Don't change Black Mage too much

[JacobNewblood]

I'd like some button consolidation and a thing where Umbral Soul "freezes" your UI timer so you don't have to spam it out of combat.

This , this is the one change I want badly, hurts sooo much when the in fight CS or ziplines between stages in A raids takes 15+ seconds.

[HikariKurosawa]

Changes I want: Ley lines + BTL merge. Make umbral soul turn into transpose when in AF(but keep transpose available as a separate button too for those who want to optimize). Make umbral soul a level 30 ability. Make umbral soul freeze AI at 15 seconds when you cap out 3 AI and 3 UH.

Most of these have already been said, but now that I've got to 90 on my BLM I really want them.

Flare needs a new animation, freeze needs a new animation, fire III needs a new animation. Everything else is visually great.

[Shurrikhan]

I guess if I had a bit of a wish-list for (very subtle / merely polish-oriented) changes...

• Gamewide Change: Casts are now fully snapshotted. If Astral Fire falls off during a F4 cast, it will still go off. If Verstone Ready falls off during a Verstone cast, it will still go off.
• Gamewide Change: Action Stacks have been added to the game. These act as a more user-friendly form of and seamless alternative to macros, allowing players to trickle down through different actions as those above fail to be applicable. For instance, a stack of Ley Lines, Between the Lines would fall to Between the Lines as soon as Ley Lines is placed on CD (since Ley Lines cannot be used but Between the Lines can be), and cycle back to Ley Lines as soon as Between the Lines, too, cannot be used.
  
  Polyglot progress now merely pauses while out of Astral Fire / Umbral Ice (instead of the BLM losing all progress towards Polyglot) but can no longer be progressed outside of combat. In exchange for the dungeon burst thereby lost, Manafont gets a second charge.
  
  Gameplay result: More uses of Convert in dungeons, but fewer free Flare/Xenoglossy casts born of Umbral Ice spam; Umbral Ice or Transpose spam no longer required.
  
  
• Astral Fire has been made a bit more intuitive in how it affects spell-casts. It now increases Fire damage by 50|75|100% while increasing Fire MP costs and decreasing Ice MP costs by the same. Now decreases Ice cast times by 25|37.5|50%. It no longer reduces the damage of Ice spells.
• Umbral Ice now reduces MP costs by 50|75|100% while restoring 25|37.5|50% MP per GCD's time and decreasing Fire casts times by 25|37.5|50%. It no longer decreases the damage of Fire spells. (The increased opportunity cost of not being in Astral Fire when casting them already covers the difference.)
  
  
• Instead of awkwardly needing to multiply BLM potencies per the multiplicative buffs of the Caster/Healer wide trait Maim and Mend II (+30% damage), Astral Fire (up to +80% Fire damage), and Enochian (+23% damage), Enochian has been replaced by Elemental Depths, which just upgrades spell potencies by roughly the same amounts.
  
  As such, to compare BLM potencies to other Casters or Healers, one need only double the potency of consecutive Fire casts. To get equivalent Melee/Tank potencies, though, they'd still have to also multiple by 1.3, of course. (For Ranged, with their awkward +20% modifiers, you'd have to multiple by 1.08333. I truly hope we just get rid of all of those traits soon so that Healer potency is Tank potency is Ranged potency is... just potency.)
  
• Among the above potency buffs in compensation for removing Enochian's 3rd layer of multiplicative damage buffs, Fire III becomes Fire V, Flare becomes Flare II, and Freeze becomes Freeze II. Fire V is now worth using for more than just mobility (no longer a faint DPS loss per AF cycle), tending to end one's Fire phase if no opportunity is granted to use it in any other way, giving a bit more offensive value to Sharpcast. Yes, they come with newer, cooler animations.
  
  
• New recommended Action Stacks have been added to Black Mage, including...

• [Instant] Paradox > [Firestarter] Fire III -> Paradox -> [Astral Fire III] Fire -> [No Astral Fire] Fire III
• Fire IV -> Blizzard IV
• Freeze -> Flare
• Ley Lines -> Between the Lines
• Umbral Heart -> Transpose

[Ayden]

BLM is now too hard right compared to other casters? What do you guys think of the following:

1. Remove Astral Fire timer and Umbral Ice timer
2. Foul and Xenoglossy - Polygot still accumulates every 30 seconds while under the effect of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice.

