The (Possible) Shape of Black Mage to Come

[Azebra]

I really hope they don't rework the entire class, because if they do my hopes that it'll maintain the aspects I love about the class are very low. Even with my current issues with the class I still enjoy playing it, it just could be better, all it really needs are some tweaks to thunder and Flare Star's mechanics need to be reworked.

I don't view BLM not being popular as an issue, literally just being realistic there are always going to be classes in the game that are more popular than others, if they really want to onboard more people onto the class the thing that really needs reworking is the leveling experience, which I doubt will ever happen with any class.

The thought of the class being reworked to just make it easier makes me really sad, I don't mean this in an elitist way, but the class really is simple in concept but trickier to get perfect execution, and no other DPS in this game has scratched that same itch for me. It'd put a huge damper on my enjoyment of high level fights, because a major part of why I enjoy them in this game is because I enjoy playing black mage in them.

[Waldbeere]

For me the BLM is currently in its best state ever. With the release of Dawntrail I was pretty disappointed because of the changes to ice paradox and the mana regeneration. It was annoying to play sometimes. And then they released Patch 7.05. For me that was the absolute BLM patch. When I read the patch notes and the changes to Umbral Soul (timer halts out of a fight). I felt like in heaven. No more rebuffing, no lost of ice during a boss cut scene + available at lvl 35. The person who decided that should get a medal.

I really hope they will not simplify the job in the future too much, else I think I will not be longer interested in playing it.

BUT

1. The only thing they should improve in my opinion is the thunder part. It feels wrong und unsatifying to recast a thunder dot while the old dot is still running.

2. Maybe also a single target alternative for flare star (same requirements) would be nice, like flare and despair.

[meie]

Have not fully sorted out my thought out so far, on what I think is best for the future. Looking back at EW transpose blm was definitely the more fun playstyle and the major benefit of transpose lines was the ability to shift and shorten your rotations. Having these tools taken away definitely felt bad, but also helped me to improve on some blm basics. So far the DT encounter design seems to be more gartered towards the basic rotation, while in EW using transpose lines felt like a requirement, at least for savage with pf strats. Some positives that come with DT is that we can weave our first ogcd and are not incentivized to burn all our instant cast resources on the opener.

from a endgame perspective I would like a "rework" that allows us to do at least similar things to EW. Shorter fire lines, skippable ice phase. As of now flare star feels just off as a second big finisher. only thing I can think of is a replacement/upgrade for despair, once casting 6 f4 or change the requirement completely. Other beef I have is with thunder, now it is tied to the basic rotation. This is mostly an issue during prog/panic moments, were you have not planned out your rotation and end up not being able to reapply it, while needing to through something like despair, flare star, blizzard 3, high thunder.

were I see more reason for a rework is from a leveling perspective. there are many spells, that basically become wasted space on your hotbar. Rotation does not develop organically with new spells. This goes in both directions, when you go back to lower level content and are used to casting instant fire paradox you might mess that up or trying to cast paradox in ice phase only to find out you are casting fire 1. Minor point are the naming conventions fire 1,2,3,4 blizzard 1,2,3.... They could give some spells more meaningful names in regards to what they do.

things I could see them play around with, since I don't see a use for lucid dreaming as blm, maybe change the mp regen in a way so we can skip b3 b4 for other gcd's and have access to a transpose line once in a while. In terms of making things easier, have some spells like manafont, swiftcast have a rolling cd, meaning even if you don't instantly use it, the timer for the next use is already starting, leaving you the entire cd window open for use.

While transpose lines may have been a unintended happy accident, but I do see it as a great example how a class rotation can be kept highly engaging and not just a 1,2,3 button combo, you press every few seconds. curious to see if we will get some minor changes in the near future, since things like the "cursed" aoe transpose rotation do seem like an unintended result.

[Ferrinus]

The biggest structural change I want right now is to just remove the Thunderhead mechanic. There's no real point in the casting limitations, and they don't really help new players because you'll lose a lot of damage if you just push your Thunder button whenever it lights up. They should just make the spell freely castable whenever you're in AF/UI (as a security measure to make sure new players never cast it without the Enochian damage bonus).

More broadly, I want the separate Astral Gauge removed; the information it displays could easily live on the main class gauge. Along with gauges, they should consolidate buttons as teased in the media preview build.

Scathe needs a rework or deletion; at minimum, it could cost 0 MP and either refresh (maybe even freeze?) your stance timer or heal you based on damage dealt (upgrading to "Drain").

In future expansions I want big payoff/finisher spells for ice and lightning as well as fire.

[Taranok]

Point 1: This will happen because the second they make DSR for DT, the over-time nature of BLM is going to collapse in on itself, again. This combined with its ridiculously low play rate still is going to necessitate a pretty big rework, and the burst meta is here to stay, at least given EW and DT's track record.

It also took them two years for BLM's damage to be fixed, required making the class literally overpowered, and it still was one of the least played jobs in the game outright. Encounter design drives class design, and class design drives encounter design. If we want over-time classes to come back, we need to demand the devs stop making fights that punish over-time classes. Fights like DSR or P8S. And instead make fights like early ShB or especially Stormblood.



Point 2: This will be necessitated because they'll see how popular PCT is, and the issues BLM is running into. As part of a rework, giving better slidecast opportunity will need to happen. And then some new intern will turn a class that famously doesn't get damage from oGCDs and give it 50 billion oGCDs, making the class extremely clunky, and destroying the class.

If you don't want point 2 to come across, every single caster needs to be screaming from the rooftops to reinstate turret caster gameplay. Which means a complete 180 on the boss design started in EW back towards mechanics that target specific roles instead of 8 man dances like pinax that horrifically punish casters that don't have enough movement or the right movement. That is the only way to prevent this. Encounter design is the problem.

