Please do not take away BLM's timers.

[Oreste]

I registered on the forum just to leave this comment.
Please read to the end, especially if you are belong to the SE.

I really don't like what SE are doing with battle jobs.
I remember the times when we had the old SMN, and back then its rework seemed like a very sad decision to me: the old summoner may have been weird, but it was difficult and interesting, and I liked it. Like the AST, who simply had its night phase taken away (why? who benefited from this? was it really necessary to adhere to the rule "we can only have an equal number of shield and regen healers"?). I don't remember the old MNK, maybe the EDW monk became better, but the fact that in DT you took away its timers (which kept the monk player in suspense) in my opinion destroyed the job.

And now you came for my favorite job too.
I remember the times when BLM had an Enochian button, but okay, maybe this nerf was worth the convenience. In EDW BLM became better because we got a beautiful button replacing Fire1, and also a very beautiful button that gives a stack of Polyglot. Back when the Pandemonium raids came out, we still had mana tics that forced you to rely on feelings and strictly control the time you were in the ice phase, and it was great, it was wonderful. I fondly remember the savage raids that I played on this job. I really liked challenging myself.

But what have we seen since the release of DT?
I strongly disagree with people who think that BLM was ok in 7.0, IT WAS NOT.
They cut off mana tics from the job (by which deleted time management in the ice phase), gave it an awkward unnecessary Flare Star (that greatly simplified time management in the fire phase), gave it portable Ley Lines (?!), and made Despair an insta-cast (?!?!?!?!). Despair was one of those buttons that kept the soul of BLM inside it. That great moment when you have 3 seconds left on the gauge, you have to cast Despair, but a voidzone is already spawning under your feet - that's what black mage means. A strategic approach to your gameplay, an attempt to predict the timings of mechanics that will happen in the next 30 seconds. That's what BLM meant to me.

After adding Flare Star and insta-cast Despair, this class became boring for me, so I refused to play it. NOT because PCT appeared, but because BLM itself started having problems.
And now it seems to go into oblivion, and will remain the same ghost of its former self, like summoner, astrologer and monk.

I'm seriously considering unsubscribing if the patch notes will confirm our fears about such a rework of BLM.

[Rehayem]

You will be given one button to press and you will enjoy it

[Jeeqbit]

I registered on the forum just to leave this comment.
Please read to the end, especially if you are belong to the SE.

I really don't like what SE are doing with battle jobs.
I'm seriously considering unsubscribing if the patch notes will confirm our fears about such a rework of BLM.

Believe me, this forum has had regulars saying how they don't like what is happening with battle jobs for looks at imaginary watch ... I've lost count of the years but they were doing it in Stormblood.

The most acknowledgement I think I saw of this was:
- At the launch of Endwalker, they said they understand people want 3.0 jobs back (obvious reference to the forums) but they are happy with where they got them in 5.0 and wanted to continue it in Endwalker.
- At the launch of Dawntrail, they acknowledged healers wanted more attacks so added an extra one every 2 minutes.
- Right before Dawntrail suddenly acknowledging loads of things that have been said for years on the forums, and admitting removing stress had removed the fun.

Their community team apparently read the forums but they don't provide any indication if they do. Developers are far more likely to read the specific forums such as the DPS forums because of how posts shuffle through the General forum fast before they are likely to even see them.

I personally found 7.0 BLM alright because I only play it casually. For a casual BLM, the changes were useful but it upset people who actually mained it. But removing the timer and the Fire IV cast times, combined with how it highlights what to press now, effectively kills what is unique about it and turns it into a glamour for the other casters.

Unfortunately, there is precedent that what we observe in streams is what is changing. There is no chance they will revert it before the patch because they have a 2 week final QA period and there is less than 2 weeks now.

[Oreste]

Developers are far more likely to read the specific forums such as the DPS forums because of how posts shuffle through the General forum fast before they are likely to even see them.

k, now I'm thinking to go whine on the DPS forum

[Hastatus]

I recently watched a youtube video that was grading which jobs were the hardest and I was struck by them all being my favorites: GNB, AST, MNK, and BLM. I gravitate towards the more complex jobs. Even if I have not mastered them all I like there to be something I can improve on over time in different parts of the game. DT gutted MNK and BLM my two most played jobs. Their EW versions felt much better to me. I stopped playing BLM outside of PvP due to the changes. I was planning on getting back into BLM in 7.2 assuming all the changes would have been settled, but now BLM looks like its getting dumbed down again. If you're changing BLM again because not enough people are playing it now, it is because you keep making changes to the job every chance you get and some people are waiting for changes to stop first. I didn't care that there are jobs like PCT that are easier to play and do more damage. The only people that complain about PCT are those who use or rely on the opinions of people who use third party apps. Those who fixate on 'my job isn't doing as much damage as that job' are whiny insecure players who don't know what fun is. These types are never content. There should be jobs that are at every end of the difficulty spectrum. If all jobs are easy to play then there will be no reason to play FFXIV anymore because jobs are the thing that players spend the most time with. You take your job with you everywhere. Being able to do roulettes at all levels and have a job that makes them more interesting and fun is important. SE's obsession with making 5% of the game harder and harder (Savage and Ultimate) while making the rest of the game easier and easier (making sure every job can easily do Savages and Ultimates) is probably what is lowering your player numbers more than anything else.

