Frustrations with BLM immobility

[Taranok]

Welcome to Meleewalker, where the balance between job difficulty and fight difficulty has completely fallen off a cliff so now they need to make you run zigzag patterns across the arena every 30 seconds to avoid instant wipe mechanics, just so you don't turn your brain off.

Thanks. I hate it.

"BLM Immobility"


Triple cast allowing 2x 3 spells to be cast on the move.

Aetherial Manipulation basically being an Icarus on a shorter cd.


> Immobile.

So, speaking from my experience in dragonsong reprise, there is literally no amount of movement BLM has that can help them clear phase 6 and phase 7 of that fight comfortably. I've heard this fight is especially friendly to RDM, and I do agree with this sentiment somewhat, but this is in no way enough movement to handle the mechanics the devs are actually designing. Nevermind the fact that the class has to choose between a not-insignificant DPS steroid and being able to play the class like an awful ranged phys.

And if anyone dares to mention 'nonstandard rotations,' I will point to that as proof of just how badly designed the class actually is, because people shouldn't need to play the class in clearly unintended ways to be able to play the class effectively.

I believe although not really needed that making AF paradox an insta cast may help people feel more comfortable with keeping their AF timer running whilst dealing mechanics. It would allow for more weaving opportunities too. I at least feel like this is a reasonable and realistic change that can benefit both people not yet confident enough and people who are skilled enough to capitalize on the opportunities it would provide.

I feel this is somewhat treating the symptom and not the disease. The AF/UI timers are a bad design practice of the class, and them being used to structure the classes rotation leads to untold confusion in new players of the class. Black Mage needs a rework. Not a summoner-level rework, but a monk-level rework. And for the first time in the history of the game, the class is played to such a low degree the devs might finally give it the attention it deserves to not only breath life into its playstyle, but to also bring it up to the same standards all other classes are built with right now. Well, mostly. Dragoon, Ast, Bard, and Ninja all have something to say on the matter as well, but most classes aren't so badly designed that players still struggle to deal with design elements that have been on the class for over a decade.

I digress.

[Nizzi]

Black Mage needs a rework. Not a summoner-level rework, but a monk-level rework. And for the first time in the history of the game, the class is played to such a low degree the devs might finally give it the attention it deserves to not only breath life into its playstyle, but to also bring it up to the same standards all other classes are built with right now.

People still aren't playing Monk even after its numerous amounts of reworks. If your argument hinges on "nobody is playing it, that's proof it needs a rework!" then you're going to get the Summoner-tier rework and you're going to enjoy it. In which case, have fun I guess when they do that?

[Taranok]

Do you honestly believe SE is capable of that?

By the by, old and bad are not synonyms in the same way new does not mean good.

Yes, I do believe it, because they've done it in the past. I also believe that if they made a new caster in BLM's general playstyle, BLM's population would completely plummet into the dirt.

The only actually bad reworks in the ShB+ era were Summoner being turned into a ranged phys instead of a caster, with fight design that is extremely hostile to everyone with a cast bar, oddly including samurai, reaper, and to an extent Summoner. Where SMN's advantage over everyone else is that it can choose exactly where to place its cast bars within a relatively large amount of wiggle room, and can swiftcast out of 1 of them every minute anyways.

While I don't play every job for progression, I do regularly dust off and bring out every job to try, see what they're like, find out their pain points and etc, and there's only a handful I flat out refuse to play. Most of the reasons are due to button bloat issues and clunky design. BLM is the only one where the game feels like it wants BLM mains to quit.

People still aren't playing Monk even after its numerous amounts of reworks. If your argument hinges on "nobody is playing it, that's proof it needs a rework!" then you're going to get the Summoner-tier rework and you're going to enjoy it. In which case, have fun I guess when they do that?

Monk is hard to pin down exactly why, since its rework is actually good and legitimately brought up its numbers from where they were, but I'd suspect it's directly related to a bad opening rotation and incredibly stale animations on a somewhat 'meh' aesthetic moreso than anything else. Monk just isn't a popular aesthetic. It also has an overcapping problem for chakra that the devs didn't bother addressing for some reason, and has direct competition with Samurai and Reaper, which are extremely popular aesthetics with similar rotation design and without dragoon syndrome on the opener.