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

[LilyPendragon]

snip

They've ironically made the old meme of 'BLM relative' strats more likely now because BLM isn't flexible enough to deal with a fair bit of the stuff it used to be able to.

What a dumpster fire.

[rainichan]

Adding my voice into the pile because for as much as I've tried to like new BLM and get used to it, it doesn't feel great. I can do movement as I learn fights, I'm not really worried about that, but with gear not giving me SpS, and an incredibly tight rotation to make sure you can get a FS off with perhaps a follow up Despair, it makes it very unfun to try to do anything with.

Either a couple of things need to happen, or the adjustments need to be more than potencies when adjustments happen:

Either we get a few extra seconds on Enochian to compensate, or FS's cast time needs to be reduced/made instant. With a drop in SpS to try to get anything off while moving or before you have to move, I feel one of these would make it feel better (I don't think it needs to be a mixture, but I wouldn't complain with a couple more seconds on Enochian and a reduced cast time for FS).

This is the first time since I started playing BLM that I can say I wish I didn't main it.

[Gaiinahat]

I see throughout this thread all the talk about how the endgame of BLM is functioning. What about beginner BLM? Since DT, I've leveled BLM up to level 70, and the class is pretty much unplayable up to this point.

Heaven forbid if you have to move, you're entire rotation is ruined, there's no means of recovery, and you have to start over with so much DPS loss. Timers drop too easily, encounters end with 0 MP and no means of getting it back to full for the next encounter. Granted, there's the slow out-of-combat tick, and ethers to get it started, and Lucid Dreaming isn't available until level 14. However, these are all useless because come the next encounter, you still have to get your MP to full before you can have any kind of "standard" rotation. So now my rotation is off by 2.5 seconds every time I have to hit B1 or F1, because now instead of having insta-full MP upon switching to B3, I have to throw in a B1, and throw in a F1 to keep UF going, and take out additional F4s for a DPS loss.

I used to LOVE BLM because the rotations were so smooth and versatile, and now I'm stuck with this unplayable "maintenance" class that punishes you if you're even a millisecond off point. At this point I HATE the class, and I can see how unfriendly these changes have made it. I can see a lot of new people steering away from this class altogether with how frustrating the gameplay is at low levels. SE pretty much killed it.

[LilyPendragon]

I used to LOVE BLM because the rotations were so smooth and versatile, and now I'm stuck with this unplayable "maintenance" class that punishes you if you're even a millisecond off point. At this point I HATE the class, and I can see how unfriendly these changes have made it. I can see a lot of new people steering away from this class altogether with how frustrating the gameplay is at low levels. SE pretty much killed it.

Yep, in their attempt to make BLM more approachable, they've made the skill floor higher and the skill ceiling lower. Pretty much the opposite of good design lol. BLM used to be a job with a pretty low skill floor, but a massive skill ceiling, now... eh.

[meie]

I see throughout this thread all the talk about how the endgame of BLM is functioning. What about beginner BLM? Since DT, I've leveled BLM up to level 70, and the class is pretty much unplayable up to this point.

Think most people are aware that even before DT, the lower level BLM experience is abysmal. Now they made changes under the guise of making the class more approachable, while everyone can say this is at best some band aid fix. Of course with a fresh expansion, endgame is more important for active players at the moment. If they were unsatisfied with EW BLM, I would rather them do a full rework then what got

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

snip

Having played more, here's an addendum to this.

7.Manafont, a botched CD.

Perhaps in some attempt to make BLM more in like with other bursty jobs, a lot of our potency was shoved into Manafont. Instead of just giving us 3K mp, now gives us umbral hearts, full mana, AF3, Thunderhead, and paradox. While on paper this sounds kind of cool, in practice, it just bloats our fire phase into absurdity, and makes it incredibly punishing to drift. As a result of this, we have to aim for very specific SPS, instead of going by what our prefered casting speed is, which was one of my favorite parts of BLM.

Please, revert this. A lot of things should be reverted or changed, or improved with the job at the moment. Don't let it stay in this mangled, unenjoyable state this whole expansion.

[GartredZW]

I just tested this out in game with basically zero spell speed (2.48GCD because I'm not un-melding my weapon just for this)
In the first half of your fire phase before Paradox, you can fit in 4 FireIVs and nothing else. If you want to slip in a xenoglossy or thunder, you'll need to use a maximum of 3 FIVs. in which case you can actually use 2 instants. So I really hope you didn't need to move in the first half, because that means you have to use all your remaining time just casting FireIVs and Despair. No room for adaptation. Trying to do four FIVs, then an instant before Paradox always fails with that low spell speed. With all my gear on (2.39GCD) you can manage it. But this isn't something that happened in old Black Mage.
in endwalker (yeah, I seriously thought to test this back then) you could consistently get 4 Fire IVs, and still get Paradox off, and you could do the same after paradox and just barely finish the despair cast. It was nice and balanced. it made sense. It felt like someone designed the class to actually work a certain way instead of just throwing stuff at the wall, and telling us to deal with it or go to Pictomancer.

