BLM 6.x speculation

[waifugenerator]

No speculation needed: They will make BLM both easier to play and far more powerful, as they have done at every single opportunity presented. They may even make Resurrection a role skill just to screw with every caster who isn't BLM even harder.

There's your 6.0 BLM speculation.

Haha fire iv go brrr

[Daws]

I like the idea of spending two Polyglots unlocking...something. Perhaps a new trait or some new uber spell that blows out our retinas. I think level 80 BLM is pretty near sublime. My only real gripe with the class is the dead spells sitting on my bar that only have relevance at lower levels. Maybe clean that up. How spells can auto switch to new spells like RDM and SMN have could be a way.

[waifugenerator]

I like the idea of spending two Polyglots unlocking...something. Perhaps a new trait or some new uber spell that blows out our retinas. I think level 80 BLM is pretty near sublime. My only real gripe with the class is the dead spells sitting on my bar that only have relevance at lower levels. Maybe clean that up. How spells can auto switch to new spells like RDM and SMN have could be a way.

It'd be cool if f/b1 upgraded into tier 3 spells (similar to thunder) which would free up 2 spaces on our hot bar, but I'm not sure how OP it would be to have what's essentially a 432pot fire 1. Also, a 4th stack of UI/AF is inevitable (4 stacks/4 spell tiers....thematic symmetry!!!!!) and would solve the mp tick issue as well as boost our damage from 1.8x to a nice even 2x

[Morningstar1337]

I'd think it'd make more sense to upgrade F/B 1 to their IV counterparts under Enochean...but that would open a can of worms regarding their current niche,as the Tier 1 spells still have the ability to refresh the timers (inc Enochean), and while allowing IV spells to refresh timers would be a logical QoL chnage, it would also be a change on par of my previously suggested 30 second instacast cooldown buffs, which would mean the difficulty of the job would job down noticeably.

With that said, Ido have a idea of stuff I think could still work, but it still needs a skill or two because the devs were insistent on giving capstone skills..

1. Phantom Dart: Why yes I still wanna use this PVP skill in PVE, and yes it would add some utility without justifying support taxes simply because its just a magic damage increase on 1 target.
2. Desperation: A trait that allows umbral hearts to cut the MP cost of Despir by a third,similar to their effect on Flare, all that means if that players would then be able to cast despair twice and then manafont a third
3. Speedrawing: Speaking of which, I propose a Cooldown buff to 60 seconds for Leylines (bring them in line with the instant cast buffs), allowing Laylines to be used at the same time as Triple and Sharp cast. I also wanted the same for Manafont, until I realize it was a 3 min CD, not s 2.5 min CD
4. Malm and Mend IV: Just allows a 4th stack of AF, UI and Umbral Hearts, more for preventing server ticks from messing with MP. Also allows B3, F3, Flare, Despair and Freeze to grant those 4 stacks at once
5. Astral Soul: Capstone skill. Resets AF, converts all Umbral Hearts into MP and gives a 25 second Damage buff. Cooldown of 180s and only usable under Enochean and Astral Fire. Meant to be an Equal and opposite counterpart of Umbral Soul, an oGCD compatedto Umbrals' GCD and a damage buff instead of resource management, usable in fire phase and resets the timer for more Fire IVs. The trade off is the loss of double despair without Manafont, but its easy to set it up in those 25 seconds with Freeze>F3>Despair>Despair>Manafont>Despair.

What do you think, better or worse then my suggestions for 30s Swift/Triple/Leylines CDs (fun fact: some of these were infleunced by an immediate response to those ideas)?

