Black mage changes are probably my breaking point with this game

[Azebra]

The whole appeal of BLM to me was that I had long casts and a timer to manage along with doing fight mechanics, and learning how to use the tools available to me to manage those by preplanning my positioning and resource usage.

It was already made easier in 7.1, so i had hope that the devs were going to preserve what I liked about the class, even if it was made much simpler, but i guess not. If i wanted to play a less stressful caster where i didn't have to worry about upkeeping stuff like a timer, i would just played red mage or pictomancer or summoner. Could at least 1 out of 4 of the magical dps had a class identity that was a little more punishing?

The reasoning of "the current fights are too hard for blm" just doesn't make sense to me, i've just done m5 and m6, and yes they're hectic but they seem totally doable. I genuinely love having a rough first run of a fight on black mage but slowly perfecting it as I practice it more, it gives a sense of genuine mastery I haven't found with any other class.

Now i'm only having half the fun in fights as I barely have to be engaged to do my rotation properly, there's nothing to manage anymore, Fire IV casting feels like im spamming glare. I was genuinely looking forward to doing suzaku unreal, as that ex and seiryu made me fall in love with doing harder content on blm when i started this game, but now I won't have any semblance of the original challenge that was, and it just makes me sad.

Idk why i'm posting this since the devs obviously don't read NA forums, i just felt i had to get it out. I'd say I'll try again in 8.0, but I'm not optimistic at this point.

[Azebra]

adding a little more because i'm not done actually. It's not even as if black mage is perfect and should never have changes, the aoe rotation has been a mess all dawntrail but was it fixed with 7.2? Nope! High fire and blizzard 2 are still worthless moves, and let's not even talk about scathe just sitting there for years without the devs expanding on it at all.

If they really wanted to entice new players to the class they'd improve the leveling experience, which is god awful (i cannot stand playing anything under 70 on this class) but any changes they make seem to disregard low level players entirely. Why did they have to be reminded via player feedback to lower the level of umbral soul (which people had already asked for prior to 7.0) so that lower players mp regen wouldn't have the chance to be completely broken? I'm just so tired, and i dont't have any hopes class design will suddenly get better

[Jeeqbit]

Having done the other two fights as well, I totally can see why they did this, but they could also have just let people play another caster if they struggle with BLM, since we have the ability to switch jobs after all.

[Azebra]

Having done the other two fights as well, I totally can see why they did this, but they could also have just let people play another caster if they struggle with BLM, since we have the ability to switch jobs after all.

Just got done with those fights as well, I can see why they felt they needed to do it, but I feel like if you're playing day 1 raids as a black mage at level 100 you're type of person who wants the challenge of it, like at that point you know how the class plays in faster fights and if you enjoy it or not. Doing M8 on new black mage felt so strange because with the casts shortened, timers gone, instants with xeno despair and paradox, and triplecast/swiftcast no longer being damage gains and only useful for movement, the entire thing felt so trivial.

I loved the thrill of more hectic fights like e6s and barbiriccia ex on black mage and I wish I had gotten to do the new raids with and old iteration of it. Its sucks that the devs were apparently really pressed about nonstandard existing they had to make the entire rotation more rigid with flarestar, i feel like if you dropped a blm with endwalker's toolkit in one of these fights it'd still definitely be doable.

[Adin]

I wanted to join in on screaming into the void. This is so disappointing. I loved blm, even in dawntrail. The quality of life changes that came later were nice, but the 7.2 changes absolutely lobotomized the job. This trend of extreme over simplification of rotations is just letting me know that this game isn’t for me any more. It was fun while it lasted.

[meie]

Im fine if they would try something new from the ground up rather than all these incremental changes. Especially the fire phases feels now so arbitrary, cast paradox whenever but not after the last f4, cast despair before or after flare star. Also Flare Star is too much of a Despair 2 anyway.

[Carighan]

Yeah I'll be honest I expected it to feel entirely different.

But it's a pretty well-done change. It changes very little in actual gameplay (you roughly press the same buttons in the same amounts in the same order), it all just "rubs less", which even given the normal fights seems sensible with the amount of movement there is and how many of the movement interruptions extend past 1 GCD of movement or even briefly take your target away. I still wish they'd actually make Black Mage a "big boom"-caster, but I guess that ship sailed like 10 years ago. xD

[Azebra]

It changes very little in actual gameplay (you roughly press the same buttons in the same amounts in the same order), it all just "rubs less"

I've seen this argument a few times since the changes dropped, along with "well if you were good at the class you weren't dropping the timer anyway so it doesn't matter", and respectfully, I cannot disagree more.

I feel like the distinction being missed is, yes, you're pressing the same buttons as you would in an optimal situation in BLM, ie in front of a training dummy, but a huge part of the class up until now was that you often encounter a NOT optimal situation, which forces you to either have preplanned how to deal with it, or make a decision on the fly to avoid dropping the timer. Most if not all of that decision making that was once necessary to play the class halfway decent isn't present anymore, since timer isn't putting pressure on the player, and you're always saving triple and swiftcast for movement anyway.

So yes, it's a fine change particularly if you weren't someone who played the class much before and weren't used to engaging with the timers, but as someone who's spent years juggling them, now the entire gameplay loop feels as empty as it does at prior to unlocking fire iv. Now you just spam your big fire moves until MP runs out, and make sure your dot doesn't fall off, make sure xenoglossy doesn't overcap, and that's quite literally it.

As other's have said, it plays like white mage without healing, shorter cast times and all. Which, if you like that, more power to you, I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong for enjoying that kind of gameplay. It's just that the parts of the class I found engaging aren't present anymore, and there's no other job in the game that scratches the same itch.

[HikariKurosawa]

Upset a minority to please a majority. Now way more people will enjoy playing black mage and can enjoy it for what it really is: explosion spam.

[ToxieDrop]

then play it.
lv it to 100 even.
all the way from ARR to DT.
it was changed to get more people to play it so play it.