I'm having a hard time understanding how people enjoy the BLM...

[IllyriaKnotfred]

Snip

A boss disappearing or going immune, a not landed cast because an add dies too soon - As you learn a boss fight you learn to use abilities to accommodate the mechanics, same goes for monks (Greased lightning) and Machinists (Wildfire).

an add interrupting a cast (either autoattacking you cause tank lost aggro or moving out of sight) - I don't even understand how that's a valid point, the same goes for any caster class, dps or healer. There are next to no mechanics (that cant be avoided) that will interrupt your rotation. Master use of Aetherial Manipulation and learn how easily mechanics can be avoided and/or cheesed.

a boss disabling you Wat. Name one mechanic in this current raid tier that does this that wouldn't effect any other class just as drastically as a BLM.

a lethal aoe forcing you to move Two words- Aetherial Manipulation. Orrr slide casting with proper spell speed.

phase transitions Back to my first point, monks, machinists and black mages all suffer from the same types of losses. You just learn to lessen the impact as you learn the fight. All have the burden of needing to learn the ins and outs of a fight to master it.

[MagiusNecros]

People only hated the BLM changes because it wasn't braindead easy anymore now that they slapped an easy to manage buff timer and called it a day for Heavensward. It's more centered around Fire 4 spam and Enoch upkeep over fishing for Fire and Thunder procs.

Flare was only nerfed to make Summoners not feel underwhelming with Deathflare. Which IMO is still underwhelming anyway.

[Kenji1134]

Thing I often find with SMN, Painflare and Deathflare is that you rarely if ever NEED continuous aoe.
BLM is continuous slightly spiky aoe, F2x2 -> Flare -> wait for mana and buffs -> repeat, on a 12s cycle.

For SMN every minute you can throw a Bane and 2 Painflares, followed by a Deathflare.
Yes your aoe is down to dots after that, but I have seen SMN in ARF (makes for a decent unified baseline) jump to 2.4k aoe dps on the early trash pulls, and ride that out for a good 30-40 seconds.
By that point I will catch them as BLM doing aoe, and they jump ahead again at the 1 minute mark.

So perhaps Deathflare in and of itself is not AS seemingly overwhelming as Flare (if you ignore the -10% per mob), but the fact that you can burst down trash is more viable than doing an infinitely sustainable (yet amusingly slightly subpar) aoe rotation.

[Krindor]

Thise complaining that BLM gets punished the most by mechanics, think a lot like this, Melee deals 0 DPS when away from the boss. When it comes to something like buffs, no buff is bigger effect on DPS than MNK losing GL3, which is a 30% damage boost and 15% attack speed boost which is essentially a 1.43% boost to damage, compared to enochian which is a 5% boost and another 17% from F4 vs F3, for a total of 22.5% damage increase. Also with AF3 with its 87.5% damage increase. The difference is that BLM can apply both of these with one click, while except for PB every 180 seconds GL3 requires up to 9 attacks to get back. The only thing I feel they should do is to change surecast from saving a cast instead of damage to allow you to cast when moving.

[XiXiQ]

Learn the fights.

seriously, for this to be enjoyable and not an exercise in frustration, you need to learn the CLASS, and be able to put those skills to use the first time you step into a fight. BLMs don't particularly want to feel like the spare leg at the ass-kicking party whenever they step into new content (nor should they be expected to). I'd prefer to see eno as a stance like WM, and ley connected to me and not the ground (if ley allowed others to step in and buff as well it would be fine, but it doesn't). Yes, that would probably require some de-buffing of spells to even things out, but it would remove most of the pointless guess-work we're supposed to endure.

[seekified]

seriously, for this to be enjoyable and not an exercise in frustration, you need to learn the CLASS, and be able to put those skills to use the first time you step into a fight. BLMs don't particularly want to feel like the spare leg at the ass-kicking party whenever they step into new content (nor should they be expected to). I'd prefer to see eno as a stance like WM, and ley connected to me and not the ground (if ley allowed others to step in and buff as well it would be fine, but it doesn't). Yes, that would probably require some de-buffing of spells to even things out, but it would remove most of the pointless guess-work we're supposed to endure.

That would also bring BLM back to being the needlessly simplistic short-rotation job that it was in 2.x. No thanks. I agree that something should be done to allow them a bit more freedom of movement, but the entire class is based around standing still and torching things. That shouldn't change.

[Maero]

Enochian if it were to be like a stance i am sorry but the job would be so broken it would not even be funny (nor fun)

[Colt47]

The timer mechanics added to Dragoon and some other jobs really feel like unneeded additions to the rotations of classes. There is a motto in life that applies to just about everything we do, whether it's free time or not: Keep it simple! Things can be challenging without having dozens of abilities / timers to manage, and it would be much better if people could focus on something simple to maintain instead of having to almost always eye the ability bar just to keep track of where they are at.

[Marianno]

As a BLM main, I've found that one needs the following in order to be successful IMO...
1. High SpS
2. Fight Knowledge/Awareness (Moreso than a tank/healer)
3. Party member knowledge--silently gauge your party members dmg output to determine how far you need to go on adds (subjective: standard F2 rotation w/ENO refresh w/B4)
4. Boss/enemy skill knowledge: which skills can be eaten with proper shields. I love being able to simply withstand moves that give you confusion with proper shields in antitower lol.
5. Need to always be casting and learn when/where to place ley lines. These things come with practice and time.

With these skills I thoroughly enjoy burning everything to the ground and outdpsing pesky melee who love to eat unnecessary dmg with no shields. Less mobility is fine but you as the player need to develop a more calculating mind. Justy opinion, so feel free to disagree.

[Marianno]

Also, I think BLM is fine as it is and I would not want them to change it. In 2.x I stopped playing it because I got tired of fishing for procs and playing BLM would simply put me to sleep. I mained SMN then as it was a little more complex with keeping up with timers to some degree. With 3.x BLM I thoroughly enjoy how it is now. Not to mention, going into dungeons with plenty of tanks and melee dps who go "oh great, another weak BLM" seeing them go crazy and leave the dungeon after seeing the might of those continuous F4's is so awesome to me. I can't tell you how many tanks have simply left the dungeon because of jot being able to keep hate over competent BLMs its too funny. So, yes keep BLM as it is. I love the burst. SMN turned me off bad this expansion.