Please reconsider an upcoming Black Mage change.

[Supersnow845]

I mean that's a good change if you like hardcasting spells. Transpose should have been replaced with umbral soul from the beginning, and umbral soul should be usable in astral fire. Or keep it, make it only usable in astral fire, and have it button swap into umbral soul upon switching to umbral ice.

I have no attachment to instant cast black mage but I think it is cooler than the original non-standard. Personally I am a fan of rotations that are set in stone and just work correctly. People will always optimize games regardless, so it makes no difference. At the top level, you're always going to be doing the same thing. Standardizing rotations and making the meta organically happen is a hallmark of good job design in my opinion. No matter what your opinion is, once the job is solved there is only one right way of playing it.

But instant cast black mage isn’t a “set in stone rotation” that just works for particular fights, it’s an example of someone theorycrafting a potential usable rotation within BLM’s parameters that doesn’t cast, there are other rotations that sit between the “all instants” and “standard” that have varying different levels of instant casts compared to the two extremes and different fights favour different ones

If “standardising rotations” is the hallmark of good job design in your opinion this is an OBJECTIVE negative because this has basically reinvented non standard

[GartredZW]

I mean that's a good change if you like hardcasting spells. Transpose should have been replaced with umbral soul from the beginning, and umbral soul should be usable in astral fire. Or keep it, make it only usable in astral fire, and have it button swap into umbral soul upon switching to umbral ice.

It's a terrible change. We use Transpose so we can swap over to a sustainable state in ice even during combat so we don't lose enochian.
The standard rotation right now uses transpose to swap to Astral Fire 1 before using the Firestarter proc. It's a decent damage gain.
yeah, I'm not a fan of that one aspect of the standard rotation right now, but I'd fix it by just making the Firestarter proc either not happen every time, or not work unless you're in Astral Fire 3 already.

[HikariKurosawa]

It's a terrible change. We use Transpose so we can swap over to a sustainable state in ice even during combat so we don't lose enochian.
The standard rotation right now uses transpose to swap to Astral Fire 1 before using the Firestarter proc. It's a decent damage gain.
yeah, I'm not a fan of that one aspect of the standard rotation right now, but I'd fix it by just making the Firestarter proc either not happen every time, or not work unless you're in Astral Fire 3 already.

It should just be what you use to swap from umbral ice to astral fire. Transpose is clunky and doesn't feel good to use. Their design intention was clearly for the guaranteed firestarter proc to be how you switch from umbral ice to astral fire, it's just not worth it because of transpose.

If transpose was for astral fire only, it would never be used outside of downtime situations where you want to use umbral soul. You're never gaining dps by using transpose to swap to umbral ice.

The guaranteed firestarter proc is good design, it's just clunky because of how you can use transpose to make it a dps gain. The rotation would flow much better if you had to do what they intended to do, and the action bars would be much nicer if umbral soul was merged with transpose. The only way to do that is to make transpose into a downtime only button by making it only usable in astral fire once you learn umbral soul.

@Supersnow845 Yeah I agree personally I'd prefer it if they didn't make instant cast blm possible, but I can see the appeal in it and I wouldn't be surprised if the devs wanted it to stay. It's not like it is dependent on addons or anything. Once you get a good enough sense for the timings and mechanics of the fights you can get a sense of how to maximize uptime and potency through balancing instant cast sequences with hardcast sequences. Personally I agree, I'd prefer it if the rotation was rigid. I'm not sure if that's congruent with the encounter design going forward though, and the existence of instant cast blm rotations enables them to have much more freedom over encounter design.

I think it is kinda cool that there is a spectrum of BLM rotations between as much hardcasting as possible and pure instant casting. This is how non-standard should have been all along, if it is going to exist.

[Owyn_Addens]

It should just be what you use to swap from umbral ice to astral fire. Transpose is clunky and doesn't feel good to use. Their design intention was clearly for the guaranteed firestarter proc to be how you switch from umbral ice to astral fire, it's just not worth it because of transpose.

Personally I don't find Transpose clunky at all, and quite enjoy using it (even if I use it waaaaay less than before). If I had to guess at developer intentions, I'd guess that the guaranteed Firestarter is "supposed" to just be used during your Fire phase as an extra reset for the timer. Using Firestarter straight out of Ice to switch to Fire without using Transpose first is actually worse than clicking it off or waiting for it to time out.