If you want to make absurd changes to 7.x BLM go ahead and add it as a new job, but restore 6.x BLM which you murdered. There is no reason you cannot have two schools of MNK or BLM in the same game and actually see which is preferred. If you continue on your destructive path you may as well change the name of the new job to Bland Mage while you are at it.

[ReynTime]

Dear Creative Studio 3,

Your obsession over "metrics!! metrics!! metrics!!" is killing the fun of the game.

[GartredZW]

Black Mage was the one class in Endwalker that I could truly say I "got"
It's not that it was the only one I understood, (not much on Scholar to get in the first place) but it was the only one with the types of challenges I enjoyed. I'm not good at keeping track of lots of long timers to hit cooldowns on the dot. but I can certainly judge distances and short term timeframes.
If Black Mage was a 10/10 in Endwalker, then my second favorite, Red Mage was a 7/10 to put it into perspective, and most others hover around 3 to 6.
This change, if it actually makes it to live, will take away pretty much every last thing I enjoyed about Black Mage up to this point. I'm on a break from the game, but still allowed here because I was an idiot and took too long to decide whether to cancel my sub or not, causing my 6 month to lapse. I don't even know if I'll want to come back knowing that this is what they did to my class.
It's honestly baffling just how much copium I've huffed in the last year about this.
"Black Mage is by far the best maintained job. I've got nothing to worry about"
"It's only the media tour, they've still got time to fix these issues. I never played non-standard anyway. Maybe it'll be fun"
"Well at least we got Ice Paradox back. that's a little better, I guess. Even if it gives us yet more free movement."
"So Despair is instant now, but at least now the fire phase isn't so restrictive at low spell speed. I don't like it, but it's at least better than it was before."
"I don't have to worry about 7.2. They've made massive changes already, and it's not nearly as bad as it was in 7.0. They're definitely done messing with it."
By the same scale, 7.2 Black Mage will probably be a 2/10. The only edge it has over Summoner is ley lines and Thunder. (Hear that CBU3? That's the next thing you want to cut.)

You can create all the unique encounters and quality of life changes you want, but at the end of the day, job design is the one thing that we all have to interact with. Being a master of a job in all scenarios as soon as you reach max level just turns it into something to keep your hands busy while you wait to find out the next safe spot to walk to in a fight. You might as well just let the game play itself, and mail us all a f-ing fidget spinner.
The whole point of having abilities to attack a boss with is so that we play an active part in winning against the boss. This sounds too obvious to point out, but they seem to not understand that making that as easy as mashing one button takes away that feeling entirely. There has to be a feeling that you play an active role in getting that health bar from 100% to 0%. And if they remove all wrong choices, what role do you play? Without the possibility of failure, there is no success.
Like I said, I don't know if I'll even want to come back to the game. I don't even know what game could replace this. Certainly not World of Warcraft. I gave up on it years ago, and at it's best, classes have been just "spam your filler while waiting for things to go off cooldown. occasionally you'll see a glowing button that you should press"
I watched bits and pieces of the live letter, and I just felt nothing. A year ago, I'd be hyped like crazy for Cosmic Exploration, or whatever that new Eureka was called. But now I just feel numb.
I came to this game for what it is, not what I could turn it into. Changing a game for people who don't even play it is just going to alienate your core fanbase, and win you customers who are more than likely to quit when they get bored.

[Fellgon]

I only hope that no one plays blm with these changes and more people realize the development team is full of BS for the future of this game

I havent found mutch players going blm since endwalker.

[Wawaya]

Who the hell are these changes for?

Who are these changes catering to? The casual players? The raiders?? Is this supposed to be a counter to PCT? BLM has always been a niche job, if it's to increase popularity, then to whom? Casual players don't really care about playing it perfectly. Raiders won't care either, if PCT still do less or an equal amount of DPS than an BLM, PCT will still be a better pick because of its support abilities and buff.

People were playing BLM BECAUSE of its uniqueness, why reducing cast time? Why removing timers? I thought they were going to make jobs more unique? This is just SMN 2 with explosions. They are just stripping away BLM's identity
There are 20+ jobs in this game, what is the point of making a copy paste of every job with a different coat of color?

PCT will still outdps every other DPS in the next Ultimate anyway thanks to its muses, so this is all pointless
I'll just inhale an insane amount of copium and hoping this is some kind of weird dev build. But it's far too elaborated to be one

If this truly is what they want BLM to be, just don't. Nobody wants this. Nobody is happy with this. They can make a job more appealing to a broader audience without stripping its identity away. But are they truly capable of such thing?

[Fellgon]

Maybe this is what Yoshida talked about in the mobile game's announcement, about how they'd been designing the main game to be easily translatable to mobile.

Thats make sense to me.