation, except it's way easier to break and adds punishment for no reward. Make a better structure.

Where has it been debunked? Can you quote or link to a post? It seems to me that when people describe the fluid nature of BLM spell sequencing in response to claims that it has a static "rotation" just like every melee job, those posts simply go ignored, only for the original complainant to repeat their original complaints a few pages later.

Is the debunking just that the devs always patch out weird meme rotations? In the first place, that's not actually true, and in the second place, it's disingenuous to try to equate something like "never cast Fire IV or any spell with Blizzard in its name" to stuff like "delay your Paradox or cast it early in order to make room for procs you'd otherwise overwrite" or "replace your last Fire IV with a Despair to keep astral going" or "use swift or triplecast to refresh astral with 1s left on the timer". These on the spot dynamic modifications have no equivalent among classes that actually have static rotations because the only question that ever comes up with a static rotation is whether you can keep your GCD rolling or have to wait.

It seems like you, like some others in this thread, are confusing what a BLM does to a training dummy with what a BLM does to an enemy that can fight back. The unique thing about BLM is that, while these two things are identical for many jobs, they're very different for BLM.

[AnaseSkyrider]

Until you actually offer some of that same respect you demand

This isn't about respect, it's about arguing in good faith. I couldn't care less whether someone is respectful as long as they address the arguments, which you don't when you say things like:

No, lets not and say we did.

Do us all a favor and project somewhere else.

[AnaseSkyrider]

It seems to me that when people describe the fluid nature of BLM spell sequencing in response to claims that it has a static "rotation" just like every melee job, those posts simply go ignored, only for the original complainant to repeat their original complaints a few pages later.

Isn't the task of ABC itself what makes your rotation dynamic; trying to fill in with instant casts *somewhere* in the rotation so that you can keep big-CD abilities rolling and not drift? I won't pretend that *I, personally,* have an idea for a perfect mimicry of the very specific examples you gave (I'm too new to the FF14 and BLM to do that easily) like with handling placement of F1, F4, and Despair, but it looks to me like the previously posted ideas with a Paradox-lite mechanic or putting F4 on a charge system already accomplishes like 75% of this.

Is the debunking just that the devs always patch out weird meme rotations? In the first place, that's not actually true, (emphasis added)

Whoa whoa, can you please elaborate on that?

It seems like you, like some others in this thread, are confusing what a BLM does to a training dummy with what a BLM does to an enemy that can fight back. The unique thing about BLM is that, while these two things are identical for many jobs, they're very different for BLM.

Can you explain further? I'm not really sure what you mean because I've even said things like ->

Actually pressing the buttons is not hard in the slightest, it's introducing encounter mechanics to the rotation that is the problem since it is uniquely designed to interact worse with said mechanics.

Which clearly acknowledges the difference between performing on a dummy in a whiteroom vs in dealing with the actual array of encounter mechanics in the game.

[Ferrinus]

Isn't the task of ABC itself what makes your rotation dynamic; trying to fill in with instant casts *somewhere* in the rotation so that you can keep big-CD abilities rolling and not drift?

A BLM's astral cycle basically looks like this: AAA-B-AAA-C. (A is fire 4, C is despair, B is fire or paradox). By default you can imagine one "blank" on either side of the B that another spell can go into without impacting your ability to finish the cycle. However, sometimes you need to insert two things in front of the B, or two things after the B, or despite your best efforts move when you'd prefer to be casting either the B or some of the As. That means that, unless you've planned things out carefully, you might have to place the B way earlier in the sequence than you intended and put another B later, or replace one (or more!) of the last As with a C, and so on. Not only does the order of spells in your astral cycle shuffle around, but the length of your astral cycle can expand or contract in response to changing circumstances, because a timer controls how many good spells as opposed to mediocre spells you can cram in there.

If there was no timer, but rather an ammo/charge system, you should still be challenged to use your instant casts when movement is required and to use your instant casts of shortening the effective cast times of your slowest, hardest-hitting spells, but you'd never actually have to make tradeoffs or sacrifices in terms of how many of those spells you'd cast at all. You'd always, rather than just hopefully get to cast six F4s and one Despair per cycle.

Also a lot of tricks that feel great to pull off and get away with would simply cease to have relevance. For instance, if I have 4s left on my astral timer and a polyglot proc that's about to overwrite, I'd normally have to either sacrifice the Xeno or the Despair. But, if I have Swift or Triple up, I can do something cute: cast Xeno, activate Swift as my GCD rolls, and then cast Despair with 1 second left on the clock, breathing a huge sigh of relief as I refresh my timer and get both my hardest-hitting spells out. Without a timer, there's no pressure: my Despair is guaranteed, and the only thing I have to worry about is a delay.

