A few questions for the BLM mains/enjoyers

[Zairava]

Would be completely nonsensical to me. Sharpcast is already Lv54 and before Lv60 when obtaining Fire IV there is basically no decision to be made when using Sharpcast. You use it on Thunder III once and then basically hold it on cooldown using Fire I, which is your main spell until Lv60. You don't even preserve Firestarter at those levels, you actually use each one of them as they are available EXCEPT if you get Firestarter on your final Fire I in your Astral Fire window, then you go one of those lines for optimisation:

• -> Blizzard III -> Blizzard I -> Thunder III (Thundercloud) -> Transpose -> Fire III (Firestarter)
• -> Blizzard III -> (Sharp) Thunder III (hardcast) -> Scathe -> Transpose -> Fire III (Firestarter)
• -> Blizzard III -> Blizzard I -> Scathe -> Transpose -> Fire III (Firestarter) [only if you recently reapplied Thunder III)

What they COULD do is bring the 30s-Sharpcast trait down to baseline since Sharpcast has a 60s recast initially.

Makes sense. I think Black Mage is perfectly fine as is (I enjoy optimizing and skill-expression even in places it doesn't matter), I was just trying to find a sort of compromise.

Sharpcast being brought down to 30s baseline is something I have thought about while running Black Mage occasionally in roulettes, but then I wonder if it would be truly necessary, which I don't feel it is personally.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Makes sense. I think Black Mage is perfectly fine as is (I enjoy optimizing and skill-expression even in places it doesn't matter), I was just trying to find a sort of compromise.

Sharpcast being brought down to 30s baseline is something I have thought about while running Black Mage occasionally in roulettes, but then I wonder if it would be truly necessary, which I don't feel it is personally.

Making Sharpcast 30s baseline is something you will start feeling if you do Lv60 and Lv70 EX trials and Savage raids synced for the experience or you doing Ultimate. It would be a huge benefit for the consistency and a fair change given how obscenely powerful Summoner is allowed to be on those levels while having a fraction of hardcasts that BLM does.

[Llugen]

For existing blm players this sounds fine, but the point of the 20s specifically is geared towards people trying out the job or who are new, make the job a little bit more forgiving which makes people new to the job less frustrated at playing it and feel bad when they miss the 15s timer while keeping it exactly the same for existing blm players, they don't get affected by this at all so win win.

On top of what Reinhardt said about the implications for a 20s timer at endgame, people new to the job presumably will be leveling it from level 1, meaning every spell they do either refreshes the timer or cancels it. I suppose with this in mind I don't see how making the timer longer would be helpful to low level play.. not sure how anyone could go a full 15 seconds without casting a single spell and if they do then their issue is not BLM specific it is the ABC fundamental.

And as an aside, from a "job learning" perspective this is probably the main reason that Fire IV is still level 60 and not 50, for players to get the feel of how refreshing works first.

Makes sense. I think Black Mage is perfectly fine as is (I enjoy optimizing and skill-expression even in places it doesn't matter), I was just trying to find a sort of compromise.

I agree that BLM actually having rotational optimization and skill expression is a thing that should be protected, however I strongly dislike the mindset that the job (or any job, or ANYthing in the game) is "perfectly fine as-is". We as a playerbase should ALWAYS be pointing out possible unintended quirks and frustrations, letting them decide if it was intended or not, and suggestions for improvement, as we are the people who actually do the stuff regularly.

[Llynethil]

On top of what Reinhardt said about the implications for a 20s timer at endgame, people new to the job presumably will be leveling it from level 1, meaning every spell they do either refreshes the timer or cancels it. I suppose with this in mind I don't see how making the timer longer would be helpful to low level play.. not sure how anyone could go a full 15 seconds without casting a single spell and if they do then their issue is not BLM specific it is the ABC fundamental.

And as an aside, from a "job learning" perspective this is probably the main reason that Fire IV is still level 60 and not 50, for players to get the feel of how refreshing works first..

And yet you still see ice mages, 0 damage healers, keyboardturning tanks, etc etc ...

The majority of mmo players in general aren't good at games, this was a thing back in wow, in gwars, in eso and also in ff14.

And that's ok, you play games to have fun first and foremost, and losing that 15s timer and have to start all over again, isn't fun, and this happens to many people who try out blm, then drop it because of that (and the rotation seem complicated at first glance, but it's really not that bad at all once you practise it a bit.)

You have to stop looking at this from an experienced player pov and try and view it from a beginners or not so good players' perspective, those extra 5s can be a huge help to them to keep having fun.

And yeah it might affect max lvl rotation, but you're still bound by your manapool, once you used font it's basically same as usual.
Who knows, maybe this could lead to an interesting new strat even at max lvl that make blm more rewarding for experienced players and being top dps in the raid.

