Please reconsider an upcoming Black Mage change.

[Carighan]

Also, I'd have to really math it out, but I think Pictomancer has the most casts out of the casters. Just goes to show how much mom and dad abandoned us to give all the attention to the new baby.

Oh that's a good point, I mentally totally excluded Pictos thinking about that. Red Mage definitely casts more than Black Mage nowadays, who in turn is either about the same as Summoner. But I forgot Picto. Yeah you're right, they might spend both more total time casting and have more frequent interrupts in their movement for casting. Even with the hammer combo and Holy/Comet.

[Supersnow845]

Oh that's a good point, I mentally totally excluded Pictos thinking about that. Red Mage definitely casts more than Black Mage nowadays, who in turn is either about the same as Summoner. But I forgot Picto. Yeah you're right, they might spend both more total time casting and have more frequent interrupts in their movement for casting. Even with the hammer combo and Holy/Comet.

I believe with the flare changes the current distribution is

PCT (using no holy’s)>BLM>RDM>PCT (using holy every time you get it)>SMN

BLM was slightly ahead of PCT (who was about 15-20 seconds ahead of RDM in per 2 minute casts) before flare and the return of ice paradox but because of flares long cast time and ice paradox BLM has fallen behind

It’s still by far the caster that suffers the most from getting caught out without movement abilities (while it barely affects PCT at all)

[Carighan]

It’s still by far the caster that suffers the most from getting caught out without movement abilities (while it barely affects PCT at all)

Of course, that's assuming you do the standard rotation, not the 100% instant cast one. At which point Summoner feels staticky compared to Black Mage. :P But I'm expecting them to revert some of their changes since it feels clearly unintentional that this rotation is near-optimal (and in many actual fights, optimal).

[GartredZW]

Of course, that's assuming you do the standard rotation, not the 100% instant cast one. At which point Summoner feels staticky compared to Black Mage. :P But I'm expecting them to revert some of their changes since it feels clearly unintentional that this rotation is near-optimal (and in many actual fights, optimal).

The monkey's paw curls, and Transpose is removed from the game. instead it shares a button with umbral soul, and can't be used in combat.
Doesn't matter how awful this will make downtime feel. They beat all us mean ol' mages trying to think about things, and that's all that matters.

[HikariKurosawa]

The monkey's paw curls, and Transpose is removed from the game. instead it shares a button with umbral soul, and can't be used in combat.
Doesn't matter how awful this will make downtime feel. They beat all us mean ol' mages trying to think about things, and that's all that matters.

I mean that's a good change if you like hardcasting spells. Transpose should have been replaced with umbral soul from the beginning, and umbral soul should be usable in astral fire. Or keep it, make it only usable in astral fire, and have it button swap into umbral soul upon switching to umbral ice.

I have no attachment to instant cast black mage but I think it is cooler than the original non-standard. Personally I am a fan of rotations that are set in stone and just work correctly. People will always optimize games regardless, so it makes no difference. At the top level, you're always going to be doing the same thing. Standardizing rotations and making the meta organically happen is a hallmark of good job design in my opinion. No matter what your opinion is, once the job is solved there is only one right way of playing it.

[Supersnow845]

I mean that's a good change if you like hardcasting spells. Transpose should have been replaced with umbral soul from the beginning, and umbral soul should be usable in astral fire. Or keep it, make it only usable in astral fire, and have it button swap into umbral soul upon switching to umbral ice.

I have no attachment to instant cast black mage but I think it is cooler than the original non-standard. Personally I am a fan of rotations that are set in stone and just work correctly. People will always optimize games regardless, so it makes no difference. At the top level, you're always going to be doing the same thing. Standardizing rotations and making the meta organically happen is a hallmark of good job design in my opinion. No matter what your opinion is, once the job is solved there is only one right way of playing it.