Every summoner needs to ask for summoner to have cast bars again, every RDM needs to ask for RDM in its current form to be the most mobile caster without changing it (meaning make every other caster less mobile, )and every caster needs to scream bloody murder about fight design like EX1, because that is what's ultimately going to push BLM towards this so-called healer GCD. It is the natural consequence of EW's hyper-movement dance design.

If we want BLM to avoid this fate, we need to ask for fight design like Stormblood. Especially Neo Exdeath and God Kefka. Where mechanics would target some roles more than others and caster movement was extremely limited, with attacks such as delta attack targeting casters but not really rphys, tanks, or melee, while things like boss jumps across the arena targeted melee and tanks, but not casters. Nevermind things like BJ/CCs jump into apoc ray, that target rphys specifically in TEA. We need fight design with this style to come back if we want to bring turret casters to be viable, but EW/DT fight design is a giant middle finger to turret caster playstyle, which is painfully obvious in BLM's hideously low play rate in both EW and DT. The devs won't care about designing caster-friendly mechanics again if casters aren't casters. Healer GCD and Summoner basically are forcing casters to handle like rphys, which is the problem in entirety.



As for point 3. Oh boy do I disagree with you. Every single class designed in ARR or HW has had critical design flaws. What you're asking for is Summoner snapshotting with superdots to come back, greased lightning and its many drops with things like tornado kick to drop GL to come back. Or Dragoon with random positionals and BotD timers that fell apart at specific skill speeds. Eno-chan is ARR-era class design even though it's distinctly from HW. AF/UI is hideously flawed in execution, and is the source of BLM's hyper-punishing gameplay design. That doesn't mean the class shouldn't have the fire phase going into an ice phase, but that BLM mains need to rethink how that is accomplished, because the timers are actively and aggressively holding the class back.

Removing the timers would allow the devs to prune a ton of redundant abilities that exist primarily to service AF/UI itself, expand the UI rotation into a main component of the class instead of something the playerbase wants to skip or avoid, and all of a sudden the extreme punishment from dropping timers just disappears so the class becomes more accessible while maintaining its core HW/SB design that DT reinforced. When I say to remove AF/UI timers, and even the concept of AF/UI as a stance, I mean to get rid of buffs with (what used to be) hidden strengths, the pointless meme rotations that complicate the job without making it meaningfully better like hypermeme or transpose->firestarter, and free up space to turn BLM into more than just a fire mage by another name. Monk is in a better spot without GL, DRG is in a better spot without BotD timers. BLM will be in a vastly better spot without AF/UI timers. Especially if the devs murder the thunder dot and add in thunder as its own distinct mini rotation it can launch whenever. Hell, removing AF/UI timers would literally be as liberating to the class as removing enochian timers was back in stormblood, despite keeping the stupid 1m oGCD you had to press to get into enochian.

[ElevatedCosmonaut]

Fights like DSR or P8S.

There are many points wrong with your post. BLM was perfectly capable in ShB and EW without these so called "pointless meme rotations", (Except in P1 TOP), and just because a mechanic persists from ARR doesn't mean it's inherently flawed! I'd argue the only persistent flawed thing about BLM that stuck, was server mana ticks! AF/UI is no different in practice from the buff upkeep you did on classes like Monk or VPR, and it's an aspect of the class that's a necessary learning process, which intuitively teaches you the ebb and flow of it.

Though I must ask. What specifically about P8S on BLM was difficult? Looking at your logs, you haven't done the fight on BLM once! Though I do not want to gatekeep opinions based on personal experience of the problem, what was the issue there?

[Ferrinus]

The BLM timers are a big source of tension and relief when playing the class and I would hate to lose them. Pretty much all the improvisation and variation in play comes from the inherent conflict between timers and cast times; in the current design, Flare Star strongly rewards maintaining your optimal white-room spell count in the face of that conflict, but even having to sometimes compromise and lose a Flare Star is more interesting than being guaranteed the perfect sequence no matter what such that the only difference between good and bad play is lag time between casts.

[Reshiramu]

In my opinion, remove AF/UI and has a healer GCD. These would improve QOL of BLM a lot. For remove AF/UI, at least in fire phase we would have a freeform to use F4, thunder or paradox. and for healer GCD we can weave oGCD more easily.

[Realfoxy]

It also took them two years for BLM's damage to be fixed, required making the class literally overpowered, and it still was one of the least played jobs in the game outright. Encounter design drives class design, and class design drives encounter design. If we want over-time classes to come back, we need to demand the devs stop making fights that punish over-time classes. Fights like DSR or P8S. And instead make fights like early ShB or especially Stormblood.

DSR and P8S were fine on BLM, even if you just stuck to the standard rotation. DSR has movement, yes, but it comes in short bursts, with plenty of time between those bursts to get resources back. P8S was completely fine for caster movement as well.

It's only TOP that was actively hostile to BLM and that was due to P6 only, which I think we can all agree, while a fun challenge, was not a very well designed phase.

Anyway, here's my hot take: Endwalker nonstandard was not only good gameplay, but should have been officially supported by the developers. This would allow them to balance it properly and account for it in fight design. Because it allowed for BLM to play into buffs and adapt to downtime, it allowed for the job to compensate for its weaknesses at a high level of play where those weaknesses actually mattered. Other developers of other games have incorporated similar mechanics into their own gameplay balance, why can't SE do it?

Now that they've removed it, we're in a world where it's competing with a job that dumps insane potency into buffs and destroys fights with downtime, leaving SE with a balance problem of their own creation going into FRU.

[Videra]

Please, for the love of god, don't rework BLM. Just put MP back onto ticks in addition to what they did, make sharpcast exist again and let thundercloud be a proc like it used to be.