BLM needs some love and RDM needs a nerf

[Exiled_Tonberry]

This is how things get broken.
Don't change two jobs at the same time. If one is underpowered, bring that one up, but leave the once overpowered job the same.
If you buff one; nerf the other, they're just going to swap places. Like the situation with PLD and WAR. They buffed PLD, nerfed warrior. Now they just swapped places. They should have just buffed PLD and left it alone.

[LastDream]

BLM needs love? The gameplay is boring? Are the people saying that coming from Heavensward or something?

I recall playing BLM back on turn 9 in 2.0 and THAT was boring and still fun somehow. Level 50 : no Fire IV, no Ice IV, no depth gameplay AT ALL just the most boring possible rotation with high burst damage.

SB is probably the best thing BLM could ever hope for. We got a solid aoe rotation making the BLM far more efficient in AOE than SMN now (4 instant flare baby) and tools to help us stay longer and easier in astral fire. The timers have been perfectly balanced in order to punish you for not positioning well, missing a cast of Fire IV in the process if you waste a single second moving when you're not supposed to. I get 3k7 to 4k dps on D1 to D4 and i'm seriously happy about it. Foul is the icing on the cake since it just works with everything. BLM is in the best possible spot ever, it's about time people learn to change along with the job.



The RDM on the other hand doens't need a nerf, it needs an actual gameplay depth. The job is efficient but is completely braindead. I don't dislike the job at all, in fact i wish the job could offer more diversity with traits and passives like the other two casters do so you can separate the bad red mages to the good red mages.

Exemple : If you cast VerFire with at least 20 more black mana than white mana and have at least 30 black mana, your next VerThunder will be enhanced and place a thunder DOT. Of course, that would require lots of potency tweaking to adjust to the changes, but that way you would actually have to think a bit on how to grow your mana and not just brainlessly playing dice over "should i white or black now". The passive on VerHoly and VerFlare is a good exemple of basic depth.

[Galvuu]

snip

You get the quadra Flare once per 3 minutes if you Ether for it.
I haven't done Omega yet (about to get on that right now), but this isn't something you use in either EX primal right now, anyway, so.
What tools help with keeping AF? We're back to 3.0 in terms of AF leniency.
Blackcat had a large Reddit thread about these very same issues and people seemed to almost unanimously agree about it.
It feels a lot clunkier, slower and more sluggish than it did in 3.4/3.5, and your refresh window is considerably tighter.
Did you actually not play BLM from 3.2 onward, or...?

And what change, anyway? What is so fundamentally different from 4.0 BLM compared to the last few patches? Other than the fact our main rotation is set (before you had three variations) and that we get screwed hard by mana ticks (though I've gotten used to waiting for it, although asking a dps job to wait is one of the worst things ever)? You play exactly as you would've before. The only single difference in playstyle is Between the Lines. Foul just replaced Blizzard as your filler spell, but the rotation and playstyle is the exact same (which was not true between 2.X and 3.X).
Absolutely nothing has changed in the BLM playstyle, and a good 3.X BLM is still a good 4.0 BLM.

It's fine if you disagree with some of the things being said, but just disregarding that and slapping the incompetence tag on us is a bit... not nice x)
(And almost nobody says it's "boring". But if there's something clunky/annoying about the job, you should voice it so it gets addressed).

[LastDream]

I'm quoting some of the very early posts since i could not read most of the thread...since my character was made from 1.0 yea i have some knowledge of the job since day 1. The quadra flare is barely just an exemple, the aoe thunder is one of the massive changes for aoe the BLM could hope for. You can clearly feel the difference when procing those "stormclouds?" (don't know the english name sadly) passives on trash mobs and the Ice IV passive really helps on the extended astral fire aoe rotation.

How can the job feel clunkier, slower and more sluggish exactly when they buffed the timer for AF and added new movement tools? Went from 11 to 14, where is the downside exactly? With Ice IV, we overall get more Fire IV to cast and we don't suffer that much from the loss of potency or raging strikes. Once again, Foul adds a nice touch to the whole experience by reducing some downtimes and both Triplecast and Between the lines prove to be extremely efficient in raiding when you need to move thus also helping /sometimes/ (rarely) refresh AF in needs. I feel much less like a turret than i did back in previous patches. Sharpcast was already a formidable tool, but the new added ones just help offer more ways for you to do your job.

The only issue i've ran into is the Ice ticks that led me to 2400 mana in AF and denied me a Fire IV sometimes.

I'm sorry, i don't mean to be rude or anything (i didn't imply anyone is incompetent really) so i'll just say that i don't agree with people that could possibly trash or complain about the current status of the job. We saw how that went well for some before SB launched. There are jobs that have significant issues and BLM is not one of them currently. If some people are dissapointed that they couldn't cast their third Fire IV without Ley Lines with 1 second left and lost their enochian because they slightly moved and wasted a gcd, that's on their head. The BLM will always be the good old "Fire/Ice" brainiac rotation but as i played from 2.0 to today, i can say without a doubt that the job has become greater and funnier than ever. Take care.

[Galvuu]

snip

Glad to explain it for you then. Although you answered it yourself, it may not be obvious to everyone, so I'd be happy to clarify.

