Thread: Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

Originally Posted by JoshiKousei

For everyone crying about non-standard being a thing: Try to imagine doing Pantokrator with standard.

You have to poke your nose into non-standard rotations in order to keep gcd uptime during Panto otherwise you're just gonna be pressing scathe for half the mechanic.

I'm slightly overexaggerating but you get the idea. It's not a pretty thought either way.

Bold to assume that a large number of those supporting the DT changes play BLM on high-end content- or play BLM at all :>

Originally Posted by Galvuu

Bold to assume that a large number of those supporting the DT changes play BLM on high-end content- or play BLM at all :>

TRUE AND REAL

The thing is that "non-standard" rotations have always been part of BLM, even for mediocre players, but specifically as least-bad-of-several-bad-options responses to fights that interrupted your ability to simply sit and cast to your heart's content. The simplest version of these is something like, it's optimal to Triplecast into F4-F4-Despair, but sometimes you have to move earlier than that, so to avoid interruption you have to triplecast F4-Paradox-F4 instead. Or you're not going to be able to finish your astral cycle so you cast Despair early. Or you literally can't stand still even to cast a quick F3 so you stay in Umbral for an extra GCD that you use on a too-early Thunder refresh. Stuff like that. The BLM rotation has always been fairly mutable, since you don't cast spells in a set order but rather on the basis of where your timers are and how much MP you have left and whether you can stand still.

ShB/EW found some very specific and difficult to execute non-standard rotations that not only fit certain movement requirements that standard didn't, but also did higher damage than standard did, and did this by outright skipping (at least some of the time) spells core to the standard rotation's progression. I think it's good to make sure that you don't end up doing more damage by avoiding spells that are core to the kit; BLM's actual optimal, best-on-paper rotation should be obvious and intuitive, and the challenge of the class should be trying to stay as close to that rotation as possible despite enemies trying to interrupt you and chase you around the arena.

DT keeps timers and cast times, so DT BLMs will wind up using swiftcast/triplecast on movement rather than damage, occasionally biting the bullet and just skipping their sixth F4 in order to avoid dropping Enochian all together, making questionable decisions as to when to refresh Thunder or spend a Polyglot because they've left themselves with literally nothing better to cast, etc. But it'd probably be good if it were a little harder to miss out on the opportunity to cast Flare Star at all, or if there was a little more to do in the ice phase, or stuff like that.

Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

The irony is other posters saying good luck doing x or y mechanic without non standard so.. you guys need to agree on how non mandatory it is or not. The intended design and gameplay of the job being incapable of handling such situations is a bad thing, I don't think it meant non std had to die but std had to be adjusted and if it means non std changes with it then fine imo. Why would you hamstring a job for the 1% of players who use that playstyle? BLM is not getting much consideration when they are making the fights but they obviously realise how it is now is not acceptable.

Y'all need to make up your minds if non std is mandatory or not cause you all contradict each other. If the content needs non std to complete x mechanic then guess what it's mandatory.

It isn't 1% of BLM players who use nonstandard rotations. There are dozens of reasonably solid nonstandard rotations available and every BLM player uses at least one of them some of the time. The finicky ones extremely tight on timing are not commonly used; however, any time you have to spend a lot of gameplay moving, or the boss goes untargetable, all solutions that involve continuing to attack the boss will be a nonstandard rotation.

Nonstandard is a catch-all for basically all forms of "black mage, adjust".

Originally Posted by wildvenonat

It isn't 1% of BLM players who use nonstandard rotations. There are dozens of reasonably solid nonstandard rotations available and every BLM player uses at least one of them some of the time. The finicky ones extremely tight on timing are not commonly used; however, any time you have to spend a lot of gameplay moving, or the boss goes untargetable, all solutions that involve continuing to attack the boss will be a nonstandard rotation.

Nonstandard is a catch-all for basically all forms of "black mage, adjust".

It's a little bit more nuanced than that. Non-standard at its core is "how can I do more damage with the tools available to me." Certain lines having more movement are either a by product of the amount of instants used for that line or are a result of you actively seeking out that line to maintain gcd uptime during a movement heavy mechanic.

Originally Posted by Taranok

....

I agree that I think the problem is as simple as the burst meta just doesn't synergize with Black mage fundamentally. Black mage only had a burst back in HW and for the 6 years afterwards it has been a sustain damage class.
You can't mold BLM into a burst job because it has had so many patches worth of work to make it play a open rotation. It was never "abuse" to play non-standard it was just adjusting the rotation. It's like how Bard has been a job that should never of been burst oriented has become a complete mess and is rare to see because it never ever suited being anything more than a sustained damage job. The only way to "fix" BLM is to do a Summoner and completely remake the class.

Non-standard won't be erased because there will always be times in a fight where you have to sacrifice something in for either damage, movement or to adjust for downtime. Non-standard won't ever go it'll just feel infinitely worse to do. Even UI paradox going removes it's class fantasy, it's a ice and fire spell not a fire spell.
It's not like the removal of mana tick destroys the ability to do non-standard it's just that the job design team did it in the worst possible way.

I don't like this half-ass approach they did, if they truly hated non-standard they should of fixed the job from the ground up to never ever need it but they haven't. The job will now become even less approachable because of the horrible levelling experience with the new mana regen system, BLM players will probably move over to Picto or play the game far less and the community built around BLM will lose a lynchpin that led to a sense of community in the job. I would of preferred a complete summoner obliteration of Black Mage because I could simply move on knowing that the job has been made for someone else and not me but these changes feel like I'm being teased, it feels like the developers want to punish me for trying to be more creative in my play style.

Originally Posted by Galvuu

falling for bait

Don't bother they're baiting you. Just ignore them lol.

Originally Posted by Ramiee

Don't bother they're baiting you. Just ignore them lol.

Your words are brimming with wisdom, friend... that's what I get for posting this late at night, my judgment is faltering due to exhaustion -.-

Originally Posted by Galvuu

Your words are brimming with wisdom, friend... that's what I get for posting this late at night, my judgment is faltering due to exhaustion -.-

You're basically being confronted with a Gish Gallop.

Don't feel guilty for shutting it down objectively / factually, and in a way that avoids getting drawn-into personal entanglements.

The alternative, in these sorts of cases, is allowing the silent audience who's following-along to potentially begin trusting or believing the endless firehose of inaccuracies, and then a viral contagion of misinformation can start spreading.

It's a waste of your time personally, yes, but you can consider it a "public service".

As a reminder, you can just ignore someone by going to their profile.