Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

**Galvuu** · 06-10-2024 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by StrangeIove

I largely disagree. I understand that Non-Standard is important to a select few players but I think these changes to Black Mage will benefit many players who like the idea of playing Black Mage but feel alienated by how complex it can seem / feel to play. The changes make the rotation clearer and more fun for more players.

I don't understand some players' aversion to a skill ceiling. Standard gives you 97% of the job's power in a very straightforward, simple way to understand. How does nipping the last 3% help them?
You can literally do top 3% damage just doing standard stuff. The new standard is just a downgraded version of the current standard, so how does this alienate them?
This would be like me playing some rapid chess games and going "I feel alienated because I'm 1k elo points below Magnus Carlsen on chess.com". Here it even makes less sense, because it's more like 300 elo difference and your opposition is only 500 elo bots (pve content is really easy in this game, except for some TOP/Dragonsong phases).
People legitimately somehow feel invalidated because you can practice to be good at something, even when the gain from hundreds of hours or practice is a meager 2% or 3%. No, we must all be the same skill level after playing for 3 hours -.-

**Moqi** · 06-10-2024 09:28 PM

Originally Posted by Galvuu

I don't understand some players' aversion to a skill ceiling. Standard gives you 97% of the job's power in a very straightforward, simple way to understand. How does nipping the last 3% help them?
You can literally do top 3% damage just doing standard stuff. The new standard is just a downgraded version of the current standard, so how does this alienate them?

Because the game rewards you for doing nothing and when you have a job that requires a couple of working braincells suddenly it's too hard and they whine that they're not easily top damage like they are when they play SMN. The funny thing is, if you manage to cast 4 Fire IV in an Astral Fire cycle you're already better than most BLM's in Roulettes (these people are not gonna step out of that) so worrying about non standard is about as legitimate as having anxiety over healing in a videogame.

But as usual SE caters to players who DON'T play the job rather than the ones who do.

**Doublejho** · 06-10-2024 05:09 AM

Originally Posted by StrangeIove

I largely disagree. I understand that Non-Standard is important to a select few players but I think these changes to Black Mage will benefit many players who like the idea of playing Black Mage but feel alienated by how complex it can seem / feel to play. The changes make the rotation clearer and more fun for more players.

the people who can't play BLM still won't be able to play BLM, nonstandard has nothing to do with it, if you're bad at BLM it's because your fundamental skill on it needs work, not because you can't memorise a bunch of rotations that'll buff your dps by 3% at most

**StrangeIove** · 06-10-2024 04:36 AM

I am interested and excited about the Black Mage changes, but I think they need to address the level of Umbral Soul

**ChloeRose** · 06-10-2024 06:03 AM

If Paradox is no longer available in Umbral Ice and that is the absolute intention I would suggest that Paradox removed entirely. The whole design of the tooltip, particle effects, and cast animation suggest that Paradox is a spell that can be cast in either phase. Restricting the spell to Astral Fire simply does not make any sense from a visual design perspective and will only serve as a reminder of what once was.

**NamiOh** · 06-10-2024 08:35 PM

Simply going to add my voice in agreement with the poster. I'm a BLM main since ARR and endwalker was the most fun I ever had playing the job. What made the job so fun was the adaptability of the rotation giving you a puzzle in a sense during each new encounter, having to figure out the best rotation to fit the timeline and movement of the fight. +1

**Willif** · 06-30-2024 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by NamiOh

Simply going to add my voice in agreement with the poster. I'm a BLM main since ARR and endwalker was the most fun I ever had playing the job. What made the job so fun was the adaptability of the rotation giving you a puzzle in a sense during each new encounter, having to figure out the best rotation to fit the timeline and movement of the fight. +1

I 100% agree with this! This is what made Black Mage fun for me too! It's the only dps I play and the other casters are too boring for me. I tried Red Mage but it's almost just as boring as Summoner.

**HikariKurosawa** · 06-11-2024 05:09 AM

It's easy to understand when you really think about it, people who master non-standard have optimized the punish out of the job. When you know how to adjust your rotation for every situation you will no longer feel any urgency ever. This defeats the entire purpose of the job design, which is for fire to feel really desperate and urgent to get all your potency out in the limited window of time you have. This is why astral soul was added and made necessary on top of getting deleted if you leave astral fire. You now have forced urgency. This is by design and a good thing.

You shouldn't be able to break the core identity of the job design and be more optimal by avoiding to play it as intended. I can see why people are uncomfortable around the changes, because they are used to not being punished as a black mage player. They are used to feeling comfort in adaptibility to avoid ever wasting, and on top of this they are playing in the most effective way possible from a potency perspective.

