Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

[StrangeIove]

I largely disagree. I understand that Non-Standard is important to a select few players but I think these changes to Black Mage will benefit many players who like the idea of playing Black Mage but feel alienated by how complex it can seem / feel to play. The changes make the rotation clearer and more fun for more players.

[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.

[MagiusNecros]

I largely disagree. I understand that Non-Standard is important to a select few players but I think these changes to Black Mage will benefit many players who like the idea of playing Black Mage but feel alienated by how complex it can seem / feel to play. The changes make the rotation clearer and more fun for more players.

After 2 weeks after launch BLM will be optimized and those that miss the old stuff will have to suck it up or play different job.

[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.

[Galvuu]

I largely disagree. I understand that Non-Standard is important to a select few players but I think these changes to Black Mage will benefit many players who like the idea of playing Black Mage but feel alienated by how complex it can seem / feel to play. The changes make the rotation clearer and more fun for more players.

I don't understand some players' aversion to a skill ceiling. Standard gives you 97% of the job's power in a very straightforward, simple way to understand. How does nipping the last 3% help them?
You can literally do top 3% damage just doing standard stuff. The new standard is just a downgraded version of the current standard, so how does this alienate them?
This would be like me playing some rapid chess games and going "I feel alienated because I'm 1k elo points below Magnus Carlsen on chess.com". Here it even makes less sense, because it's more like 300 elo difference and your opposition is only 500 elo bots (pve content is really easy in this game, except for some TOP/Dragonsong phases).
People legitimately somehow feel invalidated because you can practice to be good at something, even when the gain from hundreds of hours or practice is a meager 2% or 3%. No, we must all be the same skill level after playing for 3 hours -.-

[StrangeIove]

I am interested and excited about the Black Mage changes, but I think they need to address the level of Umbral Soul

[Doublejho]

I largely disagree. I understand that Non-Standard is important to a select few players but I think these changes to Black Mage will benefit many players who like the idea of playing Black Mage but feel alienated by how complex it can seem / feel to play. The changes make the rotation clearer and more fun for more players.

the people who can't play BLM still won't be able to play BLM, nonstandard has nothing to do with it, if you're bad at BLM it's because your fundamental skill on it needs work, not because you can't memorise a bunch of rotations that'll buff your dps by 3% at most

[ChloeRose]

If Paradox is no longer available in Umbral Ice and that is the absolute intention I would suggest that Paradox removed entirely. The whole design of the tooltip, particle effects, and cast animation suggest that Paradox is a spell that can be cast in either phase. Restricting the spell to Astral Fire simply does not make any sense from a visual design perspective and will only serve as a reminder of what once was.

[Keichi]

This I don't understand or maybe my english is to bad. Normaly Blizzard 3, Blizzard 4 and Paradox is enough to regen all mana. Even if I use nonstandard I sometimes cap my mana. May I ask where you refresh thunder? That was also able to give time.
I'm not doubting you just trying to get what you mean.


If i interpret the changes right then spell speed should be far better now then crit (a bummer for me who goes crit). I am against lowering spell speed. Its one of the few things that makes blm fun and in my opinion its identity. I also like slow cast times because it gives me time to look at the fight and think.

I was probably simply to fast in the ice phase.
I was in the 75er dungeon and had it multiple times, that i used B3, to switch from fire phase to ice phase and used then b4, to obtain the 3 shards. And switched than allready back to fire with only 6k mp (i didnt played much of attention, because it was only with "side at side" to lvl up the npc). I was probably allways 1-2 seconds to fast with the switch (because the mp regenerated over time and not with action).

The mp change should be positiv, because that scenario shouldnt happen anymore (maybe only in the very first lvl areas, when you only have 1-2 ice soul ready).

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I was probably simply to fast in the ice phase.
I was in the 75er dungeon and had it multiple times, that i used B3, to switch from fire phase to ice phase and used then b4, to obtain the 3 shards. And switched than allready back to fire with only 6k mp (i didnt played much of attention, because it was only with "side at side" to lvl up the npc). I was probably allways 1-2 seconds to fast with the switch (because the mp regenerated over time and not with action).

The mp change should be positiv, because that scenario shouldnt happen anymore (maybe only in the very first lvl areas, when you only have 1-2 ice soul ready).

Most likely yes. In that area you tend to keep Foul for ice phase if you want to max Thunder dot duration and only use it in fire phase, if the next Polyglot charge is approaching completion - essentially Stormblood gameplay.

Below Lv70 it is actually okay to Blizzard I, Blizzard IV twice or ice Scathe if you don't want to overwrite Thunder dots early.