BLM changes are really tonedeaf

[Arphene]

I just don't understand their train of thought on this, honestly. Everyone agreed EW was the best version of BLM and they listened to that feedback and... decided to butcher it?

Casuals still won't play the job because at the end of the day it still is BLM. Hardcore players will now drop the job because they've killed off non-standard and most optimization you could do, making it less enjoyable for them.

So congrats I guess. They made one of the least played jobs in the game even less popular. Takes effort and creativity to achieve that.

[Sesera]

My first impression what happening is:
Players: Please make more complex nontrivial job rotations
SE: We made jobs more casual friendly

No
The same never happy forum posters ask for it
The playerbase doesn't.

[Jeeqbit]

I just don't understand their train of thought on this, honestly. Everyone agreed EW was the best version of BLM and they listened to that feedback and... decided to butcher it?

It is the best version, sure, but that doesn't mean it was perfect. It is certainly true that the mana ticks can be unpredictable (for example, you might be able to use Thunder immediately in ice phase, or you might have to wait a GCD) and this just cleans it up so you know exactly what you have to do.

They obviously want to move away from DoT-gameplay so that change most likely wasn't related to whether it was good in EW or not. And obviously they want to give it the standard 2 minute burst.

Casuals still won't play the job because at the end of the day it still is BLM.

Maybe. I think new players get up through level 50, but after that I stop seeing them using this job. They probably get overwhelmed, die a lot due to the cast times if they can even work out which of their fire and ice spells to press, and see a free Red Mage and just switch to that.

But I think what might actually help is the new gauge. It shows fire slots that you are meant to fill so the gauge will clearly reflect if you're doing it correctly or not, whereas in Endwalker it's only communicated you're doing it right by the fact you haven't let Astral/Umbral Ice expire and by MP management going down to 0, regenerating, repeat and I would expect odd people get stuck here and either just stay in Umbral Ice or can't figure out why they run out of MP or let Astral Fire expire. That is when they're not dying to the cast times.

Hardcore players will now drop the job because they've killed off non-standard and most optimization you could do, making it less enjoyable for them.

I think they said they wanted to make it possible to express skill in other ways in the patches, but I doubt this will be damage-related necessarily, or not in a way that means a gap of 20% damage. Trouble is all these intentions are going to take time (the next 2 and a half years into 8.0), so some players will probably want to check back at what's changed then.

[sindriiisgaming]

I've been playing BLM since Shadowbringers and with the changes to the class in Endwalker, I felt like I had alot more freedom in how to play the class due to the nature of non-standard rotation.

Mainly the point that we had mana ticks and didn't need to always be casting Blizzard spells. Plus the addition of Paradox (ice).

However, with these new changes to BLM, the class does feel really guttered and that the devs are forcing only one way to play BLM.

One of the changes that speak loudest to me that whoever designed the change around Manaticks and removing nonstandard gameplay is honestly that the devs added a 3rd Xeno Slot..... Most of the time I barely have 1 stack of Xeno and it's not like we are getting a buff to Amplifier that'll give us more than 1 stack of Xeno.

Honestly, the changes to manatick and the death of non-standard gameplay is really disappointing and just feels like the Devs don't understand what made BLM so unique and enjoyable as a class.

i mean yea it sucks that the great filter came for your job aswell but hopefully in 8.0 they fix this. i personally for now would just advise to change to a different job

[Jeeqbit]

i mean yea it sucks that the great filter came for your job aswell but hopefully in 8.0 they fix this. i personally for now would just advise to change to a different job

Well in all honesty, I've stuck to tank jobs almost entirely the whole time I've played. I was so content with Paladin for example that I would just always stick with it but then that changed from what I really liked.

But now I get so bored of expert roulette, that I'm genuinely just switching jobs lately just so I can have fun. I can maybe accept if now we are supposed to get our fun by switching jobs a lot but it is strange that this is the first I've had to do this in my whole time playing.

It's not just the jobs and it's not even necessarily the quality of the content, but the fact you get the same 2 expert dungeons to the point of wanting to be sick, whereas before patch cycles were faster combined with having 2 fresh dungeons every 3.5 months (and expansion lulls were only 5 months before). We get the last one mostly which has been there for about 8 months and we get the other one which has been there for literally 1 year.

The jobs I've been switching to have been BLM, NIN, DRG, GNB and BRD just because their rotations have enough going on to distract me from the content or change how I approach the content.

[OliviaLugria]

i mean yea it sucks that the great filter came for your job aswell but hopefully in 8.0 they fix this. i personally for now would just advise to change to a different job

What job is there to go to? They're all static, expressionless, illusions of choice.

[MagiusNecros]

What job is there to go to? They're all static, expressionless, illusions of choice.

Blue Mage and Fisher

[GartredZW]

I'm a relatively new Black Mage main, and I really don't mind most of these changes. As someone who refuses to use Addons, non-standard was hell to try and do without seeing when your MP ticks were going to happen.
I'd also just randomly not get enough ticks to get full MP when in Ice Phase under Ley lines because of my high spell speed. I think it would be nice to keep Ice Paradox, but at least that movement is put into the fire phase now where you can have more flexibility with it, without just giving us too much more movement. Though I'll agree that they should add in some way to get back your MP for downtime, especially at low levels. Maybe they didn't need to remove the MP ticks entirely, just keep it the way it is now, but make Ice Paradox give you 5000 MP to guarantee you hit 10K in just one tick.

What I'm actually upset about is the removal of Sharpcast, Thundercloud, and Firestarter procs. Finding time to weave Sharpcast to use on Thunder before your Paradox was fun, and the randomness in Firestarter added some needed variance to fights. It meant that aside from the pull, you're never entirely certain where your rotation will be at any specific point in a fight because of the chance of firestarter. Unless you use the free proc to swap from ice to fire, but you're not supposed to do that since that means less time to cast in fire phase.

[Iedarus]

The MP bar is literally hanging on for dear life by the skirt of BLM's robe. I feel like 8.0 will mark the death of the bar, entirely, followed by resurrection being on a CD.

[HighlanderClone]

I think they said they wanted to make it possible to express skill in other ways in the patches, but I doubt this will be damage-related necessarily, or not in a way that means a gap of 20% damage. Trouble is all these intentions are going to take time (the next 2 and a half years into 8.0), so some players will probably want to check back at what's changed then.

"Play how we want you to."

In other games developers are delighted when players find creative solutions to puzzles the developers lay out. And in single player games sometimes they even cheer for exploits in speedruns.

In this game, if you so much as dare to do anything that gives you a 1% damage boost the devs don't expect, which impacts literally no one other than the 0.1% of the playerbase who needs to clear Savage week 1, and where the impact is so mild that players don't even factor in that MNK can do optimal drift or that BLM can do opti nonstandard lines when deciding what comp to use for prog, you WILL get neutered because you don't fit into the dev's vision.