[Eliadil]

The main issue with Phantom Dart is that it increase magic damage taken. While this doesn't seem that big when you think of BLM as the only caster of your group, the issue we have now is that SMN is pretty much on par with BLM right now in terms of damage. Increasing magic damage taken would even more encourage peoples to bring a double caster comp, and could be a huge risk in terms of healing optimization (just imagine peoples beginning to optimize encouters so that a WHM can deal more damage than a dps for the duration of Phantom Dart... ). This is a neat idea, but the support opportunity it brings would definitely require a damage nerf to the job, which I kinda don't want for now. :x

Desperation is a neat idea too, and I have thought of it as well, but it quickly fall short when you consider that you can already only have just three umbral hearts at max.
Your standard Fire Rotation is usually Fire 3 (3hearts) -> Fire 4 (2 hearts)-> Fire4(1heart) -> Fire 4(all hearts used) -> Fire 4 -> F1 -> F4 -> F4 -> Despair
As you can see, Umbral hearts get used pretty quickly here, roughly 4 spells before the use of Despair. And Desperation would not make it better, since you would have to essentially shorten your fire phase by a lot in order to get use of this trait. I don't have the numbers on me, but I'm pretty sure this would be a damage loss and not a gain. So this would need some tweaking in order to be a viable option.

The leylines buff is neat, and I'm pretty sure we'll get it for 6.0, since this seems like the logical thing to do.

For the fourth stack of AF and UI I'm not sure what could this bring on the table. AF would just mean more damage in fire phase, so that I can understand. But for UI the issue is not mp generation (we are stuck anyway using three GCD in umbral ice no matter what (B3 for UI-> Thunder/Xeno for refresh/movement/damage -> B4 for hearts), which is plenty of time to recover mp). The issue is that B3 does not grand immediate mp generation, making it hard to refresh thunder right after. Maybe have it grand 400MP on use tho ? And maybe increase the damage dealt by B4 a little. This could make Ice Phase incredibly better, as I don't see a fourth stack of AF and UI as something "needed" or "usefull" on the job.

For Astral Soul, while the idea is really cool I'll admit, the issue stays the same as Desperation : We run out of Umbral heart stacks too quickly for it to be interesting. As it is right now we need all three umbral heart stacks to have just what we need for our current fire phase. And I don't think that sacrificing one heart at least to recover 1600mp (which is what we'll have spent at the time) is worth-... Well on one hand it gives us enough for the Fire 4 we would lose by trading a heart, so it's at least Mana Neutral, so we can get some use out of it. Biggest issue is that it's an oGCD, which is terrible to weave in a fire phase. But maybe if we get a trait to shorten the cast time of Fire4...?

[Kurando]

I feel like Leylines should offer both an out of range buff and the current ground placement. You could place it somewhere in advance knowing you can zoom straight to it for a predicted mech, or because you know it's your day to have every single mech thrown at you and you can barely stay in one place long enough to reap the benefits. I suppose the effect could be weaker if you stand outside the glyph while getting the full effect inside if it's a little OP, but least the job is still getting something from it you know while it's active.

Really don't want to see any tier I or II (ARR) spells still part of a BLM's lvl 90 kit in the next expac, so hopefully other stuff can be adjusted slightly for this change.

[ty_taurus]

I just recently got BLM to 80 and while it's not something I plan on really playing much, I did start to enjoy it some closer to the end of my level grind. All that to be said, take my comments with a grain of salt, but to keep in theme with BLM staying relatively the same in terms of actions but just continuing to expand their natural rotation:

Burst, the FFXI Ancient Magic for Thunder, could be a new spell that replaces perhaps Thunder IV when Thundercloud procs along with another spell that does the same for Thunder III but single target (Perhaps Fulmination?) Basically the same as the current procs of the spell but with extra potency to the initial hit.

I think it could be nice to do something a bit more with their Ice element as well. Blizzard spells are obviously important for fueling your MP, but I did feel that of the 3 elements BLM has access to, Fire gets a lot of attention and a lot of time spent on it where Ice is just "gimme MP! Kthanksbye" and I get it from a rotational aspect. Thematically though, it could be cool to see some kind of epic Ice moment where, for once, a Blizzard Spell gets to outshine your Fire attacks, maybe once per 90 seconds or so?

[Archwizard]

QoL Stuff:
- Fire II upgrades directly to Flare, Blizzard II upgrades directly to Freeze.
- Scathe removed and replaced with a buffed Drain, Blizzard I is the new instant.
- UI reworked to increase MP tick speed to every second instead of an amount every 3 sec, OR to allow ice spells to recover a flat amount of MP directly in addition to the Refresh.
- Fire IV, Blizzard IV and Enochian buttons fused, Umbral Soul and Despair buttons fused.