Nevermind the fact that using the Fire 3 instant as it's intended just makes the problem worse because you'll only get four GCDs. Which was certainly the case in Endwalker, but we only got those 35% of the time as opposed to every time.
That just brings forth the biggest question in my mind. How do they actually want us to play this class now? Is the instant Fire3 supposed to be used in fire phase? because it's potency is lower than average, so we're better off just not using it. Well if we don't use it there, then maybe it's supposed to be used in Ice phase to swap back. But as I already showed, that significantly reduces your casting leeway. it takes away half of your available non-fire4 GCDs. Not to mention that if you want to actually optimize damage, you'll need to weave Transpose before using the Fire3, giving it AF1 potency. But to do that we'd need a consistent weave. So either waste a Xenoglossy for every ice phase, get lucky on thunder timings, clip your GCD, or continue to wonder what the point of removing Ice Paradox was. Again I ask, What's the point of the instant Fire 3 proc being a guaranteed thing? And furthermore, why only at level 90+? having that be a fixture of Fire1 from level 35 onward might actually help the boring low damage rotation of early Black Mage.

"It's for movement and extending your fire phase, ya doofus."

Well now it just sounds like they're fixing problems that they created instead of just leaving the class alone. We did just fine before with the way it was. Better than fine even. I was farming P12S by the end of Endwalker, and by that time, I was so proficient that I never dropped or clipped any GCDs. The art of optimizing your casting uptime while dodging mechanics is most of the fun in Black Mage. It's known as the hardest class in the game, and I think that's why they felt the need to change it. Forgetting that that little fact is a hindrance for some, but a challenge for others.

[CamuiKushi]

Think most people are aware that even before DT, the lower level BLM experience is abysmal. Now they made changes under the guise of making the class more approachable, while everyone can say this is at best some band aid fix. Of course with a fresh expansion, endgame is more important for active players at the moment. If they were unsatisfied with EW BLM, I would rather them do a full rework then what got

It's definitely gotten worse. You could still get by levelling the job in Endwalker. Now it's jankier than ever below level 35 and up until you get umbral hearts the forced ice cast in the ice phase feels bad. I still have to get it to 100, but there's no way I'm ever taking it into levelling or MSQ roulette again.

[Ferrinus]

There was already a forced ice cast in UI pre level 58 because you needed to fill around two GCDs' worth of time while your MP regenerated and even a thundercloud proc, which you might or might not have, would only consume one of them, and without a proc you might already have enough DoT remaining on an enemy that refreshing it is pointless. On a bad cycle you might find yourself either casting back-to-back Blizzard 1s or casting a single Blizzard and then just sitting and waiting for another second or two.

[Jason_Ashford]

I am genuinely upset by how bad Black Mage feels. This is arguably even worse than Heavensward when Enochian was not a trait built into Astral Fire and Umbral Ice. Between flipping the standard rotation completely on its head, and our new level 100 ability having no place in the rotation at all because it is a hard cast ability that is completed segregated from every other ability, not to mention the sheer absurdity of a utility dps job like Pictomancer doing everything Black Mage can do but better. For the first time since I started playing in 2015, I am genuinely considering dropping Black Mage which has been my main job from Day 1 in favor of Pictomancer even with the expected nerfs to its damage coming.

The changes to Black Mage overall has been for the worse. For starters, the removal of sharpcast and rework of thunderhead at first glance might seem to be a QoL change that would make it easier for people to maintain their thunder dot, but the fact of the matter is that thunder as a whole has no place in the rotation. Not only is it more annoying to keep track of the dot duration and thunderhead, but the extremely rigid rotation that Black Mage has been put on makes it more likely that the dot will lapse because you're in the middle of a set of casts that cannot be weaved with a thunder proc or else you'll throw off the rest of your rotation and suffer a significant dps loss.

One of the worst changes to Black Mage overall is the removal of MP generation when you had stacks of Umbral Ice. This concept of forcing a player to cast an ice spell after switching to regain their MP was a horrible idea that feels like it was presented by someone who doesn't actually play Black Mage, or level boosted it to 80+ and doesn't understand that prior to Umbral Soul you have no means of generating MP outside of combat. This is especially prevalent in 30 and under content where if your stacks time out at a bad moment you'll be forced to sit and wait for natural MP regen to give you enough for a single cast of Blizzard to get the subsequent cast for free and replenish your MP.

And then there's Flare Star. I am not sure if there was a breakdown of communication somewhere, but i really need somebody to explain to me why we were given a hard cast ability that is only marginally better than Despair, that does not reset Astral Fire's timer and does not fit anywhere into a rotation except as a finisher for aoes. At that point it begs the question of why was it the capstone ability at all. It was presented like it is supposed to be a new finisher that you cast at the end of both the single target and aoe rotations but it only really works for finishing off your aoe rotation because it has no place in a single target rotation. I would rather cast despair and eat the 60 potency difference. On top of this someone needs to explain the logic behind requiring you to accumulate stacks that are lost on switching to umbral ice, or if your Astral Fire stacks time out.