BLM needs a rework because of new content difficulty

[Realfoxy]

These aren't catastrophic or even significant failures on the level of dropping Enochian, missing a Flare Star, or overwriting a Polyglot. They're just damage shortfalls that can be fixed by better planning and optimization. They don't make the job harder to learn or play at a competent level, they make it harder to optimize.

I should add that I think Thunderhead is a pointless mechanic and that it'd be better if Thunder spells could just be cast at will whenever you had astral/umbral status (to protect newbies from losing the Enochian damage bonus) but while Thunderhead does exist it doesn't increase the job's difficulty so much as constrain (but not entirely remove) your ability to make mistakes.

I think I see where we're disagreeing. Personally, I don't consider "just casting something, anything, to maintain the AF timer" to be the skill floor of BLM, I consider the skill floor to be "how hard is it to execute the developer intended rotation." It is true that the free F3p does help players avoid catastrophic failure more easily than in Endwalker, I just don't think that these "damage shortfalls" you mentioned are in the realm of optimisation tricks. They're what I consider the basics of the job - refresh your DOT on time, don't clip your GCD, etc.

Still, I consider the Thunderhead system to be not only clunky, but an actual trap for less experienced players - I have had to advise more than one person that you should in fact not hit the shiny thunder button as soon as it lights up, since it's equivalent upfront potency to Scathe.

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All this is to reiterate that it being harder to maintain hypothetical maximum damage isn't the same as it being harder to just maintain uptime or execute the job's basic mechanics consistently. The difficulty that veterans are feeling is not something new players are feeling, and being able to relax and compromise on things that you wouldn't have to do in Stone, Sky, Sea (e.g. using F3P on mobility and AF maintenance rather than saving it for damage every single time you get it) makes the job feel a lot more able to adapt to movement-heavy bosses.

Sure, it is true that if you close your eyes and ignore all the "damage shortfalls" then yes, you could consider DT BLM to be easier. But I don't like this jobs' difficulty to now come from managing an awful DOT system and manafont drift. I don't think that anyone who misses one F4 should be punished so harshly.

(On that note, I consider it poor design that casting Flare Star as soon it becomes available is a mistake since it doesn't refresh your AF timer. Yet another thing the developers appear to have forgotten).

[Ferrinus]

I think I see where we're disagreeing. Personally, I don't consider "just casting something, anything, to maintain the AF timer" to be the skill floor of BLM, I consider the skill floor to be "how hard is it to execute the developer intended rotation." It is true that the free F3p does help players avoid catastrophic failure more easily than in Endwalker, I just don't think that these "damage shortfalls" you mentioned are in the realm of optimisation tricks. They're what I consider the basics of the job - refresh your DOT on time, don't clip your GCD, etc.

Still, I consider the Thunderhead system to be not only clunky, but an actual trap for less experienced players - I have had to advise more than one person that you should in fact not hit the shiny thunder button as soon as it lights up, since it's equivalent upfront potency to Scathe.

Well, no, I do think the skill floor is getting a Flare Star each astral cycle. I just think the job gives you the tools to do that reliably if you don't try to spend those tools on increasing your damage instead. Someone who plays conservatively and hangs on to their triple/swift/xeno is going to be able to do the standard rotation consistently, they'll just put out less damage than someone who knows how to cut corners and spend every spare triple/swift/xeno at optimal rather than conservative times.

As much as I agree with you that Thunderhead is bad, I don't think it creates any danger of DoT clipping aside from the way it might mislead new players into thinking they should do that on purpose. There's basically no pressure to refresh your DoT early unless you're so completely out of movement options that even a high-level player would've made the spot decision to do so, and insofar as there are unavoidable gaps in DoT upkeep, those are, you know, unavoidable. If some otherwise-defensible sequence of Thunder refresh and Manafont activation and so on puts you in a situation where your Thunder falls off and then stays off for 3 or 4 seconds before being reapplied, that's just how the job works, no more your fault than a failure to cast more than one Flare Star per astral cycle is. It's like how the GNB Bow Shock or whatever it's called DoT doesn't actually have 100% uptime either.

