Black Mage changes aren't enough. (As far as we know.)

[Owyn_Addens]

Another former BLM main here to echo what (almost) everyone here has said. I'm very happy to hear about the Umbral Soul changes making the class be actually playable in dungeons below 76 again, but at level 100 giving an extra 20 potency to Xenoglossy and calling it a day is not going to want to make me pick up this job again.

Please put some of the fluidity back. As it stands you barely even have the ability to choose when in your fire phase the Paradox cast is. The job has managed to become even more punishing for new players than previously while also being less rewarding for experienced players, and that's a problem that can only be corrected with changes more extensive than adding some potency here and there.

[Keichi]

I dont know, what you all have.
He feels ok.
Good, the instance paradox is not as fast as i tought (i need to use it at around 4 seconds left, because the CD of the other skills are in the way to use it more closely, but before instance did i needed to use it at around 6s, otherwise it was to close to fall off).
Thunder is something, that i need to be used. I liked it to use it first and want to use it even know.
I dont have reached lvl 100 and flare Star yet. But it doesnt feel so much differently to before. Except aoe rotation, where i simply bomb the groups with flare, instant of fire2, by fates.
And the new ice recovers the mp very fast.
The only weird thing is, that the ice timer feel off sometimes, or was very close to that, even with the few ice spells to use.

[J3WD4Z]

I've been a BLM main since I started playing. I still want to be one but this version of the job just feels bad and has so many small frustrations.

I agree so much with what the original poster said about thunderhead, it's just frustrating having to think about it. There are times when I'm about to cast it and the timer drops and it's just confusing. It feels like unnecessary jank that I now have to track.
I would rather they let Thunder be instant and always usable or at least increase the duration of the thunderhead buff. The buff is currently the same length as the DoT, so if you use the High Thunder to weave transpose into the AF1 Firestarter, the ideal reapplication becomes just as the buff is about to drop which is also at the end of a tight fire line under low spell speed.

Swapping to fire and using the Firestarter is ok but it just feels so tight to use it every time. Now that the optimisation is simple it feels mandatory to do it and you feel forced to try and make it work.
In 6.X, the optimisation was complex. I knew that I wouldn't be the best but there were always small bits I could learn for marginal gains if I wanted and I like that being there.
I didn't feel pressured to learn all of it because I knew it wasn't necessary. There were some basic improvements I did and after that it was diminishing returns.
Now there is only one optimisation with firestarter, I feel obligated to use it because I know that is how you do the most damage and it feels bad to not do it.

The manafont change sounded ok before I played it but it's just so much fire that I barely have time out of it to spend polyglots. I'm now also worried about drifting it.

6.X BLM felt so good, it was so free flowing and fluid and now it's so rigid, with no ways to correct it's rigidity. I'm playing PCT at the moment which is quite fun but I can't stop thinking about how I would rather be playing previous BLM.

I loved non-standard, it was so much fun and more accessible than outsiders realise. 90% of it was just swap to ice, use some instants and do a short fire line.
It took a bit of time to get used to actually using it but it felt so satisfying. Learning about it filled a lot of the time for me between patches whilst there wasn't much content and having these new options made me enjoy the new raid in P9-P12 so much more.
E.g. the double transpose opener, involved an early refresh of thunder which gave the thunder DoT a very different alignment for the rest of the fight.
The first time I used this to make it align better for movement for the rest of the fight felt awesome.

I hope SE bring back ice paradox or leave some more room for optimisation. Another suggestion I like is allowing Flare Star to work with fewer stacks for less damage. I really like everything content wise about Dawntrail so far but I just wish BLM didn't feel so bad :/

