Black Mage Level 100 Spell (Flare Star) SUCKS!

[Ferrinus]

Because that is the irony of flare star. It is both too strong, and too weak.

Too strong to justify skipping, too weak to really feel impactful.

That doesn't actually make sense, though. Like I said, at level 99, Fire IV #6 is also too strong to justify skipping, and, yet, it is no stronger than Fire IVs #1 through 5. If you've got two mutually contradictory complaints about something your actual problem is probably a third thing, to whit:

Cutting short astral fire early has never been a problem before provided you'd use non standard setups, and yet, here we are, so no, it matters quite a lot actually.

That's quite a big "provided" you've slipped in there! Obviously, cutting astral fire short after having cast Blizz4 to stock up on umbral hearts was a problem. But, additionally, cutting a non-standard setup short was also a problem. Like, if you did all the weird transpose+mana tick required to expurgate some combination of B3, B4, and whatever else from your rotation, entered AF3 with just enough time and MP to cast F4-F4-F4-Despair... but the could only cast F4-F4 before a boss mechanic forced you to move, you had to cut your intended fire cycle short and lose damage! Ahhh, the non standard setup is so rigid, it forces you to cast as many F4s as possible (which was 3 or 4 or something, I forget the numbers) or else it's suboptimal, I can't stand it.

The actual thing that's changed is that BLM's transition and resource-stockpiling spells are no longer skippable. But it was never actually good to fail to cast as many F4s as you possibly could given your AF3 start conditions. You always lost damage unless you squeezed every last cast you could out of your MP and elemental gauge.

While I like the elegance of the suggestion to trade Umbral Hearts for a 3-sized Astral Gauge, the one part I'm not a fan of is that it only requires 3 Fire IV casts. There is a minor sense of accomplishment that comes from getting 6 Fire IV's within your Astral Fire phase, and I think that would be entirely lost if we went as low as 3.

I'm sympathetic to this and I'd actually be fine if it still required the full complement of six to cast; my biggest priority is just removing the extra gauge, which I feel like only serves to clutter my HUD. We could have each umbral heart replace itself with an astral heart, and then each astral heart start glowing and crackling with power as it transforms into an astral soul, or something like that.

[Valence]

That's quite a big "provided" you've slipped in there! Obviously, cutting astral fire short after having cast Blizz4 to stock up on umbral hearts was a problem. But, additionally, cutting a non-standard setup short was also a problem. Like, if you did all the weird transpose+mana tick required to expurgate some combination of B3, B4, and whatever else from your rotation, entered AF3 with just enough time and MP to cast F4-F4-F4-Despair... but the could only cast F4-F4 before a boss mechanic forced you to move, you had to cut your intended fire cycle short and lose damage! Ahhh, the non standard setup is so rigid, it forces you to cast as many F4s as possible (which was 3 or 4 or something, I forget the numbers) or else it's suboptimal, I can't stand it.

The actual thing that's changed is that BLM's transition and resource-stockpiling spells are no longer skippable. But it was never actually good to fail to cast as many F4s as you possibly could given your AF3 start conditions. You always lost damage unless you squeezed every last cast you could out of your MP and elemental gauge.

Okay so someone better versed into the whole non standard thing can stop me right there if I'm completely out of touch, but I disagree with this. You got it right on one point though, it tries to eliminate all lower potencies spells as much as possible in order to keep a high pps. If your lines make you cut short F4s early and skip all the low potency stuff it's not a problem as long as the pps stays high enough. Paradox is a gain over F4 (unless F4 is swiftcast/triplecast), and then you have polyglot tools or even thunder (although the current thunderhead idk), which are all better solutions than F4. If you have to skip much of an astral phase for whatever reason and have the resources and the lines to do it, it can be a gain. Now though if you tack in the Flare stacks into the equation, that's another story. It adds a lot more weight behind F4 casts.

There is a reason it murdered most of the old non standard and at the same time, most flexibility. You can say all you like that having to cast 3 F4s is rigid, it's still twice less rigid than 6.

