BLM Post-Patch, and where to go from here.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

While me, and i'm sure, many other Black Mages are happy about the umbral soul changes, the fact is, the class has many issues beyond that, that can't be fixed by a simple potency buff.

Before I list the gameplay problems we fact, one thing has to be clear.

Black Mage is not a burst job.

Increasing the potency of Xenoglossy further, with three stacks of it, is going to force us to use them in the party buff window, restricting our movement options, and generally not feeling fun to play.

With that in mind, I shall move into the gameplay issues.

1.Astral Fire both lasts too long, and feels too strict.

This is probably my largest gripe with DT BLM. With the addition of Flare Star, our fire phase is reaching the point where our High Thunder starts to fall off, to speak nothing about Thunder 3, which is 3 seconds shorter than HT. On the latter point of the statement, Fire Paradox being instant, actually gives us 2-3 less seconds to work with, as we have to deal with the recast timer. It doesn't replace Ice Paradox in its movement tech, as the trade off of a lessened AF timer never feels good. This is also the same issue with using F3P to refresh.

2.Flare Star is not a good capstone reward.

I can understand the conception behind Flare Star. A big, meaty finisher to end your fire phase. You'll likely get it every time you do a fire phase, and it has pretty decent VFX to boot. However, in gameplay it falls flat. Despair is already a commitment, as it's (at base sps) 0.2 seconds longer to cast then F4. Flare Star shares that same length, and that's a problem. Back in EW, many times I'd find myself refreshing thunder, or keeping enochian up by the skin of my teeth, because of another cast in the phase. To add another throws off the timing that was established in ShB and EW, and further serves to make the job feel awkward and janky.

3.Thunderhead, both a noob trap, and a bad replacement.

Again, I can understand both the conception of Thunderhead, and the removal of Sharpcast. In most scenarios, you'd only use Sharpcast to keep a charge of Thundercloud (the buff that let you instantcast thunder) in your pocket, and not much else.

However, Thunderclouds replacement with Thunderhead brings about a few issues. The DoT length is the same as our proc, making it impossible to not clip it on ST scenarios. With Thunderclouds duration being 40 seconds, (as opposed to DT's 30), this is a rather baffling and harebrained oversight on the devs end.

Another issue is in the very nature of Thunderhead. If you're a new player, I feel like you would press the glowing button that pops up everytime you switch phase. It's just not good UI design.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

4.MP Regen Problems

Once again, I can understand the conception behind these changes. You don't want to deal with server ticks, it feels gamey and uncomfortable, I get it. But the MP changes aren't perfect. For one, bosses with invulnerability can't be hit to get MP back. While the level lowering of Umbral Soul does alleviate it a bit, there are still innumerable fights with short enough downtime or invulnerability phases, where there's not enough time to spam Umbral Soul. Along with this, according to my friends, the MP regen still relies on server ticks, it just only activates when you hit an enemy with an Ice Spell. While I understand if this is an issue on the technical side or the server side, I think this isn't good enough.

5. Ice Paradox

The loss of Ice Paradox is a devastating blow BLM's flexibility. It allowed us a weave slot to Sharpcast, it refreshed the Umbral Ice timer, and it was a great movement button. All of the Black Mages I've talked too, whether in my FC, in duty roulettes, in the cities, all activities, have all mourned the loss of it. Even if it has to bring MP back or not, we all want it back.

6. Movement inflexibility, and the incongruity of it in current fight design.

A recurring point within my points is this newfound lack of free movement we got in EW. All our movement now either punishes us potency wise, or is best saved for aligning into party buffs or long sections of movement. This lack of movement, where all the other casters, (even Pictomancer, with its long recast timers), have it, leaves us back in the turret mage design on StB and ShB, which doesn't fit in with the fight design of DT. If you've done EX1, you can realize how much small movement is needed in the mechanics, and as such, you can really feel the lack of flexibility.

From the bottom of my heart, I hope the devs take into account some of the points I, and many other Black Mages have brought up.

Thank you for reading.

[Altera]

Even the 2nd raid boss has so much movement due to AOE drops, as well as stuff that floats around the arena you have to dodge. I couldnt get many Flarestars off at all due to the movement and no methods of refreshing Enochian timer as ive already used Paradox, Triple cast to move so much I either have to go into Ice phase or cast a Fire 1 to not loose Enochan

BLM needs serious tweaks to how spells, timers, stacks etc works
Thunder must be made OGCD and add 10secs more duration
Flarestar stacks needs to be carried over through UI phase otherwise our shiny new LVL100 spell is not going to see much use at all.

