BLM feedback.

[Eraden]

Mao has question. Given currents state of BLMs AoE, is its still worth its to use AoE or use stronger single targets attacks and focus fire on one critter ats a time? Mao been usings AoE spells on trash packs still buts Mao hasn't really tried crunch numbers to see if AoE spells still worth its.

[Ferrinus]

F2 (to switch), F2 F2 (to use hearts one by one), Flare (to use last heart), Flare (to use up MP), Flare Star, B2, Freeze is my ideal AoE rotation, with of course Fouls and T2s added as appropriate. At bare mininum I want numbers to change enough that it's not a gain to skip either B2 or F2.

I'm guessing that the problems the dev team is having on this front are largely aesthetic/narrative:

* They probably don't want an "enhanced Flare" trait because it's a little weird that such an iconic spell as Flare is weak by default and needs a regular/filler spell to power it up
* They probably don't want Freeze, another iconic spell, to be weaker than a regular Blizzard spell, even though it has distinct utility related to Umbral Hearts

I think it'd be cool if they increased Freeze's cast time and damage (even to the point of giving it Flare's exact same stats, just like most fire and ice spells are mirrors of each other), but maybe made both Flare and Freeze impossible to cast without a full 3 stacks of AF/UI and also made Freeze impossible to cast unless you're at less than full MP. That way Freeze is never spammable (especially if they make sure to also make Scathe free, or at least make all spells free under UI) but you need to cast transition spells to be able to deploy your heavy hitters at all.

[awhitet]

I am pretty sure they will change or revert the AOE changes, everytime I do expert and there is a black mage, they still use HF2 several times before flare, the issue is a casual player won't know that the changes made hf2 useless and the optimal thing to do is cast 2 flares and call it a day, either if you are new BLM player or someone who didn't read the notes you will use HF2 for AOE, because well, it makes sense right? but the reality is that hf2 is the most useless spell right now lol.

[Tunda]

BLM thunder shouldn't be a dot.

BLM thunder should be debuff empower F4 can be casted each 60 sec with 30sec duration

Having to manage dote specially in DT is a dumb idea and it shouldn't exist

[OgruMogru]

I'm a huge masochist so I'm actually enjoying the rigidity somewhat. Very pleased with the re-addition of ice para and the changes to umbral soul. I still hate the changes to thunder! I personally really enjoyed sharpcast/thunder management. I also like that flare star is a cast and I don't want it to be made insta cast - but it is a tad underwhelming! I'm quite partial to the idea of us being able to execute a flare star with less hearts with the caveat that it's weaker than a full 6 - maybe when you use it at full charges it applies a dot, or negates the ice/fire damage reduction, or enhances your ice magic, or hell, even gives you a blizzard 3 proc so you can insta the flare-star, get a proc, transpose AF3 -UI1 and use the blizz proc to get a tiny dps gain.

[Turtledeluxe]

Still not understanding the less fire, less potency Flare Star. Why not just get rid of it then? We already have Fire IV and Flare. What is the point of a weak Flare Star?

Flare Star could not be a more obvious misplaced action. It's a Flare II, let's be real. They just didn't want it to be perceived as an AoE exclusive so they made up this whole rotation that encourages you to drop it in your single target rotation. Making it weaker, reducing the requirements, just makes it Fire IV redundant instead of Deapair/finisher redundant as it currently is.

If they wanted a new finisher then they should have just actually done that. After the requisite Fire IV, Despair becomes Flare Star and becomes 1.2k potency or something. Making it easier to get or weaker does nothing for the job at all.

And I see no reason why they didn't do this except worrying too much about BLM DPS, which they totally messed up and had to correct with a patch, which sadly left Flare Star in its same fairly meaningless state.

[mallleable]

Not a BLM main, but I did level it to 100, and it is sooooo close. The changes to Umbral Soul are amazing. Good riddance having to spam it during down time. The thunder dot is still incredibly clunky, as well as Flare Star. I think the dot should last longer, and the reapplication hit of the spell should hit harder on targets that already have the dot on them which could make early refreshes potentially worth it, easing strictness. When Umbral Soul freezes your Umbral Ice timer, it should freeze the Thunderhead proc timer as well.

I still think that they should consider getting rid of Despair, and rebalancing Flare to be used in both single target, and AOE mostly because the spell animation for Despair is super lame compared to Flare. Also the fact the Flare grants 3 Astral Soul stacks could open things up for how you can approach Flare Star in single target.

[Ferrinus]

Combining Despair and Flare (maybe even making a level 72 trait that decreases Flare's cast time and increases its potency) might work pretty well. You'd have to make sure that F4-F4-Flare-Flare didn't somehow become optimal for single target, though.

[Kabooa]

Combining Despair and Flare (maybe even making a level 72 trait that decreases Flare's cast time and increases its potency) might work pretty well. You'd have to make sure that F4-F4-Flare-Flare didn't somehow become optimal for single target, though.

The "simplest" way is having Flare have an interaction with Fire 4 and High Fire.

High Fire: Generates 1 soul, causes the next Flare to generate 2 souls, and causes the next Flare to deal +x potency, stacking.
Fire 4: Generates 1 soul and reduces Flare's cast time by 30%.

Despair is now a trait, increasing Flare's potency when hitting a single target by 50%.

There would be very little reason to mix and match these two bonuses as losing aoe damage for increased flare speed is not desirable, likewise with losing Fire 4 potency for more potency on Flare. It also prevents double flare in a single target scenario by not giving a cast time reduction at baseline.

It would also move the aoe rotation to HF x 4 - Flare - Flarestar which I guess is somehow better than Flare Flare Flarestar. High Fire could probably also use a cast reduction TBF. That spell feels horrid to use.

[Ferrinus]

The AoE spells are in a weird place because they're neither better-on-three versions of F1/B1, nor better-on-three versions of F3/B3. They kind of have the Potency stats of the former but the speed/cost stats of the latter. Maybe if they also enjoyed reduced cast times or MP costs when you already had three stacks of their associated elemental aspect?

I'm guessing the team wants to avoid giving Flare a bunch of fiddly, conditional modifiers, and I'm sympathetic, because it makes the spell feel less special if it's so weak as to not be worth casting unless you do a lot of prep. I prefer the model in which it's great by default but the consequences of HAVING cast it are awkward and inconvenient (at least until you accrue some higher-level traits).