But instant cast black mage isn’t a “set in stone rotation” that just works for particular fights, it’s an example of someone theorycrafting a potential usable rotation within BLM’s parameters that doesn’t cast, there are other rotations that sit between the “all instants” and “standard” that have varying different levels of instant casts compared to the two extremes and different fights favour different ones

If “standardising rotations” is the hallmark of good job design in your opinion this is an OBJECTIVE negative because this has basically reinvented non standard

[GartredZW]

I mean that's a good change if you like hardcasting spells. Transpose should have been replaced with umbral soul from the beginning, and umbral soul should be usable in astral fire. Or keep it, make it only usable in astral fire, and have it button swap into umbral soul upon switching to umbral ice.

It's a terrible change. We use Transpose so we can swap over to a sustainable state in ice even during combat so we don't lose enochian.
The standard rotation right now uses transpose to swap to Astral Fire 1 before using the Firestarter proc. It's a decent damage gain.
yeah, I'm not a fan of that one aspect of the standard rotation right now, but I'd fix it by just making the Firestarter proc either not happen every time, or not work unless you're in Astral Fire 3 already.

[HikariKurosawa]

It's a terrible change. We use Transpose so we can swap over to a sustainable state in ice even during combat so we don't lose enochian.
The standard rotation right now uses transpose to swap to Astral Fire 1 before using the Firestarter proc. It's a decent damage gain.
yeah, I'm not a fan of that one aspect of the standard rotation right now, but I'd fix it by just making the Firestarter proc either not happen every time, or not work unless you're in Astral Fire 3 already.

It should just be what you use to swap from umbral ice to astral fire. Transpose is clunky and doesn't feel good to use. Their design intention was clearly for the guaranteed firestarter proc to be how you switch from umbral ice to astral fire, it's just not worth it because of transpose.

If transpose was for astral fire only, it would never be used outside of downtime situations where you want to use umbral soul. You're never gaining dps by using transpose to swap to umbral ice.

The guaranteed firestarter proc is good design, it's just clunky because of how you can use transpose to make it a dps gain. The rotation would flow much better if you had to do what they intended to do, and the action bars would be much nicer if umbral soul was merged with transpose. The only way to do that is to make transpose into a downtime only button by making it only usable in astral fire once you learn umbral soul.

@Supersnow845 Yeah I agree personally I'd prefer it if they didn't make instant cast blm possible, but I can see the appeal in it and I wouldn't be surprised if the devs wanted it to stay. It's not like it is dependent on addons or anything. Once you get a good enough sense for the timings and mechanics of the fights you can get a sense of how to maximize uptime and potency through balancing instant cast sequences with hardcast sequences. Personally I agree, I'd prefer it if the rotation was rigid. I'm not sure if that's congruent with the encounter design going forward though, and the existence of instant cast blm rotations enables them to have much more freedom over encounter design.

I think it is kinda cool that there is a spectrum of BLM rotations between as much hardcasting as possible and pure instant casting. This is how non-standard should have been all along, if it is going to exist.

[Owyn_Addens]

It should just be what you use to swap from umbral ice to astral fire. Transpose is clunky and doesn't feel good to use. Their design intention was clearly for the guaranteed firestarter proc to be how you switch from umbral ice to astral fire, it's just not worth it because of transpose.

Personally I don't find Transpose clunky at all, and quite enjoy using it (even if I use it waaaaay less than before). If I had to guess at developer intentions, I'd guess that the guaranteed Firestarter is "supposed" to just be used during your Fire phase as an extra reset for the timer. Using Firestarter straight out of Ice to switch to Fire without using Transpose first is actually worse than clicking it off or waiting for it to time out.

[HikariKurosawa]

Personally I don't find Transpose clunky at all, and quite enjoy using it (even if I use it waaaaay less than before). If I had to guess at developer intentions, I'd guess that the guaranteed Firestarter is "supposed" to just be used during your Fire phase as an extra reset for the timer. Using Firestarter straight out of Ice to switch to Fire without using Transpose first is actually worse than clicking it off or waiting for it to time out.

You should be using transpose 100% of the times you come out of umbral ice, and using the firestarter proc right away to optimize potency. That's how the job works currently.