I really agree with most of this post. I disagree with the aspect that we should keep Flare Star. I feel that Flare Star's existence is fundamentally redundant with polyglot. They are both resources that build up to a nuke, and everything definitely feels too tight and restrictive. I agree with the thunder changes, they are just so far out there. It hits a point where there are too many mechanics at once and I think even if they loosened everything up, it wouldn't help much. I think a better solution would be an expantion of aetherial maniuplation to allow BLM to have More instant Cast mobility. Upon completing a rotation, Aetherial manipulation would reset the CD. I think mobility is the solution, not bigger boom. Mobility dictates the metagame of a game. I see no reason why a BLM that's peaking in the execution of their rotation shouldn't be able to easily phase in and out of the void and manipulate it to thier advantage. it solves the mechanical overwhelm BLM is feeling, it allow SE to continue to design high mobility fights without having to worry about BLM, and it leans into the existing lore previously establish by even the Thaumaturge quest lines in Ul'Dah. As a game designer myself, I really understand things in a lot of ways most people cannot.

[Eraden]

Mao kinda worrieds that Devs gonna "put lipstick on a pig" and call its a day. Movings Umbral soul down in levels and addings little bits potency to some spells is not gonna make BLMs as funs to play as it once was and Mao thinkings that by design. Devs don't appear to want BLMs be versatile. Mao nots sure why but is seem likes how it is. Mao sad that job whats near and dear to Mao heart is gettings turned into something much less funs.

[Astral145]

I just wish they would allow fire4 and bliz4 refresh timers. This content has a lot of mechanics. For example last boss in level 95 dungeon.... Anyway. I'm happy with the over all changes but a refresh on astral and umbral timers with fire4 or bliz4 would really help the job.

BLM IS Litterally my fave job, just can't play it well with current game.

[Tiddles]

Coming here to bump this thread and echo the sentiments of OP and most everyone here. BLM has been my favorite job since 2.0, and I've doggedly stuck with it through thick and thin, regardless of how difficult it could be to play in certain encounters. It wasn't a job that was so difficult that no one could learn, but it had a skill curve and I appreciated the challenge of always trying to improve my gameplay. By the time we got to EW, BLM finally felt fully fleshed out and it had decent mobility and flexibility for times when you mess up or simply need to phase change due to circumstances in a fight. It felt fun and good to play. Seeing the changes and reading so many of the same comments from fellow BLM players has crushed my spirit to play BLM, and that leaves me incredibly saddened. I don't want to have to give it up, but it isn't fun anymore, and there is no reward for the effort. I sincerely hope the devs reconsider these changes and listen to the concerns of the player base, otherwise this job will be dead. It will not be welcomed into higher tier content. And those who love it will be frustrated while playing. There was no need to fix what wasn't broken.

[ThorneDynasty]

I just did a trial at 100, and because of going in blind as a BLM and some reflexive adjustment or the other, ended up with just a little shy in MP of being able to cast the last Fire IV. Not even sure how the hell it happened, but it feels so damn silly and bad looking at the 5/6 gauge with nothing to be done to mitigate the loss, when you already had to sacrifice a Fire IV cast to keep the GCD rolling.


It's not like I think of myself as some high-level old-BLM player who knows all the dirty tricks, I probably entered downtime completely intuitively with Transpose to salvage Enochian, did as many Umbral Souls as I could, and ended up with not quite a full MP bar once the boss was targetable again.

[Astral145]

My only gripe with BLM is fire4 nd bluz4 doesn't refresh the timer. If it did I would be happy with the job especially with all changes.

[meie]

Agree with the headline. No issue if they want to rework the class, but this feels half baked. Of course there are a couple of nice changes like no more pre casting sharpcast before pulling. Automatic Thunderproc in the opener allows to weave the first OGCD. More negative I see the addition of star flare, the rotation had already a nice "finisher" with Despair, now its two and it feels worse when needing when you cant finish the fire phase. On the matter of mp regen, now you end up with no mp when you mess things up and need to wait for it to slowly regen so you can cast B3 again.
Biggest issue is that they killed the non-standard rotation to fix some mp issues during lower levels, without making the class fun in some other way. All the expression with different rotations is gone.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Longer timers so fire phase is not so tight on crit blm and more frequent tool availabilty to deal with heavy movement and I am happy. Really enjoying BLM! Glad it was the first job I took to 100.
Returning ice paradox for a little more movement and easier transpose f3 might be nice also.