Black mage changes are probably my breaking point with this game

[Senisonb]

I'll join in your shout into the void. I loved BLM, it's been my main from the beginning when I joined 4 years ago. I loved the lore of BLM and the play, yes it was challenging but that's what attracted me to it.
I was disappointed with the changes but I wanted to try them first and see, so I waited till they were out and it felt absolutely awful! The short casts that feel meaningless, the fucked up muscle memory that was developed over the years, the half a second after each cast that you just do nothing, the boring one button rotation, the lack of satisfaction that you got despair in at the last millisecond and those orba that never go away just as a painful reminder that there is not timer.
It honestly felt easier than summoner. I'm gutted they ripped the heart out of my favourite class so I'm speaking in the only way they can hear and unsubbed today because I don't want to main any other jobs and if they can do it to all blm's without even mentioning it in the live letter then be it.

[St0rmy]

I don't consider myself a BLM/Caster main. When it came to the casters, the only one I enjoyed was BLM. I found RDM clunky, SMN and PCT boring. It was a simple job but satisfying. The long cast times are why I liked the job. It felt good to position properly and to simply see the cast bar fill up and do a lot of damage. Did it suck when I would mess up the rotation and drop Enochian? Yea, absolutely but it felt great when I did it right.

Hell, I'll be honest and say I don't even mind the timers going away all that much (still will miss the great feeling of barely refreshing them in time) but my goodness, I miss the long cast times so much. It feels almost empty without long cast bars. At the very least I would want ONE ability that has a long cast bar.

I'm sure I'll get used to it and move on but it definitely feels different. I understand why they've made this change given the new raid tier but I wish there could've been a compromise somewhere. We have swiftcast, surely we could've been given one long cast timer spell and be expected to use swiftcast (or triple cast) should the need arise from mechanics.

[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.

[Carighan]

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.

It feels much nicer to play now, although I will say the issues run so much deeper that this is the tip of the iceberg. The entire leveling experience needs an overhault, not just BLM, although it's probably near the top of just how terrible it is. At least the core idea of "get X of Fire Y off to get access to spell Z" needs to be a a low-level thing. But all jobs suffer from that, granted.

[meie]

leveling should generally give classes their base endgame rotation far earlier and build from there, so in blm case f4. Biggest offender for the 7.2 leveling experience is that between getting access to f4 and paradox, f1 can just be removed from the hotbar since casting 7 f4 is better without the enochan timer. Minor critique with paradox has always been that it is bad with muscle memory, when doing low level content and messing up by trying to cast ice/fireparadox but its only f1.

[Carighan]

Yeah or rather the core idea.

And the Black Mage idea has not been "refill mana in ice phase to blast huge damage spells in fire phase" for a long time. That's just not enough to sell a class on in an interesting way. It could be, I suppose, an in that case giving that mechanic early could work. For example mana regen in ice phase could be non-instant (you get some for each spell used while in ice, and nothing costs mana), but all spells are instantaneous to cast in it. Meanwhile in fire phase everything has a cast time (no instant spells!), Triplecast is removed, too. But swapping is an oGCD and Despair could drain all mana and swap to ice meanwhile Manafont is an ice-only ability that instantly restores all mana and swap to fire or so. Meaning your movement is for ice, and standing still is fire, and you want to keep your resource floating in the middle instead of capping or depleting it, ever. And all potencies rebalanced. (not a truly serious idea, just to explain that the base ice-vs-fire could be inherently an interesting mechanic)

It's like, Astro gets their astral/umbral card cycle pretty early. Sage sadly does not get shields giving sting early, which is ultimately the main flow of the job. That's where they ought to focus, have each job have the core crucial gameplay pillar early. Dragoons start lvl1 lying dead on the floor etc.

[Rithy255]

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.

We shouldn't upset playerbases to appease people already enjoying the game with other jobs.

The aim with having multiple jobs is to have different appeal to different players.

If you wanna play a easy caster, Summoner, pictomancer and red mage exist, majority players get majority casters, but is it so difficult to leave one job for people to play if they want something with a tiny bit more skill towards it.

I dunno it's almost like we can design jobs for casual players and have some that are for players who want something more... most games even do this

[HikariKurosawa]

We shouldn't upset playerbases to appease people already enjoying the game with other jobs.

The aim with having multiple jobs is to have different appeal to different players.

If you wanna play a easy caster, Summoner, pictomancer and red mage exist, majority players get majority casters, but is it so difficult to leave one job for people to play if they want something with a tiny bit more skill towards it.

I dunno it's almost like we can design jobs for casual players and have some that are for players who want something more... most games even do this

I have zero interest in rapier mage, summoner, or painter mage. That's why it's so bad to gatekeep the best job themes by making them extremely contrived and convoluted to play. It's just a game, learn to have fun. Like I've said before, if you want to flex your brain, become a doctor, become a lawyer, engage in something actually intellectual. MMOs aint it.

[MitsukiKimura]

I have zero interest in rapier mage, summoner, or painter mage. That's why it's so bad to gatekeep the best job themes by making them extremely contrived and convoluted to play. It's just a game, learn to have fun. Like I've said before, if you want to flex your brain, become a doctor, become a lawyer, engage in something actually intellectual. MMOs aint it.

I think you just honestly needed to get better at playing black mage if the timer was a problem for you

[HikariKurosawa]

I think you just honestly needed to get better at playing black mage if the timer was a problem for you

Not a problem, just not something I found fun or meaningful. It was reductive and I think the job feels better to play now. I'm not saying I was good at BLM, but I was never going to get good at it because it felt like trash to play with the timer.