[AzaelOrunitia]

Also non standard had a lot to do with planning. If you entered a non standard line at a specific moment in the fight it was because you knew that was the best option available and you weren't going to be interrupted in this specific line or that it was going to allow you more movement or whatever.
And that's not even taking into account boss timings where they'd disappear and you'd have to squeeze in as much potency as you coul, something non standard allowed for.
Now our planning tools are only present in the form of triple cast, xeno and swiftcast (arguably others but which would result in potency loss) which I hope will be sufficient for whatever boss designs they throw at us next.
And there's next to now way to adapt to a boss entering downtime : use despair earlier than normal, transpose and paradox? That's basically it.

[Ferrinus]

"Twice less rigid" doesn't really mean anything. The various short fire lines were in fact much more rigid than what standard play looks like right now because in order to skip as many low-potency spells as possible without suffering the kind of rotational collapse those spells are supposed to prevent you had to squeeze the absolute maximum amount of high-potency casts out of the partly-full MP gauge with zero umbral hearts you'd be entering Af3 with. It's not a gain to do some transpose-lucid-paradox-F3 nonsense if the mana ticks aren't on your side or if you end up only squeezing out a single F4 on the other side!

The current design actually allows you to drift your astral cycle's alignment over time based on whether you use F3P under AF3 or save it for transpose into AF1 and by whether you use or skip umbral paradox. At the end of the day, you have to cut short whatever you're doing and cast Despair if the boss is about to leave or otherwise force you to stop casting, but this was always the case. Your "only" option is always going to be the precise sequence of spells that maximizes your potency per second given a fight's constraints. If you don't like that that sequence of spells is harder to perform than before, you're complaining about a difficulty increase.

[AzaelOrunitia]

That means the only way to somewhat adapt to unfortunate timings is to actually sacrifice potency per second throughout the fight ? (Paradox has higher potency per second than a Fire IV and using firestarter in AF3 means casting a weak F3 from ice which is also a loss)
Ignoring spells doesn't sound difficult to mew but only having these two options to adapt to fight duration/boss timings does sound restrictive in my opinion.

Anyway mana regen being gone kills most non standard anyway, it's not just Flare Star's doing. But maybe we should go back to talking about Flare Star (my bad I got sidetracked as well)

[Supersnow845]

I’ll note that yoshi p specifically said that since they gave 100% fire starter chance to paradox and returned ice paradox transpose AF1 F3 is now “expected play” and casting fire 3 from ice is a DPS loss.

You can make it a conditional gain if you use fire starter to avoid dropping astral fire or for movement but it is at baseline a loss because that expectation of use is baked into BLM’s potency calculations

[Valence]

The irony is that they went back to shadowbringers BLM for AoE on the other hand and managed to make their Fire 2 and Blizzard 2 spells totally worthless (probably in line with F3/B3 in idea but..) since you're just doing essentially non standard instead because it's just better. Literally schoolbook non standard Flare(s) > ManaFont > Flare(s) > instant > Transpose > Freeze > Instant > Transpose > back to flares (with the first one being a lukewarm Flare).

[PyurBlue]

The stronger Flare Star is the more punishing it becomes, I don't think there is a problem with the potency. The cast time is easy to negate with Triplecast and Swiftcast too. It's a bit underwhelming and I wouldn't mind it going away. If it stays I don't think it needs major changes. Some way to carry AF stacks into ice is the only thing I'd consider.

[Turtledeluxe]

Flare Star is at odds with the job's more powerful spell, Xenoglossy, which is built up by maintaining (a now trivialized) flow of Enochian and insta cast. It feels bad to execute and doesn't make sense potency wise. I used to think increasing the potency would fix it, but actually I now think the problem with it is just how the job feels to play when combined with all the other factors. Ice Paradox isn't really enough to make the job feel like it once did.

You also can't just make it crazy potency anyway because of the methods by which you acquire it. It's really a mess imo. Just a poorly designed difficulty increase. I think diffculty is fine, this just isn't what I saw BLM becoming.

Honestly the whole Flare Star concept feels pre Enochian in nature to me, like they just slapped an old idea on bc they were out of ideas after changing the mana regen.

[remiff]

For me, the Black Mage's Flarestar simply needs to be completely reworked.
I know this might not make much sense, but in my opinion,
the only way to fix the problem would be to give us 2 stacks so we can accumulate them, and make it entirely instant-cast.