Thread: BLM in 4.0

Originally Posted by Maero

Enochian was needed to give more depth in a sense to blm. No changes at all will come 4.0 other then perhaps removing certain abilities, perhaps surecast or manaward? Who knows what goes on in SE mind
I still find it absolutely silly casting fire on fire enemies, ice on icycles, etc...

The core gameplay will probably not change much, that is for sure.
I'm however expecting more lightning presence in our rotation. With the addition of FireIV, the dps gain from thundercloud is less noticeable. Also, as I said in my previous post with QoL suggestion, thunder1,2,3 plays exactly the same. Introducing new gameplay in those spell would be welcomed, such as making thunder2 an aoe DoT.

Regarding the elemental issue in your last line, this is unfortunately something every mmoRPG has to overlook unless they build a gameplay around these. In a soloFF, making a monster immune to one element isn't a problem as usually different element deal the same amount of damage. If you were to make a Fire resistant/immune monster, the BLM couldn't play. If u were to compensate by making it weak to Ice, then you would drastically change the rotation of the BLM as he would simply spam IceIV and it would require SE to take extra time balancing the weakness as it would either make the BLM too strong or weak on a single fight. Now if they were to do that, they couldn't simply stop on the BLM and they would need to do that on every element. This could result in making caster a non reliable source of damage as they would be too dependant on the boss nature. Just imagine how aweful it would be to have a boss "resistant to slash". What? Everytime you see a Dragoon or Ninja in your partyfinder you kick him because he has the wrong "dmg type"?

Don't get me wrong, it is silly, but in a community game you can't make things like that. WoW tried and the net result was that guild would simply not bring X class to Y boss because they had the wrong elemental type.

Originally Posted by SerenaArune

Alot of the people who say "BLM" is simple are those who have invested many many hours in this class. You can say things like "It's simple for me" but not things like "It's the simplest class in the entire game' lmao!! It's NOT simple, objectively when classes like Paladin exist.

I personally find HW BLM absolutely not easy. It is a very unforgivable rotation that you can easily screw up. (Unless you do FireIV, Fire1, FireIV, Fire). Loosing Astral Fire has a much more dire consequence than not keeping a DoT up for 2sec. I'm not even talking about loosing Enochian prematurely. ARR BLM however was peaceasy since there was absolutely no timer. It was impossible to screw your rotation... it would be like screwing your paladin theat rotation at this point.

Originally Posted by Cynfael

I don't hate Enochian, but I don't think it added much in the way of challenge or fun factor since it's basically the same play style but with more buttons and less emphasis on procs (I actually rather enjoyed the proc-heavy style of 2.x BLM).

I find placing that Fire1 every 9sec very annoying, it breaks the flow. Like big boom, big boom, big boom... spark... And I agree, the loss of the FireIII is a bit sad. It was fun to have this big burst every now and then.

Originally Posted by Cynfael

Also, why on earth would you want to get rid of Manaward? I get Surecast not being a frequently essential skill, but even that has an occasional use. I imagine the point of removing or consolidating abilities would be to reduce the number of hotkeys needed in standard play, not necessarily just to clean up the niche skills.

Both ward should simply be merged into a shield, there's no point in having so many defensive skills.
Surecast should be reworked to allow a cast while moving. The BLM being even more than before turret caster(as we proc less). Being able to do one cast while moving every 30sec would help greatly.
I'm not even sure I have surecast on my actionbar

Originally Posted by Sylvain

Both ward should simply be merged into a shield, there's no point in having so many defensive skills.

This would effectively be a nerf unless the cooldown on the combined skill were exceptionally short.

Originally Posted by Sylvain

Also, this is totally for cosmetic but, am I the only one bothered by the lazy naming of spells and attached to the old -ra-ga-ja ranking? This is so lame because the japanese version has it. (the JP name are official spell name.
Like
I : Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, ファイア, ブリザド, サンダー (Faia, burizado, sanda)
II :Fira, Blizzara, Thundara ブリザラ, ファイラ, サンダラ (burizara, faira, sandara)
III : Firaga,Blizzaga, Thundaga ファイガ, ブリザガ, サンダガ (faiga, burizaga, sandaga)
IV : Firaja,Blizzaja,Thundaja ファイジャ, ブリザジャ(Faija, Burizaja, サンダジャ？　sandaja?)