Sure, it is true that if you close your eyes and ignore all the "damage shortfalls" then yes, you could consider DT BLM to be easier. But I don't like this jobs' difficulty to now come from managing an awful DOT system and manafont drift. I don't think that anyone who misses one F4 should be punished so harshly.

(On that note, I consider it poor design that casting Flare Star as soon it becomes available is a mistake since it doesn't refresh your AF timer. Yet another thing the developers appear to have forgotten).

I don't think Manafont drift is a serious issue either because, like the very occasional DoT elapse above, it's just a fact of life that's no one's fault and therefore no one's problem. Like, you can, at any time, do a "short fire line" in order to line your rotation up so that you can Manafont on cooldown—you just have to cast Despair early, and bam, your astral cycle has been truncated. Obviously, doing this means you lose out on one or more Fire IVs and a Flare Star, and therefore costs you more damage than being able to Manafont earlier would gain you, so you don't do it. But what's wrong with that? I think it'd actually be worse if it gave you better damage, rather than worse, to truncate your rotation to fit Manafont's cooldown exactly, because it'd be less mathematically obvious that it's a good idea and people wouldn't realize they were losing out on damage by performing the rotation the job appears to expect of them.

That said, I agree with you that there should be a consolation prize for missing an F4 and that there's no reason for Flare Star itself to not refresh AF. I think I suggested somewhere in this thread or another that zeroing your MP with either Flare or Despair could automatically fill your Astral Gauge with dimmer/less valuable pips or something, and depending on how many actual F4s/non-zeroing-Flares you were able to cast, the final damage of Flare Star would be scaled somewhere between that of Despair's own damage and Flare Star's listed maximum potency.

Hell, they could just make Despair work exactly like Flare such that it gives you three pips when it lands (though this might make it look and feel weird to sometimes find yourself swapping to ice mode with 3/6 pips on your bar). The important thing to me is that a 6xF4 astral cycle should remain decisively optimal in terms of potency per second; skipping spells should be a best-of-two-bad-options thing rather than an obscure way to do better than standard.

[Realfoxy]

Well, no, I do think the skill floor is getting a Flare Star each astral cycle. I just think the job gives you the tools to do that reliably if you don't try to spend those tools on increasing your damage instead...


If some otherwise-defensible sequence of Thunder refresh and Manafont activation and so on puts you in a situation where your Thunder falls off and then stays off for 3 or 4 seconds before being reapplied, that's just how the job works, no more your fault than a failure to cast more than one Flare Star per astral cycle is. It's like how the GNB Bow Shock or whatever it's called DoT doesn't actually have 100% uptime either...

I don't think Manafont drift is a serious issue either...

See the issue I have with the above statements is that none of these were problems with Endwalker Black Mage. In Endwalker, we didn't have this Thunderhead system and you were much more free with your DOT refresh. In Endwalker, you didn't have a restrictive Flare Star system so you didn't have to play super conservatively with your fire phase. In Endwalker, Manafont wasn't such a major damage cooldown that drifting it didn't feel as bad. A well designed job should lead players into the standard rotation and make it feel good to execute. Dawntrail BLM doesn't do that. It has a number of traps for new players, and while free F3p helps, it has more ways to bleed damage than in Endwalker.

I should be excited about a new expansion and new things added to my job. I expect better from SE, and while sure I can settle I don't consider "oh missing DOT / unavoidable drift etc. are just part of the job now. Have fun!" to be good design. They have deliberately introduced these things into the job! They didn't have to do that!

There are lots of ways to fix things - e.g. your suggested change to Despair. For example, they could allow the thunder DOT timer to be increased to 60s and increase the proc to 40s - that would give some freedom back. However I'm not going to close my eyes and pretend the job as it is right now in 7.0 is any kind of improvement over 6.5 BLM.

