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

[Ramiee]

Considering how messed up BLM is now. I think it's unfixable without a full conversion back to EW BLM, the only possibility I could see BLM being sort of tolerable is making ice spells faster cast or instant cast for prolonged movement. This would suck because you play BLM because you like to cast but the constant movement and reinforcement of the cancerous 2 minute meta has completely messed up BLM. Do they really expect players not to use triplecast during burst over movement? Do they even know the playerbase they fostered with this meta?

[Keichi]

There's literally no excuse for a pure DPS class doing less aDPS than Pictomancer, and having a barely higher performance overall than Red Mage and ranged DPS. Samurai doesn't have problems with performance, so what's the deal?

A) That is only a question of numbers. Nothing with the current playstil of the Blm. The flow of Action is mostly nice of Blm and it simply feels like, you all are overreacting.

B) Do the devs even messeaure in this "adps" thing and so on? I never heared of that terms aside of F14 and even forget allways, what the Letters even means. In addition, did they not even want, that players use dps checkers.
And a other question would even be, how much % difference that even is. Low differences are ok. And as much as i allways hear, are the differences allways very low (under 10 or even 5% difference, what is in most cases nothing).

A bit more potency for flare Star could be nice (its has 400 base, with a boost of 110% -30% echo something + 80% fire buff- makes it 840 in total, it would be nice, if it is around 1k, like some other dps classes have it). But its nothing, what influence the playstile of the class.

[Galvuu]

A) That is only a question of numbers. Nothing with the current playstil of the Blm. The flow of Action is mostly nice of Blm and it simply feels like, you all are overreacting.

I genuinely cannot take this statement seriously. Did you play floors 2 and 3 of the new NM raids and felt BLM flowed nicely?
The fuse mechanic into double lariat into the Emerald Weapon mechanic in floor 3, or the aoe and heart spam in floor 2 followed, literally in 25 to 30s, by a "dodge aoe line spam" didn't feel disruptive to you, as a BLM?
Because those two mechanics are awful for BLM.
Bonus point for the mechanic in floor 4 where the boss spams forward/backward lasers and the blasts come out so fast you literally can't slidecast at all there.

BLM feels awful to play in these encounters, and you're so tightly pigeonholed into this static rotation that there's very little you can do to work around these obstacles without tanking your already low dps further. In EW, you had like 5 fire lines you could use to resolve these problems. Now, you pray for luck aoe rng or run around losing uptime.

[Keichi]

I did the fight again the bee girl (worse fight for me, Bee's, movement and love in ones^^) and Thunder cat with Blm (the other 2 was with Drg).

Its true, that whe have there phases, where whe have a lot of movement. And arent able to attack much in that phase (shit double canon, i allways stand in safe zone and was even counted as hitted).
But, the same problem have the other classes (mostly) to.
Other caster have even barely the time to attack (the same with the second Boss of 97er dungeon). Meele could maybe attack, if they are close to the target and rangers can do that from distance. But, the question is, how usefull that is. At last for me is it happens many times, that my chara is doing unwanted movement, when i doing attacks, while trying to dodge. And are than hit by the aoe (even, because the unwanted movement -mostly to the enemie- is bringing me into the attack, or is slowing me down for a moment, and is enough, that i was than hit).
This dodge sequences didnt look much like a time, where most charas are able to attack. And because of that, have i not much of a problem with it. I even stop attacking as a whole, or, try to attack, when im standing at a point, where i have a short moment time for it.
Full rotation isnt possible in that phase (mostly). But im simply adjusting as much as i can than.
Otherwise, am i switching into the ice phase and use umbral soul. Or am simply waiting and restart my rotation, when the phase is over (its not even save to say, if im even alive, in the full dodge sequence).

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

While I agree with almost everything you're saying, this point isn't completely true. It kinda hurts me to say this, as I started playing BLM in HW where being a steady damage dealer was its thing, every expansion moved BLM away from that and more into a burst job.
This is the damage profile of the BLM dps on 12Sp2 in EW, a dummy fight, overlayed with the overall raid dps:


You can see that, for the most part, the peaks follow that of the general trend. By EW, a lot of mastering BLM was tied to actually fitting your burst (3/4 Xenos, Paradox, Thundercloud and Despair) into the burst windows by manipulating your fire lines to get the required length and mobility.
DT might go back on this trend, but I feel the triple Polyglot stack and Flare Star somehow further pigeonhole BLM into this direction.

