BLM Post-Patch, and where to go from here.

[Azebra]

4.MP Regen Problems
A recurring point within my points is this newfound lack of free movement we got in EW. All our movement now either punishes us potency wise, or is best saved for aligning into party buffs or long sections of movement. This lack of movement, where all the other casters, (even Pictomancer, with its long recast timers), have it, leaves us back in the turret mage design on StB and ShB, which doesn't fit in with the fight design of DT. If you've done EX1, you can realize how much small movement is needed in the mechanics, and as such, you can really feel the lack of flexibility.

This is one of my big problems right now, I progged ex1 and had a rough time with it on BLM but I felt like it was doable, but ex2 I just gave up trying to learn the fight on it and just switched to RDM until I melded a bunch of spell speed and could do the mechanics more comfortably. Even after clearing ex2 well over a dozen times on BLM now, I cannot get over how the overlap of fire phase's new strictness/trying to save stuff for burst window/doing the fire/wind blade warp mechanic which happens EXACTLY at the same time as the burst window feels so incredibly hectic in a not great way, and I love the fight. Almost very single time I'm either like "ok, lets focus on burning through xenos for burst and staying alive for the mechanic" and then I look over and see I've dropped enochain, or I focus on the mechanic and keeping AF up and I don't maximize burst damage.

The thing that's getting me is that I did not ever feel like this during extreme or the few savages I did back during endwalker, and I was not a nonstandard player at all (I thought the concept was cool but it felt unintuitve to me/i hate using tranpose because its hard wired into my brain as the move I use when I've messed up.) Obviously dawntrail content is already more intense, but I feel like if they're not going to design the fights to accommodate for black mage, they should have at least tried to add things to BLM to be able to deal with more movement out of the gate without a crapton of SpSd melds besides Retrace (which is nice, but completely useless in constant movement mechs like ex1's Rain of Feathers) and another Xeno slot (which ends up just being saved for burst anyway). Don't get me wrong, I think the challenge of figuring out how to best use leylines/triplecast in a fight is part of the fun of the class, but currently I think it's too punishing if you ever do mess up, getting back into the flow while still doing the kinds of mechanics in ex1 and ex2 is very trying.

I like BLM's sustain damage style, its what it's built around and I don't want them trying to rework it to be just like other burst DPS, but I feel like most of these changes to the job weren't made with enough consideration for what the new content is like. I did not need the thunder damage changes to give me a new thing to fret about and worry about dropping thunderhead or the DoT itself since you're discouraged from refreshing too early now, or a new slowcast spell that punishes me from missing even one fire iv because i tried to adjust for a mechanic. I don't think its impossible to add stuff to BLM that makes it more capable of dealing with these kinds of fights without undermining the core of the class too. I'm kind of bummed that the devs either didn't realize (or just didn't care) that nonstandard rotations existence was a symptom of Black mage's flexibility, and by haphazardly trying to neuter it they took part of BLM's ability to adjust for mechs with it.

[Realfoxy]

...

I like BLM's sustain damage style, its what it's built around and I don't want them trying to rework it to be just like other burst DPS, but I feel like most of these changes to the job weren't made with enough consideration for what the new content is like. I did not need the thunder damage changes to give me a new thing to fret about and worry about dropping thunderhead or the DoT itself since you're discouraged from refreshing too early now, or a new slowcast spell that punishes me from missing even one fire iv because i tried to adjust for a mechanic. I don't think its impossible to add stuff to BLM that makes it more capable of dealing with these kinds of fights without undermining the core of the class too. I'm kind of bummed that the devs either didn't realize (or just didn't care) that nonstandard rotations existence was a symptom of Black mage's flexibility, and by haphazardly trying to neuter it they took part of BLM's ability to adjust for mechs with it.

I agree.

The fundamental problem with Dawntrail BLM is that the developers cared more about removing flexibility and absolutely murdering nonstandard than they cared about actually addressing any of the job's pain points.

Look at the Umbral Soul changes. People have been asking for such a thing for literally years to help make the BLM levelling experience less crap and we only got it just now when they accidentally broke the job in synced content.

[Sylvain]

I progged ex1 and had a rough time with it on BLM but I felt like it was doable, but ex2 .

For the love of me, can someone explain me, beside attempting to do 100% perf by doing everything that is possible to gain every little drop of dps from Xeno, Transpose, 3cast etc at the cost of movement, how is ex2 rough?
you litterally have 1 movement to do at 30s
Then you can litterally slide cast until the donuts arrive.
During the donuts, you can even get hit because as R1 or R2, your vulnerability won't be a problem at all during the share...
During the shared line you're litterally a turret

Like the only annoying part is the bumpy second part and that's really about it...

Where are people struggling on that fight (provided they're not chassing 100 perf and are just trying to do the fight with decent dps)

Unless I got confused and EX2 is actually the bird.

[meie]

For the love of me, can someone explain me, beside attempting to do 100% perf by doing everything that is possible to gain every little drop of dps from Xeno, Transpose, 3cast etc at the cost of movement, how is ex2 rough?
you litterally have 1 movement to do at 30s
Then you can litterally slide cast until the donuts arrive.
During the donuts, you can even get hit because as R1 or R2, your vulnerability won't be a problem at all during the share...
During the shared line you're litterally a turret

Like the only annoying part is the bumpy second part and that's really about it...

Where are people struggling on that fight (provided they're not chassing 100 perf and are just trying to do the fight with decent dps)

Unless I got confused and EX2 is actually the bird.

EX2 is mostly free for blm's once you get the mechanics down, think the person just might found some overly complex way to process the mechanics. EX1 is far more annoying, because some mechanics get you close to using all movement resources and then depending on how the mechanics play out, you have to run around the arena back and forth, or just stand in place.

[Azebra]

EX2 is mostly free for blm's once you get the mechanics down, think the person just might found some overly complex way to process the mechanics. EX1 is far more annoying, because some mechanics get you close to using all movement resources and then depending on how the mechanics play out, you have to run around the arena back and forth, or just stand in place.

This is what I was saying yes, Ex1 is more intense movement wise but I found the mechanics easier to understand so I could focus on how to use my resources, versus Ex2 whose mechanics I found more difficult to conceptualize mentally so I had a rough time focusing on my rotation. This was likely just a me thing though, and I agree apart from the one section of the fight that I mentioned prior that ex2 is pretty straightforward on BLM and theres enough gaps between movement sections for stuff like triplecast to come back up.

Why not just remove the timers on Astral Fire and Umbral Ice? Timer's on any ability aren't fun anyway.

To each their own, I find the timers a lot of fun even though they make me mald when I drop because it gives a sense of mastering the class when you learn to get it down and understand when you can cast in a fight and get greedy vs play it safe. To me half the fun is in learning to work around the timers, I just think in the current state of the class the balance has been tipped where it feels more pressing than before. I don't think its so cut and dry to say "well the timers feel bad right now, so get rid ofthem altogether" stuff like fire phase being more busy and you can't cast fire 1 as a panic refresh because then you lose flare star or ice phase lacking paradox to refresh its timer are part of the reason it feels worse than before.