Whoa whoa, can you please elaborate on that?

As far as I know the "hypermeme" rotation from 5.X was never patched out unless you count 6.0 coming out, and we're in 6.05 right now with goofy paradox tricks intact. I expect some potency changes in 6.08 that will make it untenable to simply forswear Fire 4 or whatever, but I'm not sure if we can expect every last one of the Transpose optimizations floating around out there to be rendered inoperable, because why would they be?

Can you explain further? I'm not really sure what you mean because I've even said things like ->


Which clearly acknowledges the difference between performing on a dummy in a whiteroom vs in dealing with the actual array of encounter mechanics in the game.

What I mean is like, a Dragoon or something that's on a dummy can just do their 1-2-3-4-5 every time with no problems. A Dragoon who is instead fighting a boss might have trouble maintaining uptime, so their rotation would look more like 1-2-3........4-5. The better they get, the smaller the gap between that 3 and that 4 becomes.

A Black Mage who has to deal with fight mechanics can't just do AAA-B-A...........AA-C, because they will lose Enochian. When they're still bad at the fight, they'll just have to settle for AAA-B-A-C or something. If they want to maintain "uptime" they literally need to concoct a new sequence of spells appropriate to that particular set of mechanics.

[Gruntler]

A Black Mage who has to deal with fight mechanics can't just do AAA-B-A...........AA-C, because they will lose Enochian. When they're still bad at the fight, they'll just have to settle for AAA-B-A-C or something. If they want to maintain "uptime" they literally need to concoct a new sequence of spells appropriate to that particular set of mechanics.

Something to note about the caster role as defined as a playstyle. To greater or lesser degree, every caster has some sort of challenge in their kit they must overcome which includes casting spells but also involves refreshing timers (BLM Must Enochian (TM)), range, (RDM Must Stab (TM)) or adherence to strict schedule (SMN Must Trance (TM)) while giving them a plethora of tools in their kit which can be juxtaposed and rearranged with a measure of flexibility to solve those problems. So, while a caster can't simply repeat the same 12 step program of their rotation, they also aren't designed with that in mind. A Melee has their button sequence, and that's it. They're nonflexible or any flexibility really suuucks.

But that BLM might have trouble just doing AAA-B-AAA-C when they have to move in there, but they also have enough tools in their kit that they can work around that, going AAA-(sharpcast)B-AE(triplecast)AAC and adjusting things accordingly. That requirement to be flexible is both a disadvantage (in that you can't just tunnel on a set-in-stone sequence on any caster) but it is also a strength (in that if you enjoy being able to swap things around and be flexible as a dpser, you'll enjoy this playstyle considerably more.)

This additional vector of job-challenge is something that's really fleshed out the caster role in Endwalker, and that's why people are resisting wanting to remove this aspect to BLM by making their challenges (and therefore the value of caster-role-flexibility) lessened. BLM Must Timers (TM). So what do you do about this? You have more tools than spells to deal with this. So how do you handle it?

[Taranok]

Something to note about the caster role as defined as a playstyle. To greater or lesser degree, every caster has some sort of challenge in their kit they must overcome which includes casting spells but also involves refreshing timers (BLM Must Enochian (TM)), range, (RDM Must Stab (TM)) or adherence to strict schedule (SMN Must Trance (TM)) while giving them a plethora of tools in their kit which can be juxtaposed and rearranged with a measure of flexibility to solve those problems. So, while a caster can't simply repeat the same 12 step program of their rotation, they also aren't designed with that in mind. A Melee has their button sequence, and that's it. They're nonflexible or any flexibility really suuucks.

But that BLM might have trouble just doing AAA-B-AAA-C when they have to move in there, but they also have enough tools in their kit that they can work around that, going AAA-(sharpcast)B-AE(triplecast)AAC and adjusting things accordingly. That requirement to be flexible is both a disadvantage (in that you can't just tunnel on a set-in-stone sequence on any caster) but it is also a strength (in that if you enjoy being able to swap things around and be flexible as a dpser, you'll enjoy this playstyle considerably more.)

This additional vector of job-challenge is something that's really fleshed out the caster role in Endwalker, and that's why people are resisting wanting to remove this aspect to BLM by making their challenges (and therefore the value of caster-role-flexibility) lessened. BLM Must Timers (TM). So what do you do about this? You have more tools than spells to deal with this. So how do you handle it?

