Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

[Voidmage]

I see what you're saying. I think you've got a point, but it's not all downside. More instant casts mean more movement and more weaving opportunities, so throwing one can feel less active in one way (you're not even filling a cast bar, so it feels like nothing is happening while your GCD refreshes) but more active in another (you can reposition and use oGCDs without clipping). Personally I never felt frustrated or bored after using Thundercloud or Xeno, but it might be because I always build for spellspeed so my next GCD comes up very quickly.

There's also definitely going to be less truncation in the astral cycle, as having more refresh/mobility tools will mean that it's much, much rarer for someone to realize that, shoot, they are not going to be able to use all this MP, they need to just use Despair immediately and hope for better luck next cycle. It's also more rare, but proportionately more punishing to get into a situation where you have to cast Fire 1 just to keep Astral. So there's going to be less absolute variety in total spells cast from cycle to cycle, even though shuffling their sequence around is gonna be easier.

I spend to much time on the word truncation...

Yes, i agree that there will be less variables in fire phase but all in all these are all things that I liked about blm.
> timing your casts to squeeze everything out even at the last second
> the flow of fire phase
> using transpose and paradox in an emergency and even in standard rotation just then stepping into non standard real quick.
> managing thunderprog

All in all these are changes that go against everything I hold dear with this job, even more so as a crit blm.
There will be happy players but I won't be one of them and DT will be the point where i will finally drop it sadly.

Picto looks good right now but we will see.


On another note, enhanced flare also seems to be gone.

[Ferrinus]

Yes, i agree that there will be less variables in fire phase but all in all these are all things that I liked about blm.
> timing your casts to squeeze everything out even at the last second
> the flow of fire phase
> using transpose and paradox in an emergency and even in standard rotation just then stepping into non standard real quick.
> managing thunderprog

I think all this stuff basically remains, but with the chief difference that it's never an advantage to skip ice spells or have shorter fire/ice cycles, so while you still might be forced to do that by mistakes or mechanics, the challenge is always going to be about how well you can minimize a loss, rather than if you can squeak out a gain. I think we're going to end up making a lot of the same decisions under pressure, though. If you have to move and you're out of instants, you might throw a Thunder spell to get at least a little potency in even though you're clipping your DoT. If a boss is about to vanish or you're about to run out of timer due to previous movement mechanics or mistakes, you'll cut your astral cycle short with a swiftcast Despair and then charge up for the next one. Etcetera.

On another note, enhanced flare also seems to be gone.

Yes, I noticed that, too. I'm actually a little sad about no Enhanced Flare combined with an apparent drop in High-Fire II potency, because it just felt right to cast HF2 for damage and then use your last Umbral Heart on Flare, rather than using all your Umbral Hearts on Flare. Now it seems like HF2 is just for swapping stances and your damage cycle will always be Flare, Flare, Flare Star for groups of monsters.

[Voidmage]

I think all this stuff basically remains, but with the chief difference that it's never an advantage to skip ice spells or have shorter fire/ice cycles, so while you still might be forced to do that by mistakes or mechanics, the challenge is always going to be about how well you can minimize a loss, rather than if you can squeak out a gain. I think we're going to end up making a lot of the same decisions under pressure, though. If you have to move and you're out of instants, you might throw a Thunder spell to get at least a little potency in even though you're clipping your DoT. If a boss is about to vanish or you're about to run out of timer due to previous movement mechanics or mistakes, you'll cut your astral cycle short with a swiftcast Despair and then charge up for the next one. Etcetera.

Hmm, no here i have to disagree.

Timing our casts to the last second will no longer be needed because we always have the safety net of two instant casts to refresh the fire timer.
The flow of the firephase will be gone because of the wait times after the instant casts (at least on low spell speed).
UI Paradox is gone so that emergency tool is no longer there (and the worst thing is that with the removal the of that spell the "flare" of it is gone)
There is no thunderprog to manage any more as far as I can see.

Nonetheless these are just my opinions so whatever.
Thanks for the discussion though.

Yes, I noticed that, too. I'm actually a little sad about no Enhanced Flare combined with an apparent drop in High-Fire II potency, because it just felt right to cast HF2 for damage and then use your last Umbral Heart on Flare, rather than using all your Umbral Hearts on Flare. Now it seems like HF2 is just for swapping stances and your damage cycle will always be Flare, Flare, Flare Star for groups of monsters.

