Black Mage Change thoughts

[Ferrinus]

If they're keeping the 3.0s time, I hope they buff Fire II's potency so that it's more worth using at low levels, and maybe reduce its MP cost to that of Fire 1. Most AoE skills are balanced such that they have the same usage speed as single target skills but do between half and a third of the damage, so you want to pull them out at 3+ targets, but it's harder to make that determination for the slow and expensive Fire II given how Astral Fire works.

[Archwizard]

So my understanding of what we saw in the LL was:

- The IcyHot spell resets the AF/UI timer, no clue if it increases AF/UI stack or has any AoE (though we probably won't need it in AoE anyway), but it at least replaces Fire 1 in the rot
- Freeze no longer gives UI but gives a full stack of UH
- Hi-Fire 2 and Hi-Blizzard 2 each give a max stack of AF/UI
- The intent is to use Hi-Blizz2 into UI, Freeze for UH, Hi-Fire 2 for transition into AF and your first two UH casts, and Flare with your last UH and any remaining MP -- essentially the same flow as the "intended" ST rotation, if all the "Fire X" spells were merged and Despair was recastable.
- ... but since that takes so long to execute I'm guessing it'll be a week into the expansion before we weigh whether we can skip Freeze and just use one Hi-Fire 2 and Flare apiece.

Anything I missed?

[Rongway]

- The IcyHot spell resets the AF/UI timer, no clue if it increases AF/UI stack or has any AoE (though we probably won't need it in AoE anyway), but it at least replaces Fire 1 in the rot

The Antipodes animation has a ground glow that suggests AoE, though it is smaller than the ground glows for spells we know for certain are AoE. Regardless, you will presumably need it in AoE because it's probably what makes the opposite Element V spell available.

The JP versions of the new Blizzard and Fire spells are named "Hi-_____" because Yoshi-P didn't want to be responsible for choosing the next tier suffix to be canonized in the FF brand. It's uncertain if the EN spells will get the Hi-Element naming or just be Element V because our localization doesn't have that tier suffix dilemma.

[Archwizard]

Antipodes

Is that the confirmed name or just a guess?

Element V

... are you just using that interchangably with the Hi-element spells?

[Rongway]

Antipodes

Is that the confirmed name or just a guess?

Nothing has been confirmed yet. They could call it anything. Even "Antipode" *cringe*. (Antipodes should be referred to in pairs. The Greek singular of "antipodes" is "antipous")

Element V

... are you just using that interchangably with the Hi-element spells?

I thought I made that clear?

The JP versions of the new Blizzard and Fire spells are named "Hi-_____" because Yoshi-P didn't want to be responsible for choosing the next tier suffix to be canonized in the FF brand. It's uncertain if the EN spells will get the Hi-Element naming or just be Element V because our localization doesn't have that tier suffix dilemma.

The whole Hi-element thing was worth mentioning in the PLL because it was delivered in Japanese; this doesn't mean they're going to use the same naming in the EN localization, and even Aimi (the translator) doesn't always know the EN names for things when doing her translations. The only things that are clear regarding Hi/V spells is that they are upgrades to ファイラ/FireII and ブリザラ/BlizzardII and they are AoE (as per PLL, around 3h30m).

[Orbus]

I hope they're useful in single target rotations as well as mobbing.
I feel like we've got an abundance of aoe's.
We already hit like a ten ton truck in that area I feel like, and while fire4 has pulled its weight, after three expansions it's time for a new top dog spell that is used more than once per astral phase or held for mobility damage.

[Archwizard]

Nothing has been confirmed yet. They could call it anything. Even "Antipode" *cringe*. (Antipodes should be referred to in pairs. The Greek singular of "antipodes" is "antipous")

Wait, are you shaking your fist at the heavens because that the headcanon name you just gave it is grammatically incorrect? Knowing full-well they've given no reason to expect that's even remotely its name?

The whole Hi-element thing was worth mentioning in the PLL because it was delivered in Japanese; this doesn't mean they're going to use the same naming in the EN localization, and even Aimi (the translator) doesn't always know the EN names for things when doing her translations. The only things that are clear regarding Hi/V spells is that they are upgrades to ファイラ/FireII and ブリザラ/BlizzardII and they are AoE (as per PLL, around 3h30m).

