Please reconsider 7.0 BLM changes

[HikariKurosawa]

I'm fascinated by your movement from how non-standard was impossibly hard to now that it's too easy and people just don't want to learn BLM.

Get thee to leveling roulettes as BLM with neither inherent ice regen nor triplecast nor Umbral Soul. Certainly you're the only person who claims to want this.

when did I say it was hard? Ever? I said it was complicated and it does require a lot of research, but this doesn't equate to it being hard. Everyone who uses it does so because it offers more freedom of movement. Once you learn what you need to do it's not difficult. It's not punishing. It's just extremely contrived.

Is it hard to understand the difference between inherent difficulty and prerequisite knowledge?

[Ferrinus]

I'm just going to throw in my 2 cents here as a decent enough BLM player:

- Thunderhead is a stupid system. Delete it and just make Thunder instant because the proc system is a huge noob trap.
- Ice Paradox had 0 reason to be removed as what killed non-standard was the MP changes and because it's gone clipping transpose after B4 for an AF1 F3P is now optimal.
- Despair needs to give Astral Souls as if you drop a F4 you just don't get access to the new capstone.
- Fire Paradox being instant makes the later half Astral Fire window tighter unless you play at a faster GCD.

Overall I dislike the changes but if I had to offer some immediate fixes it would be these.

I think you're right about Thunderhead; if they just made the spell instant and free by default the usage pattern wouldn't change. It'd be nice if maintaining a Thunder dot for a long enough time built up the charge you needed to cast a special Burst spell or something like that.

The transpose-F3P isn't optimal any more, though, since it looks like (true to the published tooltip) AF3 and UI3 don't reduce the opposite element's damage at all. This means that you get the same average damage using F3P in astral vs. saving your proc for the umbral->astral swap (and therefore that choosing to do one or the other is the main way to adjust the length of your astral cycle over the course of a fight).

[Kabooa]

I think you're right about Thunderhead; if they just made the spell instant and free by default the usage pattern wouldn't change. It'd be nice if maintaining a Thunder dot for a long enough time built up the charge you needed to cast a special Burst spell or something like that.

The transpose-F3P isn't optimal any more, though, since it looks like (true to the published tooltip) AF3 and UI3 don't reduce the opposite element's damage at all. This means that you get the same average damage using F3P in astral vs. saving your proc for the umbral->astral swap (and therefore that choosing to do one or the other is the main way to adjust the length of your astral cycle over the course of a fight).

I'm reminded of old PVP thunder where you had to fit X potency into it to get Thundercloud for both a burst and refresh.

That'd be neat if Thunder instead of a dot was a compiler, but then, they really hate Wildfire.

[JoshiKousei]

The transpose-F3P isn't optimal any more, though, since it looks like (true to the published tooltip) AF3 and UI3 don't reduce the opposite element's damage at all. This means that you get the same average damage using F3P in astral vs. saving your proc for the umbral->astral swap (and therefore that choosing to do one or the other is the main way to adjust the length of your astral cycle over the course of a fight).

>A spell of the opposite element can be cast at no cost but will deal reduced damage

This is taken straight from the media tour build so transpose f3p is still optimal.

[Ferrinus]

>A spell of the opposite element can be cast at no cost but will deal reduced damage

This is taken straight from the media tour build so transpose f3p is still optimal.

The AF3/UI3 tooltips fail to mention any damage penalty even though the ones for 1 and 2 mention 10% and 20% respectively. This might just be a mistake (the basic Aspect Mastery tooltip fails to mention that AF1 increases fire damage at all, but presumably the 40% increase remains) but I watched Rinon's video closely and noticed that Fire III did ~13k damage on hit out of neutral aspect but that it and Blizzard III continued to deal ~13k damage when used to swap aspects.

[JoshiKousei]

The AF3/UI3 tooltips fail to mention any damage penalty even though the ones for 1 and 2 mention 10% and 20% respectively. This might just be a mistake (the basic Aspect Mastery tooltip fails to mention that AF1 increases fire damage at all, but presumably the 40% increase remains) but I watched Rinon's video closely and noticed that Fire III did ~13k damage on hit out of neutral aspect but that it and Blizzard III continued to deal ~13k damage when used to swap aspects.

UI3 lists -30% dmg to fire spells in the JP tooltips.

[Ferrinus]

UI3 lists -30% dmg to fire spells in the JP tooltips.

Ah, then you're right. This means transpose into F3P is still a gain, and we'll be choosing between using the guaranteed Firestarter for safety in astral phase or for damage coming out of umbral phase (and this second thing also requires being able to profitably cast Xeno or Thunder).

[Bloody_Kenny]

The more I think about BLM changes, the more I find these choices weird and strange.

Flare Star - the more I think about the whole Astral Heart thing, the more it gets weird, cause why it is for the Fire phase? Blizzard 4 gives Umbral Hearts to use in the Fire phase, so it's logical for Astral Hearts to affect the ice phase instead. So Flare Star should've been Ice Age or Absolute Zero and be a very powerful Ice nuke, stronger than anything in Fire phase with AF3 bonuses combined. Instead, there are bigger emphasis on Fire yet again.

Thunderhead - is weird. Flat 200p with a DoT, you get it once when you shift between stances. And with that potency, it feels like using it for anything but reapplying the DoT is a waste. The upfront attack is weaker than the current Thundercloud proc. Even Thundercloud proc had a slight potency loss compared to Fire IV. And new thing is even worse, it lost damage, and you lost the opportunity to use several in a sequence for movement with some Sharpcasts. If they want to leave the whole mechanic as it is, then at least bring up the upfront damage to Thundercloud/Fire IV level (you can use it once per phase anyway, unless you Manafont).

Paradox - just bring the Ice Paradox back. The whole thing about this spell is that it's a dual spell using two opposing powers at once. It was a movement tool + a strong button to press during Ice. I think the 1 GCD of movement is a strong enough reason for this button to exist. They can go further and also make it stronger + count as an Ice spell and recover MP.

[Ramiee]

Hey at least there's 3 other casters to play!
Red Mage, Pictomancer and Samurai.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

After musing more on the DT changes I would definitely appreciate an extra charge on mana font or a good cd adjustment to tackle drift issues, umbral soul available at the same level as transpose given it's your way to regen your mana between packs in dungeons now rather than transpose. Besides those two things, if the job needs additional changes to help maintain uptime I could see reducing recharge time of triplecast being helpful, returning ice paradox wouldn't be a bad idea either.

I do not want the mana tick changes reverted at all and I do not think ice paradox should give mana back if they do return it. We should have to cast blizzard if we want mana imo, non ice spells shouldn't give mana. I have no real interest in the return of non standard, the intended gameplay should be the most optimal and able to handle all encounters imo. Having an unintended playstyle be superior to the intended one jus comes across as the intended one being poorly designed, better to redesign the standard to be the most optimal and effective in all situations imo. Adjusting the timers to be slightly longer to allow for popping 4f4 before para would be good as well to allow for slow blm to continue existing. We don't know what the enounters are like but I do expect that if the fail state of losing flare star is occuring too frequently they will make adjustments to the BLM so that it functions as they desire.

I won't be mad if non std makes a return, but I don't think it is good for the job to have the intended gameplay loop be incapable of handling certain situations and being excused with, "play non standard". I also understand not all non std required a tick timer, but encouraging in any way third party to play to peak potential on a job is terrible and should stay gone.

Still looking forward to blasting away on BLM and curious what adjustments they will make to blm based on the combined feedback. I see far more positive reception to BLM changes in game, on twitter and on reddit than here.