Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Non-standard existed as long as Black Mage existed. Even in StB there were lines where you skipped Blizzard IV and opted for shorter Fire lines on occasion, especially pre-Blizzard IV buff. ShB with instantcast xenoglossy and Despair also had Blizzard IV skip for the 3-4 Fire iV -> Despair lines. The goal is the same as standard - maximizing Fire IVs, but in a more compact window. Endwalker simply expanded on it with Paradox - essentially a beefed up Blizzard I in Umbral Ice and a juicier Firestarter enabler in Astral Fire. If anything, current Black Mage, minus perhaps MP regeneration (debatable on who you ask), is currently the most well designed version for both the average person wanting to learn the job and wanting to optimize it.

However, as I need to repeat along with the others for the xth time because players including yourself seem to not understand this - it's called non-standard for a reason. If non-standard was actually mandatory, it would be called STANDARD. The fact it is called non-standard should heavily imply that it is an OPTION, not a must and the difference between standard and non-standard is miniscule and basically just a point of optimisation and, as others pointed out, aligning things better in specific phases and cooldowns, not just in ultimates mind you.

Calling the shortening of Fire lines to align cooldowns and aspect shifts better to the flow of a fight an abuse of class design is just incredibly short-sighted; the fact that Black Mage is so free flowing and allows for this is what makes it a BETTER designed job rather than being the 11th dps with a strict rotational gameplan with minimal deviation. Players should be rewarded for creativity in using their kit, not be punished and have their options ripped out for doing something else.

The irony is other posters saying good luck doing x or y mechanic without non standard so.. you guys need to agree on how non mandatory it is or not. The intended design and gameplay of the job being incapable of handling such situations is a bad thing, I don't think it meant non std had to die but std had to be adjusted and if it means non std changes with it then fine imo. Why would you hamstring a job for the 1% of players who use that playstyle? BLM is not getting much consideration when they are making the fights but they obviously realise how it is now is not acceptable.

Y'all need to make up your minds if non std is mandatory or not cause you all contradict each other. If the content needs non std to complete x mechanic then guess what it's mandatory.

[Voidmage]

The irony is other posters saying good luck doing x or y mechanic without non standard so.. you guys need to agree on how non mandatory it is or not. The intended design and gameplay of the job being incapable of handling such situations is a bad thing, I don't think it meant non std had to die but std had to be adjusted and if it means non std changes with it then fine imo. Why would you hamstring a job for the 1% of players who use that playstyle? BLM is not getting much consideration when they are making the fights but they obviously realise how it is now is not acceptable.

Y'all need to make up your minds if non std is mandatory or not cause you all contradict each other. If the content needs non std to complete x mechanic then guess what it's mandatory.

Almost no one said standard didn't need improvement but not at the price of flexibility. That's what makes us annoyed. Why does it have to be everything or nothing in all these discussion?
Just make it so all spells give mana in ice phase and both sides would have been happy for the mana regeneration change.

This is just regarding the mana and standard / nonstandard stuff.
Of course everyone also has different opinions on the thunder stuff and the new fire finisher.

[Galvuu]

The irony is other posters saying good luck doing x or y mechanic without non standard so.. you guys need to agree on how non mandatory it is or not. The intended design and gameplay of the job being incapable of handling such situations is a bad thing, I don't think it meant non std had to die but std had to be adjusted and if it means non std changes with it then fine imo. Why would you hamstring a job for the 1% of players who use that playstyle? BLM is not getting much consideration when they are making the fights but they obviously realise how it is now is not acceptable.

Y'all need to make up your minds if non std is mandatory or not cause you all contradict each other. If the content needs non std to complete x mechanic then guess what it's mandatory.

Two feelings are being conflated in many posts: what feels good to play and what is required to play.
For the almost entirety of the game, non-standard is not mandatory. Standard is fine and can hit 98%ish of the damage a "perfect" non-standard BLM has (non-standard pushed to that degree has an element of risk, too, since mistakes can be quite punishing).
Then there's TOP p1 and p6. Can you clear those two with standard? Yep. It just feels awful. Like, genuinely frustratingly bad. And your damage output is way lower in those two phases. When I say "have fun doing TOP p6 in DT" I don't mean it's mathematically impossible, I mean it'll feel horrid and your damage will be much lower than EW.
Fight design is extremely unkind to BLM as of late (many two minutes have bursts of movement in them- case in point, there's a Ley Lines in TOP where you get literally 3/4 gcds under it and then run around because of Wave Cannon). DT changes just make the standard rotation slightly clunkier too. So, if another fight like TOP rolls around, you're just gonna feel awful. The versatility you had to tackle that type of mechanical movement is gone. So now you just get to feel bad. Can you clear? With enough effort and attempts, anything is possible. I'll just hate myself through the journey

