BLM feedback.

[Taranok]

What is the "abuse of non standard" to you? You keep saying that but don't actually give examples of how it somehow sweetened the "poorly designed real black mage".

Hypermeme, infinite paradox, and transpose firestarter are the big 3. These were all introduced by accident, were a consequence of QoL improvements and, ironically, attempts to kill hypermeme, and made the class worse to play while also feeling mandatory, especially in ultimates. The class didn't have any of these things in Stormblood and especially HW, and felt just fine despite the jank involved with HW enochian. Though HW BLM was its own....mess.

The reason I so vehemently attack nonstandard is because it derives as a consequence of actions the devs have taken over the years to advance the class, but demonstrably, especially with DT killing it, were never intended or indeed supported by the devs. And as it turns out, when you remove this crap from the class, it reveals the major underlying problems.

But Stormblood had a 13s AF/UI timer so short cycling only made sense on boss jumps. The flexibility of the rotation was basically choosing when to use sharpcast, whether it was for fire 1 or thunder 3, and little else. The AF/UI rotation combined after fire 1 lasted long enough to kill firestarter, so transpose firestarter didn't exist. Hypermeme can't exist without a 15s AF timer and despair, so unless you were using a foul, you kind of needed blizzard 4 to buffer for server tics to go back into AF3 with full mana anyways. So the only short cycle available was basically a thunder refresh into foul. Which itself you wouldn't want to really use if a boss was jumping for the reasons of clipping a DoT.

It was a pretty rigid rotation in HW and SB, and the major complaints coming out of BLMs was basically how punishing enochian was, not that the class was too rigid. Because the class was almost literally, exclusively, maximizing fire 4. Which was still true in ShB and EW, but the way to maximize fire 4 literally involved cutting core parts of the rotation out, which is why I call it nonstandard abuse. When you ignore core parts of a class, the class can only be badly designed. Imagine a SAM that ignores stickers, or a Monk that ignores its second and third step of the combo. Oh wait, we don't need to imagine that, that existed, it was called infinite dragon kick, and the devs killed that as well.

Apparently shortening Fire lines is "unintended gameplay" and "abusing bad game design", when the basic idea of "use as much Fire IV in a short time as possible" has been upheld the entire time. I find it unbelievable to call the use of one of your oldest skills, Transpose, in clever ways and skipping certain spells sometimes for fight or cooldown alignment "abuse".

What is actually sad though is how much the job had to be gutted (Umbral Paradox, Sharpcast management, MP recovery rework, Thunder rework) for them to return and put their tinfoil hat on and go "see, I told you the job is bad if you remove all the QoL that is intended to help you deal with new fight mechanics and be creative in your gameplay, it's a fundamentally badly designed job" like wow, no shit.

The irony in their and other people's negative stance to "nonstandard" and how they are happy bordering on delusion that it got destroyed is that the steps that were taken to kill nonstandard (which wasnt even that crazy of a gain anyways) actually hurt Standard BLM equally and only made the job HARDER for beginners, NOT easier.

If you knew the history of transpose, you'd know it was never intended for use in this way. The skill started with a 15s cooldown. Even with UI1, you'd be at max mana before it came back. Transposes entire purpose, its raison d'etre, is to get you back to full mana after a pull That is its design intent especially when taken in context of how ARR BLM operated, especially before fire/blizzard 3. This no longer exists as of DT and is now a weird, orphaned ability that can still be used to abuse nonstandard, just not nearly to the same degree. My favorite way currently is thunder mage during aoe pulls and pretending HB2 and HF2 don't exist because the devs screwed up the AoE rotation that badly in DT. But, you know, when you take away the grime of neglect, you tend to find things are in need of dire maintenance. So thunder mage. We can talk about flare and the aoe rotation, but as mentioned above, the aoe rotation has never been particularly well thought out. There was an entire jank rotation related to abusing server tics with just the right timing to basically chain back to back flares by using flare to get out of UI, getting a server tick after flare registers and consumes mana, but before UI is properly ended, and then flaring again. BLM has had a very fun history with extremely poorly thought out design choices that has resulted in jank and abuses of the design. Some of them the devs reasonably couldn't have been aware of, others a consequence of bad design.

