They are gutting Black Mage even more in 7.2

[Mikey_R]

It helps if we can define what "clunky" even means.

I've heard old PLD defined as clunky, SCH Energy Drain, Kaiten, long cast times, cast times in general, every gap closer. What counts as clunky and not? And within that definition, why would X mechanic count as clunky?

I can only comment on Paladin, but there were a couple of things that were starting to bug me. The first is the DoT when it came to downtime. Since every instance of Goring Blade was buffed (Blade of Valor was essentially a buffed Goring Blade), if there was downtime where you couldn't reapply it, you were essentially screwed. Boss comes back, you want to apply Goring Blade, but your FoF isn't ready, misaligning things and/or pushing your rotation back, potentially misaligning with the 2 minute raid window etc. Paladin's rigid rotation and reliance on that DoT wasn't helping. This is one of the reasons why I prefer new Paladin, because it offers more flexibility to the rotation. Though I probably would have continued to play Paladin regardless.

Another pain point for me was the fact the optimal rotation had you dropping a Sword Oath stack so that you didn't drift from the 2 minute window too much. To me, that is not intuitive at all because, why would you NOT use it? It was something that was in a weird spot and would have only been worse if we had the current Sword Oath combo back on Old Paladin.

Well that’s the thing. How do you decide what’s Jank and what isn’t. I don’t see why you think longer casts than recasts is Jank. You haven’t explained what’s wrong with it. “It feels unresponsive” why? The recast being shorter than the cast only comes into play with triplecast. Are the reverse aetherhue combo spells janky because they are long as well

What makes Jank in the first place

I do not think it is the long cast in general, it is the fact the cast time is longer than the GCD. Currently, Fire 4 at base is 2.8 seconds on a 2.5 second GCD. Compare that to Pictomancer's Subtractive Aetherhue spells, which are 2.3 second cast, but have a GCD of 3.3 seconds. In Black Mage's case, the cast finishes after the GCD has finished and in Pictomancer's case, the cast finished before the GCD is finished and allows a weave window.

I do not have an issue with Black Mage's cast times on Fire 4, what I do worry about is the now abundance of movement it is going to have with more Triple/Swiftcast usage available.