More BLM feedback and opinion

[wuCk]

Hard to start this, but i’ll try to give an objective and unbiased feedback to the job, and the job’s current level of fun to play.

An issue of communication:
Pretty much until the end of EW, there was no reason to believe anything would drastically change with the gameplay of BLM. Then, when the first infos dropped before DT, all of a sudden information about changes to the job became public. There was never a discourse, or a _honest_ reason given for any of the drastic changes made to the job. After seeing the changes, and finally experiencing them, when DT was released, i remained sceptical. Everything that was changed and reworked, is not a solution. the problems were not even there in the first place; on the contrary, it created so many more issues:

EW BLM was enjoyable for me, at any level. It was accepted and taken, that you start ramping up slower from lv50, but became more and more complete by lv90. BLM has always been a job of high risk, and high reward. It allowed for more flexibility and creativity and was a very fun job to learn, understand and to try to take it to it’s limits.
Now, ofcourse, with DT, that component has vanished. The flexibility it had in it’s rotation, is just not there anymore. With the fundamental changes to it’s MP-regeneration, and any level, but especially for the lv100 rotation, there is little left, what made the job so unique and fun to play.

In detail, i am referring to the the Astral Fire rotation, which requires the 6x FireIV’s, before being able to cast the jobs keystone ability, BLM’s new signature move: The Flare Star. While on paper, it does seem amazing. It does in reality feel, that it is a very disappointing action to have in your toolkit, due to the fact that there is a big probability ,that you are not able to cast it.
There are numerous examples for when that happens.

Another major example for the restrictiveness and unflexible rotation is of course the Thunderhead-proc ‘mechanic’. The way thunder worked in EW was fine, and even felt more rewarding due to it’s RNG proc nature. It was steadily available, able to multi-dot, and getting the proc meant you had a resource you could spend accordingly (multi target dot, movement, ice-phase-filler). While Sharpcast at lv90, was more or less ,only used to keep the thunder-proc alive, especially for lower levels, the lack of it, is a tremendous loss.

While Manafont, was arguably the weakest 2 minute buff, it again, was very flexible in it’s usage. And again, a huge loss, in my opinion, for lower levels. Did the design team ever test the impact of such a groundbreaking change (2 consecutive fire phases)?

The next factor, which reduces the job, is the MP-regen system. One of BLM’s unique traits was it’s automatic MP regen, now this trait is not existent anymore. The change to umbral soul, may be convenient, but it does not account for all the problems the job still has, due to the lack of automatic MP-regen. 1/2

[wuCk]

Not adjusting Umbral Soul, was a huge oversight. (Since when were actions from any expansion, brought to ARR levels? It feels like BIG paradigm breaking change, and is not a good solution.)

The AoE rotation, seems to be in a weird spot aswell. The impact of having no EW-thunderprocs for AoE hurts in lower levels even more. FireII/HighFireII potencies make those spells pretty much obsolete. It is rather counter intuitive for newer players or players that dont take the time looking into understanding the job and its rotation.
The point is, for me, for many many other passionate BLM-mains, that it is simply not that fun to play anymore. Back in EW, you didn’t get punished as hard if you left out a cast of FireIV or if you just casted Fire to keep up Astral Fire.

From what it feels like, the rotation you have to cast now, makes the job even less accessible to new players. It feels that the job has very little freedom, and is more restrictive. It just feels, it was not tested thoroughbly. No feedback was gathered, if it is fun to play or not.
The thrill of an MMO like FFXIV, besides it’s story, and beautiful world, is encounter and job design. And while encounter design did in fact become even a bit more interesting than before, job design starts to lack and lack more. The current direction of design takes away big portions of the fun for long time subscribers and those whoe enjoyed the job the most. also discourages playing the job.
Compare the amount of ‘doom’ threads, with the amount at the release of ShB or EW.
As someone who has even experienced BLM in the last weeks of HW, and later on in StB’s release, it was ever engaging, fun to play and felt rewarding. It got more and more good QoL changes, up until EW, where it was, in many peoples eyes in a very good spot. Now in DT, the biggest punishment is to ever stray from your astral fire rotation even just one bit, and that is a huge let down, and does not feel fun. It infact feels worse to me, than losing Astral Fire/Umbral Ice. Also the choice of equipment is very limited now, and opting for higher spellspeed than before, seems preferable.