Fire spells that currently grant astral fire will grant it permanently until an ice spell is cast. Same thing applies to ice spells. The entire gameplay will now be just MP and the rotation will be mostly unchanged. We will still use paradox once in between Fire IVs or anytime under astral fire due to its higher potency . We swap to ice to restore MP. There is no concern of losing AF and we carry on with our rotation after any downtime.

[Zairava]

BLM is now too hard right compared to other casters? What do you guys think of the following:

1. Remove Astral Fire timer and Umbral Ice timer
2. Foul and Xenoglossy - Polygot still accumulates every 30 seconds while under the effect of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice.

Fire spells that currently grant astral fire will grant it permanently until an ice spell is cast. Same thing applies to ice spells. The entire gameplay will now be just MP and the rotation will be mostly unchanged. We will still use paradox once in between Fire IVs or anytime under astral fire due to its higher potency . We swap to ice to restore MP. There is no concern of losing AF and we carry on with our rotation after any downtime.

Big No. Astral Fire/Umbral Ice (with timer) is the core of nearly every job mechanic Black Mage has. If that gets removed to tremendously dumb down the job it'll be the next one that sits on the bench after leveling for me

[OgruMogru]

No removal of timers!!

[Ferrinus]

Something I think would be fun alongside common suggestions made here (paradox AoE, ice finisher spell) would be a lightning finisher spell, maybe Burst or some original spell name.

It'd be a "finisher" in the sense that it only does full (or perhaps any at all) damage to a target with a Thunder DoT on them, but it also consumes that DoT to no further effect (or to an effect that scales weakly with remaining duration but less so than the actual DoT would have dealt), so the optimal play pattern is to throw Burst when an enemy's Thunder is juuuust about to fall off. This would introduce another timer to juggle that's a little more under your control, and, depending on the math, give you something profitable to do with extra Thundercloud procs (which could maybe stack...?).

A simpler mechanic could just be a Burst spell that you only become able to cast when you get a "natural" Thundercloud proc while you've already got one stored up.

[Komaru_Tatoro]

what if paradox have a chance to upgrade scathe to a more powerful spell without mp cost. ;P

give us 1 more polygot at capstone with a powerful 2polygot spender spell. the potency should not be twice the xeno, thus leaving the option for using it during the 15s burst window and normal xeno spend on out of burst window
but if dev decide the xeno button get auto upgrade to the 2polygot spender spell upon having two polygot already to save button space, then its fine to make its twice the potency of xeno.

heres another idea to save button space with the aforemention two upgrade spell:
paradox 100% upgrade scathe to this powerful spell, this powerful spell needs to be casted inorder for xeno to be upgraded to a 2polygot spender spell.


and since we at this. can we please increase these target base aoe radius? not just blm but all spell target base aoe.
monster gets too big of a hitbox and you needing to try locating the optimum small hitbox enmy within the crowd is a pain. also in the end, they probably die before your cast goes off and need to reselect and cast ago. although im not a gamepaf player but you do have to think about the gamepad players! its hard for then ti try find the optimum monster in the mids of instantcast aoes

back then i can understand keeping the radius small when melee need tp but they dont now. and majorly melee aoe is char base or aoe originate from char. thus they can run into the middle of the pack and aoe.

right now, caster dps on crowd on the mercy of the tank too. while melee dps dont need to worry.
monster all over the place? small hitbox enmy not in the middle of the crowd?

[Rithy255]

BLM is now too hard right compared to other casters? What do you guys think of the following:

1. Remove Astral Fire timer and Umbral Ice timer
2. Foul and Xenoglossy - Polygot still accumulates every 30 seconds while under the effect of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice.

Fire spells that currently grant astral fire will grant it permanently until an ice spell is cast. Same thing applies to ice spells. The entire gameplay will now be just MP and the rotation will be mostly unchanged. We will still use paradox once in between Fire IVs or anytime under astral fire due to its higher potency . We swap to ice to restore MP. There is no concern of losing AF and we carry on with our rotation after any downtime.

Some jobs should be harder then others, I'm glad BLM is one of the few jobs that keeps the high skill celling low skill floor, most people can pick up it and do pretty ok with it.
Just because something is hard doesn't mean it needs changes.

[Eraden]

Mao is BLM. Mao findings BLM design really good but EW fight designs gettings increasingly harder and not funs for Mao as BLM. That is, until Aloaha. Fights in new variant dungeon much more funs for Mao. Mao has little bits more opportunity to find special spots to plant and get rotations off. Mao really enjoying being BLM agains!