BLM feedback.

[Ferrinus]

The AoE spells are in a weird place because they're neither better-on-three versions of F1/B1, nor better-on-three versions of F3/B3. They kind of have the Potency stats of the former but the speed/cost stats of the latter. Maybe if they also enjoyed reduced cast times or MP costs when you already had three stacks of their associated elemental aspect?

I'm guessing the team wants to avoid giving Flare a bunch of fiddly, conditional modifiers, and I'm sympathetic, because it makes the spell feel less special if it's so weak as to not be worth casting unless you do a lot of prep. I prefer the model in which it's great by default but the consequences of HAVING cast it are awkward and inconvenient (at least until you accrue some higher-level traits).

[Supersnow845]

Honestly their justification for why they didn’t just leave the EW AOE rotation alone then just added flare star on the end is weak (apparently it was because they believed that the EW rotation was too long so you’d often miss casting flare star)

There really is just no reason for the AOE rotation to have the flaws it has because even if you saw non standard as a “flaw” like the devs obviously did non standard didn’t affect AOE after they removed cold flare from ShB

The AOE rotation has no justification for the mess it’s in

[LilyPendragon]

Mao has question. Given currents state of BLMs AoE, is its still worth its to use AoE or use stronger single targets attacks and focus fire on one critter ats a time? Mao been usings AoE spells on trash packs still buts Mao hasn't really tried crunch numbers to see if AoE spells still worth its.

I don't have the potencies in front of me, but I believer it's still always worth aoe'ing in groups of three or more. Single target on two or less

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I don't have the potencies in front of me, but I believer it's still always worth aoe'ing in groups of three or more. Single target on two or less

Blizzard II is no longer worth it once you have Freeze, as it has the same potency per second as Fire II in Astral Fire III. You can spam Freeze until you learn Flare, then you go:

3x Fire II -> Flare -> Transpose -> 4x Freeze -> Fire II (AF3 swap) -> repeat, add Thunder at your leisure

Fire II is no longer worth it once you have Lv58 Umbral Hearts as Flare spamming and transposing is stronger than any variant of Fire II due to massively higher potency per second. So you do:

@AF3 + Umbral Heart: Flare -> Flare -> Transpose -> Freeze -> Freeze/AOE Thunder/Foul -> Transpose -> Repeat
(This will provide enough MP for 2x Flare)

High Fire II and High Blizzard II potencies are too low still for them to be worth it. They need to be back at 140 base potency as they were in Endwalker to be worthwhile using.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

It's been really disheartening seeing some JP players calling for a rework. BLM really doesn't need a rework, it just needs a few adjustments and we're in a pretty good spot. Just make thunderhead longer, and make Flare Star like Apex Arrow. We don't need something as drastic as a rework.

[Atmaweapon510]

Astral Souls as a concept needs a rework to function properly for BLM, but on the flipside, I think it could work really well if handled smartly.

The key to this is actually Flare! In a world where Flare is used in the single target rotation starting from level 50, everything starts falling into place for Astral souls and Flare Star. Since Flare generates 3 Astral souls, BLM fire lines into Flare star look like this:

Fire IV x6 -> Flare -> Flare Star
Fire IV x2 -> Flarex2 -> Flare Star (9 seconds faster line)
Flare x2 -> Flare Star (15 seconds faster line)

Instead making many adjustments throughout the rotation that aren’t really intuitive or require server ticks that cause a balance nightmare, all of the adjustments are made through the Fire phase alone and potencies can be tweaked from there without causing unintended rotations like Infinite Paradox.
Abilities like sharpcast can be added back in to flesh out the rotation, not to eliminate randomness from procs, but to complete the fire phase faster or make the fire phase easier to execute. (For example, at 5 or higher Astral Souls, Fire IV becomes Meltdown, a better Fire IV that can be cast while moving.)