So no buff till 2.3... how about a compromise to tide us over?

[Kenji1134]

Well I just had a rather crazy/amusing idea.

Lets say that the average BLM rotation, over an extended timeframe, has an average potency of ~109 pot/sec.
Now suppose we make a counter, lets call it "Electrified", that only activates when you are moving, increments every 0.5s, and serves as a stacking buff on the BLM, to a max of 10 stacks, that drop after 10 seconds.

"Burst" - Replacing Apoc
Instant, OGCD, 10s Recast.
Deals 50 potency for every Electrified stack on the caster. (Max of 500 potency after moving for a full 5 seconds)

What will this do?
So we said that your rotation will give you an average of 109 pot/sec. But you basically get 0 when you have to move. With this counter, for every half second that you are moving, up to 5 seconds total, you effectively "store up" potency.
Granted, you store it at a rate of 100/sec, not 109/sec, so it will never be "ideal", but this lets you make up any dps you would have lost during semi-extended movement by storing it and using it within a 10s window after you stop moving.

[Exstal]

It's like static electricity when rubbing socks on a carpet.


...I strangely like it.

[Kenji1134]

It's like static electricity when rubbing socks on a carpet.


...I strangely like it.

Pretty much. The theme is that when you are standing still, you can channel your own energies for maximum efficiency. When you run around, you cant really use your own energy, so you instead absorb energy from the air (as you move) and store it within yourself for later use. Granted, you can only store so much.

Heh, really the 500 max potency restriction is for balancing purposes more than anything. If there was no cap, or a much higher cap, then you could have a BLM run around spamming Scathe while building up some retarded amount of Burst potency... Now do this in pvp... run run run, run run run, run run run... Oh! Burst now has 9001 potency... Instant Melee LB3 on the healer! MWAHAHAHAHA

[NightReach]

30 potency capping at 300 is probably more inlined with balance, there is only 2 ability with 300 potency off gcd, and neither is as good as this movement charging ability. Apart of that its a really cool idea.

[Madoka]

Kind of broken in either way. Running around 5 seconds for an off gcd fester equivalent nuke (or 500 potency goddamn). It would be obscenely easy to just move a little bit between casts to stack that, or move after swiftcasting something.

[Kenji1134]

Meh, perhaps.

Another approach would be to make something "Scathe Powered".
Again, lets go with the idea that we want to maintain 100 pot/sec while moving, and ~110 while standing.

So lets try this. When you cast Scathe, you get a buff that increases the damage of the next Scathe.
A normal GCD is 2.5s, we want a 2 move combo, so it has to deal a total of 500 potency over 2 moves... Hmm, that ends up being a little too lopsided. So lets drop that down to 450 total and spread it kinda evenly.

Scathe: 150 potency. When you cast Scathe, you get a buff, "Scald", that makes your next Scathe do 2x damage.
So while moving you would always do 2 Scathes, 1 for 150 and the 2nd for 300. And, of course make it so you dont end up consuming the "Scald" buff and immediately reapplying it, resulting in 150 -300 - 300 - 300 - etc.

[Lemon8or]

And, of course make it so you dont end up consuming the "Scald" buff and immediately reapplying it, resulting in 150 -300 - 300 - 300 - etc.

That would make for every 2.5 seconds (or less with spellspeed) you'd be doing 300 potency worth so BLM would just end up running Scathing along the way. :/

[Orophin]

Only if you let every dps class do the same

Then let's fix it so that healers can't heal unless they're facing the target, because they can totally just heal someone with their eyes closed, right?

[Madoka]

150 -300 - 300 - 300 - etc.

I think you're severely underestimating how much 300 potency is.

[Kenji1134]

Wow guys, reading comprehension FAIL.

I said MAKE SURE IT DOESNT do that.

Here's the problem in a nutshell. We want to maintain ~85-90% of our turret dps while moving for short-moderate timeframes, 3-5-10 seconds, as is currently required by endgame content.
If our turret dps comes out to roughly 110 pot/sec, we want our moving dps to be roughly 95-100 pot/sec. On a 2.5s GCD, that means 238-250 average potency PER attack WHILE moving.

Solutions?

Add a new attack that charges up to a certain point the longer we move, that is designed to be used solely for recovering the dps we lose from moving. How strong should it be? 240 potency per 2.5s, and let it extend to up to 2 GCD's worth of moving.

Make adjustments to Scathe to make it viable for maintaining dps while moving. Again, we can use the existing design, raise the potency, and make the trait reliable such that every 2 Scathes comes out to a total of ~480 potency.

If the generic Scathe adjustment makes it too strong for the UI phase, let Scathe be affected by AF/UI, so it does more in AF, less in UI.

Or the OLDEST suggestion in the book, give us something to let us cast while moving for short periods of time.

Frankly, its pointless now.
The devs probably have their own solution in mind. Hell knows if it will actually address our concerns or not, or if they will just apply another bandaid fix. Raise Scathe potency to 120, make AF3 2x instead of 1.8x, and call it a day. There! BLM dps went up, everyone rejoice! We still get kicked in the balls for moving! We still have 3 layers of RNG in the rotation, and it still *clunks* like no tomorrow.

Maybe we'll get some details in the next letter. IDK, Im done with BLM for the time being. People say they want it to be a stationary burst dps, then complain that 300 potency is too much.
People want it to be mobile, but complain that it'll be like bard without utility.
People want it to do more raw ST dps, without touching aoe dps, even though nothing important at endgame calls for aoe dps, but use that as a justification to not raise ST dps or to nerf aoe dps... Im done.