You act like people like me really care about where they stand in the skill level hierarchy. I care about what I am trying to aim at, and if non-standard is the meta then that would be what I am aiming at even if I currently play really poorly. I am a relative beginner to this game and will be for a long time. Non-standard destroys all urgency in black mage and replaces it with calculated adaptability. It's not harder once you learn it, it's actually easier. Which is why people are struggling with the changes. They will have to actually play BLM the hard way and deal with being punished for misplay. You will have to deal with not being able to get out astral soul all of the time. You will have to deal with the job design for once.

If you don't like the job design of blm, just play pictomancer or something else. BLM has always been about feeling really pressed to get all your potency out before your fire burns out. Non-standard removes this entire feeling from the job. It'd be fine if non-standard wasn't the meta, but the meta shouldn't destroy the core identity of the job.

You can throw a fit all you want and get as mad as you want to get at me, say whatever insults you want to say. At the end of the day I am correct and the devs are too.

The real benefit of nonstandard was the freedom to adjust how long your lines were and to move instants around to wherever you'd want them. It's incredibly liberating and with enough skill you can run circles around RDM. For a lot of people nonstandard is straight up easier, across all skill ranges. It doesn't take a postdoc in statistical thermodynamics to pick up the basics of double transposes or recovery lines. All these changes will do is compress the skill range and BLM does not need a higher skill floor than what it already has.

^^^^^^
I played non-standard to get the most out of my damage when I had to move I didn't do it because it did 2% more damage.

If you don't like playing a punishing job, just say so. Non-standard is not how black mage is supposed to feel.

**Doublejho** · 06-11-2024 08:10 AM

Originally Posted by HikariKurosawa

[nonsense]

a few things;
- you're more likely to be punished for doing nonstandard wrong than standard
- standard can perform essentially equally to nonstandard for dps
- nonstandard comes with just as much urgency if not more than standard, standard doesn't put you into situations where you have literally 0 seconds of free time to waste, your procs matter less and your timers matter less than they do in nonstandard
- nonstandard is still about maximising your fire casts, it's just maximising the amount you do compared to everything else too
- nonstandard isn't the meta, standard is, hence why it's called standard and not non-standard; meta things are the standard, that's what a meta is
- nonstandard is more in the spirit of BLM because the job has always been about optimising your freeform rotation to match a fight, standard is not optimising your rotation and is putting it on rails
- nonstandard can also optimise your damage when stationary, and even render you LESS mobile than standard depending on the line you're doing, it's not something that suddenly turns you into a ranged physical dps necessarily

- finally, you're talking complete and utter nonsense here, i can only be astounded by your sheer confidence in your own opinion and how persistently you can keep pushing it despite you being the only one who thinks it's reflective of reality, if this isn't bait you are a marvel of ego

hope this helps

**CoeliAlmr** · 06-11-2024 07:31 AM

I seriously hope SE reconsider. Non-standard is just so damn fun.. I can't believe I'm not going to be able to do it any more in a few weeks :/

I play wizards/mage in every game where I can and 6.0-6.5 BLM is probably my favourite iteration of a mage across any game. There's just something so satisfying about using your tools to adjust when and how you move and to me that's exactly the kind of decision making I want on a mage.

Rather than giving abilities that restrict the length of a line, SE could lean into it this dynamic by making ice spells more mobile and/or allow all spells in ice to give mana. Would even be fulfilling gameplay to have multiple fire abilities to consider which adjust the length of a fire line more significantly.
Making adjustments to line length more accessible for new players would probably make the job more approachable for new players to get through mechanics honestly.

There are so many other ways that BLM could made more approachable but for some reason they chose to focus on removing the fun optimisation aspects which are very heavily enjoyed by some of the community? I don't understand why this was their priority?

I could be wrong but it doesn't seem much more approachable either anyway? Transposing out to Ice Paradox was comfy compared to a slow B3 and forcing 6F4s in a fire phase seem likes a decision which opposes this?

The number 1 complaint about BLM I hear from people not used to it is that levelling it is an awful experience. Watch any new content creator start the game and a lot of the community actively recommends starting on any job except BLM.
Make it more enjoyable in lower levels so people use it more in dungeons and become more comfortable for later content. Why not make give the first stack of triple cast earlier and let the level 66 ability be the second stack? What about adding a weaker F4 for low levels to be consistent?
Another common complaint which affects desirability: the inconsistency of caster raise.

Thanks for reading.
PS. Make Scathe 0 MP. At level 100, you won't have mana for Flare Star if you use it.
Also: Umbral Soul at lower level please - having no mana at the start of packs in DT is going to feel horrible.

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