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

[Ferrinus]

If you map the fight, you can make it so you only use non-standard when you have three instant casts (Xeno/procs) or Lucid up- that's the 75% you're guaranteed to pull off correctly even without looking at the MP bar or trying to keep track of the ticks at all. The remaining lines are standard if you wanna play it safe, or "gamble" on those last 25% by following your "feel" for it. That's what I meant. In practice, this means that, usually, out of like... 8 AF cycles, you do one less non-standard than someone with the MP tracker. It also means your overall planning for a phase/fight will look slightly different from that of someone with the MP tracker, but that one non-standard you lose is literally negligible (we're talking 0.5% or less dps here).
At that point, your opener/reopener crit rate is a much more impactful factor.

The issue with your analogy is that you cannot avoid the AF clock at any time. Like, you can't "ignore" AF (I guess you can... spam Fire).

You can avoid the AF clock by just always playing it safe. Knowing the AF clock gives you the freedom to play risky for more dps. Like, right now I could put some tape over my computer monitor to hide my AF/UI timer and still never drop it by always making sure to go like F4 F4 (paradox), F4 F4 (fire), or something like that. But if I want to never cast Fire and only cast Paradox, I need more information.

Likewise, if I want to cast Blizzard III and Blizzard IV less often, I need more information still. If 75% of the nonstandard lines are guaranteed without a tracker, then 25% of the nonstandard lines are risky unless you've got a tracker. If you only miss out on a 0.5% DPS gain by eschewing a tracker, that means a tracker can increase your DPS by 0.5%.

Now, you're right; 0.5% is not very high. That is, in fact, why I never installed a tracker and just stuck to standard lines when playing Shb and EW BLM (whereas if a tracker could increase your dps by 10% or something I'd have quit the job in disgust). However, I think using a third party information utility should be able to increase your DPS by 0%, not 0.5%, so I'll support any change that either adds that information to the standard UI or renders it irrelevant.

There's probably an alternate world in which BLMs stopped depending on server mana ticks and instead had a unique gauge-based "mana tick" that was visible alongside the polyglot tracker or something, and that would also be fine for me so long as they found some separate way to make ice spells actually feel good to cast. But just removing the relevance of the mana tick all together is a perfectly fine solution, especially since we still have the Fire/Ice and Thunder timers to manage.

[wildvenonat]

There's probably an alternate world in which BLMs stopped depending on server mana ticks and instead had a unique gauge-based "mana tick" that was visible alongside the polyglot tracker or something, and that would also be fine for me so long as they found some separate way to make ice spells actually feel good to cast. But just removing the relevance of the mana tick all together is a perfectly fine solution, especially since we still have the Fire/Ice and Thunder timers to manage.

The default gauge has a pulse on it; no reason it couldn't have been timed alongside MP ticks. It isn't, but it could have.

I personally only play Black Mage in Bozja, which meant my spell speed was such that even with the standard rotation I often needed an extra spell in Ice to hit max MP even with Lucid up and not using Transpose F3, so if they design a good method to reduce the reliance on MP ticks, I'm in favor. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have quite done that.

A lot of this discussion has been about micro-optimizations in savage raid reclears, and those do matter, but that's a tiny percentage of how much the playerbase plays any given class. There's a lot of omni 90s out there and most don't bring most of those classes into Savage at all. The way the MP tick gameplay worked feels pretty good on Black Mage until your spellspeed gets too high/your gcd too low, and at that point there's optimizations available and possible to perform without third party tools though it's harder, much like trying to play without being able to see exactly now many seconds remain on the AF/UI timer.

In the service of reducing the desire for third party tools for micro optimizations, they currently have made all ARR and HW, and a lot of Stormblood, content janky as Black Mage. That's not a worthy tradeoff for reducing jank at the top level of play.

[Ferrinus]

I just don't agree that low level content is going to be any jankier now, even including dungeons in which you won't be able to recover any more MP than a healer does between monster packs. Indeed, I think it's kind of the opposite, where it becomes more clear what you're supposed to be doing in places that used to feel like weird lulls where you had no good options.

Consider level 50. Right now, if you're synced down to 50, and have just cast Blizz 3 after emptying your mana, you're now sitting there twiddling your thumbs and waiting for between 3.1 and 6 seconds to pass before you can go back to spamming Fire. You might be able to profitably refresh Thunder on your target, but you might also have thrown a Thundercloud proc purely for its up-front damage like two GCDs ago. You might, also, have a Firestarter proc from your last Fire cast back in Astral, which means you can't even count on your MP refilling in the middle of an F3 cast! To be safe, you'd have to cast two or even three Blizzard spells in a row.

In DT, a level 50 black mage can swap to umbral with B3, cast Blizzard a single time, and immediately swap back to astral with F3 no matter how fast their GCD is. They don't have to sit there wishing they had B4 or Xeno or just something, anything to kill the dead time while they wait for their MP to come back.

[LilimoLimomo]

From a job balance perspective, do you think that 'simple' and 'complex' jobs can co-exist in the same space?

Absolutely. There are plenty of both PvE and PvP games where characters/jobs/etc that require different amounts of skill exist in the same competitive space.

At the end of the day, everyone wants to do more damage.

This is absolutely not true, at least not to a meaningful degree. Remember, casual players are the majority of the player base. For many of these players, all they'd have to do to deal more damage is look at their tooltips or watch a 5-minute video on YouTube...but they don't. Because as long as they aren't explicitly failing, that's good enough. Any desire they have to do more damage is so meager that it isn't worth the effort of doing a short read or a quick watch. I honestly don't know if there's a way to want something less than that without not wanting it at all.