[HikariKurosawa]

Two feelings are being conflated in many posts: what feels good to play and what is required to play.
For the almost entirety of the game, non-standard is not mandatory. Standard is fine and can hit 98%ish of the damage a "perfect" non-standard BLM has (non-standard pushed to that degree has an element of risk, too, since mistakes can be quite punishing).
Then there's TOP p1 and p6. Can you clear those two with standard? Yep. It just feels awful. Like, genuinely frustratingly bad. And your damage output is way lower in those two phases. When I say "have fun doing TOP p6 in DT" I don't mean it's mathematically impossible, I mean it'll feel horrid and your damage will be much lower than EW.
Fight design is extremely unkind to BLM as of late (many two minutes have bursts of movement in them- case in point, there's a Ley Lines in TOP where you get literally 3/4 gcds under it and then run around because of Wave Cannon). DT changes just make the standard rotation slightly clunkier too. So, if another fight like TOP rolls around, you're just gonna feel awful. The versatility you had to tackle that type of mechanical movement is gone. So now you just get to feel bad. Can you clear? With enough effort and attempts, anything is possible. I'll just hate myself through the journey

It's a skill issue. The irony of people who claim non-standard is so hard is that they dread playing black mage the way it is intended to be played and for what makes it truly hard: turret style caster that has mastery of fight mechanic timing and knows exactly where to position at all times.

Maybe you'll just play pictomancer because it's more to your speed?

[Galvuu]

It's a skill issue. The irony of people who claim non-standard is so hard is that they dread playing black mage the way it is intended to be played and for what makes it truly hard: turret style caster that has mastery of fight mechanic timing and knows exactly where to position at all times.

Maybe you'll just play pictomancer because it's more to your speed?

I'm going to regret addressing you- especially when you're just blatantly insulting me again, and what I'm about to say cannot possibly sound anything other than conceited (and I apologize to everyone else for it in advance), but I want to make this clear for the sake and context of my other posts.
I have a lot- and I mean a lot- of experience in what would be called "standard Black Mage" by modern sensibilities. I played Black Mage for a lot of Heavensward (alongside Scholar) and a lot of Black Mage during Stormblood (alongside Bard).
I cleared UCoB in Stormblood using exclusively Black Mage, and I was one of the first few to do it (in fact, when I cleared UCoB on BLM, there were less than 50 recorded kills in the funny spreadsheet website), and my reclear got a very shiny number too.
So I know what "standard" BLM plays like on difficult content where you need to move around, and how to make it work there. I don't think I'm the best BLM in the world or anything like that, but I do think, by virtue of my unhealthy FFXIV playtime and enjoyment of high-end content and optimization, that I speak with some degree of knowledge and experience about the job and the endgame of XIV throughout its different eras in general.

If you're going to blatantly attack me to try and diminish my points, at least do your homework and check the aforementioned funny spreadsheet site, including the historical data dating all the way back to Heavensward.
Either way, if you have any substantive input, consider writing that instead of gratuitously insulting me in a public forum. Have a nice day.

[HikariKurosawa]

I'm going to regret addressing you- especially when you're just blatantly insulting me again, and what I'm about to say cannot possibly sound anything other than conceited (and I apologize to everyone else for it in advance), but I want to make this clear for the sake and context of my other posts.
I have a lot- and I mean a lot- of experience in what would be called "standard Black Mage" by modern sensibilities. I played Black Mage for a lot of Heavensward (alongside Scholar) and a lot of Black Mage during Stormblood (alongside Bard).
I cleared UCoB in Stormblood using exclusively Black Mage, and I was one of the first few to do it (in fact, when I cleared UCoB on BLM, there were less than 50 recorded kills in the funny spreadsheet website), and my reclear got a very shiny number too.
So I know what "standard" BLM plays like on difficult content where you need to move around, and how to make it work there. I don't think I'm the best BLM in the world or anything like that, but I do think, by virtue of my unhealthy FFXIV playtime and enjoyment of high-end content and optimization, that I speak with some degree of knowledge and experience about the job and the endgame of XIV throughout its different eras in general.

If you're going to blatantly attack me to try and diminish my points, at least do your homework and check the aforementioned funny spreadsheet site, including the historical data dating all the way back to Heavensward.
Either way, if you have any substantive input, consider writing that instead of gratuitously insulting me in a public forum. Have a nice day.

