Two Steps Foward, Two To Go: Black Mage, Flare Star, and Thunderhead.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

Well I'm not sure anyone expected such drastic changes within 7.05 for BLM, but here we are. To recap the changes,

1. Ice Paradox
This is a big reversion. To quote the devs themselves in their 7.05 Job Adjustments (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobgu.../#battleaction,

After reviewing player feedback, we've also made changes to Paradox so that it can be used even when under the effect of Umbral Ice.

If this doesn't prove that we have a say in things that go on behind the scenes, I don't know what else will. I'm not sure what more I need to say about how great it is that we have this back. We're considerably more flexible, the thematicism of Paradox makes more sense, and it's really just a fun move to use.

2.Umbral Soul
This is a great quality of life feature, and one that I personally didn't even know I wanted! Freezing the timer once you use it makes downtime between dungeon trash, or even some boss mechanics you're learning, so much less tedious. (though very minor nitpick, the blue oval around the Umbral Ice timer is offcenter so fix it if you want :P)


While I am over the moon with these changes, there are still a few pain points that need to be addressed. After playing the job more at level 100, and feeling it out more, I feel I can adequately give my piece on what needs to be changed and how. I invite you all reading to give your feedback as well.

1.Flare Star
Probably one of the most divisive things about Black Mage in this expansion is Flare Star. Our level 100 capstone move is kind of like Bards Apex Arrow. Performing our Fire 4's allows us to get 1 stack of Astral Soul, once we get 6, we can cast Flare Star, a big finisher, that's very cool looking.

On the surface, this seems cool. Another big finisher for the big and flashy job! However, it quickly falls apart in most content. Black Mage, since EW, has been moving away from its identity as a turret caster, a caster that roots themselves down and just blasts the enemies with high damage spells, in exchange for limited mobility. With the advent of Paradox, we've grown more mobile, which definitely helped with the busier fight design.

Flare Star feels like a weird reversion into that design, in fact, I think it was meant to compliment the lack of an Ice Paradox, but with BLM's movement being more restricted, people hated it, and as such, Ice Paradox is back.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

snip

Another issue with Flare Star is the strictness it imposes onto us. Even since HW, Black Mages have been able to do shorter fire phases, whether to align with buffs, account for movement, or to just recover from a mistake, it's been a core tenement of our flexibility. With Flare Star, that's mostly gone out the window. We have to get 6 Fire 4's in, (or 2 Flares) no if's, ands, or buts, or else we lose a ton of potency. I can understand the perspective of not liking this being a "Skill Issue", however, the strictness of this makes learning fights harder, makes overworld content harder, makes raids harder, it kneecaps our ability to be flexible without incurring a major penalty that just doesn't feel good.

I am not in the camp of making Flare Star instant. While I do think it would make it cooler, I feel it would be subtracting from Black Mage's identity as the least mobile caster. I do understand the idea of not wanting more movement can sound rather archaic, but we have enough instant casts as is, and I feel any more could start to feel rather brainless.

There is a reason I brought up Apex Arrow earlier. I believe the best way to fix Flare Star is to allow us to cast it with less than 6 stacks, and adjust potency accordingly. Yes, it will still be optimal to get in 6 Fire 4's but it will allow us not to completely waste our stacks of Astral soul, and be able to be as flexible as we were in the past.

2. Thunderhead

While Flare Star's reception has been mixed, I have seen near universal negativity with Thunderhead. It imposes a lot of restrictions onto us, (Not being able to hardcast thunder to open a fight, having to time it very precisely to not lose potency, its duration cutting into our Astral Fire phase especially with Manafont), and all we get for it, is a weaker version of Thunder 3 from EW.

Even more baffling, the potency for High Thunder was moved even more to the DoT portion. This has caused it to become even more punishing. I'm paraphrasing, but I recall one of my colleagues saying that unless you refresh it at 3 seconds or less, it's a potency loss.