At this point I wish they would revert BLM back to Endwalker state, let keep Retrace and remove everything else and rather try again in 8.0
Also for 8.0, I would prefer them focusing fully on current Jobs rather than waste so much time making new ones and keep new Jobs for 9.0.

If there isnt any serious changes for BLM next week for Savage, i doubt there will be many BLMs in the clearing parties at all. PIC is way too powerful, too easy to not prefer over a BLM

[Sylvain]

Increasing the potency of Xenoglossy further, with three stacks of it, is going to force us to use them in the party buff window, restricting our movement options, and generally not feeling fun to play.

While I agree on the premise that Xeno damage boost forces us into such gameplay, as long as xeno would do more than fire, the end result would be the same. However, it is true that almost 60% more damage over FireIV promotes such gameplay a “tad bit too much”. Perhaps nerfing Xeno to make it closer to “neutral” with fireIV, while buffing FireIV would help elleviate the issue.
I don’t see any problem with the idea of “keeping xeno for burst”, but it shouldn’t come at such a cost, afterall the spell is clearly designed as a movement tool and not simply a burst one. (Otherwise they’d just not make it instant)

1.Astral Fire both lasts too long, and feels too strict.

It does feel too long. However, I don’t think Paradox instant is a problem. With the guaranteed Firestarter we shouldn’t have any problem and unlike xenoglossy, doing so is a very small, almost negligible, dps loss. Hence making it (imo) well designed. If you can, it’s best to do so but if you use FireIII for movement your dps would in all practicality be the exact same. Some sources are conflicted on the exact loss but it’s somewhere between 0.5-1% if you were to compare one rotation doing it everytime and one never doing it. Since most player would do it only a few times, I do not believe this to be a problem.
Paradox instant + Garanteed FireIII imo lower the skillfloor quite substantially without raising the ceiling all that much. Also, the more SpS we’ll have, the lesser of an issue this will become.

2.Flare Star is not a good capstone reward.

To me the issue is just that it conflicts with Despair. I don’t think the cast time is an issue considering it can be done after Despair (thus giving you 13s to do it). However, it is extremely restrictive as it can only be done at specific moment, thus making its lengthy cast time a problem.
I like that it’s a meaty 3s, tbh I wouldn’t even mind a 3.5 like flare. Thus, some freedom on where to cast it would be more than welcomed.
I strongly believe making it a rarer occurrence would make it feel better. Throwing this again, reducing the flare stack requirement to 4, making them proc only from Paradox + Despair (and kept in umbral obviously) + free use from amplifier, would make it more akin to a 1min cd and give us more freedom. Additionally It could also refresh AF.

3.Thunderhead, both a noob trap, and a bad replacement.
…
Another issue is in the very nature of Thunderhead. If you're a new player, I feel like you would press the glowing button that pops up everytime you switch phase. It's just not good UI design.

I think this is the biggest issue. They really should just bring back the old damage distribution.

5. Ice Paradox

Regarding the mobility I agree, the theme I also agree, but why do people talk about its use as a weave slot for Sharpcast… Sharpcast is gone… You can’t ask to have it back for something that no longer exist… Tbh adding back Ice Paradox should be really trivial on their end. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to add it back like they did for energy drain with SCH at the beginning of EW.

It’s literally the #1 complain.

6. Movement inflexibility, and the incongruity of it in current fight design.

So here there’s an issue in perspective.
I see “dps loss on movement” as part of the job design. Basically, I see BLM optimisation as reducing movement as much as possible. Some, like you?, see that as a hindrance. Basically, all the desired movement should simply be part of the basic rotation, AKA Summoner.
I personally like that holding on xeno, transpose/FireIII etc basically reducing my movement, affects my DPS. Because when I can do everything right, I (should) get the reward of higher dps. (ofc atm we’re low but that’s still what’s happening).
However, the number might be too harsh here. A few changes could easily narrow the gap between the “perfect run” and the “full movement run” (every movement tool used for movment and not for DPS optimisation), such as:
- Nerfing Xeno potency to align it more with regular rotation.
- Matching Cast and Recast of FireIV, Despair and FlareStar. ( Triple cast isn’t a dps gain anymore)
- Increasing Astral Fire 3 damage boost to nerf transpose/FireIII
However this would obviously kill a big part of BLM optimisation but you can’t ask for “no penalty on movement” while requesting “more optimisation”.

From the bottom of my heart, I hope the devs take into account some of the points I, and many other Black Mages have brought up.