A question about potency changes:
If all the potencies start ramping up over the course of time, aka powercreep, the question is:
Could atleast the duration of encounters be edited (by raising enemy HP), to account for all the changes? Potency changes for existing jobs, and introduction of new jobs, led to shorter encounters overall, throughout any content.

Points which i left out on purpose are: job relative balance, optimization of rotations (non-standard play), or any proposals of what to change.
The proposal would also be simple: just revert back to EW BLM!

Tl;dr
Current BLM iteration not nearly as fun to play as it was in previous expansions, across all levels, please revert back to EW.
Buff content to account for powercreep.
2/2

[Carighan]

Eh, it's nowadays just the base class you play before you get to Picto jobstone, no?

I agree on the powercreep though, this is a base problem with the community being utterly allergic to nerfs, even if the net-result is the same. They'd rather have everyone else deal +5000 damage on each hit than see their own be nerfed by 5000. Of course, the fact that then the boss effectively loses 40k extra health every GCD compared to the "proper" solution is lost on most players. And Square too rarely does a numbers squish to reel this back in. They ought to, though.

[meie]

The only reason why the new blm "works" is because the encounters seem to be far too easy compared to endwalker savage, from what I can tell. In endwalker you got pushed more to the edge when it came to movement resources in a pf strat environment. While I'm somewhat of a inconsistent player, I can see that there is not much to play around when it comes to optimizing encounters. With the old non standard lines there where always multiply things you could try out, without spreadsheeting the entire rotation.

[GartredZW]

Really, it just needs Paradox to get it's cast time back, and Sharpcast with old Thunder back (and by proxy, the non-guaranteed firestarter procs)

Flare star is servicible in it's current iteration. I don't hate it, but it's just underwhelming. If I had to design it, I'd just make every FireIV you use that doesn't use an Umbral Heart give you an Astral Heart, which occupies the same spot in the gauge. Then make Flare Star only available at 0 MP, and have it's power scale with how many Astral Hearts you have. It means losing one FireIV isn't that big of a change to the rotation. It makes Flare Star feel more contingent with the rest of the rotation, giving it a proper place as opposed to "well, the counter got to 6. time to use the thing that I can only use when the counter gets to 6"

I wasn't a big fan of Thundercloud before you got enhanced Sharpcast. Having Sharp be on a 30 second cooldown with 2 charges made the skill actually feel good to use. It wasn't perfect, but it added a necessary level of variation to your rotation. It wasn't entirely obvious that you could/should play like this, but you were meant to use Sharpcast some time before your next Thunder in such a way that you don't use Paradox first. Otherwise it'll turn into a Firestarter proc instead. If I had to design something to fix this, I'd just make Sharpcast have no cooldown, and instead just cost MP. This is a rough idea that I'm not too certain about numbers wise, but I think it'd be cool if you just spend 400MP to cast Sharpcast (maybe have zero cost when under Umbral Ice.). This way, you only get one per fire phase, or else you lose a cast. But even if you've got a long Fire Phase, you can still just use the Thundercloud proc without Sharpcast, and leave it up to chance whether you get a free proc. Plus, if you know you're not going to need Sharpcast this Fire Phase, you can intentionally use it for the Firestarter Proc, making that an actual mechanic instead of a fail condition or RNG exclusive mechanic.

It would have a similar, but much less severe issue than what we currently have now. Where if you have a particularly long Fire phase, your Thunder can just fall off before you phase shift, and you have no way to put it back until after you finish Fire Phase. But instead with my proposal, you would just use it anyway, only without Sharpcast, which leaves you to randomness on whether your next one will be hard casted, and half potency. It's still a failstate, but it doesn't throw everything out of whack like it does now.

Paradox being instant cast throws off the entire timing of your Fire Phase. It's baffling that they decided to do that. Having the Enochian timer start 2.5 second earlier means you can only get three FireIVs and a Despair in your latter half Fire Phase, but you still only get four FireIVs in the early half because of FireIV's longer than GCD cast time. I find myself and many others using Paradox for movement, and not having enough time to actually finish the Fire Phase normally because of it. I think that's why they made Firestarter a guaranteed proc, but now it just feels like they gave us too much room to make mistakes that we don't even need most of the time. They wanted to kill non-standard, but now Transpose is part of the basic standard rotation. Good job guys.