K, until we get official confirmation otherwise, I'm just gonna keep calling them the Hi-2 spells like we were told they are in the LL, particularly since it feels weird to give them the 5th rank knowing that Flare and Freeze outclass them and functionally are now the AoE equivalents to the 4th rank spells.

And it's just gonna be confusing to swap terminology back and forth.

I hope they're useful in single target rotations as well as mobbing.
I feel like we've got an abundance of aoe's.
We already hit like a ten ton truck in that area I feel like, and while fire4 has pulled its weight, after three expansions it's time for a new top dog spell that is used more than once per astral phase or held for mobility damage.

Going back to my original point, that's actually something that worries me.

The current AoE rotation is basically Freeze -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Fire III -> Flare -> Flare, repeat until TC or cooldowns are available. Tossing F3 in there feels tedious because it's not an AoE, but the rotation is otherwise fairly short.

The new AoE rotation is shaping up to be designed as Hi-Blizzard II -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Freeze (bump forward a slot if Foul's down and the UI tick delays MP) -> Hi-Fire II -> Hi-Fire II -> Hi-Fire II -> Flare -> Flare, repeat until TC or Manafont -- which is 100% AoE, makes two of our currently useless skills actually useful, and allows for nearly 1:1 instant substitution to get back into our single-target rotation... but takes twice as long to execute accounting for cast times, so you may not even have the time to use more than one rotation (or even ramp it all the way up to Flare once) before the pack dies.
It gives us more tools, but conversely, gotta wonder if they're worth being pushed to use them.
Unrelated sidenote, anyone else notice that the final Hi-Fire 2 had a shorter cast time than the second? Wonder what that's about.

We won't know if it's viable until the final potency values are available, but there's a potential alternative in just Hi-Blizzard II -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Hi-Fire II -> Flare, which would be more convenient if only because it's way shorter but also could force Freeze into the same slot that Fire/Blizz2 had until now (on top of rendering the QoL traits for our AoE pointless) and once again forces a pause if the UI tick is poorly timed before you can cast T4.

Plus I wonder if the FrostFire spell means the functional death of Firestarter as a trait (Freecure, anyone?), and of Sharpcast on anything but Thunder spells...

[Rongway]

Wait, are you shaking your fist at the heavens because that the headcanon name you just gave it is grammatically incorrect?

No, I've been calling it Antipodes (ann-TIP-uh-deez), as it should be. Others, who probably played the original release of Chrono Trigger, have been calling it Antipode (ann-ti-PODE), no S.

Knowing full-well they've given no reason to expect that's even remotely its name?

In SquareEnix history, Antipode, Antipode 2, and Antipode 3 were the names given to a collection of fire-ice Dual Techs in the original localization of Chrono Trigger. Ostensibly the name was intended to be something longer but the technology of the time required the name be shortened. Later releases use the names Antipode Bomb -/2/3. I have enough faith in Michael-Christopher Koji Fox's team to think that if they decided to call it Antiposomething, they would choose the more elegant Antipodes rather than the clumsy Antipode.

K, until we get official confirmation otherwise, I'm just gonna keep calling them the Hi-2 spells like we were told they are in the LL,

The naming anecdote during the PLL is only relevant to Japanese and German, because the English and French localizations don't use power suffixes. If it had been an English-only PLL, it wouldn't have been a story worth telling.

Hi-Fire II and Hi-Blizzard II look bad, particularly because they should be parsed [[Hi] [Fire II]] and [[Hi] [Blizzard II]], but Hi-Fire II and Hi-Blizzard II imply [[Hi-Fire] [II]] and [[Hi-Blizzard] [II]]. As there were no Hi-Fire and Hi-Blizzard spells to begin with it would make more sense to just call them Fire V and Blizzard V which is consistent with the EN spell naming conventions.

particularly since it feels weird to give them the 5th rank knowing that Flare and Freeze outclass them and functionally are now the AoE equivalents to the 4th rank spells.

Flare and Freeze aren't Fire and Blizzard spells. They are Ancient Magicks, a different group of spells in the Final Fantasy brand.

And it's just gonna be confusing to swap terminology back and forth.

So we should be using the one that's consistent with the current EN naming conventions. English forums, English action names. At any rate, I'm going to keep calling them Fire V and Blizzard V until official information that is specifically relevant to the English client becomes available indicating otherwise, so please get used to it.

