How is BLM in new expansion?

[Sleigh]

Raids haven't even came out yet and bis gear so hard to say who is on top.
At 56 just getting any gear I can get. I'm like "oh level 56 gear!" Not even looking if its spell speed or what.
At end game when people start getting the right gears and see how raid fights are then let the bitching start. To early right now.

It's true, we're basically at the stage in the game in 2.0 where BLMs saw Titan and probably thought T1-5 would be a bitch and SMN OP. Unfortunately I'm confident the Enochian tools won't match any form of Savage mode mechanics they've shown thus far, an area where SMN always did well even post-BLM buffs.

[Twilite]

I'm gonna stick with it, we'll be buffed again and SMN nerfed in no time. The pros outweigh the cons for me tbh. I can't go back to controlling a pet, I just can't that's one thing I do not miss.

I'd prefer no more "Ok we will buff you but break xx class" mentality SE has notoriously followed since the beginning.

There are times where you can have your cake and eat it too.

[Alkimi]

Most of it does not have spell speed.. which I consider another nerf. My SS dropped from 620 to 576 with this new set of garbage.

At level 60 the effectiveness of spell speed per point is basically cut by about two thirds anyway (dunno about other off stats but I assume their equally as ineffective at this early stage).

For instance my GCD with my old lv50 set went from 2.19 at lv50 to 2.39 at lv60.

[Twilite]

I knew I wasn't going crazy about that. So he want us to die trying to pull off new rotations, AND be the slowest casters in history. Awesome man.

[Drakolos]

I knew I wasn't going crazy about that. So he want us to die trying to pull off new rotations, AND be the slowest casters in history. Awesome man.

Don't forget that even the best armor atm ingame is still crap compared to the ones we had. The iLv180 Armor are equal to the Darklight set from 2.0. Ofc they had to fix the effectivenes of SS, or we would have casttimes of <1sec at the end with endgame Alexander sets. We will get our casttimes back later with better gear which is equal to Dreadwyrm.

[Ellsian]

My problems with Enochian and current BLM design:

- Pressing Enochian while the Enochian buff is still on negatively impacts your Enochian buff timer and locks you out of your skills. For instance, pressing Enochian at 1 or 2 second left on the buff, will then "refresh" your buff to 5 or 10 seconds and return on cooldown for the full 60 secs. This effectively locks you out of your major damage dealer, Fire IV, for almost a full minute just because you pressed what's suppose to be a beneficial buff that unlocks your skills for use even 1 second too early.

- Your cast of Blizzard IV or Fire IV will forcibly CANCEL mid cast if either Enochian or Umbral/Astral happen to fade before your cast finishes. This is bad design. It's especially awful considering that Blizzard IV is mandatory in refreshing the Enochian buff in the first place.

(continued in next post)

[Ellsian]

- The Astral/Umbral buffs are much too short to be used as baseline requirements in BOTH the casting of Fire IV/Blizzard IV AND for refreshing Enochian. Both our major damage dealer and our buff maintenance are tied into the same 10 second window. This is not enough time to account for the myriad of raid possibilities and results in overly punishing gameplay when those inevitable mechanics occur. It's even more egregious when half of your window is already committed to fulfilling the hard casting of 2 spells and their gcds in order to just refresh Enochian. This alone leaves little other time for any mistakes or mechanics.

- No room for creativity or other spell casts due to the forced restrictiveness of Enochian and Astral/Umbral timers. The way the timers work out, there's an extremely strict cycle in which you can deal damage and maintain your buff. This leaves little to no room for any other spells or utility without risking possible downtime.

[Sleigh]

Stuff

I certainly agree with much of what you said, some things I think maybe you'll think different after longer with 60 BLM perhaps.

That said, the being able to cast B4 and then having it cancel is complete nonsense. Can't tell you how many times I've gone into UI3 with 4s left on the timer because of ONE mechanic that occured late that rotation and I am forced to drop Enochian unless I have Swiftcast. It should be like B3/F3 where the start of the cast dictates the rest of the cast.

[PuttyKat]

yea i find my self saving swiftcast now for bliz 4 and transpose to get into ice mode quickly when shit goes crazy on the arena so i dont loose my buff LOL which means i'm in astral fire alot less now, cuz i'll force a switch to keep up enhochian when i'm bout to do some dancing

[Xenitan]

Thundercloud is also awkward now. Is it even good? It feels worse than just casting Fire now. Fire is a GCD for 180*1.8 = 324 potency that also refreshes Astral Fire and has a 40% chance to give you the ability to- at no mana cost- throw out a 240*1.8=432 potency spell at the cost of a GCD that ALSO refreshes Astral Fire. Thundercloud only brings refreshing thunder to the table and Thunder is probably going to last you until you cast it next anyway.

What do you do when you go Fire 3->Fire IV and then see the Thundercloud proc? Using it immediately means You're looking at 4 seconds left on Astral Fire so you have to Fire afterwards, so it just took Fire IV's slot (you're down 108 potency). Any usage of Thundercloud needs to either 1) Take advantage of the extra DoT ticks or 2) Let you get that Fire IV you replaced in. Which means you're going to spend 3+3+2.5 seconds not casting Fire. Cutting it close.

But if you ignore the proc, is using Thunder during Umbral Ice even good?