Thread: How would you have changed BLM for 3.0.

I'm curious on how people would have evolved the blm class from 50 to 60.
I feel the best part of blm was the proc aspect of play, and it was completely removed. I think procs should be the focus of the class, not balancing timers. Using the new spells as a guide this is the direction I wished SE took.

1. Thunder 2 should be an AOE with short weak dots.
2. Enocian is a CD that increases fire 3 and thundercloud procs by 10 to 20 percent. And allows fire 4, blizzard 4, and thunder 4 to be cast.
3. Add Thunder 4, just a stronger thunder. Can only be cast under enocian.
4. Change Blizzard 4. Blizzard 4 instantly refills all mana. Can only be cast under enocian. Blizzard 3 has a 50 to 100 percent chance to proc blizzard 4.
5. Fire 4 can only cast off a proc while under enocian. Fire 3 has a 20 to 30 percent chance to proc fire 4.

I know none of this will happen but I was bored. And wanted to know what others would have envisioned.

T2 change that you offered would be nice but not essential. I disagree with the change you suggested to Enchian regarding procs. I disagree with the change to B4, that just isn't needed, as with number 5 because the drop to our DPS would be significant and would make us even more noncompetitive.

My suggestions:
Astral Fire Duration Increase
Thunder 4 - Thundercloud giving extended Enochian by 5 seconds (so that using Thundercloud doesn't punish you)
Allow finish of B4/T4/F4 cast if the cast has started even if Enochian drops off
Fix of the F3-Gap-F4 bug.
Reduction of the Mana cost of F1 to be the same as F4 (so that using F1 instead of F4 doesn't double punish you)
Enochian skill always fully refreshes Enochian (so only B4 is a diminishing return)

Then give one of the SMN skills a small magic vulnerablity debuff so they have more utility.

What the above will do is bring QoL to BLM, and make casters able to be a viable option in raids where there aren't any "cheese" mechanics that force the use of a caster - and allow caster heavy parties to compete with Melee heavy parties.

I keep seeing a lot of unnecessary or unreasonable requests in these BLM threads. The devs aren't going to take us seriously if we don't offer suggestions that are fair and feasible.

Originally Posted by Kona_Nightwind

1. Thunder 2 should be an AOE with short weak dots.
2. Enocian is a CD that increases fire 3 and thundercloud procs by 10 to 20 percent. And allows fire 4, blizzard 4, and thunder 4 to be cast.
3. Add Thunder 4, just a stronger thunder. Can only be cast under enocian.
4. Change Blizzard 4. Blizzard 4 instantly refills all mana. Can only be cast under enocian. Blizzard 3 has a 50 to 100 percent chance to proc blizzard 4.
5. Fire 4 can only cast off a proc while under enocian. Fire 3 has a 20 to 30 percent chance to proc fire 4.

(1) is unnecessary because our AoE damage on small groups is fine, and if there are so many mobs that we hit the 50% decrease on Flare then the party is either rushing or not pulling as intended. I think the one notable problem with our AoE now is that the MP requirements at 60 preclude the use of
Convert -> Fire II -> Flare
or
(Some Sort of Ether) -> Flare.

(2) (4) (5) would exchange the current "clunky" for just plain "unreliable". Having so many proc based abilities might sound fun, but the nature of pseudo randomness leads to times where everything that could trigger a proc does, as well as times where nothing that could trigger a proc does, and I don't want to be in the middle of a heavy burn phase during one of the times where the latter happens.

(3) would be great as long as, as HaroldSaxon suggests,

Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

Thunder 4 - Thundercloud giving extended Enochian by 5 seconds (so that using Thundercloud doesn't punish you)

Having another thunder spell won't do us any good if we never use it because it interferes with the Astral/Umbral Enochian juggling. Having a Thundercloud-ed thunder spell add a few seconds to the Enochian timer would be a great solution to this particular problem.

Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

Astral Fire Duration Increase
Allow finish of B4/T4/F4 cast if the cast has started even if Enochian drops off

These, or even just one of these, would help so much. An Astral extension needs to be paired with an Umbral extension, though, since the real danger is not in missing a Fire IV cast but rather in missing a Blizzard IV.

Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

Fix of the F3-Gap-F4 bug.

As far as I can tell, this is working as intended. Take the opportunity to pop a cooldown while you're waiting to be able to cast Fire IV.

Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

Reduction of the Mana cost of F1 to be the same as F4 (so that using F1 instead of F4 doesn't double punish you)
Enochian skill always fully refreshes Enochian (so only B4 is a diminishing return)

I haven't found the Fire I cost to be a problem on a regular basis; however it could become a problem if the duration of Astral Fire is increased. With the current duration of Astral Fire, it's possible to Sharpcast -> Fire I and have Astral Fire wear off before the Fire cast is finished, resulting in the unbuffed MP cost. If we get an Astral Fire duration extension, then it would still be up at the end of the Fire cast and we'd have to pay the double cost.

As for Enochian, having the ability directly set the buff duration to 30s is a definite YES, PLEASE. Why it wasn't written to function this way in the first place puzzles me. In this case we get sort of the reverse of the usual problem with buffs; the buff will sometimes last a split second longer than I'd like, and in attempting to reapply it via ability, the ability instead refreshes it for 15s and goes on cooldown for a minute.

Besides these, an increase in the radius of Leylines to 5 yalms would make it actually useful in fights with a lot of movement (which is pretty much every Heavensward fight ever).

Originally Posted by Rongway

Having another thunder spell won't do us any good if we never use it because it interferes with the Astral/Umbral Enochian juggling. Having a Thundercloud-ed thunder spell add a few seconds to the Enochian timer would be a great solution to this particular problem.

I would agree, that is why I said it adds 5 seconds to your enochian timer.

Originally Posted by Rongway

These, or even just one of these, would help so much. An Astral extension needs to be paired with an Umbral extension, though, since the real danger is not in missing a Fire IV cast but rather in missing a Blizzard IV.

Agreed

Originally Posted by Rongway

As far as I can tell, this is working as intended. Take the opportunity to pop a cooldown while you're waiting to be able to cast Fire IV.

It isn't "intended" as such, its an unintended bug from a bug fix to stop ever-flaring.

Originally Posted by Rongway

I haven't found the Fire I cost to be a problem on a regular basis; however it could become a problem if the duration of Astral Fire is increased. With the current duration of Astral Fire, it's possible to Sharpcast -> Fire I and have Astral Fire wear off before the Fire cast is finished, resulting in the unbuffed MP cost. If we get an Astral Fire duration extension, then it would still be up at the end of the Fire cast and we'd have to pay the double cost.

Well, the issue with it is, if you have to use an extra F1 due to movement, you not only lose the potency from when you could be using F4, but because the mana cost is higher, chances are you won't be able to use another Fire 4 later in the rotation. Its double punishment. Remember sharpcast can't be used in every fire rotation.

Originally Posted by Rongway

Besides these, an increase in the radius of Leylines to 5 yalms would make it actually useful in fights with a lot of movement (which is pretty much every Heavensward fight ever).

I think it could do with a slight increase, but too much could end up being too easy.

Ideally the whole game would have been reworked so that elemental damage matters and casters had access to the elemental abilities they needed; smart play would involve spells with correct elemental affinities while avoiding those that were terrible (aka no more casting Fire on Ifrit because it was the only direct damage spell worthwhile under the old system).

Of course that won't happen. I don't know what I'd have done, but I definitely wouldn't have restricted the next tier of your ordinary elemental spells to a ridiculous timer system with micromanagement upkeep requirements. That feels less like a black mage and more like the dev team just giving you something to do for the sake of doing something different.

I'd really like it if Scathe would reset the duration of Astral Fire. So the movement will still be a dps loss but you could at least keep AF up.