They managed to make fire 2 good in EW only to almost make it useless now in DT.
This here is the thing I don't get the most.

[Ferrinus]

Timing our casts to the last second will no longer be needed because we always have the safety net of two instant casts to refresh the fire timer.
The flow of the firephase will be gone because of the wait times after the instant casts (at least on low spell speed).
UI Paradox is gone so that emergency tool is no longer there (and the worst thing is that with the removal the of that spell the "flare" of it is gone)
There is no thunderprog to manage any more as far as I can see.

I think that last-second casts are always going to be a thing, just because of the fundamental contradiction between having cast times and bosses forcing you to move. They'll be rarer, since we have more mobility in fire phase (and less in ice) than before, but you're still only going to have a triplecast approximately once every other fire cycle, but I feel confident that I'm going to find myself under enough pressure + have made enough mistakes to occasionally need to sneak in 1s-left-on-the-timer Despairs.

There's still going to be a pressure on BLM to refresh Thunder as it falls off (this I think is going to be functionally identical to EW use of Thunder, since if you're on top of Sharpcast you are also just casting it at instant speed for 0MP every 30 seconds) and to not overcap polyglot. On average, you'll need to use one Thunder and one Xeno every 30s, and if save them up or put them off you can still find yourself in awkward situations in which you literally can't fit all your overdue Xenos and a Thunder alongside your F4s unless you cheat some stuff out using Swiftcast. (And of course instant-cast Xeno and Thunder were already breaking up the flow of watching cast bars fill in EW).

I'm going to miss UI paradox, though! It's possible that it's gone because, with it, BLM would literally have too much free movement. Also, since Paradox is IIRC slightly lower in potency/second than Fire IV, it's possible that it'd end up optimal to skip UI Paradox even if it was available (but they could fix that with a potency buff)(but they would have to make sure it doesn't accidentally become optimal to just maximize Paradox casts by transposing rapidly).

They managed to make fire 2 good in EW only to almost make it useless now in DT.

I wouldn't say useless so much as the equivalent of Fire 3; you use it to swap, because it does more damage on 3+ targets than Fire 3 would. I can sort of get why; it's difficult to create a Fire II that's worth casting ahead of Flare purely based on the math (even if you pick the exact right damage, mp cost, and cast time that it's better than F4 but worse than Flare on 3+ targets, players might still just start skipping it in order to get to Flare faster), so the designers pretty much have to just put in a special trait that causes F2 to buff Flare in order for F2 to get used at all. But that feels kludgey, and also makes Flare itself weaker by default, which means it's less exciting to learn at level 50.

What they could do is make F2 generate Flare Star pips while Flare generates less; like you get 1 pip per F2, and 2 pips per Flare, or something. But that's also kind of a heavy-handed order from above rather than an organic result of potencies and cast times, so it feels a little less appropriate to BLM's general design.

[Voidmage]

I wouldn't say useless so much as the equivalent of Fire 3; you use it to swap, because it does more damage on 3+ targets than Fire 3 would. I can sort of get why; it's difficult to create a Fire II that's worth casting ahead of Flare purely based on the math (even if you pick the exact right damage, mp cost, and cast time that it's better than F4 but worse than Flare on 3+ targets, players might still just start skipping it in order to get to Flare faster), so the designers pretty much have to just put in a special trait that causes F2 to buff Flare in order for F2 to get used at all. But that feels kludgey, and also makes Flare itself weaker by default, which means it's less exciting to learn at level 50.

What they could do is make F2 generate Flare Star pips while Flare generates less; like you get 1 pip per F2, and 2 pips per Flare, or something. But that's also kind of a heavy-handed order from above rather than an organic result of potencies and cast times, so it feels a little less appropriate to BLM's general design.

Tbf Fire 3 at least has the firestarter thing going for it.
Sure these are all things to make it useful but the easier way would have been to just not get rid of enhanced flare tbh.

The more I think about it the more I wonder i the new fire finisher was even needed. We already had flare and despair.
It all seems (minus the manastuff) to be changes just to adjust to that new ability.