Ty SE for BLM changes!

[Wired-Lain]

Personally I think they should have kept the playstyle and just gave them really high potentcy on a few skills. The BLM who takes forever to cast but then does 9999 damage (or the XIV equivalent) was my favorite part of the fantasy.

Same with summoner that also doesn't really cast anymore.

Its my favorite part of the ARR cinematic too. Watch the black mage during the battle he spends most of it casting a single spell (but when he finishes it o boy!)

[Daralii]

You just need more planning and fight understanding

Gross. Disgusting. Get rid of it.

[Cleo_king]

skill issue

[OliverQ]

Butcher... is ... Rough. Butchering is as I said like what happened to Summoner.

This is more like at worst a bad haircut? To me the changes make a lot of sense.

Again my ignorance on Black Mage is what has me confused as an outsider looking in.

I think they were trying to do the changes people were asking for because it seems to be liberating limitations that otherwise held the Job back. I think 2 seconds is still a long cast time. . .
But maybe it have been better just to reduce all cast times by .2 seconds instead... Does that sound better?

Anyways as I know I don't know much about Black Mages this will be all I'll say about it.
I'll Leave you guys to it I'm out of my depth and I just don't understand since I didn't live the black mage life.

The job is quite literally butchered. Its entire core foundation of play is now gone. It's going to play like a healer with 2 second or faster cast speeds and no fail state.

[OliverQ]

Well no they played Pictomancer.

You still need to stay put but a lot of the cast times were reduced by 1 second... they're just making it less punishing because when it came to high-skill expression... people were rather to exclude a black mage than invite them.

That's not fair to the black mage players. You say if people wanted to play a caster... but people weren't playing Black Mage. There was a whole huge thread about it.

This is the part I don't understand. Like... is it reeeeaaally a big deal to make it a bit easier? I mean - it's not like what they did to Summoner now that you bring up Summoner.

Summoner had the most complex rotation in the game with three dots to keep up. Now it's a fischer price toy... it's like that scene from Hannibal where Lector made the FBI agent eat his own brain.
In comparison... this feels more like they were helping black mage players out. (A bit - just a bit)

Like the meme was always Black Mages don't move... I guess I never realized Black Mages REALLY don't want to move. It's like trying to get a cat to move off a thing you're working on and they start doing aggressive meows and hissing. D:

You have said you don't play black mage. You're also ignoring the removal of the astral fire/umbral timers. Longer cast times while maintaining astral fire is the core foundation of the job. With no timers, and very fast cast time, it's no different than a white mage spamming glare.

Some people want jobs with a bit of complexity. Not every job needs to be super easy.

[Daralii]

You have said you don't play black mage. You're also ignoring the removal of the astral fire/umbral timers. Longer cast times while maintaining astral fire is the core foundation of the job. With no timers, and very fast cast time, it's no different than a white mage spamming glare.

Some people want jobs with a bit of complexity. Not every job needs to be super easy.

There's also no room for on-the-fly adjustments to keep things rolling or payoff for knowing the fight and job well enough to bank and use tools to maintain uptime, which was one of the last bastions of noticeable skill expression for any job.

[Mistress_Irika]

I truly feel sorry for all the previous BLM mains. The only time I tried playing the class was during the ShB expansion when I took a break from being a SMN. Class was difficult. Yet, I saw nothing wrong with the class. Maybe I can somewhat understand the reduced cast times. The removal of the timer itself is something different. What did I miss between EW and now? Did BLM somehow get harder to use?

I hope you don't quit on the class. At the very least, it has not suffered with being reworked entirely, not like SMN. I literally have to be careful on my travels since Carby is doing a lot less fighting and a lot more shielding. I do miss when it could tank for me, but that's a different story for a different thread. You just have a ton of things that are no longer going away if not used immediately which again feels weird. The change could have been a lot worse. However, I don't exactly think that it should have a huge effect on you.

It's a literal shame that skill expression is starting to become nonexistent as time goes on. That's all I'm seeing with the changes, this one included.

[DekaiTsuna88]

I truly feel sorry for all the previous BLM mains. The only time I tried playing the class was during the ShB expansion when I took a break from being a SMN. Class was difficult. Yet, I saw nothing wrong with the class. Maybe I can somewhat understand the reduced cast times. The removal of the timer itself is something different. What did I miss between EW and now? Did BLM somehow get harder to use?

I hope you don't quit on the class. At the very least, it has not suffered with being reworked entirely, not like SMN. I literally have to be careful on my travels since Carby is doing a lot less fighting and a lot more shielding. I do miss when it could tank for me, but that's a different story for a different thread. You just have a ton of things that are no longer going away if not used immediately which again feels weird. The change could have been a lot worse. However, I don't exactly think that it should have a huge effect on you.

It's a literal shame that skill expression is starting to become nonexistent as time goes on. That's all I'm seeing with the changes, this one included.

In DT they introduced Flare Star, making BLM a job with rigid rotation. You're heavily punished if you don't do 6 times Fire IV in fire phase. Previously you can do non standard rotations if the situation demanded so. Since DT, they started to heavily restrict non-standard. With this patch, non-standard is dead plus BLM is now a very boring job to play. Basically any kind of skill expression is no longer there.

Sadly the issue is not limited to BLM itself. Imo the way they handled BLM is a proof that they are not paying any attention to the job oversimplification issue. It's a telling sign that this game is already going down the road where many people won't like. Honestly I'm not sure how they take feedback; did they even take feedback at all, or did they do what Yoshi-P mentioned back then, which is acting proactively instead of defensively? I don't know. If it happens to be the latter, their proactive attempt is blind shooting at best.

My BLM main friend is considering not resubbing after their sub ends. They've put up with these shenanigans ever since the start of DT. I guess this changes broke their straw. The others are looking to move away from this game entirely even though they're not BLM mains due to the uninspiring changes (which is just number shuffle) they implemented with other jobs as well.

[CVXIV]

I don't play enough black mage myself, but I wonder how this will impact the spell speed materia
For awhile now, I always thought most materia was pointless since it seems most jobs want crit
So if this change also impacts that, if black mages ever used it to begin with, then that'd be pretty disappointing since the materia system seems mostly underutilized

It also makes me wonder how the job would fare in Bozja, because the specific armor you get there applies a haste buff to you already

Of course that's more of a niche thing and wouldn't impact a majority of combat scenarios

I always wanted to play more of the job, because I had heard you needed intricate knowledge of the fights to perform well and that was always appealing to me. Plus the destructive aspect of it is pretty fun. Red Mage was always my caster of choice because I like spellblades and the ability to revive people to save a run is great feeling when you pull it off

[RedLolly]

If we don't have a job that completely breaks if they can't keep a timer rolling in certain circumstances, then the devs no longer need to worry about trying to design fights around that one job with strict timers.