The issue is, BLM could have anything else. Timers just are not a fun mechanic. They are not necessary to flesh out the class. Even in a world absent timers, they would still be pretty well and truly challenged in their role, as is, because the class spends the overwhelming majority of its time sitting still with cast bars.

This isn't where the timer issue stops though. The simple fact is it's a major drag on the quality of black mage itself, and like Greased Lightning, it's a poor mechanic of the class. That is, I absolutely despise chain casting umbral soul between dungeon pulls. Every single class that has to do something like this has had the mechanic removed because there is no world where chain casting an ability between pulls or needing to set up literal macros to manage the timers during downtime is fun.

This is true in boss transitions where you have full control. Chain casting umbral soul is not a fun mechanic. And everyone here has suggested: "Just create a way to lock timers." You're creating mechanics to shore up a badly designed mechanic, when you can remove a bad mechanic and create newer mechanics and bring the class in a new direction for the first time since Heavensward. No, really, the class has played more or less the same as it has since heavensward, disregarding explicitly the change from the garbage mechanic that was HE enochian.

Beyond this, due to the garbage structure created by the timers, the class is a convoluted mess to learn and overly frustrating to fit into new content. The timers are the challenge you overcome to even play BLM as intended, they have next to no impact on the skill ceiling outside of explicitly managing when you despair right before a boss jumps so you don't waste time/excess mana on spells like Blizzard 4 right before a boss jumps. That is the extent of the timer's impact on the ceiling, right there. That is the only impact it has because timers really aren't a skill ceiling mechanic. Which means, if we remove them, the ceiling, the difficulty of the class, would still be there.

And if you, simply, get rid of a garbage-tier mechanic like the timers, then a new mechanic can actually be added. Monk didn't have a real mechanic until they removed greased lightning and added Masterful Blitz. And the class was being held back in terms of player enjoyment because of the sheer amount of positionals it had. Of those 2, Greased wasn't a real mechanic, it was a gatekeeper. Positionals were a mechanic, and we can argue until we're blue in the face over whether they're fun or not, but sometimes trimming something a minority loves helps bring the class as a whole to a better place.

Moving back to BLM, it has exactly 1 mechanic right now. Always be casting. That is the extent of it. Timers are not a mechanic, they are the bar you must jump over until you can play the class, and every time you play it, you must jump over it. It's an annoying, frustrating hurdle to the class and, just as with monk, Black Mage is being held back by this mechanic. I am not asking for a power vacuum, I want to maintain a lot of the core structure of the class even absent timers. Things that other black mages love, like needing to substitute out spells.

Most importantly, I'd love an actual mechanic added to the class, but one that slips in and enhances/enforces the way it currently plays, just without the frustrating, needlessly difficult and archaic timers. This mechanic can take many forms from something like: "Casting 2 fire 4s enables the cast of a new spell," to basically anything else. Which will help break up the rotation. Taking the paradox mechanic and dropping it down to when you get Sharpcast (and yeeting Sharpcast into the trash bin with the rest of the procs), but making it so Paradox increases the DPS of every fire 1 spell to be like Paradox itself so you're encouraged to do things other than fire 4 spam. But the class doesn't have a Masterful Blitz or Life of the Dragon or Stickers or pretty much anything that any other class has. It just has superfluous timers and awful procs.

I want to see the class have a leveling experience that doesn't require every fresh player of the class to relearn BLM 20 different times because of how wildly the class changes. The class is legitimately held back by its ancient design, and it's high time the class actually got a real, engaging mechanic than procs I literally ignore because T3 procs more often than not, and Sharpcast has a cooldown so short I can always use it for paradox. And the timers, those stupid timers, completely drag on the class itself to the point where the class feels absolutely awful to play.

The second I had to make a macro explicitly to manage maintaining umbral ice when I went into DRS as BLM, I knew instantly, then and there, just how awful a design this structure of the class is. And I have been masterfully using this class since the days of Heavensward when Enochian was complete trash.

To even suggest it's in the same realm of challenge as getting into melee for RDM when RDM has an actual class mechanic (black/white mana) is actually insulting to the class. And remember, even without timers, maintaining the AAA-B-AAA-C rotation would still be difficult.

Provided you reinforce the structure of AAA-B-AAA-C in any of its forms in any way, the class will be just fine without the timers. The timers are not necessary to this. Even without timers, even if the class was exclusively fire 4 spam, it would still be the single most punished class in the game simply from interrupting a single spell, because that is the primary difficulty challenge of black mage. The sooner BLM mains understand this, the sooner BLM can actually do something different than being literally the same class since Heavensward.

