Quote Originally Posted by Ramiee View Post
I really think a lot of people really don't get non-standard. It's just adjusting the standard rotation to fit a fight better, things like not using ice 4 because you know the boss will stop being targetable soon so there's no point in having 3 UH and it's better to just replace it with an extra fire 4.
The whole mana tick things is not a non-standard thing it's a speed runner/parser thing.
I'm pretty sure most standard rotation players have unintentionally done their own non-standard plays by just changing the rotation to fit a fight better, every time you use a firestarter fire 3 for movement you did a non-standard action.
The problem with nonstandard is it's an abuse of class design. And remember, there's nonstandard from a boss jumping and you want to do as much damage as you can (which every class does,) and nonstandard where even normal play is nonstandard, which is exactly what BLM does. Nonstandard didn't exist in SB except for boss optimizations and was barely a whisper for most of ShB. Then EW came in and nonstandard became mandatory. Classes that can't handle content get adjustments, but classes that are 'fine' don't get adjustments. Nonstandard isn't quite 11 wyrmwaves or HW SMN levels of nonsense, but at the end of the day it's bad for a class to be played in a way other than how it was intended, especially when this method causes other people who don't know about nonstandard to suffer.

Which is exactly what happened. How many people have said you can't do TOP without nonstandard? How many recommend it for DSR for later phases especially? How can devs make adjustments the class needs when they see the playerbase handling the issue to the point where they can't even tell the core class has serious issues?

Hell, I can guarantee that manafont is failing the sniff test. It is going to require immediate adjustments for lack of overcap protection and its strict location of use. If nonstandard exists and finds a way to mask this issue, it will never get fixed. Likewise, why should monk and summoner not be allowed nonstandard, but BLM should?

What's worse is, if anyone truly stopped for half a second and looked at the class, I mean truly analyzed every single ability, the class is an absolute mess of design based around the oldest class mechanic still left in the game and the original structure it had in ARR, and everything else is slaved to it. Even nonstandard is. This wouldn't even be a problem if the devs seriously modernized the class, which they're still not doing despite fixing the tic issue.

I fully expect BLM to be in a worse state going into DT, but not because nonstandard is being removed. Because the game has moved on without BLM, but the devs are oblivious to just how far removed it is. I've commented that LL is probably going to become 15 yalms or so like pict's 'ley lines' specifically because the devs aren't designing the game out of any one class, and BLM will still require special attention, meaning even a mere one replace isn't going to be good enough.

But hopefully at the end of the road, the class will be fixed and brought to a better place because the devs finally deal with its core design problems that are as old as the relaunch of the game. And then maybe, the class will be more than just a glorified fire wizard that lightly dabbles in thunder and ice. Because I'd like more of the other elements as well, but they can barely exist within the tyranny of the timers.