The current AoE rotation is basically Freeze -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Fire III -> Flare -> Flare, repeat until TC or cooldowns are available. Tossing F3 in there feels tedious because it's not an AoE, but the rotation is otherwise fairly short.

You shouldn't be casting Fire III when there's a group, unless you're quadraflaring. If you don't have Manafont and an EtherHQ handy, you should just Freeze > Flare > Flare repeat, with (Sharpcast) Thunder IV and Foul as appropriate.

The new AoE rotation is shaping up to be designed as Hi-Blizzard II -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Freeze (bump forward a slot if Foul's down and the UI tick delays MP) -> Hi-Fire II -> Hi-Fire II -> Hi-Fire II -> Flare -> Flare, repeat until TC or Manafont -- which is 100% AoE, makes two of our currently useless skills actually useful, and allows for nearly 1:1 instant substitution to get back into our single-target rotation... but takes twice as long to execute accounting for cast times, so you may not even have the time to use more than one rotation (or even ramp it all the way up to Flare once) before the pack dies.

It gives us more tools, but conversely, gotta wonder if they're worth being pushed to use them.

This is assuming that Blizzard V is usable immediately at the start of a trash pull; it may not be. The PLL slide for BLM states

"Under certain conditions, swapping between Astral Fire and Umbral Ice will make new actions available" (emphasis mine). This strongly suggests that you can't use Blizzard V unless you previously used FireIII/FireV/Flare to switch directly from Umbral Ice to Astral Fire, and you can't use Fire V unless you previously used BlizzardIII/BlizzardV to switch directly from Astral Fire to Umbral Ice. If this does happen to be the case, we'd need to open with the old spells on the run, so that once all the mobs are gathered we're ready to go into the tier V rotation.

This could make Blizzard V and Fire V much less useful on half pulls, not just because there would be half as many targets but because we'd arrive at each pull probably under Umbral Soul spam, and we don't yet know if Umbral Soul would preserve Fire V usability. If Umbral Soul preserves the activation conditions for Fire V, this would of course be a non issue, as we would arrive at the next pull with three hearts and ready to go straight into 3x Fire V + 2x Flare. This is just me thinking about the possible ways things could work wrong and bracing for possible disappointment.

We won't know if it's viable until the final potency values are available, but there's a potential alternative in just Hi-Blizzard II -> Thunder IV or Foul -> Hi-Fire II -> Flare, which would be more convenient if only because it's way shorter but also could force Freeze into the same slot that Fire/Blizz2 had until now (on top of rendering the QoL traits for our AoE pointless) and once again forces a pause if the UI tick is poorly timed before you can cast T4.

If the final calculations indicate that Blizzard V > Fire V > Flare is more potency per second than Blizzard V > Freeze > Fire V > Fire V > Fire V > Flare > Flare I fully expect the potencies for Blizzard V and Fire V to be adjusted up. Finally getting upgrades to Fire II and Blizzard II after four expansions of obsolescence would be pointless if we don't even get to use them in their implicit rotation.

Plus I wonder if the FrostFire spell means the functional death of Firestarter as a trait (Freecure, anyone?), and of Sharpcast on anything but Thunder spells...

Sharpcast will charge up to twice, so it should be easier to use it specifically for Thunders without losing uses over a fight duration.

[Ferrinus]

I wouldn't be surprised if the new icyhot spell is able to trigger Firestarter. This would work out in a pretty cute way in Umbral Ice, since it would mean you could Transpose-Firestarter rather than hardcast F3 for a bit of extra damage going into Astral Fire as well as a callback to a function for Transpose that hasn't really been relevant since ARR.

[RobynDaBank]

Nothing has been confirmed yet. They could call it anything. Even "Antipode" *cringe*. (Antipodes should be referred to in pairs. The Greek singular of "antipodes" is "antipous")



I thought I made that clear?

The whole Hi-element thing was worth mentioning in the PLL because it was delivered in Japanese; this doesn't mean they're going to use the same naming in the EN localization, and even Aimi (the translator) doesn't always know the EN names for things when doing her translations. The only things that are clear regarding Hi/V spells is that they are upgrades to ファイラ/FireII and ブリザラ/BlizzardII and they are AoE (as per PLL, around 3h30m).

Somewhat of a redundant comment - the Japanese katakana translates to "Firara" and "Blizzara", which in the previous Final Fantasy games I played (the 13 trilogy) were AoE. The upgrades would be Firaga and Blizzaga.