[Ferrinus]

See the issue I have with the above statements is that none of these were problems with Endwalker Black Mage. In Endwalker, we didn't have this Thunderhead system and you were much more free with your DOT refresh. In Endwalker, you didn't have a restrictive Flare Star system so you didn't have to play super conservatively with your fire phase. In Endwalker, Manafont wasn't such a major damage cooldown that drifting it didn't feel as bad. A well designed job should lead players into the standard rotation and make it feel good to execute. Dawntrail BLM doesn't do that. It has a number of traps for new players, and while free F3p helps, it has more ways to bleed damage than in Endwalker.

I should be excited about a new expansion and new things added to my job. I expect better from SE, and while sure I can settle I don't consider "oh missing DOT / unavoidable drift etc. are just part of the job now. Have fun!" to be good design. They have deliberately introduced these things into the job! They didn't have to do that!

There are lots of ways to fix things - e.g. your suggested change to Despair. For example, they could allow the thunder DOT timer to be increased to 60s and increase the proc to 40s - that would give some freedom back. However I'm not going to close my eyes and pretend the job as it is right now in 7.0 is any kind of improvement over 6.5 BLM.

They weren't problems with EW Black Mage... which is why I agree the job has gotten harder to play at a higher level. But I don't think it's gotten harder to play or more forbidding at a lower level, because it's more obvious what you're supposed to do and extra instant casts + less frequent oGCD weaving has made doing that thing more forgiving. I definitely think removing Thunderhead entirely would make things less frustrating for experienced players while either not affecting or actually helping beginner players (my assumption here is that the Thunder spells remain 0s cast time and 0mp DoTs only castable when in an elemental aspect), and some mechanic by which a Flare Star is guaranteed at the end of every astral cycle will help everybody.

I think it'd be difficult to retool the class such that Manafont doesn't drift because of the nature of what Manafont actually gives you; it's not like Amplifier or Delirium or something, after all, it actually cares about your current resource totals, and your resources are what you spend to deal damage, and you already want to spend those most efficiently whenever you've got them. Actually, it occurs to me that you could make Manafont work like an MP-based Excogitation: it'd give you a ~30s status that, upon your MP dropping below 800 in astral phase, instantly triggers and refreshes all your resources. The 100s cooldown has been working for me, but going back to a 120s cooldown and making the actual effect a delayed trigger could make everyone happy.

I've posted it elsewhere, but here's an HUD-only change I'm desperate for: instead of a separate Astral Gauge, they should just make Astral Soul stacks replace Umbral Hearts as you gain them. Then, once you've got three, those three light up one by one, and then you can Flare Star. (Then, for an actual mechanical change, dropping to 0mp by casting Flare or Despair could automatically light up any existing astral hearts with a slightly dimmer glow indicating that each one is sapping your Flare Star of 20 potency or something.)

[Realfoxy]

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I think it'd be difficult to retool the class such that Manafont doesn't drift because of the nature of what Manafont actually gives you; it's not like Amplifier or Delirium or something, after all, it actually cares about your current resource totals, and your resources are what you spend to deal damage, and you already want to spend those most efficiently whenever you've got them. Actually, it occurs to me that you could make Manafont work like an MP-based Excogitation: it'd give you a ~30s status that, upon your MP dropping below 800 in astral phase, instantly triggers and refreshes all your resources. The 100s cooldown has been working for me, but going back to a 120s cooldown and making the actual effect a delayed trigger could make everyone happy.

I've posted it elsewhere, but here's an HUD-only change I'm desperate for: instead of a separate Astral Gauge, they should just make Astral Soul stacks replace Umbral Hearts as you gain them. Then, once you've got three, those three light up one by one, and then you can Flare Star. (Then, for an actual mechanical change, dropping to 0mp by casting Flare or Despair could automatically light up any existing astral hearts with a slightly dimmer glow indicating that each one is sapping your Flare Star of 20 potency or something.)

