BLM needs a rework because of new content difficulty

[Iedarus]

Picto is overpowered as hell right now. It's definitely getting nerfs. As I said, potencies will be looked at with the Savage patch. I also refuse to take Arthars seriously after what he pulled in regards to the healer strike.

Wait, what did Arthars do? I keep hearing about something he did but can't find what it is.

[Realfoxy]

This is the crux for me. I've always more or less played BLM like this; I remember the introduction of "cursed"/"hypermeme"/etc. rotations in Shadowbringers that involved weird transpose and lucid trickery but that would result in a hypothetical ~1 percent damage gain while actually becoming vastly more vulnerable to disruption from any required movement. I think I'm only realizing now that the EW equivalents not only preserved or improved your movement but made you more mobile rather than less.

If they want to crank the numbers up on BLM damage, great, but I appreciate the challenge of figuring out when to use my movement tools for damage vs. when to actually use them for movement (and it feels good when those two coincide). Umbral paradox specifically returning would be a nice way to fill out the ice phase a little, but it'd also be an ease-of-play buff, and there's such a thing as a job being too easy.

I don't have a problem with ShB style nonstandard coming back. The issue is that we don't even have that. We don't have any way to easily shift the alignment of the standard rotation loop versus the fight, beyond choosing AF3 F3p vs AF1 F3p or doing some stupidly cursed things with Lucid Dreaming. So you have LESS agency than in Endwalker when it comes to utilising those movement tools.

I also don't get why people think baseline BLM play needs to be harder. It already had the biggest skill gap of all the jobs in Endwalker. In a world where all jobs were in HW/Stormblood design and all of them had ways to mess things up, sure, maybe you could argue BLM could be more difficulty. But we're not in that world, we're in the one where melee uptime is nearly free, hitboxes are still huge, positionals are getting taken away, and mechanics still have you running back and forth across the entire arena. This isn't Eden's Promise any more.

[Ferrinus]

I don't have a problem with ShB style nonstandard coming back. The issue is that we don't even have that. We don't have any way to easily shift the alignment of the standard rotation loop versus the fight, beyond choosing AF3 F3p vs AF1 F3p or doing some stupidly cursed things with Lucid Dreaming. So you have LESS agency than in Endwalker when it comes to utilising those movement tools.

I also don't get why people think baseline BLM play needs to be harder. It already had the biggest skill gap of all the jobs in Endwalker. In a world where all jobs were in HW/Stormblood design and all of them had ways to mess things up, sure, maybe you could argue BLM could be more difficulty. But we're not in that world, we're in the one where melee uptime is nearly free, hitboxes are still huge, positionals are getting taken away, and mechanics still have you running back and forth across the entire arena. This isn't Eden's Promise any more.

I don't think BLM needed to be harder, but, I don't mind it getting harder. Like, if it remained as hard (even, with an aggressive enough boss, impossible) to use all your cooldowns for optimal damage as it is now, but hypothetical white-room BLM damage was increased such that doing the best job you could (even though you were objectively, measurably losing damage compared to what you could deal a training dummy) still gave you top-tier DPS, I'd be perfectly happy. It's what I play a job with long cast times for.

I agree that a little more control over astral/umbral cycle length would be good. If, for instance, completing a cast of Despair always filled your astral gauge no matter how many F4s you'd already cast (even if that resulted in a slightly weaker than average Flare Star) then we'd be in a situation in which the standard rotation is also the optimal rotation but the various second-best and third-best compromises black mages often have to make feel a little better to settle for.

[Magikazam]

The third bit is that BLM legitimately cannot handle the content the devs are making. Be it a dungeon, trial, or especially EX1, BLM is too much of a turret caster in a game where the devs despise turret casters.

Yet despite that it still deal more damage than mobile casters in endwalker. Again, the issue rn is that Picto is overtuned and BLM potency need buff

[Sequora]

Yet despite that it still deal more damage than mobile casters in endwalker. Again, the issue rn is that Picto is overtuned and BLM potency need buff

Again… PCT isn’t overtuned. BLM is undertuned.

We have two extreme trials for data points and there’s no reason PCT shouldn’t be up there in terms of rDPS. No rez, similar utility to melee DPS. nDPS is lower than selfish DPS.

[Poppet]

The two ex fights aren't even downtime heavy or movement heavy. We get a fight with actual downtimes and movement it's going to be even worse for BLM.

BLM is beyond undertuned. While PCT is in a good spot in a fight that's hard to paint in they might actually be in a slightly undertuned spot despite what it seems like.

[Realfoxy]

I don't think BLM needed to be harder, but, I don't mind it getting harder. Like, if it remained as hard (even, with an aggressive enough boss, impossible) to use all your cooldowns for optimal damage as it is now, but hypothetical white-room BLM damage was increased such that doing the best job you could (even though you were objectively, measurably losing damage compared to what you could deal a training dummy) still gave you top-tier DPS, I'd be perfectly happy. It's what I play a job with long cast times for.

