BLM feedback.

[GartredZW]

You know I actually agree with a lot of this. The AF timer is a punishing, skill floor mechanic. Turret caster gameplay is incompatible with Endwalker > Dawntrail fight design.

The timer having a failstate is part of what makes it so fun. Mastering that 15 seconds, and fully planning out everything you need to do so you're not stuck in a situation where you've got four Fire 4s left to cast, you've got three seconds to use paradox, your DoT is about to fall off, and you're about to overcap on Xenoglossy. If you remove that aspect, you remove the fun of Black Mage, and make it into just another ranged DPS that stands still to do damage. it turns optimizations from something you're always keeping in mind to just a matter of keeping the GCD rolling.

After clearing the first extreme trial, It almost seems a bit too lenient, and restrictive at the same time. I barely ever use Triplecast because I've almost always got a movement button available. We get Paradox and Fire 3 to use whenever we need to just as long as we don't use both of them before our third Fire 4. Thunder however heavily punishes long fire phases where you use one too many xenoglossys. Dropping Fire phase in Endwalker was a simple matter of just using Fire 3, and blasting your remaining Fire 4s before Despair. Now it's a much more substantial DPS hit than it already was because of the lost Flare Star. Before, I would always keep a close eye on that timer so I made absolute sure to get three or four Fire 4s in before Paradox, then the remaining before Despair. None of the main rotation were movement tools aside from phase changes, and Ice Paradox. This means we've got to plan very closely what we use each charge of triplecast, swiftcast, xenoglossy, and even instant Thunder procs for. Now I don't feel the pressure to even bother when I know that I've essentially just got two free (reset timer) buttons to use. Also, this might be my own personal thing, but I'm finding myself gambling on timers much more now. I'll regularly try to start a cast when the timer says 3 in hopes it finishes just in time to cast Paradox at the end, and be fine. That wasn't the case in Endwalker because of how strict the paradox cast timing was. It also imbalances your fire phase to have up to five GCDs before Paradox, and three after.

It might seem like I'm just complaining that it's easier, and maybe it is, but I also thought it was better designed before, and encouraged the right kind of deliberate planning and executing gameplay.

[Lastsaltimo]

I agree with most of the posts here, and would like to add that BLM is in this iteration in a difficult spot to play and master the job with DT content requiring increased movement due to RNG mechanics. I feel like maybe adding another triple charge stack or reducing the timer to 40-45 seconds would alleviate a lot the problems we are having when dealing with the rng movements, specially since blm is the least capable class to handle such quick movements without previous planning.

I think flare star is in general okay, but increased astral timer would definitely help a lot of the issues. Maybe having an instant blizzard skill, either ice paradox or even B4 would provide us bit more tools for recovery.

It would be great if flare star stacks can carry over umbral phase, that way we would be planning our rotations around two systems to execute our capstone skill: 1) the astral timer and 2) the 6x F4s lines. I feel like having both of them depending on the same astral timer system is a high source of distress and reduces my enjoyment while playing the job.

[Zarkovitch]

Man, BLM got gottem, I hope the buffs are huge.

[Galvuu]

Man, BLM got gottem, I hope the buffs are huge.

You can't fix this DT BLM design failure by just tweaking the numbers around. 7.05 isn't going to change much.

[Lanvaldear]

I just kinda wish that you could stack Thunder dots to a minute like RPR can do with Deaths Design. I feel like ti would make using it a lot less clunky.

[Eraden]

Anyones noticed the tomestone gears has very little Spell Speed on thems? Is another kicks to the chops for BLMs.

[DeScruff]

Yeah numbers changes can only fix so much (Which don't get me wrong, BLM certainly needs some number changes)
Fire Phase is waaaay to rigid thanks to Flare Star. Numbers wouldn't exactly fix that.

Keeping the Astral gauge while under UI, I guess is one way to fix that, though another way thats been floating in my head is to change how the Astral guage gets filled + how Flare Star works
Example: Every Fire move fills the Astral Guage. Despair/Flare turn into Flare Star when at 0 MP. (This could be Ether when Astral gauge is full, or maybe the Astral gauge affects Flare Star's potency)
Ether way the Fire Phase can be shortened if the player wants, the latter might have some utility for a non standard rotation if the potency is high enough with short Fire phase, or I could imagine using Flare in a single target setting if the additional Astral Souls will make up the pot difference. Something like: (Manafont -> Fire IV -> Fire IV -> Triple cast, Flare -> Despair -> Fire Star).

The Fire phase is not as rigid and long it would probably help being ready to cast Thunder anytime when needed. Though Thunderhead should probably still be 40 sec

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

So... Umbral Paradox is back along with a slight potency boost, Umbral Soul now doesn't need to be periodically pressed on the run and during boss jumps AND makes it far less of a pain in the ass to use LB3 when applicable. Nice.

Not too fond of empowering Thunder dot at the cost of base damage. In fact, this isn't even a potency gain, only a shift and makes early refresh only more punishing and less newbie friendly (you know, their design goal for DT BLM).

Flare AOE penalty reduction only excarbates the problem, that F2/HF2 and B2/HB2 are worthless at their current potencies and lack of synergy with Flare, so AOE Transpose stays on top.

As for potency adjustments... I don't know, it looks shallow on paper. Anyone crunching numbers how it fares vs Pictomancer?

[Sunako]

Anyones noticed the tomestone gears has very little Spell Speed on thems? Is another kicks to the chops for BLMs.

Do you even want full spell speed? That would mess up your manafont timer?

[Taranok]

Do you even want full spell speed? That would mess up your manafont timer?

Nothing could mess up manafont timing considering it has 20s of anti-drift on it. Manafont itself literally just saves 3 GCDs now by removing a blizzard 3, blizzard 4, and fire 3 from the rotation without weird things getting in. Oh, but I forget, they brought back ice paradox, so it also cuts that out so...yay? It could be removed and barely be noticeable because it literally is just: "Here's all the benefits of your umbral phase all at once." Woo. To give you an idea, I just use it on cooldown as soon as I flare star regardless of where I am in the rotation because it's literally meaningless.

SPS is still incredibly valuable as the overwhelming majority of damage comes from GCDs, and even the oGCD damage is handled via GCDs. That is Xenoglossy and Amplifier, a 30s cooldown and a 2m oGCD, still is itself a GCD to claim that damage. Likewise, Thunder technically still double dips because it's a GCD DoT. I want to know why the devs shifted 50 potency from the instant section to the DoT section, however. Let's just make it harder and more punishing to use thunder for movement.

The big thing really is the pointless timers. SPS makes the timers easier to not mess up, especially in highly random encounters like EX1, where 1 run can be extremely favorable to BLM while the next is a nightmare due to things as basic as mountain fire patterns or which volcano is chosen relative to your personal spot.

On the flip side, the ~2.3% more damage the class gained just off enochian should put it within 200 DPS of pictomancer using an aggregate of arcadion, and it got a fair amount of buffing outside that. Though the return of ice paradox, a real 'whatever, I don't care' of an ability return, is functionally yet another fire 4 in DPS to water down the DPS loss that is fire 3, blizzard 3, and blizzard 4. Will be nice if you have to move during UI, just as it was in EW.