I don't think the excog idea is good, since if it refreshes after despair then your Flare Star will make the manafont fire phase a lot tighter (though you could just make FS refresh AF like I mentioned before). It also wouldn't completely solve the drift problem since you'd still want to use it off cooldown.

I think you could easily fix Manafont by just giving it charges. Decreasing the cooldown to 100s just made the drift problem worse - the shorter the cooldown, the more likely you are to lose a use by drifting. 100s only made it easier to align with 2min cooldowns, but that's pointless because Manafont is not something that gives you burst anyway, yet another example of how SE just does not understand how this job actually functions in fights.

[Ferrinus]

I don't think the excog idea is good, since if it refreshes after despair then your Flare Star will make the manafont fire phase a lot tighter (though you could just make FS refresh AF like I mentioned before). It also wouldn't completely solve the drift problem since you'd still want to use it off cooldown.

I think you could easily fix Manafont by just giving it charges. Decreasing the cooldown to 100s just made the drift problem worse - the shorter the cooldown, the more likely you are to lose a use by drifting. 100s only made it easier to align with 2min cooldowns, but that's pointless because Manafont is not something that gives you burst anyway, yet another example of how SE just does not understand how this job actually functions in fights.

Excog manafont would probably want to be paired with an AF refresh on Flare Star. I'm not sure why it would drift, though, since you'd be able to press the button as soon as it lights up without wasting its effect unless the boss goes untargetable for spans that probably drift everyone else's cooldowns, also.

That said, I don't think Manafont cooldown drift is a problem in the first place. Like, if Manafont's cooldown dropped to 80 or 60, that would be a significant buff, but it would still drift because it's never going to line up perfectly with the end of every single astral cycle and will never be worth cutting an astral cycle short to press immediately. Precisely because it's not a burst ability, it doesn't have to be something that you press immediately at fight start and then every other time that Searing Light or whatever pops up on your buff list. It could just get used as convenient, and improve your overall damage to the extent that it's used and you have the opportunity to discharge the resources it generates for you.

[Realfoxy]

Excog manafont would probably want to be paired with an AF refresh on Flare Star. I'm not sure why it would drift, though, since you'd be able to press the button as soon as it lights up without wasting its effect unless the boss goes untargetable for spans that probably drift everyone else's cooldowns, also.

That said, I don't think Manafont cooldown drift is a problem in the first place. Like, if Manafont's cooldown dropped to 80 or 60, that would be a significant buff, but it would still drift because it's never going to line up perfectly with the end of every single astral cycle and will never be worth cutting an astral cycle short to press immediately. Precisely because it's not a burst ability, it doesn't have to be something that you press immediately at fight start and then every other time that Searing Light or whatever pops up on your buff list. It could just get used as convenient, and improve your overall damage to the extent that it's used and you have the opportunity to discharge the resources it generates for you.

Each use of Manafont lets you cut out a weak B3 and B4 from your rotation. Say that you're at base spell speed and after your normal fire phase you use manafont, that means you'll do 3xF4 PD 3xF4 Desp FS F3P which is 5684 potency (excluding eno) over 28.6 seconds (account for 0.1s caster tax). Say you didn't use manafont, you'd instead use the B3+B4 into standard fire line and then do 6386 potency over 36.2 seconds.

So if you do manafont, you get 36.2 - 28.6 = 7.6 seconds (missing fast F3, B3, and B4 + caster tax) to do cast your normal spells. PPS of the standard line is 176.41 pps, times 7.6 seconds, equals 1340.716 potency. Then 5684 + 1341 - 6386 = 639 potency before eno. So it's more than an entire Despair cast.

I'm not going run down the other comparisons, but DPS wise, Manafont is worth more than TWO uses of Triplecast COMBINED.

Like I said before, you can close your eyes, bleed off all the damage, and play super safe, but given that BLM is a job whose ONLY contribution to the raid is damage and Addle, you should be doing enough DPS to justify your existence.

I don't want SE to be balancing this job around its standard rotation, when the standard rotation is full of all this jank that normal players have to deal with.