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

[Colt47]

Am I missing a new craze here? I have always and will always eat unsweatened oatmeal. Sweatened Oatmeal sounds disgusting...



It's not at all the same core idea, not even close. The core idea of BLM is about staying in your "strong" phase (Fire) as much as possible and make the best use of your time and MP while in that phase then switching to your weak phase to recuperate and staying it it as shortly as possible. The secondary core idea is positioning and dealing with movement. Using tools that you have to move when you need to but using positioning to move as little as possible.

The core idea of RDM is balance. It's about maintaining balance between the two mana to quickly charge up for a short but strong melee burst window before jumping back out and continuing to maintain balance. The secondary idea with RDM is surrounding Fast Cast; utilizing your slow weak spells to get a Fast Cast proc and then use that on long cast time spells that deal more damage. With some additional mechanics around your slow cast spells proccing a "less weak" fast casting spell.


Just because both have "two things" doesn't mean they are the same core idea. They are completely different things.

The core idea is going between two phases and they simply differentiate the usage of the phases, which is what I was talking about with the moonkin druid as the job went through similar designs going from expansion to expansion. The design difference between RDM and BLM is more so MP management. BLM wants to stay in fire as long as possible because that is when it is expending MP for more damage. Ice phase is the recovery phase of the sea saw and is just an active dps resting phase. RDM is the other sea saw design where it's about going back and forth rapidly to keep to energy meters roughly the same.

If that is merely the identity of the job, then it shouldn't even matter if they increased the cast speed on black mage to make it less clunky. A 3-4 second cast in this game is extremely long and punishing, which doesn't really fit the idea of "you can do better if you use this ability" that other casters have. Instead they get punished because most of the AOEs and attacks from monsters will complete at around 2 to 3 seconds.

Also leylines as a mobility tool is fine, just having it comboed as a haste buff and encouraging someone to stand in it to get more casts off is just like the 3-4 second cast problem where it encourages someone to eat attacks. Shorter cast times improve reactive gameplay without overcomplicating or making the job dependent upon skills they might not have until later, and makes the job a lot easier to test against new and old content since it should meet minimum mobility standards for most content.