Quote Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo View Post
BLM has always been about building and spending. Build mana with Ice, spend it via Fire. Build Umbral Hearts with Ice, spend them with Fire. Build Polyglots by keeping your plates spinning, spend them on boom. If building and spending is bad, then BLM has always been bad, and I don't see how one more facet of building and spending would move the needle one way or the other.
BLM, right now, does not follow this builder/spender pattern at all. There's no gcd or button (or combo) you do to build anything up. You go into UI and you can use whatever you want there while you get your MP back. Unless you think "Thundercloud" and "Xenoglossy" are builders. And that's the magic, really. It's also true for the "spending" part- if you cut your AF short into a Despair (because the boss is going to disengage or it's somewhat advantageous), your loss is minimal- because you're not "losing" a resource that is somehow unrecoverable. That's why BLM is so flexible- you have a wide array of high potency gcds (in both AF and UI) and can more or less change their order with great liberty to suit your needs. That's why people say current BLM is "flexible". Only have time to do 4x Fire IV > Despair before the boss jumps off? No problem! Doing some Transpose line to dump Xenos and optimize Firestarter? No problem! Need a burst of movement and must dump Thundercloud, Xenoglossy and a Triplecast right now? No problem! Ups, need to go ice early? Just Despair, Transpose and Paradox, no problem!
In the DT BLM you cannot do any of these things, because the moment you do not use a Fire IV (aka, use your builder) or don't cast Flare Star (aka, your spender) you permanently lose that one Flare Star. You have to follow the 6x Fire IV pattern no matter what, or you either don't build enough or don't spent it.
Ofc if you want to engage in extreme pedantry, you can say that if you overwrite a Xenoglossy right now you're doing the "same" (didn't spend the Xeno) or if you just skip your entire AF (like, go into Fire and immediately cast Despair) you're also wasting the "MP you built", but the fact that how you build and spend those resources, when you do that and in what order you do it is so free-form is why BLM doesn't fit that pattern at all (it fits it in the loosest sense possible).