The (Possible) Shape of Black Mage to Come

[GartredZW]

I'm still not too happy with how Black Mage is currently. Upon thorough analysis, just about every change was detrimental to the job. The few that aren't are the changes to Manafont, the third Polyglot stack, Retrace, and new Umbral Soul. Those are fine to stay.

Paradox being made instant in Fire Phase is much more of an issue than most people understand. In Endwalker, you had just enough time to get four FireIVs off, then Paradox in the first half of your fire phase. Alternatively, you could also get off four FireIVs after Paradox and still get your Despair cast off. I actually tested this personally at base spell speed, 2.50 GCD and everything. It felt balanced. You had an equal amount of time in each half of your phase, and that made both halves feel equally meaningful.
Now compare it to Dawntrail. Paradox is instant now, so that means your enochian timer is starting right when you hit the button, not when you finish the GCD. You can now only get three FireIVs after Paradox while still getting Despair off, but because of FireIV's slightly longer than base GCD cast time, you still only get four FireIVs in the first half. You can actually manage to get five GCDs off before Paradox if two of them are instant cast. (also, this doesn't work if you use the instant Fire 3 to swap phases) It makes high spell speed feel almost mandatory now.
It cuts down heavily on your options for the only benefit of an extra Movement GCD that we don't even need. Ask yourself how often you use Xenoglossies or Triplecast to keep them from overcapping. For me, it's all the damn time, even in Savage.

Additionally, it muddies the amount of information you can actually get from the gauge. Notice how the gauge starts at 15, and ends at 1. It never actually reaches 0 before it fully ends. This means it rounds up to the nearest whole number.
If you're like me, you don't really plan out rotations as much as you play it by ear moment to moment. How do you know if you have enough for that last FireIV before your next Paradox or Despair? In Endwalker, doing FireIV and Paradox would be 5.3 seconds total. If you've got enough time for this, it'd show up as a 6. Slidecasting rules also apply, so depending on your latency, you can be certain that you'll get the last FireIV and Paradox out as long as the timer says 6. If not, then add more spell speed to the desired value. It's actually a pretty similar situation for Despair, just with a bit of extra time needed.
Compare this now. You've got a timer that says 3. It could be 2.9 in which case, you're good to go, or it could be 2.3 where you absolutely shouldn't try it. The only way to know for certain is to wait for the timer to tick down, or have a perfect internal memory of what fraction of a second has passed since the last second tick. Early on especially, this led me to taking a lot more risks on numbers that seemed like they would work only to lose enochian. Now it's leading to me being way too safe with my timer, and forcing myself into this very rigid rotation where I'll hit paradox if it's anywhere less than 4.
This sounds like a skill issue, and not an issue with the class. Maybe I didn't explain it properly, but my point is that the game guided you to knowing exactly what information you needed with the job gauge, and now its imprecision is causing issues that weren't there before.

That's not even to mention the levelsyncing experience. This was the number 1 thing I wanted fixed about Black Mage going into Dawntrail. The fact that Flare and Despair are different buttons given so far apart means that I outright refused to do anything levelsynced so I don't go below 72. Now because of how used to Paradox being instant I am now after Extreme and Savage, I refuse to levelsync below 90. I went from having 19 available levels to only having 11. Good job Square.
All these huge issues stemming from just a single change of cast time.

I want to keep ranting on everything that bothers me, because it's genuinely a lot. But I feel like this post shows in enough detail just how much I think about this class, and how much contempt I have for these changes seemingly made by someone who just doesn't understand what makes Black Mage fun to begin with. (Achievement: most pretentious thing said all day.)

[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.

[Ferrinus]

I completely agree about Scathe; it should be free, and it should either refresh your timer, heal you on hit (the triumphant return of Drain from Stormblood!) or both. I could also see it being removed but B1 getting an instant cast time, but I'd prefer B1/F1 symmetry remain.

But I genuinely believe, and find in practice, that instant-cast fire paradox makes BLM easier rather than harder to play, because it gives an extra GCD to move around with, it lets me be greedier in the first half of the astral phase, and perhaps most importantly it gives me a firestarter proc as a cushion against future threats from whatever I'm fighting. It's easier and more rewarding than ever to follow B4 with six F4 casts. It is harder than before to do this if you separately want to use every damage optimization trick in the book (strictly using your firestarter proc with transpose to stance swap, only ever using swift and triple on despair/flarestar/b3, etc) but that's a good thing. I don't want it to be a foregone conclusion that I can just claim every damage gain that a guy with a spreadsheet can hypothesize; there should be a tug of war between taking risks for high damage and playing safe for consistent damage.

The way that spells do or don't fit neatly into the rounded-up display of the astral timer is always going to be accidental and unpredictable because of the fact that spellspeed exists as a gear trait. Even in the absence of spellspeed, whether default cast times fit well or not is based on what multiples you count them in. For instance, a pair of F4s is 5.6, which might fit under a "6", a trio is 7.4, which has better odds still of fitting under a "9". On the other hand, at high spellspeed in EW, F4+P might be 4.4 or 4.5 seconds of casting, which are basically a coin flip if your timer says "5", but playing around "6" instead will leave you safe but also means you might be giving up what would have been an entire second or second and a half of slack and therefore missing out on a benefit your spellspeed should have gotten you. And then Leylines can screw all this up further.

All of this ignores the fact that nobody actually starts awake from a coma to find themselves playing BLM mid-raid with a "3" on the timer staring at them, but instead was sitting there at their keyboard or controller watching the number count down, watching their GCD spin, and feeling out how their rotation is coming together over time.

