I thought I would hate Blm. I was wrong.

[Ryaz]

I've never been a fan of turret casters and honestly, for the longest time I found Thm/Blm extremely boring. Standing in one place spamming fire 1 until a Fire 3 proc happens was yawn-inducing for me. But I pushed through leveling because I'm on a mission to get all my jobs to 80 (only 4 more to go!).

But once I got past 50, things began to change. Enochian, Blizzard IV and Fire IV were unlocked. I started to add in Sharpcast into my rotation and had to watch my timer to make sure Enochian didn't fall off. The road to 70 didn't add a ton of new stuff, but Foul added another big boom to end my rotation with, forcing me to really work to keep Enochian up. My AoE rotation really started to feel fun once I hit 68 and could double Flare. 71-80 was a joy- Despair for my single target Flare-like ability and Aspect Mastery and Umbral Soul really made the rotation smooth (no more reliance on Transpose to switch aspects). Capping it off with Xenoglossy as a single target Foul with another Polyglot stack was just icing on the cake. The rotation is involved and being forced to move really makes you have to adapt, but at the same time it's so smooth and has a great rhythm to it. Plus lots of big booms and everyone loves big booms.

So, Blm went from being a class I despised to my favorite caster of them all. My only real complaints with it is that Xenoglossy's animation feels a bit underwhelming and that its the only job where I have to switch my hotbars around when I level sync.

[Hasrat]

Double Flare? Boy, just wait til you pull off the quad-Flare.

[Silverquick]

I've also been working it up little by little again.

Its a nice change from Summoner and Red Mage.

[Nemekh]

A lot of effort and checks went into the current iteration of BLM. It's genuinely rare for a job to feel so seamless and fluid out of the gate of an expansion release. The job feels and plays really well. I honestly wish the same due care was given to all jobs instead of what ended up happening. At least things are now a lot better for the overall game balance and feel of play.

[Noctisnine]

Yeah specially compared to monk who is the worst of the jobs right now.

[Rilifane]

I hear the "I hate turrets and BLM is boring" a lot from people but most of them never played it past 50, thinking it couldn't possibly change that much and in a way that makes it more fun with each new skill you unlock.

I disliked the "transpose" phase aswell because it felt awkward and slow.
BLM has a slow start but the closer you get to 80 the more you notice just how incredibly well designed and fluid it feels. Everything just clicks and it's a class that can be both relaxed (in casual content where only few mechanics happen) and demanding (optimizing it in endgame content).
I like how it has two sides and it's neither always relaxed nor always demanding.

I wish more people would just push a few levels past 50 when it starts to get better and better.
I'm the only BLM in my FC. Most don't even touch it and some want to level it but are pushing it back and level everything else before it.
Shame, really.
It's so well-designed and I think a lot of people could enjoy it but are driven off by the unnecessary bad reputation.

Also: quad flare + triple foul?
Insert gleeful laughter here.

[SpeckledBurd]

A lot of effort and checks went into the current iteration of BLM. It's genuinely rare for a job to feel so seamless and fluid out of the gate of an expansion release. The job feels and plays really well. I honestly wish the same due care was given to all jobs instead of what ended up happening. At least things are now a lot better for the overall game balance and feel of play.

It isn't rare for Black Mage IMO. Black Mage has pretty consistently had some of the best additions to its kit of any job from expansion to expansion, and more importantly they have a tendency to make bigger changes to the existing kit in addition to expansion additions (IE, Transpose refreshing Enochian in Stormblood and Umbral Hearts from Freeze this expansion). Overall they've lavished attention on Black Mage to the point where it has a solid play experience at every level but 50.

It pays to be the job the game's Director prefers I suppose.

Yeah specially compared to monk who is the worst of the jobs right now.

I mean at the end of Heavensward Black Mage and Monk had a lot of very similar problems with Greased Lightning and Enochian, its just in Stormblood they actually solved those problems for Black Mage while Monk got some of the dumbest additions possible.

If Stormblood Black Mage had been anything like Stormblood Monk it would have been "Enhanced Manaward: Refreshes Enochian when Mana Ward is Broken" instead of Transpose refreshing it, Triple Cast wouldn't exist, Between the Lines would only work during Umbral Ice Phase at full MP, there'd be a trait that altered what Scathe did in Umbral Ice and Astral Fire, and Foul's potency would be a pittance for the price of removing the Enochian status while putting the Enochian CD on cooldown.

[Kabooa]

It pays to be the job the game's Director prefers I suppose.

I'd argue the Director just represents your average player better.

If you're primarily the designer, and in a game without a beta server, you rarely get your creations dragged through the mud, and something you think is genuinely good just doesn't gel with the rest of the playerbase.

I'm not sure how many testers they have, but they could stand to have more. More numerous, eager, and effectively wage-less testers.

#PublicBetaTestServers When

[Nemekh]

It isn't rare for Black Mage IMO. Black Mage has pretty consistently had some of the best additions to its kit of any job from expansion to expansion, and more importantly they have a tendency to make bigger changes to the existing kit in addition to expansion additions (IE, Transpose refreshing Enochian in Stormblood and Umbral Hearts from Freeze this expansion). Overall they've lavished attention on Black Mage to the point where it has a solid play experience at every level but 50.

It pays to be the job the game's Director prefers I suppose.

I wouldn't call past iterations remotely close to how beneficial Shadowbringers release BLM's changes were. Lots of QoL and AF/UI's timer being further increased and nothing new was fundamentally broken in any regard. In fact the only real change BLM has had is the indicator for how many spells left can be made instant with Triplecast in 5.10. The job has had no underlying mechanics changed because it was that good.

Meanwhile, in Stormblood F4/B4 spells were 3s base on release, the AF/UI timers were shorter, the Enochian upgrade tooltip was incorrect (leading people to think its damage% was bugged/did nothing when it was fine) and Foul had a mana cost. These things did get resolved after the fact but it wasn't already in the best state possible on release. Even further down the line were potency adjustments done and the anim lock and speed of AM was made much better.

Heavensward's release state is harder for me to recall, I mostly have memories of not enjoying the old Eno B4 timer mechanic at high ping, the state of SMN and SCH's teapot Broil.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

I wouldn't call past iterations remotely close to how beneficial Shadowbringers release BLM's changes were. Lots of QoL and AF/UI's timer being further increased and nothing new was fundamentally broken in any regard. In fact the only real change BLM has had is the indicator for how many spells left can be made instant with Triplecast in 5.10. The job has had no underlying mechanics changed because it was that good.

Meanwhile, in Stormblood F4/B4 spells were 3s base on release, the AF/UI timers were shorter, the Enochian upgrade tooltip was incorrect (leading people to think its damage% was bugged/did nothing when it was fine) and Foul had a mana cost. These things did get resolved after the fact but it wasn't already in the best state possible on release. Even further down the line were potency adjustments done and the anim lock and speed of AM was made much better.

Heavensward's release state is harder for me to recall, I mostly have memories of not enjoying the old Eno B4 timer mechanic at high ping, the state of SMN and SCH's teapot Broil.

HW Enochian was a lot trickier than it is now. Back then we started with fire and used B4 to refresh Enochian, though everytime you ended the chain the refresh extended it for 5 seconds LESS until it finally reset to the original 30 seconds (or however long it was--pretty sure it was 30). Eventually you got a feel for how many F4s you could squeeze in between B4 casts and you could chain it endlessly but it took a lot more attention to detail than it does now.

It was jarring to start with B4 in Stormblood but BLM requires a lot less looking at timers now. Im glad more people are picking it up.