SE, the 7.0 BLM changes will not increase engagement. They are completely-pointless.

[Ferrinus]

Since just spending a Firestarter proc in AF3 is no longer going to constitute a slight damage loss, and since Paradox is instant under AF3, BLM is simultaneously getting more strict and more lenient; on the other hand, you'll suffer more than before if you weren't able to cast every possible F4 in your astral phase. On the other hand, you now don't necessarily need to cast more than two F4s in a row between your various instant casts, and you might even have the opportunity to weave a Thunder spell in if your enemy's DoT is about to run out. You'll be missing more if you know the boss is about to jump away in only 4 GCDs and your MP is still full, but your actual decision-making remains exactly the same as it used to, which is to say that it becomes incumbent on you to just squeeze out as many F4s as possible and swift/triplecast your Despair at the absolute last second.

Rather than making every hit restore MP in ice mode, I think I'd prefer to see every hit grant an Astral Soul stack in fire mode, so that really screwing up and needing to cast Fire 1 or even Scathe doesn't deny you your Flare Star at the end of the phase. But at this point we're just haggling over the price; it's always going to be the case that there's a single, optimal way to play the class and you lose damage if you fail to play it that way.

[Ramiee]

I don't follow. How are Fire IV and Flare Star dictating when and in what order you do things in a way that other BLM builds aren't? And maybe it will help if I explain the way I'm thinking about it, which might be different than the way you do.

The main difference then before is that the main spender (Xenoglossy/Foul) outside of just straight up using your Fire spells was connected to simply keeping Astral/Umbral up. It seems to be that Fire IV's tokens that give you Flare star forces you to linearly use as many Fire IVs to get it then use it and switching back to ice form drops this making you lose potency. This along with the MP regen changes has made it that switching to Ice phase and dropping Flare star fails your rotation ergo destroying non-standard rotation where you'd use tranpose to switch to Ice for certain reasons.

It makes it similar to how other Jobs in the game make you do a combo rotation that gives resources (Sen for example) to use on a spender (Midare Setsugekka) when previously BLM didn't have anything like this. Instead you were limited to using Despair or Flare at the end of your "combo" because your MP was running out. So you could technically switch to Ice to regain Mana and skip Despair or do Despair early even if you have enough mana to spend on extra Fire IVs.
But now because we have Flare Star we are forced to do as many Fire IVs as we can to get Flare Star as our finisher after Despair removing the decision making from it.

[HikariKurosawa]

So basically you don't like BLM. You liked BLM's look and Job fantasy but don't like how the Job has played since like Heavensward.
I don't like Samurai, I think the combos are boring, Kenki is boring and all the big attacks are flashy without substances and just seem ungabunga do damage to me. However I love the Samurai job fantasy and look. You know what I think about that?
Oh well, other people enjoy how Samurai plays there are so many other Jobs in the game for me to play I dont need to beg for it to conform to my preferences just because of how it looks. For someone who seems to care so much about being a teamplayer so much so that doing 8% less damage than people on a third party leaderboard makes you feel like you're sandbagging. (despite BLM standard rotation still being higher damage than most other DPS) You sure do want other people playing the game to lose their fun.

I didnt ask for them to change BLM, they changed it because it wasn't getting enough play. Now I celebrate the changes I didn't ask for because the devs knew what I wanted without any complaining.

[Ramiee]

I didnt ask for them to change BLM, they changed it because it wasn't getting enough play. Now I celebrate the changes I didn't ask for because the devs knew what I wanted without any complaining.

Ok I hope you enjoy your one button spam Job then go back to Samurai after realising 1-1-1-1 is actually very boring.

[Ferrinus]

The main difference then before is that the main spender (Xenoglossy/Foul) outside of just straight up using your Fire spells was connected to simply keeping Astral/Umbral up. It seems to be that Fire IV's tokens that give you Flare star forces you to linearly use as many Fire IVs to get it then use it and switching back to ice form drops this making you lose potency. This along with the MP regen changes has made it that switching to Ice phase and dropping Flare star fails your rotation ergo destroying non-standard rotation where you'd use tranpose to switch to Ice for certain reasons.

It makes it similar to how other Jobs in the game make you do a combo rotation that gives resources (Sen for example) to use on a spender (Midare Setsugekka) when previously BLM didn't have anything like this. Instead you were limited to using Despair or Flare at the end of your "combo" because your MP was running out. So you could technically switch to Ice to regain Mana and skip Despair or do Despair early even if you have enough mana to spend on extra Fire IVs.
But now because we have Flare Star we are forced to do as many Fire IVs as we can to get Flare Star as our finisher after Despair removing the decision making from it.

