Can we just take a moment to talk about Black Mage?

[Colt47]

It doesn't kill job depth if they gave it a haste buff. BLM is about having big powerful key spells that take a long time to cast, but it makes no sense that they'd rapid fire off said big spells constantly in a rotation. You would expect the long spells to be at the end of the rotation, similar to how communio works with reaper, albeit reaper has theirs as a fast cast since they are a melee job.

Resisting change is one thing but getting lost in the whole idea that slow and clunky is a mechanical identity in a game that isn't built for it is a self defeating in an argument. So lets just push their "identity" even further and increase their cast times to 6 seconds on their fire spells and see how that works out for you blackmage lovers. I'm betting it would completely cripple and render the job unplayable because suddenly you'd have to always use every single quick cast move, and then you'd just counter argue that they could just buff the attack damage and somehow the whole thing works.

What causes all the frustration with them is the leyline skill and the time limit someone has to complete a combo thanks to ecolochian, which is to say the two core mechanics that make the job what it is right now. At the very least they should make it so that someone doesn't drop casting despair / flare if the timing is off since that's probably the biggest pain point.

Maybe making leylines something that isn't a zoned buff would fix the problem since they already got so much stacked against them with the longer cast times that they don't really need to have to deal with a position locked haste buff.