Issues with Black Mage go against Design Philosophy going into the Expansion.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

The changes for black mage were proposed as lessening the learning curve for the actions and rotations for the class. While an admirable attempt, it falls short on multiple fronts.

1. Fire Paradox being instant is not the replacement to Ice Paradox that I assume it was designed as. Due to it being instant, the Astral Fire timer is refreshed sooner than it was as a hardcast, and as such, we have Less Time To Work With.

2. The added length of the fire phase, with Flare Star, has led to situations where it is hard to use our Xenoglossy's there, as well as keep uptime on our Thunder debuff. It makes it harder to use our resources to the best of our ability.

3. Black mage Feels Terrible to Play in Content under 76. While this is an issue that has been made known before, it's even more pressing now. When bosses go invulnerable, or untargetable, under level 76 We cannot Regen MP. Some of my friends tested this, and it turns out you have to land your ice spells to regen your MP. This further makes it easier to lose your phase, in a way that I do not believe is intuitive to the player.

4. Ice Paradox is one of the most beloved spells in our kit. Allowing us extra movement in our Umbral Ice Phase. While I understand its removal to get rid of the Nonstandard style of gameplay, I cannot put into concise words how bad it feels now that it's gone. So much of our instant cast kit are resources, which means, if we want to weave a potion, or an ability, like Amplifier, Triplecast, Swiftcast, or Leylines, we have one less way to do it, which makes it feel stricter, and Harder to Grasp for New Players.

With all of this, It's only right I give suggestions on how to rectify these issues.

1. Bring back Ice Paradox. It would solve most issues presented. It would Decrease the Rigidity and Immobility that are often decried by players new to Black mage, it's also just a fun button to press, and something I know many players, both experts and newcomers to Black Mage miss a lot.

2. Consider dropping the level of Umbral Soul. While I recall an interview where you say you want to be careful about where you put moves in a leveling toolset, I feel with this new system and how unfun it can feel to very slowly get your MP back, I believe that New Players will want Umbral Soul sooner, as well as the Veterans. Perhaps at level 40, or 56.

3.Consider Increasing the Astral Fire Timer when Fire Paradox hits, or Making Fire Paradox a Hardcast. Increasing the astral fire timer to, perhaps 17 or 18 seconds when Fire Paradox hits, would fix the issue we currently face, as well as making it a hardcast, as with the hardcasted version, The Timer would refresh at the End of the Cast .

4. Make the thunder dot last a bit longer. I am not too well versed in the mathematics, but I think 35-36 seconds is a good balance if you wish to keep the length of the fire phase intact.

Thanks for reading!

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

As an addendum to the first proposed solution, I would be fine if Ice Paradox did not restore mana, its main purpose in my argument is the free weave slot we get from it.

[wildvenonat]

MP regen during downtime moving from level 4 to level 76 is the most ridiculous thing in DT BLM.

[Wyssahtyn]

a blm friend mentioned the no mp regen during downtime thing to me and i just thought it was one of the most bizarre changes i've heard in a good while. clearly the job's not the director's pet anymore if something like that goes through lmao.

[ThorneDynasty]

FF14, a MMO made by developers who used to play their own game.

[Voidmage]

FF14, a MMO made by developers who used to play their own game.

Come on now, they obviously play warrior.

I agree to all the points of OP.
BLM is a clunky mess right now. No idea what they were thinking. The fire phase feels so punishing now for messing up. No idea for whom the changes were.

I'm playing other jobs now, no use trying to cling to something dead. Maybe the player numbers of BLM will drop (not that it was big in the beginning) and it changes but somehow I have the feeling the devs don't care anymore.

Funny thing is PCT feels more optimisable then BLM now, though I haven't leveled it to max yet.

[Azebra]

FF14, a MMO made by developers who used to play their own game.

This is what really gets me, the first few years when I started playing this was always something I saw cited as a strength of the game. Obviously I've seen people over the last expansion or two complain about job changes, but I can't really speak on those much since I dont really play other classes seriously, the only major rework I had experience with was summoner (which I disliked, but again I didn't have much experience with old summoner so I couldn't really give well thought out critique on it). But for years now the attitude towards blm changes was basically like "if it aint broke dont fix it" the core of class was identical with a few bits added on/QoL improvements.

So to see all these changes now that not only go against their stated intent of making the class more approachable, but also when most blm players loved Endwalker's version of the class feels so... odd. Like I've been slowly making my way through MSQ so I'm not max level yet but so many of the changes, especially at lower levels just have me thinking "literally who asked for this". Even removing time based MP regen, something some people did have genuine issues with, doesn't feel well thought out, and it exacerbates an already existing issue of the class not being great to play early on. Genuinely it feels like they just wanted nonstandard play completely gone, low level and high level player experiences be damned

[wildvenonat]

Like I've been slowly making my way through MSQ so I'm not max level yet but so many of the changes, especially at lower levels just have me thinking "literally who asked for this". Even removing time based MP regen, something some people did have genuine issues with, doesn't feel well thought out, and it exacerbates an already existing issue of the class not being great to play early on. Genuinely it feels like they just wanted nonstandard play completely gone, low level and high level player experiences be damned

I would honestly have been happy with them removing time based MP regen if you had Umbral Soul immediately and if Xenoglossy, Thunder, and Scathe gave you MP while in Ice. "MP regen is more obviously deterministic" is a fine concept. The problem is that there are more situations where you can't reliably regen MP.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Don't need ice para back, won't say no to it. But no to xeno etc giving mana. Yes to low level umbral soul for syncing content. Keep fire para instant and increase the astral fire timer.
I'd be pretty content with that. Much happier with my mp no longer being tick based.

[wildvenonat]

The reason xeno etc should give MP in Ice is that then your movement tools benefit from you transposing into Ice any time you're running around, which means running around and changing to Ice early feels less like a punishment, and does not inherently devour all your Swiftcast uses. It does not need to be a huge amount of MP. 1K or 2K is fine.

This was already a standard form of playing black mage.