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.

[Kozh]

If they'd cater to us, we'd have more complex jobs.
I don't get your point.

I don't want this to become another "raider vs casual", as I'm both, but my experience is the same as Auro. I haven't joined the Balance discord at that time, but I did join a lot of discussion/arguments on reddit reggarding AST change. Most of people who celebrated that the rng was removed were raiders.

Whether or not this confirms that the only reason they remove card rng was because of raiders, I don't know for sure. But imo it's not wrong to say that a lot of raiders dislike the rng because you can't optimize it.

[Riusvell]

I don't want this to become another "raider vs casual", as I'm both, but my experience is the same as Auro. I haven't joined the Balance discord at that time, but I did join a lot of discussion/arguments on reddit reggarding AST change. Most of people who celebrated that the rng was removed were raiders.

Whether or not this confirms that the only reason they remove card rng was because of raiders, I don't know for sure. But imo it's not wrong to say that a lot of raiders dislike the rng because you can't optimize it.

That's a shame to hear, I've quit discussing jobs for the vast majority due to the great EW SMN debacle.
I liked the RNG for some part, the only part I didn't like was flipping back into a melee card if I needed a range one. That was my only complaint with EW AST. Yea, played AST too. Don't like the new card system as it just feels like there's no real purpose to them anymore and are for me, information overload. I don't want this to be changed for those who do enjoy it though.

[Jeeqbit]

Suddenly seeing Black Mages in all my roulettes (normally they are like unicorns). You can see how it's a casual hobby for people to play Black Mage sometimes or in some tiers, rather than something they play all the time.

[Doopliss]

If they'd cater to us, we'd have more complex jobs.
I don't get your point.

I know somebody already replied to you, but I want to say--as somebody who has been raiding since ARR and only gave up out of boredom during the last tier of Pandaemonium--I honestly agree with Auro_Seldaris, too...to a point (I don't think it should be blanketed as "raiders" in general).

However it's usually not casual players complaining; they don't tend to give enough of a shit about being optimized or competent. Most complaints are done by completely middling-tiered raiders who want to go through the motions of raiding to score high on third party websites with as little pushback and as few fail states as possible. These aren't the type of people raiding because they love the RPG fantasy or engaging with complex mechanics; they want to humble brag and engage with the most boring spreadsheet simulator in the world.

It's why endgame fights are a goddamn bore, too. The completely flat arenas with easily recognizable floor patterns; the bosses with hitboxes so large they may as well be striking dummies; the lack of role-specific duties; the complete avoidance of any mechanics that might require a player or two to opt out of 100% uptime; the culling of positionals, timers, dots, stances, cast times, etc.

While I can see some of these as having been removed to ease player-specific burdens in casual play (namely stances, but I still think the removal of those sucks hard), most job mechanics were things casual players could ignore and still get through the, you know, casual part of the game just fine.

But, no, in fact most of these changes have been to appease the type of player who thinks a job with a lower skill requirement not scoring as high as a job with a higher skill requirement on FFLogs or some shit is bad design and needs to be rectified. You can't have RNG with AST because that could ruin their parse run. You can't have fail states because that might shatter their ego. It's the type of player that wouldn't let a WHM in their party back in HW because it didn't have as much overall DPS output as SCH or AST did, despite WHM being a far more accessible and easy healer that was good for progression (and still extremely easy to clear the fights with lol).

Unfortunately these type of players tend to be the loudest about balance and why we're here today. It's all in the name of "optimization".

[Azurarok]

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.

Why is that optimization step jank? Weighing triple/swiftcast for the speed gain they give cast time > GCD casts as opposed to using it purely for movement is a pretty reasonable trade-off to have to consider, much like damaging gap closers.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]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.

Did they mention giving BLM even more triple/swifts in 7.2? AFAIK, no words has been said about that at all. Although the implication of reducing Fire IV cast time to 2.00s does means that Triple/Swift usage on Fire IVs will no longer result in DPS gains. Which means they are there solely for mobility option than serving dual purpose like they currently do.

[...]Unfortunately these type of players tend to be the loudest about balance and why we're here today. It's all in the name of "optimization".

There's a term to address these sub-type: the Meta Slaves.

Taking an example of what I just replied a paragraph prior:

- Triple/Swift is an option to deal with movement requirements while also serving as a DPS gain tool if the BLM wishes to go for it.
- Triple/Swift is now solely a mobility tool. There is no more consideration needed to be given.

God forbid people have to actually think about anything else besides 'MuH dPs/BarSe!!', we can't have that! Option two is way to go!! ... is what I'd advocate if I'm a meta slave.

Yuck. Just yuck.

[Kazuke_Miso]

There's a term to address these sub-type: the Meta Slaves.[/SIZE][/I]

Honestly a better term, though less well understood, is FFLogs discord dwellers.

Seriously, if you've ever checked out the FFLogs discord for more than a week or so you'd understand what I mean.

Those people will cry, kick, and scream if they had to drop a WHM auto attack to do a mechanic. They whine and whine and beg Kihra to count DPS differently to cater to their specific raiding disability. I have no idea why Kihra keeps listening to these people, but I guess now that FFLogs itself is a microtransaction I can hardly be more surprised.

And it's also no wonder Xenosys Vex is their cheerleader, the guy who basically ghostwrote modern WAR and made it a braindead, overpowered tank. And not content to stop there he kept bitching about Gunbreaker too just because it needed more than one brain cell. He unironically believes that it's fine to gut jobs into amoeba-level gameplay just so you can do a slightly harder DDR raid.

Modern gameplay, from both encounter and job design, caters towards these amoebas, who take joy in repeating the exact same sequence of actions 100000 times to get a rank 2 on fflogs. I honestly think out of all the content creators out there Xeno has probably done the most damage to this game's design. It's weird that he even was a DRK main in HW, like he was a completely different person back then.

I'll admit I haven't watched him at all since late EW though, so IDK if he changed his mind. But man, his takes during ShB and EW were the peak of idiocy and the devs really listened to him.

[Kozh]

And it's also no wonder Xenosys Vex is their cheerleader, the guy who basically ghostwrote modern WAR and made it a braindead, overpowered tank. And not content to stop there he kept bitching about Gunbreaker too just because it needed more than one brain cell. He unironically believes that it's fine to gut jobs into amoeba-level gameplay just so you can do a slightly harder DDR raid.

Oh god, no, please. I will cry if they butcher gunbreaker too. It's one of my favorite jobs to play, a tank that sorta feels like dps. I genuinely hope SE doesn't listen to anyone demanding gunbreaker simplification.

[SWATomega]

I'll wait for it all to play out in the end. Personally if they want to remove the time add it a an additional layer that the timer can be maintained but not required. Add an additional damage benefit while the timer is running and if it drops off then you'll have to restart it. Or if reverted have the timer pause if it hits 0 and you like mid cast of fire iv so you don't lose the spell mid cast. Something to help new players when starting out but will help the veteran players in certain scenarios.