[tearagion]

lol

What I glean from this post: you don't like the timers, and are unwilling to read the post 2 above yours, therefore BLM should be changed to accommodate your preference. Timers aren't a bad mechanic just because you don't like them. You're going to have to get over this.

[Taranok]

That means that, unless you've planned things out carefully, you might have to place the B way earlier in the sequence than you intended and put another B later, or replace one (or more!) of the last As with a C, and so on. Not only does the order of spells in your astral cycle shuffle around, but the length of your astral cycle can expand or contract in response to changing circumstances, because a timer controls how many good spells as opposed to mediocre spells you can cram in there.

Fun fact, after mathing it out, if you ever have to substitute in a Fire 1 into the level 90 rotation, it costs you 300 potency. 401, technically, but as it's a faster cast the actual impact comes down to about 300.

I think you can literally screw up a sticker (as in, do a 1-2-1-2-3 combo on SAM because you tapped the wrong button) to even approach that level of punishment.

If you have to interrupt a fire 4, it will cost you at least 400 potency. Closer to 900 if you interrupt it closer to the end, because fire 4 is, legitimately, a 958 potency spell (310 * 1.8 * 1.3 * 1.2 * 1.1). To put this into perspective, Midare Setsugeka comes in swinging for about 1118.7 potency. Higanbana is about 1356 potency. The newly buffed Xenoglossy is 1304.

Why is this relevant? Because anyone who thinks timers add anything interesting to the class in terms of challenge really have forgotten just how much of a challenge it is to not interrupt fire 4s, to greed standing in AoEs to greed out a cast to keep the cast time rolling. Because so much of BLM's damage is tied to individual, long spell casts that even interrupting a single one is on the same order of magnitude as screwing up something like Ten-Chi-Jin for Ninja.

In other news, I hate the new BLM AoE rotation as well. Because it bloats out a class with massively overbloated bars and also, simultaneously, is so long that I basically can only use it in one cycle before literally everything is dead. Between it, fouls, flares, and high fire 2s. Even the old one let you cycle several times on mobs.

If there was no timer, but rather an ammo/charge system, you should still be challenged to use your instant casts when movement is required and to use your instant casts of shortening the effective cast times of your slowest, hardest-hitting spells, but you'd never actually have to make tradeoffs or sacrifices in terms of how many of those spells you'd cast at all. You'd always, rather than just hopefully get to cast six F4s and one Despair per cycle.

Also a lot of tricks that feel great to pull off and get away with would simply cease to have relevance. For instance, if I have 4s left on my astral timer and a polyglot proc that's about to overwrite, I'd normally have to either sacrifice the Xeno or the Despair. But, if I have Swift or Triple up, I can do something cute: cast Xeno, activate Swift as my GCD rolls, and then cast Despair with 1 second left on the clock, breathing a huge sigh of relief as I refresh my timer and get both my hardest-hitting spells out. Without a timer, there's no pressure: my Despair is guaranteed, and the only thing I have to worry about is a delay.

To add this in since I do have more to say on this: I'm not asking, and have never asked, for timers to be removed with nothing to fill in the void. There are numerous things the timers accomplish that should be preserved. My question to you on this is: What could be added that maintains this flexibility and additional punishment you like, without having the timers? Because literally every other class in the game can have their rotation interrupted and not need to go through mental gymnastics to recover the rotation. To my mind, it has never even been a core part of the class. Just something I had to suffer through. It never gave me a sense of accomplishment or feel good, because you have to master this aspect just to play the class. This is why the timers are a gatekeeping mechanic and have no actual impact on the ceiling.

So what could be done that accomplishes this playstyle without needing to cripple the rotation on a complete failure? Because every time someone, including you, defends timers, you assume the challenge cannot be acquired in some other way, or that the class wouldn't get something new. You just assume it will be removed as is. Actually, the part I find most ironic is when people agree with many of the negative things I say, such as dropping timers during boss transitions, but want to save the timers while preventing the drop, when the easier option is removing the timers and doing something else to the class than locking the timers' decay.

Recovery rotations aren't really something I consider a fun part of any class, and the devs seem to agree as they've systematically been nuking every last recovery rotation from the game, Black Mage and Bard being the final holdouts after Ninja, Dragoon, and Monk had their failures removed or, had a button to shore up a mechanic that used to be good, but has since decayed into bad. Bard's recovery being if they die mid-song.

[Taranok]

What I glean from this post: you don't like the timers, and are unwilling to read the post 2 above yours, therefore BLM should be changed to accommodate your preference. Timers aren't a bad mechanic just because you don't like them. You're going to have to get over this.

I read the post two above it, you just don't actually want to read an argument and instead dismiss it instantly.