In 3.2 onward, you had 12 seconds of AF III. You had 3 primary AF rotations (disregarding procs for now, but we'll get into it). F4 has a base cast time of 3 seconds, F has 2.5. Thus, we had:

- F4x3>F>F4 (9+2.5, 0.5s window for the AF III refresh)
- F4x2>F>F4x2 (6+2.5, 3.5s window for the AF refresh- this one is important)
- F4>F>F4x3>B3 (9+1.5, 1.5s window to get the B3 off and go into UI III)

You could be whatever suited the situation best. The middle one is the most common rotation. As you can see, you had around 3 seconds of leeway during the initial part of your AF rotation and you were left with AF III on a 12s timer, in which you had to cast 2xF4 and B3 for a total of 7.5s casting things. This gave you a 3.5s window in the first part, and a 4.5s in the other, and thus you could fit 2 procs there (or just run around for mechanics without losing F4s).
With higher speed and some slidecasting, this would become even more comfortable.
The merit of 3xF4>F, as tight as it is, is that if you could do that, you were left with 12s of AF in which you only needed one F4 and one B3- you had 12-4.5=7.5s of AF leeway in which you could shove Thundercloud procs while running around.

The current 4.0 scenario has only one rotation:

- 3xF4>F>3xF4>B3 (9+2.5s, meaning you have 1.5s for the AF refresh and 2.5s for the UI III refresh)

Even if you predict heavy movement, there's no way to alter your rotation for it. Since the cast time of 3xF4+F is 11.5s, and your AF now has 13s of uptime, you have a 1.5s window to work with. Compare with the previous 3.5s for F4x2>F>F4x2 or the massive 7s for the 3xF4>F>F4.
No matter what you do, that 1.5s will haunt you. So if anything happens you're forced to cut the rotation a F4 short.

So, not only does your rotation have less versatility (sluggish), your timing windows are a lot shorter (exact same has 3.0, making it clunkier).
The fact that our spellspeed right now is effectively lower than in 3.2, make all these issues even worse.
We can't even use Thundercloud procs in the AF phase without sacrificing a Fire IV now, and before I could fit 2 procs easily (with 1300 SS).
It feels so... clunky.
That's why it's clunky.
That's why I'm here asking for QoL changes and slight dps buffs >: (

(And no ofense taken at all, apologies if I jumped the gun on you )

[GospelVhae]

Info on F4 HW cast time vs F4 SB cast time

Thank you for this. You worded what I couldn't to support as to why I think BLMs will rise with upcoming armor sets (with a lot of spellspeed, I hope). I die a little inside every time I'm faced with the decision of whether to force a F4 and transpose or let go of a F4 and B3.

[Ferrasper]

Thank you for this. You worded what I couldn't to support as to why I think BLMs will rise with upcoming armor sets (with a lot of spellspeed, I hope). I die a little inside every time I'm faced with the decision of whether to force a F4 and transpose or let go of a F4 and B3.

I don't feel bad about it. I just F4 and transpose. If more then anything, you get an extra explosion from it. The way I see it. Big whoop you get a small dps decrease from it. It's not going to kill you or end the world if you do it.

[NovaLevossida]

Thank you for this. You worded what I couldn't to support as to why I think BLMs will rise with upcoming armor sets (with a lot of spellspeed, I hope). I die a little inside every time I'm faced with the decision of whether to force a F4 and transpose or let go of a F4 and B3.

I'm bummed that with the expansion launch, the spell speed situation makes BLM feel so awful to play while casting. I love the other changes, and the cast speed reduction wasn't unexpected, but it's the only one of my jobs I've hopped on and thought, "Wow, this feels awful just hitting buttons compared to right before the expansion." I guess we'll probably be feeling okay with the next tome gearset after the one coming up.

[Llugen]

The whole thread is tl;dr, but my suggestion after thinking about it and toying with it would be let the umbral hearts function similar to MCH ammunition where the fire spells used with it are given +25 potency.

Also, consider giving Triplecast increased potency for the three spells that it casts, like +50% or double if you please.

If you're really interested in more of my unique thoughts, between the lines should reset the recast timer on aetherial manipulation, which would not be broken at all since flying back and forth would mean not being able to cast in the downtime.

Also, there is no reason that Surecast doesn't allow you to move while casting the spell. Furthermore, the "nullifies draw in and knockback" completely doesn't work, or I haven't encountered a moment where it does.

Also, if you'd like to apply some kind of cooldown reduction by 10 seconds on Convert for every umbral heart spent or for every Blizzard IV cast, I'd be down with that. Almost every other job that I've looked at has some kind of cooldown timer lowering feat now. Would be dope.

[Krisom]

Furthermore, the "nullifies draw in and knockback" completely doesn't work, or I haven't encountered a moment where it does.

The problem with this is two-fold and it comes with bad design.

The first problem is that many mechanics for some reason do not let you take advantage of these abilities, for example on DRG I had an idea that if I were to be targeted by Susano's knock-back and have a bomb on me I'd use Arm's Length so I don't have to sprint back to the group. - However I should have known that it knocks me back regardless.
Arm's Length and Surecast are in no way game breaking in that fight because most of the time you will be targeted by a stormcloud, the very rare moments (once where it matters in the fight) you're not targeted it'd be perfect and would reward players who utilize these abilities wisely.

The second problem with Surecast is that when you begin to cast a spell, the effect wears off. I am unsure if this affects the knock-back or not but it's very likely it does in a way that it wouldn't work any longer.
Would it be game breaking for Surecast to be a buff that lasts 10 seconds for every cast during then? Probably not, but I don't see any reason why it's in the state it is. Increase its CD, reduce the duration of the buff but atleast make it more useful than it is now.