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

[Taranok]

Whoops! Yeah, I meant Flare Star.

I guess what I'd point out here is that there's a "lost" Fire IV and a lost Fire IV. If you want to skip Fire IVs profitably, you need to know what you're doing and plan it out to an extent, often paying for it ahead of time by skipping a Blizz IV or B3 or both ahead of time. But it's entirely possible to do all the clever nonstandard stuff, screw something up, and end up only casting three Fire IVs before your Despair, or only two, or to cast your four Fire IVs but fail to get your Despair off because you got greedy. More prosaically, you might have to cut your cycle short by casting only four Fire IVs... but, tragically, you were ready to cast six because you'd cast B3->B4 before this astral cycle, so now you're just owned because you forgot about an incoming boss AoE or something.

So, like, mistakes are mistakes. You can sometimes recoup some, but often not all, of the loss, especially not if you manage to overcap Polyglot stacks or fat-finger Convert with full MP or something.

To add to this, joining the discussion late, I'd describe it as catastrophic losses of fire 4s. This is when you lose a fire 4 in such a way that you also abort out of the timer itself. When this happens, you lose ~3-32s of polyglot at 29.33~ potency per second lost (~1547.8 potency max currently with +30% magic and mend, +23% eno-chan.) You might ask, 'wait, 32s?' If you drop it at exactly 29s, you have to spend ~3.5s casting back in, so that's also lost potency that cannot be recovered. Then you have to spend 2000 mp casting back in, which is a DPS loss since you're likely hard-casting back into the rotation. Let's assume fire 3. That spell is ~415 potency true casting back in at relative 3.5s cast time or 118.8 pps with the highly unlikely 0 spell speed scenario. This costs you 2000 mp and will cost you a fire 4. Well, a current fire 4 is 310 * 1.8 * 1.3 * 1.23 or ~892 potency at 318pps. You're straight up losing both 892 potency from a lost fire 4, and also the difference in pps from the opportunity cost of having to hardcast back in. That MP cost likely is costing you a second fire 4 due to fire 3 costing 2000mp, but it's possible you entered AF3 with exactly 10k mana instead of 9.6k that also can happen if you thunder late and don't get a tic.

There's a lot more that goes into it than this, but there's a reason I often equate BLM losing timers to being equivalent to a NIN casting TCJ and straight up losing the entire thing to accidental movement immediately after. I know way too many people who hate BLM because of this sword of damocles constantly hanging over the head of the class. Especially as the risks get greater and greater.

[Sneakyotter]

Why would I try to engage in a job that I know I will never play optimally?

I doubt you have play anything optimally in all your play time.

[HikariKurosawa]

That's impressive how toxic people can get because they are maladaptive and unwilling to accept that the devs don't like how many people abuse third party addons to optimize a job in an unintended way that is clearly unintentional abuse of game mechanics. Transpose was meant to be used in low levels to keep enochian running, it is not an end game ability. Once we got umbral soul we were expected to take it off our bars just like healers and their base heal.


I will just keep grinding the game and adapting to change until you know your place.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

What devs initially intend and what players figure out can coexist. Generally it is a better PR move to support/accept alternate play methods when found by the playerbase rather than punish the "abuse" by nerfing and reworking things to make it strictly worse or impossible to do.

That said, Transpose, even with the old cooldown of about 15 seconds, still had use at Lv50 when created by using Firestarter Fire III for a more bombastic entry into the Fire phase. So no, Transpose wasn't purely a "I need Ice on the run" tool, it was a multitool all the way back then.

That said, I used non-standard in various situation to deal with specific movement and used standard elsewhere. I do not use 3rd party addons/plugins to tell me when my MP comes back and I still can use non-standard. It's not rocket science to use it and it's grossly exaggerated how "unintuitive" people claim it to be, especially when the difference between it and standard BLM is so miniscule, all it does is provide movement to movement heavy fights without relying on your teammates (either by proc/Paradox management or shortening your AF/UI cycle once or twice)

[Voidmage]

Transpose was meant to be used in low levels to keep enochian running, it is not an end game ability. Once we got umbral soul we were expected to take it off our bars just like healers and their base heal.

You do realise you have to be in umbral ice first to use umbral soul and that you did that with transpose more often then not after a fight?
Or if you have to move suddenly and change to umbral ice quickly for paradox to keep enochian going. It was literally the saving tool for more casual players also.

Transpose was not meant to be taken of our hotbar.

yeah you're right but it's definitely not meant to be used for the reasons people use it for in non-standard. If it was, blm wouldn't have received the changes it did.

This topic is a dead horse anyway. It's going to be another case of "bring back kaiten". Longstanding thread on the forum of a vocal minority crying for something that is better off gone.

I don't have the same opinion but ok. Just wanted to clear the Transpose-point.

[HikariKurosawa]

You do realise you have to be in umbral ice first to use umbral soul and that you did that with transpose more often then not after a fight?
Or if you have to move suddenly and change to umbral ice quickly for paradox to keep enochian going. It was literally the saving tool for more casual players also.