As an aside, and this is an idea I picked up from playing Picto, making Flare Star into a slower cast (like 5s) with very high potency (think something like 700 or 800 before the AF multiplier) might help with mobility. I can't begin to describe how comfortable it is to be able to use Holy in White/Comet in Black and Swiftcast a motif to get 8s of mobility. I feel doing something similar with Flare Star, assuming they're committed to that horrid spell, is a good idea mid/long term.

Oh, numerically yes, BLM might function as a burst job, cooperating with raidbuffs, leylines, or xenoglossy, but what I'm more so talking about, is that BLM doesn't really focus on gauge building or that type of cooldown reliant burst damage that other classes do.

That's not to say that I don't like that style on other jobs, (Hell, I raided with DNC, and I'm gonna raid with VPR in the upcoming content), but when you play a BLM, the only 3 CD's you have to keep in mind are Leylines, and Manafont, Amplifier is just another Polyglot and doesn't directly influence your damage output on the numerical level like the SPS buff of Leylines does.

[LilyPendragon]

Honestly I don't think it would kill them to make Flare Star instant. Or increase the potency by 200-400. Or both. It's objectively worse than Xenoglossy in every way but the AoE which...doesn't matter in most raid fights.

Instant Flare Star could be a thing, however I don't want them to stick more potency in Flare Star as it just makes it even more of a punishing mechanic. So unless they did both of your suggestions, I think added potency to FS would be a net negative to an already butchered class. Adding more rigidity and punishment to the already most punishing class in the game by far (even moreso in DT), wouldn't be a good thing.

[Ialnyien]

Personally for me (I enjoy Savage / EX Content but am by no means a top 5% player) the class just feels so unforgiving.

Any time an error is made either mechanic, death, or missed cast; and you are instantly penalized for the next minute until your timers come back up.

To echo everyone else: Flare Star just feels bad and janky. It needs something more. Either have it refresh umbral hearts or give us a +100% Ice Potency buff or something to make it worthwhile. If you don't get all six Fire IV's off because of mechanics or anything else its a useless capstone skill.

I'm not overly upset about the Ice Paradox change as I do understand, but as others have pointed out it makes the ice phase feel so pointless. Perhaps the change is to keep Flare Star through the phase and it can be cast during Ice Phase but keeps the AF Potency Buff and brings you to Fire Phase with AF3/3 Hearts. At least at that point it would feel like a skill moving you back into the damage phase and would be an overall potency buff. It also eliminates the overuse of Transpose which also feels incredibly janky.

[Galvuu]

I'm still gonna say that, if they're dead-set on keeping Flare Star, with the reduced cd of Swiftcast, I could see an argument being made for it being a long cast of 5s with very high potency (I mean like... 900 before the AF multiplier) that you can instant-cast for 5 seconds of mobility.
It's much worse than Picto's motifs, since those can be SC'd when it's convenient, but it's probably better overall. That's one aspect of Pictomancer's design I think can be ported over to BLM.
Ofc, that's just for Flare Star. BLM has 50 problems, and I'd rather get rid of Flare Star, in honesty...

[CamuiKushi]

Adding my voice as a very casual black mage: it just feels bad now. I got haukke manor in leveling roulette just now and it was a nightmare. I had to use lucid dreaming for MP recovery between packs, it takes multiple blizzard casts AFTER TRANSPOSING to get back to full. It's just terrible and I would bet money it wasn't play-tested at low levels because I can't see how anyone can consider the job inviting in its current state. It's more alienating than ever.

Edit: My comment is mostly to suggest that there are just fundamental problems with the job now even outside of raiding. Even at the most simple level of play it's a punishing job.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

Edit: My comment is mostly to suggest that there are just fundamental problems with the job now even outside of raiding. Even at the most simple level of play it's a punishing job.

With umbral soul at 35, it's definitely better but not perfect, if they could move it even early that would be nice, but I fear it might build bad habits within the newbies (I.E. thunderhead spamming)

To your "punishing" point, I feel that's part of the draw of the job, and really any job in 14. It's punishing to lose uptime as a melee, it's punishing to have a buff run out, It's punishing to run out of mana. I feel that's the push and pull you contend with in a job, and personally I like it. The problem with BLM now is that its punishment isnt really tied to the mechanics of the job, and just seem more like development oversights.