Having your Movement and main rotation be separate made you think about what to prioritize. If you only need one or two GCDs of movement, then you're fine to just use a Xenoglossy and Thunder. If you need three GCDs, or you need two and have already used one this fire phase, then you use Xenoglossy and Swiftcast. For heavy movement, there's Triplecast. I will regularly find myself sitting at 2 triplecast charges for extended periods in a fight because most of them don't require anything close to as much as we have.

We made do before by being smart and planning things properly, now I'm optimizing my movement by just guessing correctly in a week 1 savage blind prog. The only fight in Dawntrail that feels like it actually pushes us in the kind of way that Anabaseios, or the Endwalker EX trials did is Valigarmanda EX.

[Sylvain]

Really, it just needs Paradox to get it's cast time back, and Sharpcast with old Thunder back (and by proxy, the non-guaranteed firestarter procs).

That's a lot of "just".

Imo the new BLM was designed to make it more approchable and this comes at the cost of choice and depth for the veteran.

-Mana rework-
In vacuum, the mp reworks means that toying around alternate rotation and shorter phase isn't possible. So the dilemna of "how should blm be balanced, alternate or basic" is gone which makes it easier to balance and less intimidating.
-Instant paradox-
What most "not amazing" BLM struggled with was mobility. In a sens, the firephase was extremely restrictive as you had to aligne 8 cast. Current Fire phase offers 2 garanteed instant, Paradox and FireIII. Sure it's a small loss vs a transpose fireIII but this still overall makes BLM much much more approchable to the average players who struggles with slide casting on a BLM.
I understand and agree that at higher level of played, especially for the BLM playing since SB it throws off all timing but objectively from a newplayer perspective, being granted 2 instant in firephase is a welcomed change.

-Thunder rework-
Removing thunder as a random procs means that it would always be available at the same point helping newer BLM with movement.
The removal of Dynamisation thus makes sens. If you want to makes things easier, instead of making them proc, you simply give them on a strict condition.
However I don't understand why they changed the damage repartition as the "burst + DoT" was much more newbie friendly than the current "full DoT". The timer being slightly too short is imo an oversight...

-Mana font rework-
It was indeed the weakest 2min. However I feel this one was changed because of Flare Star implementation.
However I agree, double firephase makes for a weird feeling. perhaps just making Mana font grant a free use of Flare Star would have been better.

Finally the addition of Flare Star is probably the biggest killer.
As you said, BLM felt good because it was flexible. They've done quite a few changes, each of them killing flexibility making the rotation all the more fix. However, Flare Star makes it so strict that you're not even allowed to not do your full fire rotation anymore. Basically as you said, "nice on paper aweful in practice". While it isn't the worst thing even in savage where boss never leave the arena, this might make for an interesting rotation on FRU...


I feel we're in a weird place right now because on one hand many things are gone and some feel outright bad.
the job is more approchable but instead of being frustrating for its challenging nature, it is now frustrating because it feels too strict.
Before, you had to assess what were your best options based on the different options you had available, Fire/Thunder procs etc. You could change around your rotation giving you a lot of freedom and avenue for improvement.
Now you can't do most of that. Once you've found the best way to move around without using as many Xeno as possible, you're done. (So basically like any other dps job not relying on procs...)

I mean what could be done?

- Paradox/FireIII :
Paradox instant makes for a weird-ish fire rotation, which should have been tempered by the FireIII garanteed proc for a smooth fire rotation with 2 instants... but doing Transpose FireIII is slightly better.
If left unchanged, the problem stays and people are unhappy with the new timing
If Paradox regains its cast then we're in for bigger problem because the alternate rotation doesn't exist so we're talking 9 freaking cast in a row!!! (and we're not talking picto cast here...)
If FireIII proc is changed such that it's a dps loss to transpose fireIII then I forsee people complaining that the little gimmicky optisation available to them is now gone.
So either way, no matter what SE does... it's a loss.

