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

[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 ^^