Imagine taking it so personally when someone says "skill issue" after you explicitly state that you have a skill issue. The frailty of the ego is laughable.

"So, if another fight like TOP rolls around, you're just gonna feel awful. The versatility you had to tackle that type of mechanical movement is gone. So now you just get to feel bad. Can you clear? With enough effort and attempts, anything is possible. I'll just hate myself through the journey "

This is literally a skill issue.

I'm not attacking you, I'm not insulting you, I'm just saying, get good.

[MitsukiKimura]

Imagine taking it so personally when someone says "skill issue" after you explicitly state that you have a skill issue. The frailty of the ego is laughable.

"So, if another fight like TOP rolls around, you're just gonna feel awful. The versatility you had to tackle that type of mechanical movement is gone. So now you just get to feel bad. Can you clear? With enough effort and attempts, anything is possible. I'll just hate myself through the journey "

This is literally a skill issue.

I'm not attacking you, I'm not insulting you, I'm just saying, get good.

Out of all the people I've seen write on these forums you are the first person I can say without a doubt that needs to apply their own *Get Good* advice to your own self. Work on your rotation, use your cooldowns and don't preach like you know whats best for the class.

[HikariKurosawa]

Out of all the people I've seen write on these forums you are the first person I can say without a doubt that needs to apply their own *Get Good* advice to your own self. Work on your rotation, use your cooldowns and don't preach like you know whats best for the class.

Irrelevant. Everything I said in that post was true. Why would I be good at black mage or even anything in this game? Why does that matter in this context? Focus on the subject at hand and not random duty finder parses.

[lifd]

The irony of people who claim non-standard is so hard is that they dread playing black mage the way it is intended to be played and for what makes it truly hard: turret style caster that has mastery of fight mechanic timing and knows exactly where to position at all times.

It's quite ironic reading this when in another post (Positionals vs Damage over Time) you flat out say you don't use positionals because I quote : I play video games to have fun, I don't find positionals fun or rewarding in any way. Why would I do something I don't find enjoyable for a miniscule gain of 1.9% potency? I will do me, and you can do you. Some people are less submissive than others.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...50#post6482250

Which is literally you, telling everyone that you don't play your class as intended by the devs. I guess the devs need to force people to use positionals by making skills that have a positional property be unusable when you're not positioned ? since it's not the intended usage. I usual never interact on the forum (only lurk & read) but with this amount of bad faith I had to call you out on it. It is quite the entertaining reading throughout the week either way.

Regarding the actual changes : No matter if people like or dislike the changes & new additions, they just seem clucky and half backed (at least from the media tour). From the whole umbral soul situation, manafront being pretty much guarantee to drift, the whole lvl 100 optimal AoE rotation completely skipping HF II & HB II (based on Eksu Plosion theory crafting) and being completely unintuitive, to the fire phase being tighter than ever (and probably more that i missed). If their goal was to make the class more accessible they completely missed the mark and caught the vets in the process.

As a side note : Regarding all the people mentioning non-standard shouldn't be thing since it was not "intended" by the dev, it's just emergent gameplay. It's just the byproduct of having skills that you can use in different order & different situation, i'd even argue that blm is quite the embodiment of this concept. The whole class wouldn't function without that concept, because if you would always follow the same rotation a.k.a use your Triplecast/Xenoglosys/Sharpcast at the same place in your rotation not matter what fight, the class wouldn't be considered viable for endgame content & for low end content, it would be just a pain, where you'd have entire phases where you would be doing nothing or scathe spam. So it's quite funny seing people talking about "intended way of playing the class" when the class revolves around pre-planning & adaptation (a.k.a emergent gameplay).

[HikariKurosawa]

It's quite ironic reading this when in another post (Positionals vs Damage over Time) you flat out say you don't use positionals because I quote : I play video games to have fun, I don't find positionals fun or rewarding in any way. Why would I do something I don't find enjoyable for a miniscule gain of 1.9% potency? I will do me, and you can do you. Some people are less submissive than others.

???? Hitting positionals doesn't change how the job is played. It adds a minute amount of potency for busywork that is often impossible because of how the bosses are positioned.

They could never force positionals because they would have to dumb down encounter design by an insane amount in order to make that realistic. I can play the job as intended and ignore positionals entirely.

Who is actually trolling here? Positionals hold the game back, but also, why are you even talking about that in a black mage thread? It's the weirdest whataboutism I've read in a while.