Let’s hope they do, see you in 2 weeks ^^

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

It does feel too long. However, I don’t think Paradox instant is a problem. With the guaranteed Firestarter we shouldn’t have any problem and unlike xenoglossy, doing so is a very small, almost negligible, dps loss. Hence making it (imo) well designed. If you can, it’s best to do so but if you use FireIII for movement your dps would in all practicality be the exact same. Some sources are conflicted on the exact loss but it’s somewhere between 0.5-1% if you were to compare one rotation doing it everytime and one never doing it. Since most player would do it only a few times, I do not believe this to be a problem.
Paradox instant + Garanteed FireIII imo lower the skillfloor quite substantially without raising the ceiling all that much. Also, the more SpS we’ll have, the lesser of an issue this will become.

I feel like I might have misrepresented my point. The point is that because your fire phase refreshers are all instant now, you either take the 2-3 second loss on your fire phase with your refresh, or you use both to pad out the loss, and likely have to refresh your thunder earlier, further lengthening your phase.

And if I may clarify on my movement point, we had a lot freer movement in EW than in DT, and while getting used to that is a personal gripe, from the BLM's I've spoken too, they bemoan that loss too. And furthermore, our free movement now (Fire Paradox and F3P) are both more restrictive on when they can be used (Fire Phase), and feel less good (Refresh recast timing issue).

I thank you though for digesting the thread and giving such well thought out feedback.

[Eraden]

Mao still believes mistake was made by havings Flare Star come from Fire IVs. Is means that Flare Star COMPETES with Xenoglossy for spot in rotation. Flare Star should be step up in chain that begins with maintainings Astral and Umbral, produces Polyglots and the Polyglots should be whats used to make Flare Stars (two for Flare Star equal to 250% of single Polyglots or three for Flare Star equal to 400% of single Polyglots). This way BLMs keep EW flexibility AND gets shiny new boom whats not competings with Xenoglossy.

[Illyrian94]

Just throwing my voice in with the hopes that more people commenting is enough to draw attention to things. I'm probably what most people would consider a fairly "casual" Black Mage. Started playing FF14 partway through Endwalker with BLM as my main and have yet to do any "harder" content. I largely played the standard rotation, but had been starting to explore a tiny bit of non-standard since I was wanting to dip my toes into harder content in Dawntrail. I still could do harder content in Dawntrail with BLM, obviously. It's not like the job is actually factually unplayable.

It just doesn't feel good right now. I could care less about damage, really. That can be fixed easily enough with potency tweaks. The job feeling bad, though? That can't be fixed with potency tweaks. Flare Star is incredibly clunky. Did we really need another big, slow, hard cast ender? Especially one that punishes us for needing to have a short fire phase or if the boss leaves the arena? Thunderhead/thunder is just bad. Ice Paradox being gone limits our mobility and makes the UI phase feel weirdly short, etc. All things that have been said plenty of times that I don't really need to repeat.

What really blows my mind is the MP regen problem. The fact that this wasn't caught in testing makes all of the BLM changes feel as if they were untested and rushed. I work pretty closely with QA folks on a daily basis, and I love them to death. It feels like these changes weren't given a proper QA pass at all. Obviously, we don't know if that's the case--but it sure feels that way.

Thanks for the consistently well thought out posts you've been writing up.

[Sylvain]

I feel like I might have misrepresented my point. The point is that because your fire phase refreshers are all instant now, you either take the 2-3 second loss on your fire phase with your refresh, or you use both to pad out the loss, and likely have to refresh your thunder earlier, further lengthening your phase.

No I got that, but hence my answer, sure, because they're both instant the timer are tighter. 100% agree with that. However, specifically because we always have fire3 proc, I do not believe this to be an issue. If you know that the next firephase will be tight due to movement, you can decide to keep FireIII to ease the movement.

Also, maybe it's just me but, specifically because Paradox is instant I now do 4 fireIV and use Paradox right when there's basically 1s left on AF. I see no problem with that if anything I find myself more mobile than before. But clearly I must be doing something wrong because everyone complains about the oposite.

And if I may clarify on my movement point, we had a lot freer movement in EW than in DT, and while getting used to that is a personal gripe, from the BLM's I've spoken too, they bemoan that loss too. And furthermore, our free movement now (Fire Paradox and F3P) are both more restrictive on when they can be used (Fire Phase), and feel less good (Refresh recast timing issue).

I suppose you and those players were playing the alternative rotation. Obviously this being gone the end result is stricter. I can't deny that.

I personally never enjoyed the alternative rotation and played the "regular" one most of the time. For me, the rework overall has made everything simplier tbh.
It took some time to get used to the changes but I personally like some of the changes.

