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

[Shiroe]

why simplify?.. same reason they made DT "woke" & androgynous.., loud activist tourists, who complain about difficult jobs?
....
that said, fights were getting borderline too difficult / annoying for BLM... Do believe future fight designs have less restrains with the new BLM
....

[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.