BLM Changes Are Fantastic. The timers were so annoying. Thanks FFXIV team ! :)

[kentribal]

It's one of my favorite jobs, unfortunately I didn't like the changes. I felt like I was playing a mage in wow, so I went back to gnb and the ninja I leveled up right now. Also, let's not forget that BLM is Yoshi's character, so it wouldn't surprise me that these changes were made to check people's reactions to the changes that Yoshi says will be made to jobs in 8.0.

[ThorinG]

I think the changes made BLM more flexible and approachable, but at the cost of making it way too easy for seasoned players.

Since i dont think they will revert to the previous build, at least add a little complexity by adding a timer to Enochian ( a 15 sec for example), which is refreshed by all fire, blizzard spells except for Fire VI and Blizzard VI.

[Carighan]

Do the opposite! Make Fire/Ice automatically swap every X seconds, and your goal is to make the most of each phase no matter when it the right it aligns?

Another upside of that approach would be that hotbars could be cleaned up massively as a lot of current spells exist primarily to "manage" stance.

[Keichi]

It's one of my favorite jobs, unfortunately I didn't like the changes. I felt like I was playing a mage in wow, so I went back to gnb and the ninja I leveled up right now. Also, let's not forget that BLM is Yoshi's character, so it wouldn't surprise me that these changes were made to check people's reactions to the changes that Yoshi says will be made to jobs in 8.0.

Wait: What do you mean: "playing a mage in wow."?
The Black Mage IS the mage/wizard in FF. It seems clear, that they should play very similary.

[Carighan]

Wait: What do you mean: "playing a mage in wow."?
The Black Mage IS the mage/wizard in FF. It seems clear, that they should play very similary.

Come to think of it, I bet most BLM players disliking the new state wouldn't even know what a "pure caster" looks like as it's been a long time since any MMORPG had them. In GW2 you could do that, but as the Elementalist constantly stance-dances and the Mesmer has very few casted abilities not really, while WoW only had Fire Mage and Destrolock as cast-centric characters for most of its life, with TBC-era Arcane Mage being just about the purest caster alternating fast casts you spam with a relatively slow channeled abilities but few tools to be mobile.

And that's kinda the point: Old BLM could already skip so many of its casts. Plus all the mobility it had. In comparison to games featuring actual casters, very little of gameplay value was lost in the change simply because of very little being there beforehand that could be lost. Was it then a good change? IMO no, but that's because it didn't go far enough, BLM has been badly designed before, it needed ripping out and re-implementing. Not... this.

[Valence]

Mh yeah no. Saying that HW BLM could skip so many of its casts is ridiculous. One swiftcast and one sharpcast every minute, that's it. The only thing without cast times was Scathe (even Thunder had cast times), and you were not guaranteed to get many firestarter procs when casting F4, that with B4 and Freeze also had a 3s cast time back then. Flare was 4s.

[Carighan]

Mh yeah no. Saying that HW BLM could skip so many of its casts is ridiculous. One swiftcast and one sharpcast every minute, that's it. The only thing without cast times was Scathe (even Thunder had cast times), and you were not guaranteed to get many firestarter procs when casting F4, that with B4 and Freeze also had a 3s cast time back then. Flare was 4s.

As you seemingly agree with, it's been a long time since any MMO had pure casters.

[Valence]

I probably misunderstood what you meant with old BLM I guess.

[Carighan]

Haha yes, but I probably could have worded it better, too. Apologies. I meant "old BLM" as in "before the current change", but wasn't worded well.

[Taranok]

I think the changes made BLM more flexible and approachable, but at the cost of making it way too easy for seasoned players.

Since i dont think they will revert to the previous build, at least add a little complexity by adding a timer to Enochian ( a 15 sec for example), which is refreshed by all fire, blizzard spells except for Fire VI and Blizzard VI.

Let's not bring the skill floor back up after they finally lowered the massive skill cliff of the class.

The problem isn't that BLM is too easy now. BLM was always a stupendously easy class in principle. Its difficulty almost always came from contact with boss mechanics. Nonstandard wasn't a real thing for most of the classes life, so the majority of its difficulty was learning where to stand during fights and maximizing cast times.

The problem with this reworked BLM is that the devs well and truly, finally, have killed caster DPS' core gameplay. Sitting still and casting. If the class still had 2.8s and even 3s casts, 7.2 would be a challenge harder than the hardest ultimate. That's how much movement there is in modern fight design. That's how utterly divorced it is with older fight design and how roles fit into the game. Unfortunately, this issue is so dire that RDM won't survive modern fight design without a major change, and I strongly suspect that BLM and PCT will both lose their ley lines because this nonsense is extremely caustic to core caster gameplay. And then we'll have the true reality of casters laid bare. Casters aren't that hard to play bereft of cast bars. Even shadowbringers summoner isn't that hard if you remove the cast bars, outside of optimizing the pet AI to not drop abilities. It's also core to casters as an identity, so every class that gets them reduced or removed has slowly gotten worse and worse.

The devs need to bring back full cast bars, and design fights with 2 of 5 roles not having much in terms of movement. They need to be static classes. That is the challenge, that is where the fun of playing casters truly lies.

Mh yeah no. Saying that HW BLM could skip so many of its casts is ridiculous. One swiftcast and one sharpcast every minute, that's it. The only thing without cast times was Scathe (even Thunder had cast times), and you were not guaranteed to get many firestarter procs when casting F4, that with B4 and Freeze also had a 3s cast time back then. Flare was 4s.

BLM also couldn't skip jack crap in Stormblood either. Your highest damage spell was foul, followed by a proc'd thunder 3, then fire 4. The entire class was maximizing fire 4, and the only time any BLM skipped anything in the rotation was because the boss was about to jump and the timers wouldn't survive said jump. All the nonstandard stuff where BLM started skipping casts came about because of high spellspeed builds in shadowbringers, and didn't gain traction until paradox solidified it in endwalker. It's part of why I say nonstandard is demonstrably not intended nor is it healthy for the class. It's the equivalent of summoners in Heavensward boosting their expected damage by 25-40% by abusing the bad design of Dreadwyrm Trance, snapshotting, and contagion. Doesn't matter how much anyone likes it, it is aggressively bad to the game's overall health and in no way representative of how the class is intended to be played, or even how it was played throughout the years.

Endwalker is almost literally the only expansion where BLM was regularly played in a way other than what was intended.