Actual buffs:
- Trait so Flare can be used out of UI3 without consuming all UH or all MP.
- Trait to make Fire I instant.
- "Astral Hearts" allow Fire IV, Despair, and Flare casts in AF to charge up Burst, which provides additional interaction with Thunder spells.
- A single-target Execution spell that uses Polyglot charges.

[Lauront]

My main wishes for BLM:

• Streamline the spells, so that Fire 1 becomes Fire 3, Blizzard 1 becomes Blizzard 3, Blizzard 2 becomes Freeze and Fire 2 becomes Flare. This will require a rework of Firestarter, to let Fire 3 proc it, and of the various spell costs and cast times and any other necessary aspects, but it'd significantly reduce button bloat and make a clear upgrade path feasible, to provide some new animations for these two spells. Fire 1 is ugly and I'd rather it vanished at this point.
• Rework Blizzard 2 to center on the enemy target, as with Freeze.
• Fuse Enochian with Fire 4 and Blizzard 4, as with PVP.
• Allow for the procs to be OGCDs. The job has a good number of instants now, through 2 Xenos, Triplecast and Swiftcast, and possibly even some new ones to come, so it'd be nice to be able to weave the procs into them.
• Burst (new spell) - an AOE spell, maybe on a 30 sec CD, which consumes Thunder DOTs at a discount to their full value. If used below a certain HP threshold, it instead multiplies the remaining damage of the DOT. The envisaged usage would be for consuming what's left of Thunder before the boss vanishes or is at low HP and close to dying.
• Some new AOEs. Sartauvoir (the Bozja mage), with his Tri-Directional Flame, has reignited () my desire for Entropic Flame, so I'd like Flare to upgrade to that, and Freeze to an appropriately frosty ice spell. I'd settle for some version of Comet too, if Entropic Flame didn't make it in (e.g. if it were given to some other caster.)
• Speed up UI MP ticks.
• Figure out Scathe's purpose.
• Primarily for PVP - turn Aetherial Manipulation into a dash forward spell.
• I'd also like to see Aspect Mastery moved to when Flare is acquired. The trait is a huge QoL upgrade and it's sorely missed when synced.

I'm not sure what new ideas they have planned, but I think the above are areas they can touch on to improve on the existing kit. Maybe stuff to improve on abilities like Sharpcast, Leylines, Manaward, Manafont, AM etc. as well. I'd like to see some bold new ideas but the BLM rotation is so well designed at this point that they may just want to add flourishes.

QoL wishes:

Combine mutually exclusive buttons to lower bloat - F4/B4/Enochian, Ley Lines/Between the Lines

Turn B2 into a targetable spell like Freeze, and make it upgrade into Freeze.

Lower the MP cost and possibly increase F2 potency.

New Skill Ideas:

Necrogenesis - next three speels return 10%dmg as HP (give us a self-heal for peet's sake!)

Burst/Comet - double Polyglot stack skill for burst phases

A way to instantly generate 2 Polyglot stacks.

Do something with F1 (maybe F5 as an instant cast AF refresh as suggested before).

I'd like Necrogenesis. Also agree on fusing Ley Lines and Between the Lines, to save more button space.

[Morningstar1337]

My main wishes for BLM:

• Streamline the spells, so that Fire 1 becomes Fire 3, Blizzard 1 becomes Blizzard 3, Blizzard 2 becomes Freeze and Fire 2 becomes Flare. This will require a rework of Firestarter, to let Fire 3 proc it, and of the various spell costs and cast times, but it'd significantly reduce button bloat and make a clear upgrade path feasible, to provide some new animations for these two spells. Fire 1 is ugly and I'd rather it vanished at this point.
• Fuse Enochian with Fire 4 and Blizzard 4, as with PVP.

Would be interesting though I'd still advocate for B2 to be kept for those with more popoto hardware (at least until they find a way for invisible mobs consistently targetable).