I still have my grip about a few points tho, Thunder being 90% DoT, Xeno-pile-up, and I hate having to use my triple cast for a dps gain. And FlareStar... oh boy that spell... it took me 30s into the trailer to realise "oh boy.... this looks like a really bad addition... i hope I'm wrong". Tooltip reveal weeks later confirmed I(everyone?) wasn't wrong.

I thank you though for digesting the thread and giving such well thought out feedback..

<3
Tbh I really hope we get the SCH treatment from EW and get Ice Paradox back at the very least. This is litterally the easiest change they could make without breaking the rest.

I have no hope for any form of Astral Flare rework and I'm *very* skeptical on a thunder rework.

Mao still believes mistake was made by havings Flare Star come from Fire IVs. Is means that Flare Star COMPETES with Xenoglossy for spot in rotation. Flare Star should be step up in chain that begins with maintainings Astral and Umbral, produces Polyglots and the Polyglots should be whats used to make Flare Stars (two for Flare Star equal to 250% of single Polyglots or three for Flare Star equal to 400% of single Polyglots). This way BLMs keep EW flexibility AND gets shiny new boom whats not competings with Xenoglossy.

Tbh this would just further promote Polystacking for burst. Is that what you want? "No Xeno gameplay" and turn xeno into a much worse Reprise fom RDM?
Like "... did this BLM just cast a xenoglossy? what a noob... you never do that. You always go for a 3PFS, (3 polyglot Flare Star)"

Started playing FF14 partway through Endwalker with BLM as my main

Welcome Comrade ! Excellent choice ! Boss are always tastier when properly toasted and crispy.

It just doesn't feel good right now.

Yup this seems to be the general feeling. And indeed, as much as people complain about DPS, DPS can be fixed, feeling is different and requires more work.

So regarding longer cast, I actually really wanted one big ass cast... Like my dream spell was to actually have a 5s cast only usable during Leyline :3 I really wanted that Omega boom worht of 2000 potency :3
But let say Flare Star missed the mark... For every reason everyone keep pointing.
Yeah Thunderhead... I think everyone went from "OMG YES EASY THUNDERHEAD PROC" to "wth is that crap" once we saw the new damage...
And rip Ice Paradox... (maybe you'll be back in 2 weeks ... maybe?)

What really blows my mind is the MP regen problem. The fact that this wasn't caught in testing makes all of the BLM changes feel as if they were untested and rushed. I work pretty closely with QA folks on a daily basis, and I love them to death. It feels like these changes weren't given a proper QA pass at all. Obviously, we don't know if that's the case--but it sure feels that way.

I do believe the "low level experience" was indeed not noticed....

Regarding the changes, I feel that it musn't be easy to add a new skill to everyjob, especially one like BLM because, sparing the whole alternative rotation and such, BLM was considered a very well designed job... What can you add that won't break that delicate balance?
Ideally something that doesn't change the rotation too much... Them settling for a spell only castable at the end of the fire cycle kind of make sens... like, in the grand scheme of things, doing an extra cast after despair doesn't change much. However, as you said "it does feel bad" and that's clearly something that must have sliped through.

I mean every expansion will have this problem and it will always be more apparent and probably even harder to manage.

HW brought "rankIV" mechanic which entirely changed the gameplay.
SB brought Foul which didn't change much but basically served as a delay during the Icephase.
ShB brought despair and xeno which rounded up the rotation with a finisher and a mobility skill. Being unable to stack xeno also made the "xeno stack for burst" not a problem.
EW brought Paradox which solidified ice phase...

So what do you add seriously? Ngl, it's getting hard to add stuff without messing up with everything. Had many conversation with friends and everytime someone brought up a new spell idea, everyone was quick to point all the gameplay issue this would introduce.

[MerlinMerlinson]

A sad black mage main checking in to +1 all of this. Thank you for writing it up. I hope we see changes to bring back the magic of our beloved class.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

I suppose you and those players were playing the alternative rotation. Obviously this being gone the end result is stricter. I can't deny that.

I personally never enjoyed the alternative rotation and played the "regular" one most of the time. For me, the rework overall has made everything simplier tbh.
It took some time to get used to the changes but I personally like some of the changes.

I still have my grip about a few points tho, Thunder being 90% DoT, Xeno-pile-up, and I hate having to use my triple cast for a dps gain. And FlareStar... oh boy that spell... it took me 30s into the trailer to realise "oh boy.... this looks like a really bad addition... i hope I'm wrong". Tooltip reveal weeks later confirmed I(everyone?) wasn't wrong.
"

Oh no, I don't care for nonstandard either, I've played BLM strictly with standard. I feel like the movement we got in EW, was less detrimental, even in the standard rotation. That's just how I see it though.