The destruction of BLM

[brinn12]

The population of BLMs has definitely exploded since the patch. Any dungeon I get often has another BLM in. I've been in trials and raids in Mentor Roulette with 3 BLMs even today... the BLM population has really exploded in a way I've never seen before.

Just like Summoner in early Endwalker. We know how that will end.

[PyurBlue]

What people consider interesting will vary though.

Completely fair and FF14 doesn't absolutely need aggro management at the moment, I just think there are some interesting ways to integrate it (and diversion wasn't one of those).

[DiaDeem]

[WaxSw]

New BLM is the exact same thing Yoshi-P complained when he talked about a platformer with no holes.

Its a shallow experience with no depth so people can jump in, consume it and boost the population so the devs can pat themselves in the back without consideration how this kind of designs are cancer that is slowly destroying the quality of the game and significantly lowers the self life of the content

[Supersnow845]

Square seriously needs to be more transparent with what they consider a success for these types of job changes

Like sure we can look at nu BLM numbers and go “success it’s popular now” but does square consider whether this popularity will stick or not? I mean I’ve discussed nu SMN a million times here in that they redid it, made it overpowered relative to its complexity, its popularity soared and they pat themselves on the back before ignoring the fact that it crashed in popularity as soon as it wasn’t overpowered relative to its complexity (because that title moved to PCT, a job everyone also agreed was better designed than nu SMN)

How much of BLM’s popularity right now comes from people genuinely enjoying the job vs “it’s super easy and it’s the current strongest caster”

[Valence]

In a way yes, but at the same time the concept of aggro could be adjusted and made much better. I never thought of pressing diversion every occasionally as interesting, but what if something like NIN's hide was an aggro tool? If you gained enmity you could use hide and reposition to force your aggressor to lose track of you. RDM could get its old bind back and combine it with displacement to create an evasion tool. SMN could get some kind of tank summon back and use it for defensive purposes. I feel like there is some room for interesting gameplay here.

Now that you mention it, it's one thing from current pvp that I never thought would actually work in pve with some care.

[Rithy255]

How much of BLM’s popularity right now comes from people genuinely enjoying the job vs “it’s super easy and it’s the current strongest caster”

I'm going to say theirs a decent amount of people who did hop onto black mage because it's easy now, but the majority of people playing it right now will not stick by the job once another caster becomes better.

Like you've point out SMN used to be popular because it was pretty much the best caster, also being reworked made it the "new caster", Picto was also very popular not just because it was a fun design but it was the new caster and was so strong at launch.

I'll be honest black mage numbers aren't even that good for something that is outperforming pictomancer by a massive margin, sure it's the most played but the fact that it's not got insane play rates despite being so good this tier shows that theirs a lot of people who would rather pick something like pictomancer, due to not liking how new black mage plays.

I doubt black mages "popularity" would last in 7.4 if we see pictomancer doing better then it damage wise, fact is even in 7.1 black mage wasn't "the least popular caster" as that was summoner by a decent margin, shouldn't this show that actually pictomancer was just outright the best caster for a while in addition because it was designed pretty differently a lot of people actually enjoyed it.

[Kohashi]

No offense, but this line of thinking is exactly what's wrong with job design these days. Of course when you remove the timers they'll feel like an annoyance in retrospect; the job has objectively become "less annoying" due to the streamlining and simplification it got. We could theoretically keep trimming down every little annoyance in the entire game until we're left with nothing.

bla bla bla

Statistics concerning BLM % in the new savage tier heavily increased compared to the previous tier. I call that a win. I get some people like complexity and to struggle, but it is what it is.. BLM shouldn't be the cool kid's club.

[MitsukiKimura]

bla bla bla

Statistics concerning BLM % in the new savage tier heavily increased compared to the previous tier. I call that a win. I get some people like complexity and to struggle, but it is what it is.. BLM shouldn't be the cool kid's club.

Apparently you don't with that kind of response

[Supersnow845]

bla bla bla

Statistics concerning BLM % in the new savage tier heavily increased compared to the previous tier. I call that a win. I get some people like complexity and to struggle, but it is what it is.. BLM shouldn't be the cool kid's club.

And PCT/SMN’s play rate went down. So…….absolutely nothing was actually achieved

Especially when they buff PCT in 7.3 and all the meta chasers go back to PCT