I agree that a little more control over astral/umbral cycle length would be good. If, for instance, completing a cast of Despair always filled your astral gauge no matter how many F4s you'd already cast (even if that resulted in a slightly weaker than average Flare Star) then we'd be in a situation in which the standard rotation is also the optimal rotation but the various second-best and third-best compromises black mages often have to make feel a little better to settle for.

The reason I keep going on about BLM getting harder is that in EW we had the perfect solution - the job got easier at a base level with the addition of Paradox, while simultaneously harder to get maximum damage on. Lower skill floor, higher skill ceiling.

In Dawntrail they've done the opposite, raising the skill required to get an acceptable level of damage out of BLM, while simultaneously destroying the skill ceiling of the job.

And having the basic level of BLM play get harder to execute, with the less flexible Thunderhead system and rigid Flare Star, just makes it the job a walking balance problem. We can see it in the Ex1 damage numbers. If you buff BLM so that the average player does acceptable damage, the top end players will be doing imbalanced levels of damage.

[Magikazam]

Again… PCT isn’t overtuned. BLM is undertuned.

We have two extreme trials for data points and there’s no reason PCT shouldn’t be up there in terms of rDPS. No rez, similar utility to melee DPS. nDPS is lower than selfish DPS.

And in the two extreme Trial Picto can outdamage selfish dps by quite a big margin in rDPS. their maximum dps is quite incredible in fact.

[Ferrinus]

The reason I keep going on about BLM getting harder is that in EW we had the perfect solution - the job got easier at a base level with the addition of Paradox, while simultaneously harder to get maximum damage on. Lower skill floor, higher skill ceiling.

In Dawntrail they've done the opposite, raising the skill required to get an acceptable level of damage out of BLM, while simultaneously destroying the skill ceiling of the job.

And having the basic level of BLM play get harder to execute, with the less flexible Thunderhead system and rigid Flare Star, just makes it the job a walking balance problem. We can see it in the Ex1 damage numbers. If you buff BLM so that the average player does acceptable damage, the top end players will be doing imbalanced levels of damage.

I don't think this is true. I've said it before: if you're not trying to optimize your instant cast resources so that they shave down the maximum possible number of seconds off your GCDs, I think BLM is actually easier than before. A higher proportion of your spell casts are naturally instantaneous, you get 50% more uses of swiftcast, thunder needs to be hardcast under any circumstances and requires no weaving to make this happen, etc.

On the other hand, it's much harder to maximize the job's damage output. In fact, that's what this thread is about!

[Realfoxy]

I don't think this is true. I've said it before: if you're not trying to optimize your instant cast resources so that they shave down the maximum possible number of seconds off your GCDs, I think BLM is actually easier than before. A higher proportion of your spell casts are naturally instantaneous, you get 50% more uses of swiftcast, thunder needs to be hardcast under any circumstances and requires no weaving to make this happen, etc.

On the other hand, it's much harder to maximize the job's damage output. In fact, that's what this thread is about!

I'm not just talking about maximising your instant cast uses, I'm talking about all the other ways in which they've made the job harder:

- High Thunder can't be hardcast, so a long manafont fire phase can cause it to fall off

- High Thunder has such low upfront potency you lose a lot more damage refreshing it early, compared to throwing out an early T3P in Endwalker

- Flare Star makes the consequences for missing an F4 much greater

- Flare Star is an additional 3 second long hardcast

- If you mess up the end of your fire phase e.g. with an interrupted Despair cast, you can't transpose Para B1 B4 and then resume. You have to slowcast a B3 before you can get back to your normal rotation.

The only thing you could argue that makes DT BLM is easier is the free F3p, which I agree is an addition that makes the job easier. However you could get that in EW just by sharping fire every time (fun fact - you lose more damage by doing AF3 F3p instead of transpose AF1 F3p now, just to make it harder to do optimal damage).

All of the above contributes to the execution of the job being much less flexible than in Endwalker. Again, you can see this in the two Extreme trials we have. EX2 is a fight without much movement, it's very easy to budget your instant casts and the high movement mechanics are very spread out. The job functions fine.
However then you get into EX1. You have to fight adds which will force you to re-DOT and change targets. The movement is more continuous. Now you see the issues with DT BLM's kit.

RE: Maximising damage output: Sure, you could argue they've made it harder to do so. But they haven't done it in a very fun way. Here's another fun fact, Manafont is such a huge damage gain now that you absolutely do not want to lose a use due to drifting, but you don't have any short fire lines to adjust its alignment any more.

That's the issue with DT BLM. It's A LOT more clunky, and that makes it harder for newer players and veterans alike.