Transpose Firestarter also didn't exist until Endwalker outside of a brief stint in ARR. The buff duration of fire 3 was too short to reliably limp the buff out of the AF phase into the UI phase, do the full UI phase, and then transpose firestarter. It required getting buffed from 18s to 30s to enable this behavior. While the old 12s buff in ARR worked because you could easily fire 1, blizzard 3, firestarter proc, and then transpose firestarter was used to reclaim some of the proc's damage due to the bad netcode implementation of FFXIV combined with the state ARR BLM was in.

And the fun thing is, they didn't gut the class to me. They restored and enforced the HW and SB rotation. The best aspects of BLM, the rotation that made me fall in love with the class. And by enforcing it, we can see just how bad a position BLM is in. And, lo and behold, the bad position BLM is in.

But sure, strawman my argument. The class is easier to understand now, and just as hard to play as it was in HW and SB. Just with the added punishment of messing up causing you to drop flare star, at least 1 fire 4, and whatever gauge was in progress for xenoglossy. Which I relish in being made worse because it means the devs will maybe, finally realize that the thing holding back BLM is, was, and always has been archaic design choices made in ARR that have been coopted into a major and extremely flimsy structural component prone to breaking at the slightest breeze. You know, literally what it was in HW and SB anyways.

Non of the nonstandard stuff was QOL intended to make the job easier to play. It exploited things intended to make the job easier to play to ignore core components of the class. That is why I am positively giddy that nonstandard has been mostly killed, and I look forward to the class finally getting the much-needed love it deserves, especially as DT moves to completely kill the turret caster playstyle. But, you know, clearly a 5s transpose to capitalize on a 30s firestarter buff was in the minds of the original ARR devs when the class was designed as a proc mage.

[wildvenonat]

The Umbral Soul changes are nice and so is the return of ice Paradox.

The Thunder changes are odd. I suspect the intent is to push people more towards letting it drop rather than refreshing it early, but it's still just in a weird spot all around.

[Jason_Ashford]

The Umbral Soul changes are nice and so is the return of ice Paradox.

The Thunder changes are odd. I suspect the intent is to push people more towards letting it drop rather than refreshing it early, but it's still just in a weird spot all around.

honestly i wish they would have simply gave back the effect of each tick having a chance at proccing thunderhead, and if we're going crazy with suggestions, maybe instead it procs an enhanced thunderhead which frontloads the damage like we used to have.

[wildvenonat]

honestly i wish they would have simply gave back the effect of each tick having a chance at proccing thunderhead, and if we're going crazy with suggestions, maybe instead it procs an enhanced thunderhead which frontloads the damage like we used to have.

My preference would be simply to make it an ogcd. The frontloaded damage version was a newb trap because it was not obvious how little damage it did for the cost of the gcd.

[Jason_Ashford]

My preference would be simply to make it an ogcd. The frontloaded damage version was a newb trap because it was not obvious how little damage it did for the cost of the gcd.

i would be happy with an OGCD thunder, but i dont know if that'll happen, though i have no clue why it wouldn't seeing as how you cannot freely cast thunder anymore

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

@Taranok

Ok, happy for you that you enjoy a more rigid version of BLM like HW/StB, thanks for the history lesson that I didn't ask for and still knew of (I started end of HW).

Job options shift over the course of development, that's why Transpose went down and Firestarter went up in timers, as you said. Just because certain unintended things are discovered by players does not mean they are bad or should have been gutted.

While not the same genre, unintended mechanics in FPS games like rocketjumping were unintended bugs that were made into features.

Now please kindly understand that many people actually love the change into EW and hate the change from EW to DT. You liking this iteration at best makes you an outlier and Im happy if you are OK with it, but I'd love of you'd stop actively shitting on non-standard like it's been the devil's spawn that should never have existed. Unintended or not, many agreed Endwalker BLM was one of the most fun designs the game ever had.

[CamuiKushi]

I'm unsure of how I feel about the changes. But I will say none of them address how unapproachable the job is to anyone who hasn't already levelled it past 35. It literally doesn't affect me, but it does bother me that the early levelling experience has been completely ignored.

[Galvuu]

The Umbral Soul changes are nice and so is the return of ice Paradox.