Transpose was not meant to be taken of our hotbar.

yeah you're right but it's definitely not meant to be used for the reasons people use it for in non-standard. If it was, blm wouldn't have received the changes it did.

This topic is a dead horse anyway. It's going to be another case of "bring back kaiten". Longstanding thread on the forum of a vocal minority crying for something that is better off gone.

[SoleilBigMountain]

You skip around, post, and act like a jack ass then when people call you a jack ass you call them toxic? What an actual animal of a person. For the record since you clearly have no idea that these changes actually hurt the casual line making black mage harder to play as well as killing non standard, people aren't just mad non standard is gone there's a lot of stuff wrong here. As well as the fact non standard was a different way to play the job not the end goal, if you actually looked into non standard it is not the "ok you want to start optimizing BLM learn non standard" it was after you perfected standard and wanted to learn just a different way to play the job, non standard was such a small DPS gain that just playing standard better and crits could easily out pace a non standard BLM, you could be in the top 99% of BLM's playing standard. I can tell you don't know that though because you heard something was hard then let it live rent free in your head until they got rid of it without doing any research.

[LilimoLimomo]

Why would I try to engage in a job that I know I will never play optimally?

This is a fair question, and I'll do my best to answer it in detail.

Assuming you're talking about players in general and not just yourself, the first thing to remember is that most FF14 players are casual. These players tend not to go on forums, tend not to watch guides, and tend to play at a "good enough" level. And broadly speaking, "good enough" is enough for them.

Unlike the average casual player, I do like pushing myself a bit further. I like thinking about the finer details of game systems and trying to optimize in some ways. But what matters to me more than my own skill level is fun; that's why I play this video game in my spare time, because I want to have fun. So while I do like to go a bit further than a casual player, at the end of the day, being "good enough" is good enough for me. And for me, BLM gives me the most fun.

Sure, I can play SMN where being optimal is a cakewalk, and I'll have an easier time with combat and do significantly more damage. And when I'm feeling low energy, I do that and it's fun. But most of the time, SMN can't engage me. It doesn't take long for me to get tired of its almost-entirely linear 2-minute rotation, and it's almost entirely instant-cast kit make me feel like my rotation is detached from the mechanics of the fight I'm playing.

BLM's non-linear structure keeps me engaged. I will never be as good with BLM as I am with SMN, but that's a small price to pay for fun. And every time I play BLM, I get to have fun. BLM presents me with challenges that make me think and react in ways that other classes don't. When I do pretty good with BLM, that is so much more satisfying to me than when I play a perfect game with SMN. I will never be optimal with BLM, but that's what makes it fun: every time I play, there will always be room to improve, I will always be able to play better than I have before. And that's engaging for me.

Of course, we all have personal preferences. If one of your preferences is to be able to play optimally, that's valid! If that's the case, then I'd just say that BLM won't be your cup of tea. Luckily, there are a plenty of other classes in the game where optimal play is a much more realistic prospect for your average go-getter. So I'd recommend those for you; BLM is for players who want something different than you. And that's the beauty of a class-based game like FF14: even though we want different experiences, we can all play the same game together.

[Sneakyotter]

abuse third party addons to optimize a job
Transpose was meant to be used in low levels
I will just keep grinding the game and adapting to change until you know your place.

You gave up before you even try. You blame for a lack of tool to get better at the job. Your arguments are made up. Yeah I'd like to see you try greenboy.

[HikariKurosawa]

Of course, we all have personal preferences. If one of your preferences is to be able to play optimally, that's valid! If that's the case, then I'd just say that BLM won't be your cup of tea. Luckily, there are a plenty of other classes in the game where optimal play is a much more realistic prospect for your average go-getter. So I'd recommend those for you; BLM is for players who want something different than you. And that's the beauty of a class-based game like FF14: even though we want different experiences, we can all play the same game together.

That's the thing though, they made it so BLM does work optimally for everyone who cares enough to learn the job now and not just the people willing to research all the non-standard lines. At the end of the day, it was bad design and abuse of game mechanics. It's pointless to argue about it since it's gone. If you can't see why it was removed and isn't coming back, it's fine to keep throwing a fit on the forums. I'm not going to try to help you understand why your perspective is bad or wrong anymore.

I couldn't care less either way. If they keep non-standard in game, I will continue to avoid blm, if they remove it, I will engage with it and try to get good at it. BLM is for people who want to explode stuff with fire magic. The essence of the job is making sure you get out all your fire casts before enochian shuts down. That's all the identity of it is. It was never about non-standard and hopefully never will be again.

I'm not trying to argue either, I am just expressing why I think the changes are good and the logic behind them. I am enthusiastic about the changes because it makes me want to really get into the job. I couldn't care less about what was lost, and it's pointless to dwell in the past.

That said, I don't care if you don't move on. The world will move on regardless of whether you can cope with change or not.