A Meaningful Overhaul to BLM Lv. 35 Freeze

[Llugen]

Hi. As many of you know, this idea has been tossed around in the various BLM threads, originally proposed by Eloah in the damage thread I think, but to be blunt this is so good and I am so confident about it that it is worth making its own post for developer attention. (not sure that they've been perusing the 150+ total pages of the other threads, salt and all) So here goes. Please bring all your friends and all their friends to like this OP for hits.




Dear Developers,

You have been trying to make Freeze "useful" basically since 2.0 launch by buffing its potency and lowering its cast time, etc. This hasn't worked, because it's still a loss to use Freeze over just getting back into Astral Fire no matter which way you slice it. To elaborate, Freeze is either higher potency than Flare (so broken) or lower potency than Flare (so pointless). There is no in-between, since Transpose is used to get back to Umbral Ice I after Flare and not Blizzard III. Furthermore, if anything Blizzard II can give you Umbral Ice III faster than Freeze can anyway. Further still, its bind ability has been almost completely nullified because all "modern" mobs resist the bind anyway. This spell is not even on most BLM's keybinds because, quite frankly, it's horrible. The fact that it was not majorly fixed in 4.0 suggests to us as a community that, with all due respect, you might not be sure how to address this skill and make it useful.



Well, we have come up with something really solid. Consider the following adjustment/overhaul:

Lv. 35 Freeze (Spell): Deals Ice damage with a potency of 100 (or adjust as you feel necessary), grants a full stack of Umbral Ice (so Umbral II at level 35, III at 40 and beyond). Now a targeted spell like Fire II (just remove the bind for non-pvp if it's going to continue to be useless).
Lv. 50 Sub-Zero (Trait): Upon reaching Zero MP (i.e. after Flare), the next Freeze will cost no MP (and be instant cast, if you wish)
Lv. 68 Enhanced Umbral Heart (Trait): Upon successful use of Sub-Zero proc, grants three Umbral Hearts (as well as the rest of the current effects of Enhanced Umbral Heart). Edit: or even just ONE Umbral Heart to guarantee that it is not used single target.



Let me spell this out for clarity. Despite being able to quadruple Flare, the current BLM rotation for AOE damage leaves much to be wanted; it is still a slave to the Transpose timer. Worse than this, Fire III must be hardcast in Umbral Ice I, and on top of that the job is in the unenviable position of needing to decide whether or not to cast a single target spell during an aoe phase to charge up Umbral Hearts (Blizzard IV). This is pretty poor design at this stage of the game; requiring a hardcast of Fire III may have balanced BLM's AoE rotation back in 2.x, but no longer. This needs streamlining, especially considering that SMN can make use of its burst significantly better than BLM can, and time inbetween aoe pulls helps it to recover timers (aetherflow, tri-disaster, etc) much more effectively than BLM can (Sharpcast and Polyglot do not compare with double Enkindle Bahamut and 2 Painflare/1 Bane). Lastly, the "sustain" nature of BLM AoE is largely pointless; all other classes have AoE burst to keep damage on the tank/party down as much as possible, not to mention it would be poor balance to make long aoe phases with their finite resource, unlike BLM. The whole point of AoE is to burn things down fast (during cooldowns), so BLM's ability to continuously AoE has little value.



This adjustment/overhaul to Freeze would not only make the spell actually used in the rotation, which is what you seemingly intend, but it would smooth out several kinks:
-You no longer have to wait for a server tick of MP with Transpose
-You no longer need to debate whether or not to cast Blizzard IV for Umbral Hearts for significant potency loss in big mobs
-You no longer need to slowcast Fire III to get back into Astral Fire due to Umbral Ice III
-Due to fastcast Fire III, an off-gcd can be weaved more effectively before the first Flare/Thunder IV of the Astral Fire phase
-You no longer need to worry about insufficient MP to Flare twice (and potentially Thunder IV) due to accidental MP clipping (from Ley Lines, The Arrow, etc), and always at least twice due to the Umbral Hearts granted.
-You now have a real reason to not only have Freeze on your keybind, but to use it in AoE rotation regularly, as its potency would be higher than Blizzard III on 3 mobs or more.
-Moving through the rotation faster means more damage faster means stronger AoE means eeeeeverybody happy!




This suggestion is literally gold. When I first read it, I just about cried. Again, I am not a developer nor do I intend to be, but by your words BLM is "the strongest caster", and this should include AoE damage. Right now, SMN is pretty significantly stronger AoE damage than BLM due to its burst nature (again, "sustained AoE" is pointless) and its gains from downtime between pulls (timers management). This needs to be rectified to justify bringing BLM at all into content of any kind. It's sad to say that as a main of BLM for four years, I can't even do dungeons effectively anymore. If you collectively feel like this is overpowered, consider dropping the potency of Freeze by a small amount, but to be perfectly honest, Black Mage should be the strongest Area of Effect damage.


Thank you for reading this and considering it carefully. On top of this suggestion which I am 100% confident in, there will be another thread outlining other balance changes that have been suggested in the other threads in an OP soon.

[Raldo]

I've been disappointed with BLM's AOE potential ever since they added the damage reduction to Fire 2 and Flare based on how many targets you hit. This would be a welcome change.

[Kabooa]

I've been disappointed with BLM's AOE potential ever since they added the damage reduction to Fire 2 and Flare based on how many targets you hit. This would be a welcome change.

Fire 2 doesn't have diminishing returns.

[zuzu-bq]

Fire 2 doesn't have diminishing returns.

The diminishing return of Fire II, is using Fire II.

[Lelila38]

Thanks Llugen for stepping up and making these into separate threads. I support the Sub-Zero change to make Freeze useful and think it was a great idea to give it its own thread to make it easier to find.

[Raldo]

Fire 2 doesn't have diminishing returns.

You are correct, I worded it badly. Fire 2 used to hit harder (120 potency, if I recall correctly), and Flare is gimped based on the number of targets hit.

[Remedi]

I still think that the subzero portion should be baked into flare instead of making it a separate trait, but regardless it's a.....cool.....idea and should be considered by the dev team (especially after the changes to tri-bind)since imho the main problem with BLM aoe (and to and extend to the job) is how slow it is compared to how faster other jobs are now (though it would be fine if that slugginess would come out with a major firepower but it is not so and as such they should address it)

[Kabooa]

Thinking further on this, you run into some implications..

As a 1 heart variant, you remove it from single target consideration given certain parameters (Swift or Triple with a flare ender) but also remove it the 3 pack and 7+ pack AoE (because you want 3 hearts in both scenarios. 2 Fire 4 / Fire 2s, and then double flare).

As a 3 heart variant, you open up single target uses that effectively remove some dead zones as long as you have an instant cast available. Sub 100% MP Fire Phases become a non issue so long as an instant cast can be used for a Flare at the end. A side effect of increase Black Mage's cleaving capability on boss + add set ups immensely is also here.

[Llugen]

Tsumi pointed out that it would probably have to be only one heart otherwise flare would be single target with swiftcast at least and then into freeze, but even one heart is enough for two Flares, so I'll take it.

Please share with your friends to come like this post, I really think we have something solid here worth dev attention!

[Remedi]

Don't see a problem for it having an effect on single target since as you said you would need swiftcast to use it anyway