Disapointed of the BLM changes we could see so far

[Eastwall]

at this point, l Feel you got to vote With your wallet now...

[Sayurichan]

I don't like the Enochian timer removal and lowering casting times.

I like the "challenge" of keeping that Enochian timer running. While minor, it gives the mind something to think about how to cleverly arrange the next few skills in order to not let the timer expire even in the middle of mechanics.
I wouldn't mind just adding 3 seconds to the Enochian timer as a good compromise, but removing outright? No.

I also like the challenge of having longer casting times, it's fun trying to finish a long cast just to dodge out of the way in the last possible moment. With Pictomancer-like short casting times this will become less exciting and will require less planning/timing/brain work.

Also, by having Fire 4 having a longer casting time than a recast time, it encouraged the player to think when to use triple cast/swiftcast in order to produce more oGCD opportunities.

Personally I think the core rotation + casting times were perfect as it is in current Dawntrail (aside Thunder).

If they wanted to imropve Black Mage, I think changes that are just minor tweaks/QoL additions would be better received:
- Slightly increased potencies
- Cutscenes freeze Enochian timer and reset it to max
- Just let us cast Thunder whenever we want
- Leylines resets Retrace cooldown
- High Fire 2 becoming useful again (Enchanced Flare)
- Fire4+Blizzard4 and Freeze+Flare pairs could be merged into one button each and change depending on ice/fire, since only one of them can be active at a time.

Long cast times and managing astral and umbral timers were fine when the rotation centered on maximizing fire IV output, but the past 2 expansions have introduced a lot more nuance to BLMs rotation.
Meanwhile, the pace of combat has been rapidly increasing, causing old timer-juggle and long casts to become such a bad combat liability that for the past 3 xpacs there have been "blm strats" to compensate.

Longer than average casting times has been the point and identity of Black Mage since the beginning.
Complaining about long casting times on a Black Mage is like complaining that a White Mage is expected to heal or that a Red Mage has a melee combo.
If you want a magic class with fast casting times and mobility, there are already Red Mage, Summoner AND Pictomancer to choose from.

Yes, combat encounters have become more difficult, but that's why BLM also received plenty of tools to deal with it. As long as you plan well enough these tools are more than enough to deal with any encounter in the game.

Further, the long casts have forced a meld contention which makes it even harder to access BLM if you like other casters.

You can play a crit build if you don't want to meld spell speed, it's pretty much as viable as a spell speed build and plenty of people manage to do just fine even without spell speed melding.

[CalvinDescoles]

That nice cause i mean, most of the people here have either almost never post anything on forum but now that they are frustrated... blm circus is in town

[remiff]

I don’t say this with pleasure—on the contrary—because the 3rd division also ruined my main job with Endwalker, and my favorite healer with Shadowbringers.
And honestly, we just have to accept it, because the developers have always ignored feedback regarding jobs, and we don’t even know what database they use to make changes that are often premature
—like with the Viper, which was unprecedented at this stage.

Jobs are losing all their essence and identity; they are being homogenized in a seriously concerning way.

Before Dawntrail, Black Mage was one of the few classes that had been spared, but now you're witnessing firsthand the developers’ lack of communication, their disregard for player feedback, and their risk-taking in the worst way—through homogenization and massive simplification.

This is simply because the Pictomancer has an incredibly well-thought-out design that fits perfectly with the current battle system, while most other jobs don’t align well with the tons of downtime they keep adding to fights.
I’ve always been against homogenization and the loss of identity, but it’s clear that the developers don’t care, and the job changes for 8.0 give me very little hope when I see the terrible things they are doing to job adjustments and reworks.

[Lucretia_Eldritch]

I don't play Blm but understand the pain. Once the vehicle you run content through has it's established core playstyle bastardized and turned unrecognizable it's just like, what's the point? A lot of the fun comes with expressing yourself through the job of your choice, going through content with your own jobs strengths and weaknesses. Those options for varied playstyles are very limited now though. Changes are fine, but not when it removes an established playstyle from a game just to cater it to people who weren't interested in it in the first place.

Used to play Ast and Drk in HW and StB because I always prefer classes with heavy resource management or risk/reward playstyles and these 2 fit perfectly. Was completely obsessed, would run dungeons on repeat even if I got nothing from them just cause I had fun playing and mastering them. The end of StB and start of ShB ended up ripping the soul from both of them. Drk is so bare bones now that it feels like a tutorial job just to give someone a run down on how GCDs, oGCDs and combos work. 1 2 3 spam with resource management-lite edition and a lot of uninteresting skills that are bloat for bloat sake. TBN and LD are the only unique things left. Now I just play Mch and do the bare minimum to semi keep up with patches. As fun as Mch can be, it's not my playstyle, but my playstyle doesn't exist in the game anymore so my excitement to do content in hasn't really been there.

Decided to unsub in a vague hope that maybe more people do considering a lot of the criticism lately, and SE changes their job rework and design trends. Was on heavy copium for 8.0 bringing back more playstyle options but this has shown that the devs have no intention of following through more than likely anyway sadly.

[enhasa]

That nice cause i mean, most of the people here have either almost never post anything on forum but now that they are frustrated... blm circus is in town

Just because we don't post doesn't mean we don't read. Sometimes it's better to lurk until you actually have something worth speaking up about. I don't normally post because I don't normally feel like speaking. I feel like speaking now. Made an entire post on here outlining how I feel about DPS design and the weird attitudes towards people who don't enjoy the current design trends.

[Supersnow845]

Just because we don't post doesn't mean we don't read. Sometimes it's better to lurk until you actually have something worth speaking up about. I don't normally post because I don't normally feel like speaking. I feel like speaking now. Made an entire post on here outlining how I feel about DPS design and the weird attitudes towards people who don't enjoy the current design trends.

Talking to that person is pointless because they just completely ignore people who do have a lot of posts and act like nobody has any posts

[Metricasc]

The way i see the changes, they are a bit too far. and also really destroys BLM's identity within the caster role of having big casts for big damage because of the cast time changes (the damage part was already screwed upon with the arrival of PCT just being strong), even if you kept the timer being gone and the thunderhead/firestarter proc timers gone (at that point you just remove thunderhead buff and make thunder spells a mobility tool that can be used).

I am also super conflicted bc as someone who hasn't really had a caster i stuck with ever since SMN was reworked, I would likely play BLM with the changes and it would actually make the class super interesting for me to play, but not at the costs of having another SMN rework situation that absolutely pissed off everyone who actually play the class in the first place. I'd rather just have it be another class than changing something existing.

[Realfoxy]

It's really stupid because SE literally just added a caster with shorter healer style casts and no timer management into the game, it's called Pictomancer and by all accounts people seem to really like it (balance problems aside, but those are very fixable without affecting the fun of PCT).

So there's absolutely no reason to make these changes to Black Mage that strip away so much of what makes it unique. It really feels like SE are designing jobs around what makes people not want to play them, instead of giving people a POSITIVE reason to play a job. And that reason, for BLM, was maximising your use of long cast, hard hitting fire spells.

The new casts are basically just 'red glare' in fire phase and 'blue glare' in ice.

[Carighan]

Fire4+Blizzard4 and Freeze+Flare pairs could be merged into one button each and change depending on ice/fire, since only one of them can be active at a time.

Oh that's a good one, you're right, there's no way to ever use the opposite one.