That part is a very old discussion. The ra-ga-ja naming convention isn't universal throughout FF games, and this dev team decided to stick with roman numerals.

I wouldn't be too surprised if they busted out ra-ga-ja for the bigger spells in the future, though. You do see it in-game already, but only for boss-level spells like Ancient Quaga.

My wishlist (spitball/in progress):

Enochian is now a variable duration cooldown that allows access to Blizzard IV, Fire IV, and Thunder IV, while providing additional passive benefits as generated by certain of your elemental casts, Iceblood, Meltdown, and Surge (to a maximum of 3 stacks across all elements). Rather than being maintained, your skills now accelerate its recharge, and it is capable of overcharging to up to double duration at double the cooling time. Additionally, it does not deplete over time, but rather over cast-time (1/6 of its cooling time, though coming out closer to 1/3 during combat due to recharge accelerators), and can be toggled off. In short, rather than making a new gameplay priority, Enochian culminates on previous gameplay, and rather than being merely maintained, it's used opportunistically.

Umbral Ice and Astral Fire now provide quick-casting benefits at all ranks, rather than just at rank III. Additionally, they may now proceed to rank IV while Enochian is active.

Firestarter and Thundercloud have been reworked and moved to earlier trait positions. Enhanced Surecast and Enhanced Scathe have been made baseline and replaced with Shattering, a new Ice mechanic, and Elemental Affinity (increasing the bonuses and/or proc chances of Firestarter, Thundercloud, and Shattering by 33%).

Ice and Lightning magic now plays a more important part in overall rotation, though Fire still takes up the bulk of spell-casting.

Thunder I, II, III, and the newly added IV no longer share the same function at different cast lengths and durations; instead, each is chargeable for added cast time and duration or effectiveness, but each have different functions. Each can be charged to any of three ranks — 100%, base cast of 2 seconds; 133%, 2.67 seconds; 167%, 3.33 seconds; and with Enochian active 200%, 4 seconds — for a proportionate increase in effectiveness.

Additionally, THM's two Magic and Mend traits now increase damage and attack speed by 5% each, rather than just 10% damage. This should give it a more favorable gameplay flow.

Additional synergies have been added to Scathe. Manaward has been replaced by Mantle, which has a great deal more depth. Both are now more integral to general gameplay.

Thunder I remains your basic DoT, but with an additional chance on tick of Discharge, which damages nearby non-CCed enemies for 30 potency and mini-stuns on critical strikes, with greater range possible against other targets suffering from the same effect. The periodic ticks on the main target also proc Thundercloud.

Thundercloud - Stacks up to 3 times. Each stack reduces the cast time of your next Thunder skill by 2 seconds. With a single stack, your next cast skips ahead immediately to a first rank cast, charging towards rank 2 over (base) .67 seconds, or on to rank 3 over 1.5 seconds. Cast while moving to ensure that it does not attempt to charge. At 2 stacks, it will hit for the highest possible rank instantly.

Thunder II now launches a surge of electricity at the target, striking 4-6 times and additionally consuming a tick each with each strike. Each critical strike will automatically cause a discharge, in addition to the normal chance on consumed ticks.

Thunder III prepares a secondary channeled cast, lasting up to 4 seconds (base), which releases waves of electricity from or towards the target. If the primary target is Electrified, his ticks are accelerated by 100% and each add 3 seconds of Charge on nearby enemies. If not, the target is afflicted with Lightning Rod and draws tick damage from all Electrified enemies within 8/10/12 yalms based on the initial charge time. Charging the skill increases the tick rate caused by 30% and Lightning Rod range by 30% per stack, reducing the necessary channel time to 2.5 seconds (or 2.1 with Enochian).