This is why I wish there was a non content but only job PTR for ff14, do changes like this, let players break the job completely doing this, and if the data is good, implement if, if no find another way, hard to say other wise.

[Llugen]

And yet you still see ice mages, 0 damage healers, keyboardturning tanks, etc etc ...

...You have to stop looking at this from an experienced player pov and try and view it from a beginners or not so good players' perspective, those extra 5s can be a huge help to them to keep having fun...

I don't think I was able to fully communicate the weight of what I mean when I said missing ABC fundamentals, so let me do so now.

Always Be Casting is of course a pretty intermediate notion, not even really "experienced", but trying to adjust the job to make up for someone not adhering to this fundamental rule for ALL jobs in the game is a flawed idea. If a player is not doing ABCs, the problem is not the job, and no amount of design changes for the job are going to help.

Yes players are going to ice mage or pure heal, but that shouldn't inform the overall design of the class, if not solely because those players don't care about the design of the class.. they just want to spam freeze or whatever. As an aside, a good way to combat something like the ice mage fantasy IMO would actually be to lean into it... make an NPC at the THM guild that basically "swaps" your astral with your umbral, so the class functions exactly the same but backwards (So Blizzard IV is your damage spell, Fire IV gives you Astral hearts, Freeze/Flare inverted, etc.). That purely aesthetic option alone would would probably go SIGNIFICANTLY further than any standard job tweak they could throw (and they would probably FEEL better after being acknowledged, frankly), because again the nature of the issue is not the job, it's the player mentality.


Also on the contrary, we DO have to look at it from an experienced player POV, that experience including trying to grasp how to level when I started playing the game 10 years ago, because jobs cannot be balanced around lower level play if they become broken/ruined at higher level play because of it. As an experienced player I vividly remember the leveling frustrations (in fact they were even worse when I did it, but that's besides the point), and it is from that perspective that suggestions should be made precisely because of experiencing said frustrations, not just saying "screw the newbies".

[Zatoh]

Please don't take Scathe away. When doing FATEs with other players (especially at low levels), it is really nice having an instant-cast spell that will hit my target before someone else kills it. I also like having a button to click during dungeon pulls while moving. This spell is not obsolete.

I thought the main point of Sharpcast was to give you Firestarter procs when you need to move, especially since you typically use your Firestarter procs as you get them. Am I wrong? I feel like saying "your only real option is using Sharpcast to hold onto a Thundercloud proc" ignores the fact that mechanics exist.

I like the idea of holding up to three charges of Firestarter and Thundercloud, and I would find it helpful to have indicators for them on the job gauge.

[OgruMogru]

Please don't take Scathe away. When doing FATEs with other players (especially at low levels), it is really nice having an instant-cast spell that will hit my target before someone else kills it. I also like having a button to click during dungeon pulls while moving. This spell is not obsolete.

I thought the main point of Sharpcast was to give you Firestarter procs when you need to move, especially since you typically use your Firestarter procs as you get them. Am I wrong? I feel like saying "your only real option is using Sharpcast to hold onto a Thundercloud proc" ignores the fact that mechanics exist.

I like the idea of holding up to three charges of Firestarter and Thundercloud, and I would find it helpful to have indicators for them on the job gauge.

One aspect of higher end optimisation is using sharpcast for a fire 3 proc and then holding that proc throughout your ice phase so you can use paradox ice [instant cast] to weave transpose and then use the f3 proc under af1 for higher potency. There are more nuanced options than just this one but it is a key aspect of optimized blm play.

[Llugen]

Please don't take Scathe away. When doing FATEs with other players (especially at low levels), it is really nice having an instant-cast spell that will hit my target before someone else kills it. I also like having a button to click during dungeon pulls while moving. This spell is not obsolete.

I agree that Scathe being the exact same spell that it was 10 years ago doesn't feel great, but I cannot emphasize how much I agree with THIS kind of sentiment right here.

Scathe HAS its uses, and they may be closer to niche than not-niche but they are still gains. If you're not using scathe in dungeons as an execute (last button before a mob dies when you otherwise couldn't get another full cast off), or just before boss downtime as the same, then you are missing optimization. Hopefully though it goes without saying that fights are situational, and if you have something like a xeno or a firestarter or thundercloud (or even transpose > ice paradox), then those should be prioritized at those levels given the scenario, but I use scathe literally every day like this, and everyone probably should.


I don't think scathe really needs fixed that badly (or more accurately, I don't think it deserves to be high on the priority list of things to be addressed for the class), but if I were to fix it, I would probably make the double potency thing just be passive in astral fire instead of 20% chance thing, and reduce its MP cost to 400 like Thunder, so using a single scathe in a fire phase if you REALLY needed to would not cost you a Fire IV from a standard rotation MP perspective. HOWEVER, I understand them being hesitant to give ANY buff to scathe, because they don't want scathe mages either (otherwise I might suggest the six-sided star treatment).