And I'll also use myself as an example. Sometimes I want to do more damage, but a significant amount of the time I want to do less damage. Because to me it's not about speed-running an encounter; rather, I want to enjoy the encounter. An encounter that goes on for too long is less fun, and an encounter that doesn't last long enough is also less fun. I want that sweet spot. The damage done by all of my abilities? That's just a contrivance. The purpose of the game is to have fun doing the things the game asks you to do, and all the numbers in the game are a mathematical attempt at providing an experience where the player gets to do things that are enjoyable for an enjoyable amount of time. When the numbers are too low, I want them bigger. When the numbers are too high, I want them smaller. Because what I care about is fun.

[Lyth]

...

Games where there's a variation between 'simple' and complex' are often designed such that the reward is not in the performance output itself. The reward is entirely in having mastered a character or job that few others can play. In this game, that's not possible, because players expect 'complexity' to translate into more damage, which then determines what jobs are preferred in content clears.

One of the first things that new players ask when trying to decide what job to pick is 'which job is the most powerful/strongest?' It's all about getting value for effort, and damage is central to that on every role. Perceptions about what's 'meta' pervade all skill levels, regardless of whether you even know what optimal is, let alone being able to execute it. That's why discussions linking 'complexity' and 'damage' are such a problem.

You can say that this is not important to you, and that's fine. But we cannot pretend that these topics don't come up all the time in job balance discussions mid-expansion.

[Galvuu]

Now, you're right; 0.5% is not very high. That is, in fact, why I never installed a tracker and just stuck to standard lines when playing Shb and EW BLM (whereas if a tracker could increase your dps by 10% or something I'd have quit the job in disgust). However, I think using a third party information utility should be able to increase your DPS by 0%, not 0.5%, so I'll support any change that either adds that information to the standard UI or renders it irrelevant.

I mean, I don't use a mana track either (purist at heart). I just do 2/5 non-standard/standard lines instead of 3/5. It's really not a big deal, and it's a tool you can still use consistently 100% of the time without any tracker- you just use it a tiny bit less.

[LilimoLimomo]

Games where there's a variation between 'simple' and complex' are often designed such that the reward is not in the performance output itself. The reward is entirely in having mastered a character or job that few others can play. In this game, that's not possible, because players expect 'complexity' to translate into more damage, which then determines what jobs are preferred in content clears.

With respect, I don't think the fact that players complain, argue, or feel entitled to things should move the needle on this. Any designer worth their salt knows that players are frequently their own worst enemy; they advocate for what they want, often oblivious to the fact that if it were implemented it would result in a less enjoyable experience. It's the job of a capable game designer to collect player feedback and not take it at face value; rather, it should be scrutinized and considered alongside more objectively measurable data such as analytics, as well as the designer's understanding of human psychology. If any changes are made, they should be based not on what would cater to the whims of vocal players, but what would actually be best for the game experience.

If you don't trust that the devs of FF14 can do this, fair enough. But that's a very different proposal than "can complex and simple jobs exist in the same space".

[StrangeIove]

I disagree. I am also not a Black Mage main but I have tried to be in the past. I like the long casts and planning out the rotation (the use of instant skills etc.) what turned me off Black Mage was always thinking that if I didn't learn Non-Standard play that I wasn't playing the job to it's full potential. But when I went to the balance to learn non-standard it was like a brick wall of a massive document. This turned me off ultimately.

[Voidmage]

I disagree. I am also not a Black Mage main but I have tried to be in the past. I like the long casts and planning out the rotation (the use of instant skills etc.) what turned me off Black Mage was always thinking that if I didn't learn Non-Standard play that I wasn't playing the job to it's full potential. But when I went to the balance to learn non-standard it was like a brick wall of a massive document. This turned me off ultimately.

My apologies but here i finally have to agree with the other posters in this forum and have to get a bit sharper in tone.
No one ever forced you to play non-standard, it was never needed and if that was what turned you away from the job that's on you.
I'm slowly getting annoyed by this narrative and I'm normally quit the chill person who tries to respect others opinions even if I don't agree but all this talk about "the job had a skill ceiling I couldn't reach and now I'm happy that it was lowered" is quit... it's just arrogant. That's not directed at you per se (you formulate it as just your opinion) but on the others. I just use this post here to piggy back.

Nothing was forcing you back then to play anything other then standard and nothing changes really for you now either. There are no big changes for you but lots for nonstandard players.
If mana ticks had been the issue then giving every spell in UI mana recovery or at least UI paradox with recovery would have changed absolutely nothing for you and wouldn't made other blm players mad.

I just don't get, why not reaching the skill ceiling of a job is such a big deal. I also didn't reach it and was far from one of the best players, I just looked in awe at the number crunching and skill the top players showed and was happy with that.

Rant end

[Ramiee]

It is pretty tragic that the wow parsing culture is reflected in XIV so much as well.
People really should know that outside of the race to world first with ultimate raids there really isn't any great reward or renown by having a top parse, I doubt most people who even browse FFlogs religiously can tell you who did the top parse of any job without going to look it up. The only thing that matters is clearing, the first person who cleared TOP, the group who cleared TOP without a healer and someone who just cleared it 5 minutes ago with a grey parse all got the same reward.