- Flare Star :
Improving the Flare Star situation is imo the most critic issue. The spell is not fun to do. There are too many times where you feel cheated by the boss for not being able to finish your firephase. This will be all the more true with FRU which will most likely have 1 or 2 phase with boss going in and out of action every 30s.
The most important thing should be that Flare Star becomes fun/exciting to use and not a big disappointement whenever you loose enochian/can't finish your firephase.
Usually the most reasonable proposal I've seen are
- Makes the potency Base+X per FireIV cast so that it can be used as a DPS gain regardless of the length of the Fire phase.
- Makes it so that only Paradox and Despair grant stacks. Those two being the 2 spells we're 100% sure people would always do their best to cast during any firephase.

[GartredZW]

-snip-

I really couldn't care less what new players would find more approachable. I started at the beginning of Endwalker a level 1 Thaumaturge, and before the start of Dawntrail, I was clearing Anabaseios Savage in farm parties. Why should the people who can't even be bothered to learn the job be catered to more than the people who already enjoy it? It makes no sense.
This goes for Paradox and Thunder. Being easier isn't a good or bad thing. It's just less fun.
I'm not sure what your point was by pointing out how many hard cast spells in a row we have to do. That's the entire point of Black Mage. And like I said before, we've got more than enough movement tools to deal with whatever we need. Movement tools were completely separate from the main rotation tools.

And as for the "just" thing, all I said to do was hit CTRL-Z on two simple things. The idea I had for Flare star would be nice, but I don't mind the skill as it is now.

[Sylvain]

I really couldn't care less what new players would find more approachable. I started at the beginning of Endwalker a level 1 Thaumaturge, and before the start of Dawntrail, I was clearing Anabaseios Savage in farm parties. Why should the people who can't even be bothered to learn the job be catered to more than the people who already enjoy it? It makes no sense.

Well

See it this way

Design A - less approachable but more engaging and technical : The fraction of the player base that can interact properly with the kit enjoys it, the rest less.
Desgin B - more approachable but less technical and thus engaging : Everyone can interact properly with the kit.


So you have two groups of people, let's call them the good players "G" and the less good players, "C".

In design A, G get to play the job but not C. if G is the majority of the players, then it's an ok design. if C is the majority of the playerbase (which is the case), then the majority of your players can't interact with a portion of the game.

If too many jobs have design A, this ends up off putting players from group C which can leads to frustration and unsubbing as "nothing fits".

Players in G keep requesting more A design and players in C keep requesting more B design.

This goes for Paradox and Thunder. Being easier isn't a good or bad thing. It's just less fun.

Basically this, you find it less fun because it is easier.
Many find it more fun because it is easier. You just rarely, if ever, see them posting because they don't interact with forums.
Except that litterally all the players from my FC or static which didn't enjoy BLM because it had just too much cast enjoy the new instant paradox.
The only one that didn't like is our BLM and me i'm a bit on the fence... Not saying this sample is of any particular relevance.
But that's something I noticed, everyone who leveled up the BLM was like "ooh it's so cool that the fire paradox is instant it's so much easier ot move around now"

Many didn't enjoy BLM because it was too hard
Many currently don't enjoy SMN, because it is too simple.

However, when looking at the numbers, what we see is that most people are C.
Provided dps follows, even in ultimate you mostly see "easier" jobs.

For every BLM you encountered on TOP, you had 10 summoners/rdm
For every AST you has 10 whm

etc etc.

If you're a game developper you want most people to enjoy most aspects of your game.
And you need to make the difference between the loud minority and the quiet majority.

Again, when you read the forum it seems to be that everyone wants a much more hardcore game.
Yet, in practice in game it doesn't seem to be the case. The playerbase as a whole follows the path of least resistance.

So caving in to a request that might only please a small fraction at the expanse of the majority is a tricky thing to do.
Basically, what if it results in less subs? From this PoV, better loose a fraction of the fraction (the HC) than a fraction of the majority (the casual).

the ideal case is just something in between that fits for everyone but in practice that's impossible to achieve as there'll always be someone who wants it harder/easier than you and thus will feel unsatisfied.

Taking BLM, we see people mourning the "alternative rotation". (so do I). Yet, this is exactly what kept many people away from enjoying BLM.
I mean, who are you to say that your enjoyement to the alternative rotation, old design, prevails the one from those who didn't enjoy it and prefer the new one?

And as for the "just" thing, all I said to do was hit CTRL-Z on two simple things. The idea I had for Flare star would be nice, but I don't mind the skill as it is now.

