BLM Aoe and Enochian

[Happosai]

So I posted this idea in the frustrated enochian thread but the more I thought about it the more I felt this topic deserves attention. I have been having a blast with BLM 3.0! Keeping enochian up as much as you can is a challenge that is well worth the effort (imo). However it has recently come to my attention that maintaining enochian (casting blizzard 4) in an aoe situation of 3 mobs or more ends up being a dps loss (thank you aikaal for your continuous work). It is better to purposefully let enochian fall off and continue with fire 3, fire 2 x 2, flare, transpose repeat. This seems incredibly counterintuitive to the way 3.0 blm functions. I am not much of a number cruncher or theory crafter so the details are foggy at best, but here are my ideas:

- give us a new, powerful aoe move that can only be used under the effects of enochian (and astral 3?). The potency would have to make up for blizzard 4 cast only hitting one target

- remove the nerf on flare while under the effects of enochian. Again I'm not a number cruncher so I'm not even sure if this would even make maintaining enochian optimal. Basically make enochian effect flare in a manner that makes it worthwhile to maintain enochian

- give us a new skill that is useable only under the effects of enochian and umbral that does light aoe damage but acts like blizzard 4 in that it refreshes the enochian timer. Maybe call it freeze 2 (or just replace freeze lol)

Before people jump on me with a bunch of hate, let me just say that I'm not asking to be king of aoe again. I'm not trying to relive the past pre heavensward days. What I am asking for is an adjustment to Blm's abilities to make maintaining enochian at all times, in this case aoe situations, a dps increase. Blm 3.0 is all about that enochian and keeping it up at all times. It is silly that the optimal thing to do is to purposefully let it fall off. 2.0 rotation should only be used in the event of a mistake, not on purpose.

To clarify, i mean for these to be 3 different ideas. Im not suggesting all of these things happen

[hallena]

To be honest i think they should've gave us thunder IV Or make thunder II aoe while under enochian..
5 yards radius aoe thunder. Castable while under enochian. make it so it can't proc thundercloud or has reduced chance for all i care.

[Vantil]

I agree that something should change, and I like your ideas.

My suggestion is this: During enochian your Flare won't consume all your mana, won't give Astral Fire stacks, but instead lower your enochian duration. With this you would have to add a F2 now and then to stay in Astral Fire 3, and you'll eventually drop enochian if you go crazy with the aoes. You would have to chose if you wish to "spend" your enochian right away for really high aoe burst, or use less Flares to make sure you have enochian for the next part of the fight/dungeon/whatever.

Maybe tricky, but it sounded good in my head.

[Arkenne]

They could simply make it so Flare would have no penalties while in Enochian...

Edit: nvm, you already said it :/

[Sethra]

Given that nerfing the crap out of BLM AOE was their goal, they obviously don't want to do anything to make our AOE better. For AOE, Enochian just becomes a low power RS on a shorter cooldown.

Bliz 4 should have been Thunder IV. Flare should not have been nerfed (it doesn't change how we run dungeons, just makes the trash pulls slower).

[Happosai]

To be honest i think they should've gave us thunder IV Or make thunder II aoe while under enochian..
5 yards radius aoe thunder. Castable while under enochian. make it so it can't proc thundercloud or has reduced chance for all i care.

I like it. What if thunder 4 was a separate dot much like bio/bio2? Thunder 4 has a 5 yalm radius like you said, cannot proc thundercloud but targets under the effect of both thunder dots have an increased chance to proc thundercloud? That too much? It could potentially lead to a ton of thundercloud procs possibly to the point you have trouble fitting in fire 2 and flare xD

[Happosai]

I agree that something should change, and I like your ideas.

My suggestion is this: During enochian your Flare won't consume all your mana, won't give Astral Fire stacks, but instead lower your enochian duration. With this you would have to add a F2 now and then to stay in Astral Fire 3, and you'll eventually drop enochian if you go crazy with the aoes. You would have to chose if you wish to "spend" your enochian right away for really high aoe burst, or use less Flares to make sure you have enochian for the next part of the fight/dungeon/whatever.

Maybe tricky, but it sounded good in my head.

Pretty cool idea. Essentially its making our 3.0 single target rotation an aoe rotation (flare is the new fire 4) where we can throw out some flares, refresh af with fire 2, and make sure we leave ourselves enough to to refresh enochian when necessary. Maybe this could create a situation where I put blizzard 2 back on my bar like "oh crap I lost af3, enochian has around 7 second left" :3

[hallena]

I like the idea of enochian making it so flare leave us at 7-8%'ish mana instead of 0% so we can finally aoe without sucking our thumbs for 6-9 seconds after every flare
However i'm pretty sure if you want something to change, you need to get the japaness to complain about it enough

[Happosai]

So I'm still trying to wrap my head around what our current aoe rotation is. Fire 3, fire 2 x 2 flare, transpose repeat. Already if you cast fire 3 too quickly after mana regen tick I have found sometimes I dont even have enough mana for 1x fire 2, flare much less two. So do we wait an extra 2 seconds? If were waiting an extra two second why not cast blizzard 4? I was told that 2x fire 2's and flare is like 10% better than single fire 2 flare spam. So what are you guys doing during mana regen ticks? Are we supposed to move into melee range and cast a blizzard 2? Only thing that makes sense to me at this point...

[hallena]

My no cooldown aoe rotation consist of fire III - fire II x3 - Flare - Transpose. Wait 0.5 after first mana tick - fire III - fire 2 x2 - flare. Repeat from transpose
I don't believe in blm's aoe anymore so more often than not, i single target kill pulls. unless there are 4-5+