The (Possible) Shape of Black Mage to Come

[Ferrinus]

Paradox guarantees a Firestarter proc, so even if you use it identically to Fire you'll be guaranteed enough time to complete your astral cycle thanks to the proc's extra ~12 seconds. I don't really agree that the additional GCD of free movement DT paradox provides in the fire phase is unneeded or unwelcome; it sometimes happened that you needed to swiftcast your EW paradox to be able to maintain your stuff in the phase of boss mechanics, and many have complained that BLM doesn't have enough mobility when they're required to prepare and then complete a full 10k+3hearts astral cycle every time they loop through their rotation.

Also, with zero spellspeed, the 5.3 seconds required to throw an F4 and F1 might NOT be possible if your timer says "6" because that 6 might actually represent 5.2 or 5.1 seconds, and this is especially true with the 5.8 seconds it costs to do F4/Despair. So you do make a good point that adding a decimal point and a single additional digit to the astral/umbral timer would be a nice QoL change, but this isn't an issue you get to escape by changing whether a single spell is instant or not.

[GartredZW]

Paradox guarantees a Firestarter proc, so even if you use it identically to Fire you'll be guaranteed enough time to complete your astral cycle thanks to the proc's extra ~12 seconds. I don't really agree that the additional GCD of free movement DT paradox provides in the fire phase is unneeded or unwelcome; it sometimes happened that you needed to swiftcast your EW paradox to be able to maintain your stuff in the phase of boss mechanics, and many have complained that BLM doesn't have enough mobility when they're required to prepare and then complete a full 10k+3hearts astral cycle every time they loop through their rotation.

Also, with zero spellspeed, the 5.3 seconds required to throw an F4 and F1 might NOT be possible if your timer says "6" because that 6 might actually represent 5.2 or 5.1 seconds, and this is especially true with the 5.8 seconds it costs to do F4/Despair. So you do make a good point that adding a decimal point and a single additional digit to the astral/umbral timer would be a nice QoL change, but this isn't an issue you get to escape by changing whether a single spell is instant or not.

I'm not saying it's harder to play or anything. It's just far less intuitive than before. It felt like there was some genuine care put into how long each and every cast was to make sure everything lined up, but now that's all thrown out of whack.
And like I said, slidecasting rules apply, so unless you've got very bad internet, a 5.3 is going to be enough to get the paradox off. Despair does have a chance to clip if you're a bit unlucky, but it's still a lot easier to get a feel for than what we have now. This is also why every Black Mage guide recommends a comfort value of spell speed. I got a good grasp of Black Mage in Endwalker before even stepping into savage or extreme, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything in Dawntrail. These issues started truly getting mitigated when I reached BiS on my spell speed build, and I was able to finally have some flexibility. (I just tested this out. I can get four FireIVs after Paradox now, but if I use the firestarter in the phase transpose I only get away with four before. I can technically get five FireIVs before paradox, but I can only get Paradox off with a food buff. not really an issue, I just think it's funny.)

And finally, yes, there are people who complain that the job is too hard before. There will always be those people. We've got enough movement tools to deal with any fight (past level 70) if you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, then good luck learning. The whole class shouldn't have been gutted for the players who want to be good at a job without putting in the effort to learn how to be good. In-fact, I think it's actually detrimental to new players specifically. Paradox being instant means it's usable as a movement tool. This might make some players prematurely use it without knowing just how restrictive your latter half fire phase is, or that you get a decent damage gain for saving Firestarter 3 for phasing from Ice to Fire with transpose.

If they wanted us to have an extra GCD of movement, I'd propose making scathe anything but hot garbage. Remove the MP cost as it just serves to throw off your fire phase. Give it a potency of 300. Not quite at the level of any of your good spells, and still certainly a damage loss, but still worth hitting over nothing. And finally, I'd give it an extra effect that extends the current Enochian timer by one GCD length.
This way it's still not recommended to ever use it, but you've got an option for when you have to run laps around the arena for mechanics, and you're out of polyglots, your triplecast is on CD, and you can't let Enochian run out.