The Thunder changes are odd. I suspect the intent is to push people more towards letting it drop rather than refreshing it early, but it's still just in a weird spot all around.

I suspect the Thunder changes are because of how Thunderhead works. There's a small chance that, with old thunder, a rotation of Paradox>Transpose>Thunderhead>Paradox>(Xenos)>Thunderhead>Transpose+Firestarter might be too strong and give you perfect mobility. Stripping Thunder from its upfront damage kills this, even if it brings a slew of other problems.

But hey, Ice Paradox being back is a good thing. Not enough, but a sliver of hope. That said, with the buffed Fire IV and Despair, Flare Star is starting to look really puny...

@Taranok

Ok, happy for you that you enjoy a more rigid version of BLM like HW/StB, thanks for the history lesson that I didn't ask for and still knew of (I started end of HW).

Job options shift over the course of development, that's why Transpose went down and Firestarter went up in timers, as you said. Just because certain unintended things are discovered by players does not mean they are bad or should have been gutted.

While not the same genre, unintended mechanics in FPS games like rocketjumping were unintended bugs that were made into features.

Now please kindly understand that many people actually love the change into EW and hate the change from EW to DT. You liking this iteration at best makes you an outlier and Im happy if you are OK with it, but I'd love of you'd stop actively shitting on non-standard like it's been the devil's spawn that should never have existed. Unintended or not, many agreed Endwalker BLM was one of the most fun designs the game ever had.

A better dev team would embrace that depth and lean into it, curbing only things that are blatantly out of line. But this is SE. Their way or the highway- the old goat can do no wrong...
But hey, it's a step in the right direction. I'm taking any small victory I can get.

[Keichi]

Mhh.
The new changes looks nice on the first view. But at the same time a little weak, compaired with some other classes (funny, how Rangers had as good as no chances -bard literally no cahnces-, and that Picto wasnt nerfed).
If i saw it correctly, has most skills only obtained around 10 potency. In exchange has enchonias obtained a little buff. What increase all spells a bit.

The umbral soul change is interessting.
Its the time stop, whe all wanted. Now, is it interessting, at what point the timer will restart. And, if the time stop will great some other problems (like, the timer restart with the start of the next casting, is it allready low, would it drop off, is it starting by the next hit, would it be the best way -has no time yet, to see the change in action).

The thunder change is weird to. But dont look like a big problem.
And i found it funny, that ice paradox is back -like the people wanted it-, but the devs Set it up, that its only showing up, if you are managing the requirement for flar star. Where it can be a little hard in some situations, to obtain it^^

[Basteala]

Mhh.
The new changes looks nice on the first view. But at the same time a little weak, compaired with some other classes (funny, how Rangers had as good as no chances -bard literally no cahnces-, and that Picto wasnt nerfed).
If i saw it correctly, has most skills only obtained around 10 potency. In exchange has enchonias obtained a little buff. What increase all spells a bit.

Remember Enochian makes 10 potency in Astral Fire significantly more than 10 potency.

The umbral soul change is interessting.
Its the time stop, whe all wanted. Now, is it interessting, at what point the timer will restart. And, if the time stop will great some other problems (like, the timer restart with the start of the next casting, is it allready low, would it drop off, is it starting by the next hit, would it be the best way -has no time yet, to see the change in action).

Umbral Ice even mid combat just stops the timer, which is nice. The effect seems to linger until you change zones (or specs or what have you).

And i found it funny, that ice paradox is back -like the people wanted it-, but the devs Set it up, that its only showing up, if you are managing the requirement for flar star. Where it can be a little hard in some situations, to obtain it^^

This is categorically untrue. Going from Fire to Ice, regardless of whether you used Flare Star, seems to trigger it (based on my screwing around in Arcadion Normal as well as target dummy stuff). Transpose seems to do it, too. The only thing you don't get is Paradox going into Umbral Ice from nothing.

Overall I'm happy. Ice Paradox makes the spec a lot less frantic without sacrificing uptime.

Is Astral Fire still a bitch? Sure, but I always felt that was the point of BLM. I can't speak for anyone else but I always enjoyed BLM because of the nonsense it expects us to do in a game where more and more jobs are becoming braindead.