Thunder IV is a terrifying nuke, which channels minor lightning bolts down onto the target and enemies within 8 yalms if Electrified as it charges, before a main lightning bolt crashes down onto the target for 360 potency. If cast time is skipped, the potency of all minor lightning bolt damage skipped will instead be dealt directly to the enemy with the main hit.

Because of the changes to Firestarter and Thundercloud, Sharpcast is no longer needed, and has been replaced with Thunder IV.

In progress:
Scathe is now capable of automatically consuming AF/UI/TC charges to deal greater effects, depending on your current stance. These effect types include Shatter, Comet, and Bolt. Shatter will deal immense bonus damage to a frozen enemy. Comet will launch a fiery meteor at the target, dealing a short stun. Bolt will push the enemy away from you while mini-stunning. On Crit, your next Scathe within 12 seconds will not trigger the global cooldown.

Mantle allows you to self-cast any of your elemental skills, damaging your barrier it provides in order to passively deal a portion of that damage and effect over time to nearby enemies while providing any mechanical procs or advantages normally generated from a target. Mantle takes half damage from friendly fire, but will distribute the full amount. This additional effect ends when the barrier breaks. In other words, you can use yourself as a target to further your contribution to Firestarter, Thundercloud, or Shattering, but comes at the cost of some damage absorption, and should thereby be used carefully.

Firestarter: All Fire damage now deals a portion of its damage over time, and consume this periodic damage on the target to deal additional damage, which in turn creates additional periodic damage. These periodic effects will always crit if the ability that cause them did. The higher the relative potency of the cast (including whether it and the previous periodic set crit), the shorter the periodic effect lasts, but your Fire spells have reduced cast times and trigger reduced recast times based on the amount of periodic fire potency you are dealing across all engaged targets, and each tick has a chance to further halve the cast time and mana cost of your next Fire spell.

Thundercloud: As above, this functions in mostly the same way, but Thundercloud itself now has about half the effect per stack of the current version, while now stacking up to 3 times.

Still working on Shattering, but I want it to be an immense damage bonus proc on frozen targets.

Would you intend to make IV spells refresh the duration of astral/umbral? if Enochian cannot realistically be kept up 100% of the time. (or can it? maybe I didn't understand everything properly) and is used more as a opportunistic burster, it would make sens. This would also allow the fusion of rankI and IV spell into one single that would switch when enochian is up, effectively freeing up 2 skill space without changing the gameplay.



Same goes for ThunderIV, I don't think we need 4 different thunder. (but I like the whole lightning rod thing)
Making thunderIII turns into ThunderIV would be sufficient. If I understand right, under Enochian ThunderIV does more than ThunderIII so there would be no point in casting ThunderIII.
Merging these 3 would free 3 skillslot.

I like the whole idea of stackable charges though.

Finally, I don't like the DoT mechanic and the whole "faster cast time". If you put a portion of fire's dmg as a dot, u reduce the nuking potential of Fire, and I believe this is something many blackmage love, being able to spam 5 digit crits (6 for Stormblood?) and see the mobs health drop significantly uppon every cast. The DoT consumming mechanic would fit the summoner better.
Same goes for the thunderIV, the whole idea of saving proc do deal a huge thunderIII or even more scary ThunderIV for insane crit totally fit the BLM theme.
Concerning our turret issue, I'd rather have tool to help us deal with it instead of faster casting time. Like "your next spell can be casted while moving". Your Scath (or my scath) idea are example of things you could do while casting. Even though your Scath is more PvP / solo oriented imo.



Also, this is totally for cosmetic but, am I the only one bothered by the lazy naming of spells and attached to the old -ra-ga-ja ranking? This is so lame because the japanese version has it. (the JP name are official spell name.
Like
I : Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, ファイア, ブリザド, サンダー (Faia, burizado, sanda)
II :Fira, Blizzara, Thundara ブリザラ, ファイラ, サンダラ (burizara, faira, sandara)
III : Firaga,Blizzaga, Thundaga ファイガ, ブリザガ, サンダガ (faiga, burizaga, sandaga)
IV : Firaja,Blizzaja,Thundaja ファイジャ, ブリザジャ(Faija, Burizaja, サンダジャ？　sandaja?)