[HikariKurosawa]

Personally I don't find Transpose clunky at all, and quite enjoy using it (even if I use it waaaaay less than before). If I had to guess at developer intentions, I'd guess that the guaranteed Firestarter is "supposed" to just be used during your Fire phase as an extra reset for the timer. Using Firestarter straight out of Ice to switch to Fire without using Transpose first is actually worse than clicking it off or waiting for it to time out.

You should be using transpose 100% of the times you come out of umbral ice, and using the firestarter proc right away to optimize potency. That's how the job works currently.

[Owyn_Addens]

You should be using transpose 100% of the times you come out of umbral ice, and using the firestarter proc right away to optimize potency. That's how the job works currently.

Yeah, I do that with every F3P, which apparently you think is bad for the job? I'm just saying that in a world where Transpose doesn't exist you still wouldn't use Firestarter while in UI3 because it would still be terrible.

[HikariKurosawa]

Yeah, I do that with every F3P, which apparently you think is bad for the job? I'm just saying that in a world where Transpose doesn't exist you still wouldn't use Firestarter while in UI3 because it would still be terrible.

So what are you suggesting you would use fire 1 to switch to astral fire? At the end of the day I think they should just tune it so that it is worth it to use firestarter while in UI3, or make ice paradox switch to astral fire. Or something.

It just doesn't feel good to use transpose to switch over, and it would feel worse to use fire 1.

[Carighan]

Yeah, I agree. The extra transpose just feels like busywork for the sake of... well good question. Inducing RSI faster? Honestly they could remove the entire skill, find a better mechanic to save state for long disconnects, then if you absolutely want to get the RSI of constant transposing back, work a fidget toy with the other hand while playing, same result. Or bind all your abilities combinations so you always got to press 2 buttons.

[Altera]

i am wondering if BLM has been completely abandoned by Players as well as balance devs as currently BLM is the only Job not on the list of group comps in FRU. Not even 0.1%. PCT has 70%, RDM 27% and SMN 3%. BLM job symbol isnt even showing up on the screen of all the jobs lol

And about the NonStandard lines now back in full force. I feel they need to remove Despair, or make it become Flarestar at lvl 100. Keep its 3sec casttime, but buff its potency or make it a guaranteed Crit/DH hit to offset Despair no longer being in the rotations. As well make it refresh Enochian.

I find this expansion has been pretty laughable how Yoshida and balance devs has let PCT run around rampant being OP for 4-5 months now. And feels like fights have been catering to all PCTs strenghts.
I am feeling like my desire to keep playing now diminishing by every week and I have been a THM in 1.0 until Job System was introduced and been BLM ever since. Never taken a single subscription break from the game. Kept it at 180days plan, max retainers since day one to support their plans for ARR. Now I have reduced it to monthly subscription and only 2 retainers extra.

If BLM doesnt get the love it needs, or PCT gets its deserved Nerf, I feel i will make Sub 0days and retainers 0 :/

[Owyn_Addens]

So what are you suggesting you would use fire 1 to switch to astral fire? At the end of the day I think they should just tune it so that it is worth it to use firestarter while in UI3, or make ice paradox switch to astral fire. Or something.

It just doesn't feel good to use transpose to switch over, and it would feel worse to use fire 1.

If Transpose -> Firestarter didn't exist, here are your other options for using the Firestarter proc ranked.

1. Use Firestarter after Paradox but before Despair to reset the timer, go through Umbral Ice, and then swap back to Fire with a fast-cast F3.
2. Don't use Firestarter at all—either wait for the buff to run out or click it off.
3. Use Firestarter while in Umbral Ice. To be clear, the reason this is the worst option is because you're not dealing any extra damage than a normal fast-cast F3, but now your timer is shorter because it starts ticking sooner.

Stop whining about Transpose and either improve or swap jobs instead of clamoring for them to keep sanding away at Black Mage until there's nothing left.

i am wondering if BLM has been completely abandoned by Players as well as balance devs as currently BLM is the only Job not on the list of group comps in FRU. Not even 0.1%. PCT has 70%, RDM 27% and SMN 3%. BLM job symbol isnt even showing up on the screen of all the jobs lol/

Literally every single clear at time of posting has a Pictomancer in it because it's so blatantly OP that not bringing one is just shooting yourself in the foot. As long as Picto continues to exist in its current form it's basically guaranteed a slot in every ultimate group, so Black Mage can only go into the flex DPS slot where it has to compete with both melees that deal similar damage while having greater freedom of movement and SMN/RDM which deal less damage but bring an extra rez. It's real dire.