I think the purpose of this is to use High Thunder as more of a movement tool than a damage tool, like a healer DoT. Personally, if you can't make a DoT feel good, like T3 in EW, I don't see a reason to keep it.

A pretty simple bandaid fix for this is to Increase the duration of Thunderhead to 40 seconds. It's the same length of time that we had for T3, and I don't know why they made it 40 seconds again.

Thank you for reading. Do share this around, get peoples eyes on it. We've made a change before, and I know we can do it again.

[Turtledeluxe]

Making Flare Star weaker in exchange for less restriction sounds even dumber than what it is now. Sorry to be blunt, but whichever dev thought of Flare Star in general just missed on the idea of a lvl 100 action all around.

Xenoglossy is stil our best attack and insta cast at that. Why are we upending the whole freaking job over this? Just change it back to EW BLM at this point in totality.

[AzaelOrunitia]

Thunderhead has major conception issues as everybody seems to agree. A dot tied to a buff which has the exact same duration is really bad design as someone already mentioned in another topic, that and its underwhelming potency on proc which makes it all the more important not to clip it make thunderhead one of the main issues and hindrances to what used to be a smooth BLM gameplay experience. Keeping the uptime of a dot is always something that jobs have to work around but High thunder might be the clunkiest out of all of them (why can't we just cast it whenever we want anyway?).
So yeah increasing the duration of the buff would be more than welcome (still can't wrap my head around why they reduced proc damage to increase dot damage in 7.05 but oh well...)

As for Flare Star... so much wasted potential imo. The idea of being able to cast it with fewer stacks while more stacks lead to more potency has been going around for a while and would honestly be much better design for the skill. I'm personally a bit pessimistic and highly doubt they would ever go as far as grant us this wish.
I personally think that making it instant would be a decent change, although as you said it'd take away from BLM's identity as a turret caster even more... Yet another 3s cast on top of Despair was not necessarily something that we needed, I don't think BLM's rotation needs an array of finishers like RDM has.
If we are to keep it as a 3s cast, then PLEASE make it feel impactful. The skill dictates our entire rotation and gameplay, it's what prevents us from having more flexibility so playing entirely around a skill that has 160 potency less than Xenoglossy is kinda meh... It's supposed to be our finisher, we have no guaranteed crit/dh (not that I advocate for this) at least give us some screen shake I beg you.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

I personally think that making it instant would be a decent change, although as you said it'd take away from BLM's identity as a turret caster even more... Yet another 3s cast on top of Despair was not necessarily something that we needed, I don't think BLM's rotation needs an array of finishers like RDM has.

I get you, though another issue I have with instant flare star, is that even with it being instant, you still have to deal with the recast timer, so while you don't have to root yourself for it, it doesnt solve the time issue.

[Turtledeluxe]

How does Flare Star take away from turret status? All the insta cast abilities and procs don't do that? Can someone please explain how this random AoE skill with a long cast is the one thing ruining your turret fantasy?

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

snip

That isn't what I said. Also, Flare Star is used in in single target scenarios too.

[remiff]

To fix the BLM's Flarestars, they should add 2 possible stacks similar to Polyglots,
increase its potency, and make it unaspected damage and instant like xénoglossies.

[Tunda]

Black mage shouldn't have a dot in the first place..

Thunder should be a debuff each 30 second (60sec recast) to Amplify F4 and Flare damage

each time F4 caster extra 15% expulsion done by thunder debuf

[Turtledeluxe]

That isn't what I said. Also, Flare Star is used in in single target scenarios too.

Many of you have said twice making it insta cast ruins the turret fantasy.

Also yes, it's an AoE stuffed into single target rotation. It's redundant at best, not worth casting at worst.

Making it just another F4 makes it even more worthless than it already is as a redundant slow Despair.

And when I say worthless, I mean conceptually. Obviously yes, it's an additional action with potency. The problem is that it's a long cast requiring all the conditions it requires and rewards you by basically being Despair 2.