[GartredZW]

Why do you keep talking about difficulty? no one said anything about how much easier or harder the job is. I really don't care how easy or hard it could be as long as it's still fun and well designed.

and what do you mean by "nobody actually starts awake from a coma to find themselves playing BLM mid-raid with a "3" on the timer staring at them"

Did you forget that we're not talking about striking dummies here? There are mechanics going out where you need to move your eyes away from the gauge for some time to see what's going on. Perhaps even movement where some players don't mind letting the GCD clip a bit. I know I do that sometimes because I prioritize survival over numbers like a good little Black Mage.

I usually find it more comfortable to plan out the last FireIV and Paradox together because of the fact that I'm not internally counting how many GCDs I've gotten off at any moment. so I essentially just check in when I'm about to start a FireIV cast to see if I've got enough time for more afterwards. If not, then I'll ready myself to press Paradox after my current cast (or sometimes do some monkey-mashing) It's just something I intuitively started doing to avoid canceling casts.

[Tigore]

One thing I do wonder about BLM is how it can be granted movement while still being a turret caster. I think these 2 ideas from Warcraft at a mid point could be looked at.

Mage Talent: Ice Floes (can't find it with the current talent trees)
This one had about 3 charges with a 15 - 25ish second recharge. It simply allows one spell cast to be done while moving at the same time. You still need to hard cast the spell. You can simply move while doing it too. You could proc the ability while casting too.

Shaman Cooldown Spiritwalker's Grace
This is similar to Ice Floes except it is a 2 minute cooldown that allows all hard casted spells to be used while moving for about 15 seconds. Just like Ice Floes, it can be proced in the middle of casting something.

As for how the BLM could move while casting, I would imagine they would still use the same cast animations while levitating slightly off from the ground. Best lore point I could say that makes it possible is ley line walking. It might even involve changing up and improving the current ley line circle, but that is up for debate if we should have the circle follow us with a cooldown proc or if we should have it stay and only change locations with Retrace.

[Ramiee]

Triple cast is the answer to that tigore it's just that CBU3 in EW decided to make the entire game based around 2 minute bursts so triple cast lost its function as a movement tool and was turned into a burst tool.

[Supersnow845]

Triple cast is the answer to that tigore it's just that CBU3 in EW decided to make the entire game based around 2 minute bursts so triple cast lost its function as a movement tool and was turned into a burst tool.

The concept that a job has movement tools that are also a gain in burst is not inherently bad though, the problem comes from the fact that BLM is balanced so that you basically need to use 100% of your movement tools in burst just to be competitive in DPS while PCT intentionally discourages the use of the second hammer combo in burst because your burst is only long enough for 1 hammer and hyperphantasia and hyperphantasia is stronger than hammer

If BLM was at the rough DPS it is now only having to commit about as much of its movement as PCT does to its burst then BLM would be doing way better right now

[Ramiee]

The concept that a job has movement tools that are also a gain in burst is not inherently bad though, the problem comes from the fact that BLM is balanced so that you basically need to use 100% of your movement tools in burst just to be competitive in DPS while PCT intentionally discourages the use of the second hammer combo in burst because your burst is only long enough for 1 hammer and hyperphantasia and hyperphantasia is stronger than hammer

If BLM was at the rough DPS it is now only having to commit about as much of its movement as PCT does to its burst then BLM would be doing way better right now

It's good for optimisation, sure, but due to how strong the raid buffs are you have to do it from the start. Triple cast should be movement tool first burst second but it's the reverse. This is literally just because the 2 minute meta exists, if the raidbuffs weren't consistent on CD triple cast optimisation would be fun because part of prog would be me finding where i can use it for damage or movement. But for now it's only used for damage because 6 triple casts under raid buffs is better than 3.

[Ferrinus]

Why do you keep talking about difficulty? no one said anything about how much easier or harder the job is. I really don't care how easy or hard it could be as long as it's still fun and well designed.

and what do you mean by "nobody actually starts awake ..."

Did you forget that we're not talking about striking dummies here? There are mechanics going out where you need to move your eyes away from the gauge for some time to see what's going on. Perhaps even movement where some players don't mind letting the GCD clip a bit. I know I do that sometimes because I prioritize survival over numbers like a good little Black Mage..

It's you who mentioned that the Paradox change is detrimental to new players, i.e. it will make it harder for them to play BLM. The thing is that that's definitely wrong; even discounting the guaranteed proc, the instant cast makes it much easier to abort and preserve AF3 in the face of emergency and more movement means more leeway in general. It's also an additional opportunity to weave stuff in without clipping.

I mean exactly what I say by "no one starts awake"; even if you got distracted by a boss mechanic or party chat or something you'll have actually been playing BLM with your particular spellspeed parameters for more than zero seconds and have a sense for what you can or can't get away with. Because spellspeed exists, at all, not to mention leylines, any particular timer-based rule of thumb is only going to work by accident and for a fraction of the playerbase, unless you're willing to aggressively round up, in which case it will work for everyone but is also so cautious as to be useless. Like, in EW, I was safe at all "5"s and many "4s". If I didn't build for SPS, I would have been safe at most "6"s and all "7"s. So it's actually 7 which guarantees an F4+hardcast Paradox for all players. But, in fact, that 7 also guarantees two hardcast F4s and a swiftcast Paradox, which is the situation we play in under DT. So in general I don't believe that there was some kind of gem of intentional design based entirely on Paradox having a cast bar or not.

Like I said, adding a decimal to the phase timer would be a welcome change, and it'd be funny if they REALLY committed to customizability by, like, making the Fire button turn into 2.5s cast time Paradox while the Blizzard button turned into 0s cast time Paradox, but I don't really see myself using the former in the vast majority of cases. They could give Paradox the special property of generating an 18s or 20s astral timer, but, really, I think your astral cycle is pretty well spaces out already because the "top-heavy" 4 or even 5x F4 at the start is counterbalanced by the Despair and Flare Star at the end.