Black Mage Change thoughts

[Sensyon]

The triple Flare is interesting because I have no idea that enables it. I was wondering if maybe Flare could consume the fire+ice crystal like it does an umbral heart, but I rewatched the trailer and the crystal goes untouched. So presumably there's a trait that gives a free Flare under certain circumstances, or makes Flare consume only a fraction of your MP twice after spending a heart, or something.

I'm pretty sure he used an ether or Manafont between the second and third Flare. It probably behaves the same way as 5.x.

[Ferrinus]

Ohhh duh yeah I completely missed his little ogcd animation between Flares 2 and 3. Good call.

[Kahnom]

Its good that they don't add anymore instant-cast spell or even more type of procs.
We have more than enough as it is.

[Ferrinus]

I wish that, instead of or in addition to lasting longer, thundercloud procs could stack.

[Orbus]

Like, being able to hold more than one at a time?
Alternatively, if you could toss a thundercloud proc and either the damage stacks with the current thunder spell on the enemy or extends the duration of the dot by however long the thunder spell your using lasts.
The biggest problem with thundercloud procs is that you're throwing damage away whenever you use it at any time but the end of the dot, which is inherently a problem when proccing it is entirely random(it might not even proc at all, which ends up being a net negative since you could have used the time to leave umbral phase and cast a fire 4 instead) unless you're sharpcasting it, in which case you have to hold on to it for its entire duration and you might not be in a good state to use it when the timer comes to the end because of boss mechanics.

[Mezzoforte]

They changed it for the sake of Skill disparity which is a poor reason, it in my eyes has lowered the skill ceiling to what we know of of the tool kit right now, but whom is this actually aimed for, the skill disparity is not coming from enochain management.

This is poor showing that SE tried to cater to rubbish players and those skilled players basically got a shot in the foot for no reason.

This game doesn't have a particularly high ceiling as it was before. This is a fairly simple mmo game with a fairly simple and easy to do set of rotations. Anything in an mmo that is based on a rotation is by definition simple. There isn't a lot of decision making. If you were working with multiple of built in rotations with priority lists and constantly shifting of the makeup of priority lists and building new ways to use skills on the fly. Then you may have a somewhat highly skilled mmo. The problem is that games like this rarely can work with such designs so we end up with these very simple 1 or 2 types of rotations that eventually you just repeat as a reflex. You are splitting hairs talking about removing managing enochian as lowering the ceiling since it was almost already at the floor as it is.

[MagiusNecros]

I wish that, instead of or in addition to lasting longer, thundercloud procs could stack.

They won't stack. We will need to spend Sharpcast on AoE pulls for T4 procs I wager. I usually start using sharp if it procs once after a hardcast.

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Regarding the changes I'm happy BLM gets new spells. Last xpac was so damn boring.

[Sylvain]

LoopStart:
Blizzard V (UI3, Antipodes charge)
Blizzard IV (hearts)
Antipodes (enable Fire V)
Fire V (AF3, Antipodes charge)
Fire V spam
Antipodes (enable Blizzard V)
Despair
goto LoopStart;

I do not think we will spam fireV specifically because it does refresh astral fire.

BLM was considered one of the most well designed job if not the best hand down (talking about design not popularity )
Beside Scath and fire2/ice2 as odd ball

The single target rotation was satisfying and everything fit neatly with each other.

So in short, you do not fix what doesn\\'t need any fixing and fireIV / astral fire management did not required a fix.
Umbral ice did and we got Umbral soul in ShB (what an amazing spell)

What were "broken" :
Rank2 spells
Scath
Ice1?
Weird rotation at very very high SkS

What were annoying but not broken :
Enochian lost during the opener due to a random lag spike
Dychotomy between summoning tiny sun (fireIV) and a flame sneeze (fire1).
Fire1 potency being so low that it made optimal gameplay out of sync with the overall job design (hence the high SpS rotation, iceIV skip etc)

If fireV becomes the main Nuke then the fire rotation and the BLM experience as a whole change drastically. You basically reverse to a flashier ARR BLM with no stance time management (mostly fire obviously)
Even if antipodal has higher potency the spell itself is pointless.
FireIV has a potency of 107pps
Despair has a potency of 126pps
Antipodal would need to be between these 2 to be included which would make it a rather weak upgrade. Despair true strength is that it allows a final firespell you wouldn\\'t normally be able to do because as a finisher alone, it\\'s potency is quite bleh for a finisher.

Now what I think is actually happening
They show us that FireV can swap stance so it is a replacement for Fire3 in the same way IceV is.
As said before, fire2 was considered broken because it was too weak to be incorporated into the aoe rotation. If FireV has higher single target potency than Fire3, refresh the stance AND does aoe
Then it works both as Fire3 and fire2

In a single target rotation you would do fireV fireIV spam antipodal somewhere despair then iceV , so your single target rotation would not budge. Antipodal would just be an visual upgrade to fire1 and a HighSpS-BS-rotation safeguard.
(Which is something I have been advocating for in many many posts)

FireV also serves as a visual upgrade (assuming it can proc in the same way firestarter procs Fire3), perhaps also better and clearer target for Dynamisation as many new BLM are confused and it is confusing !
And our air rotation feels less clunky as a whole as fire2>5 becomes a spender thanks to our 3 stack of Umbral heart.



Anyway, can't wait to try it out!!

[Ferrinus]

My guess is that Fire V has lower potency than Fire III, so we'll use 3 for single-target stance swap and 5 for multi-target stance swap. I think we're also meant to "spam" 5 for multitarget until we have only one umbral heart left and then transition into Flare, although whether this is actually a good idea will depend on relative potencies and cast times.

[Kabooa]

My guess is that Fire V has lower potency than Fire III, so we'll use 3 for single-target stance swap and 5 for multi-target stance swap. I think we're also meant to "spam" 5 for multitarget until we have only one umbral heart left and then transition into Flare, although whether this is actually a good idea will depend on relative potencies and cast times.

It looked like a 3 second cast time, so same as Fire 2. Probably only need around 200 potency.