Regarding the newest Blackmage changes

[Nero-Voidstails]

to be honest I am a little bit confused about most thing but I will say this moving Ley lines is a really good add to blackmage

[HappyHubris]

Blackmage will lose a large portion of skill expression and creativity, along with the risk reward factor that came from using your resources to squeeze out more damage, instead of using them for movement needs. But now there is no way to recover the required amount of mana without casting a set sequence of spells. There will also be no use of going into fire with non full mp depending on how the new job gauge works, doubling the amount of creativity that has been taken away from us.

Welcome to a club called "every other job design."

[OgruMogru]

I don't think non-standard play is dead completely - we get different amounts of charges for the new gauge depending on the spell used so I think the focus of nonstandard will shift to manipulating how you fill that gauge to get access to the new nuke. I would have preferred if we could regain mana with any gcd in UI personally. I'm only really concerned by the complete lack of any mana regen for any type of downtime we might encounter. That's gonna make everything from overworld mobs to high end raid phase transitions etc a nightmare -_-

[Taranok]

I don't think non-standard play is dead completely - we get different amounts of charges for the new gauge depending on the spell used so I think the focus of nonstandard will shift to manipulating how you fill that gauge to get access to the new nuke. I would have preferred if we could regain mana with any gcd in UI personally. I'm only really concerned by the complete lack of any mana regen for any type of downtime we might encounter. That's gonna make everything from overworld mobs to high end raid phase transitions etc a nightmare -_-

What we saw was: Fire 4 gave 1 charge. Flare gave 3. Manafont appeared to give full mana + 3 umbral hearts, which lets you double cast flare. At 6 stacks, you can super flare/meltdown/whatever it is.

What we don't know is: If manafont buffs flare (so you always double flare,) if there's overcap protection (appears to be no,) if it makes flares instant (can't say, too lazy to bring up vid,) or if casting at fewer stacks will generate a weaker superflare/meltdown.

Nonstandard will always be used for odd situations like weird boss jumps, and I wouldn't be surprised if short cycling exists in some form. But I'm just happy standardized nonstandard is dead. The game is better off with it gone.

[Keichi]

What we saw was: Fire 4 gave 1 charge. Flare gave 3. Manafont appeared to give full mana + 3 umbral hearts, which lets you double cast flare. At 6 stacks, you can super flare/meltdown/whatever it is.

What we don't know is: If manafont buffs flare (so you always double flare,) if there's overcap protection (appears to be no,) if it makes flares instant (can't say, too lazy to bring up vid,) or if casting at fewer stacks will generate a weaker superflare/meltdown.

Nonstandard will always be used for odd situations like weird boss jumps, and I wouldn't be surprised if short cycling exists in some form. But I'm just happy standardized nonstandard is dead. The game is better off with it gone.

To the instant flare:
No its not.

You can see, that the mage used triple casting to use 2 flares and then shot the new explosiv fire Ball instantly to.

The rotation looks to be now: using triple cast at the start, to shot very fast fire4. Than use paradox (who looks to be now instant to, or, switch cast was used), shoot fire4 again, until the shards are full.
Use the new Fireball and despair.
Recover your stuff with manafront. Use triple cast again to shot 2 Flairs and the new spell to.

[Valence]

Imagine if flare is back into single target BLM standard.

[awhitet]

I really doubt they've made fire paradox instant, that would make 0 sense and it would ruin your astral fire phase specially with low/mid sps. Most likely you get an instant after using the new ability that reposition the lines. New thunder has cast time in benchmark but in this trailer it has not, we'll see what happens about that.

About the MP, yes, it can potentially kill the non standard but we literally don't have any clue what's going to happen, you can see a MP regen effect after the blm uses B4, but how much is it, 5000?10000? Does ice paradox give MP? what about using thunder/xenos during ice? We just don't have enough information to just say "bro non standard is gone, ggwp 8.0 waiting room"

I would also be really sad if they get rid of non standard as it allows you to be creative in some scenarios, you have the option to do something different, it's not just about 2% dmg increase, it's more about you just have more options to handle mechanics, like imagine you have to do TOP P1 without non standard, you can technically still do it, but it would be a pain in the ass.

Also if you only get MP from ice spells, what about downtime? Imagine boss goes away and you finish on 0 MP, use tranpose and then what, don't get mana? I'll assume umbral soul will give you MP per usage or something.

TLDR: We just don't have enough information yet to claim anything, but wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to remove non standard with all this "ease to play" stuff they've been introducing, making all classes even more brain-dead.

[Mecia]

Im worried about more instant casts as thats potentially telling of what kind of fights we're up to.

[Sjol]

I guess it would have been too much to hope that they could integrate the six-star into the main gauge. I really liked that it was one piece unlock a lot of the other jobs.

With regards to not regening MP in Umbral Ice was that said? Or could it just be that you don't regenerate at the accelerated rate in Umbral Ice anymore?

[OgruMogru]

I guess it would have been too much to hope that they could integrate the six-star into the main gauge. I really liked that it was one piece unlock a lot of the other jobs.

With regards to not regening MP in Umbral Ice was that said? Or could it just be that you don't regenerate at the accelerated rate in Umbral Ice anymore?

It was written on one of the powerpoint slides so less likely to be a victim of bad phrasing. It said mana will be recovered by ice spells INSTEAD of over time.