Yeah this one at least everyone seems to agree, no matter how you look at it, no one really likes the skill.
"Idea's good, execution is bad".

Thus I wouldn't be surprised to see some changes on that skill next patch.

[GartredZW]

Where does this line of thinking end?
Aggro management is too hard, so let's just make tank stance a basic "give aggro when dealing damage" toggle.
Healers having more than two buttons is too hard, so now they just have one spell to spam.
Positionals are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Cast times in general are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Melee needing to be close to the enemy to deal damage is too hard, so we made their range the same as phys ranged.
Combo actions are too hard.
Random Procs are too hard.
Keeping your GCD rolling at all times is too hard.

Eventually, you're going to have to tell people "Don't like this? well then play something you do like." "Too hard? do you want to put in the effort to make it work, or do you just want to play something without that thing?"
What's my option for that exactly? I don't like new Black Mage as much, so what should I do? Time travel back to Endwalker? I already tried all other jobs, and none of them got close to Black Mage in how fun they are.
Better yet, Maybe I should start using the tactics that so clearly work. "Dragoon is still too hard. I want to play this class, but the combos are too long, and I forget which half I'm in. Also remove the weaving."
How many people actually took a look at Black Mage and said "Well before, it was just way too hard, but now with an instant paradox that throws off the entire timing of the fire phase, it's way better. Now I enjoy it, and will play it more than my previous main."
Because in my experience, It's mostly just non-Black Mage mains who say "yeah, cool changes" then go back to playing what they already liked. Nothing of value was gained.
This expansion especially made these changes even more pointless because they also introduced a brand new easier caster at the same time. Not to mention that if Black Mage was too hard, there were already Red Mage and Summoner before, which are both far easier.

I worded this kind of weirdly, but I don't think easier equates to less fun. I just think that the changes to paradox and thunder are less fun even in spite of the fact that they're easier. I hear so many people who seem to not grasp that something being easier to pull off doesn't make it better or more fun.

You mention that the majority of the playerbase can't interact with a portion of the game as a negative thing, but I'd consider that to be the system working as intended. It's not that they can't play Black Mage, it's just that the skill curve is too intense, and requires too much planning and thought.
I don't blame these people for not wanting to spend the mental energy needed to play Black Mage all the time. Red Mage was my third class leveled this expansion after all. But I can respect when those people find something they can actually do and stay in their own lane. Instead, I'm to believe that there's this huge portion of players that far outnumber the already existing Black Mage enjoyers who cry out that they would love Black Mage if it wasn't Black Mage, and was instead some other similar, but easier and less deep job (including non-standard who most people never did, including myself). And Square ran the numbers to find that they would definitely gain more loyal subscribers and thus more money by changing one cast time, removing Sharpcast, and removing Ice's increased MP ticks.

I'm not even arguing that nothing should change about anything. I just think that changes should make sense and add to the fun of the class and not done haphazardly thrown out there without thinking, or take away gameplay. You won't hear many people complaining about the third Xenoglossy, Retrace, or even new Manafont (especially since you can late-weave it now). Those are good changes.

[Carighan]

Where does this line of thinking end?
Aggro management is too hard, so let's just make tank stance a basic "give aggro when dealing damage" toggle.
Healers having more than two buttons is too hard, so now they just have one spell to spam.
Positionals are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Cast times in general are too hard for some players, so we just remove them.
Melee needing to be close to the enemy to deal damage is too hard, so we made their range the same as phys ranged.
Combo actions are too hard.
Random Procs are too hard.
Keeping your GCD rolling at all times is too hard.

There is no hard cutoff.

This is one of those situations where, as a game developer, you cannot have hard and fast rules. You need to judge on a case-by-case basis which portion of your community to piss off vs which to make more happy. As your game ages, this changes even for existing groups due to a combination of naturally finding it difficult to attract new players and the number of buttons vastly increasing (which warrants some degree of re-trivialization of mechanics with each expansion, anyways, the alternative is doing the WoW thing where every time you add 3 new buttons, you remove 3 older ones again).

Can a MMORPG be made too easy? Sure. But it's not as easy as you might think, due to how MMOs work as leisure time brain relaxation experiences for many, not high-stress-high-focus exercises. It can also absolutely be too difficult. It's a balancing effort. There is no simple solution.