Well, Fire IV has always been BLM's single hardest-hitting and spammable spell, so the goal (on single target, anyway) has always been to maximize the density of Fire IV (and Despair) of casts in the total list of spell casts populated over the course of a fight. Even if Flare Star didn't exist, you'd still be trying your hardest to execute an astral cycle consisting of six F4s, one Paradox, and one Despair every time you can, with an awareness of an imminent boss jump/death just leading you to cut your astral cycle short by casting your Despair early.

Various transpose/lucid/paradox tricks ultimately amounted to purging as many weaker-than-F4 spells from the rotation as possible, but if by some miracle you could still cast six F4s per astral cycle while also skipping B3, B4, F3, whatever, that's what you'd do, because it would further increase your F4 density. So it's just generally true that you always want more F4s, and lose out on damage if you can't do all your F4s. DT knows what the maximum number of F4s is and rewards you for hitting it, which is a bit of a win more mechanic, but doesn't really change your basic goals in so doing.

[Ramiee]

Various transpose/lucid/paradox tricks ultimately amounted to purging as many non-F4 spells from the rotation as possible, but if by some miracle you could still cast six F4s per astral cycle while also skipping B3, B4, F3, whatever, that's what you'd do. So it's just generally true that you always want more F4s, and lose out on damage if you can't do all your F4s. DT knows what the maximum number of F4s is and rewards you for hitting it, which is a bit of a win more mechanic, but doesn't really change your basic goals in so doing.

I know I was just trying to explain the basic idea of why people are upset about the change and giving a scenario of why you might transpose without getting into any actual specific non standard rotation for a specific boss.

[Galvuu]

Well, Fire IV has always been BLM's single hardest-hitting and spammable spell, so the goal (on single target, anyway) has always been to maximize the density of Fire IV (and Despair) of casts in the total list of spell casts populated over the course of a fight. Even if Flare Star didn't exist, you'd still be trying your hardest to execute an astral cycle consisting of six F4s, one Paradox, and one Despair every time you can, with an awareness of an imminent boss jump/death just leading you to cut your astral cycle short by casting your Despair early.

Various transpose/lucid/paradox tricks ultimately amounted to purging as many weaker-than-F4 spells from the rotation as possible, but if by some miracle you could still cast six F4s per astral cycle while also skipping B3, B4, F3, whatever, that's what you'd do, because it would further increase your F4 density. So it's just generally true that you always want more F4s, and lose out on damage if you can't do all your F4s. DT knows what the maximum number of F4s is and rewards you for hitting it, which is a bit of a win more mechanic, but doesn't really change your basic goals in so doing.

This is a simplified view of the overall problem, in fairness. The goal, in reality, at least for EW, is the following: "how can I maximize the average potency of my gcd?". This includes many aspects- maximizing your powerful spells like Despair, Paradox and Fire IV is one. But so is keeping Thunder rolling without overwriting it and using your instant casting ogcds (Swiftcast and Triple) on Despair as much as possible (since it's a slower cast and doing so grants you more potency per second).
In addition to these, another aspect of this is "how can I minimize the number of weak spells in my gcds?" and "how can I keep perfect uptime at all times?". And it's these last two that make DT BLM problematic. For the former, they're attempting to force you to use them. For the latter is where the "rigidity" aspect comes into play. It's just like the hypothetical I gave you exemplifies- if movement, or a mechanic, or downtime, or just an honest mistake forces you to lose one of your "builder gcds" (your Fire IV), then you lose a very powerful gcd (Flare Star) for the whole fight, with no way of recovering it. It's like losing a Xenoglossy for not casting 6xFire IV. This is the "builder>spender" pattern. People have given good examples and thoughts on this in other posts.
It's really thinking about the problem a bit differently (and more completely) than just "I wanna cast as many Fire IV/Despair as possible".

(Oh my God, I replied to the wrong post... I'm sorry. I'll leave it up because I think the info is still useful...)

[Galvuu]

Ok I hope you enjoy your one button spam Job then go back to Samurai after realising 1-1-1-1 is actually very boring.

Funny enough, SAM is also becoming more rigid, with severe implications for fights with downtime... wouldn't be the best job to turn to.
But that's why we have Pictomancer :')

[Ramiee]

Funny enough, SAM is also becoming more rigid, with severe implications for fights with downtime... wouldn't be the best job to turn to.
But that's why we have Pictomancer :')

Yeah it's actually pretty funny that picto simply having forced downtime already intrigues me more for optimisation around boss fights then anything new added to black mage.

[HikariKurosawa]

Ok I hope you enjoy your one button spam Job then go back to Samurai after realising 1-1-1-1 is actually very boring.

Project harder little guy