Black mage changes are probably my breaking point with this game

[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]

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.

Black mage and becoming a lawyer or doctor isn't even comparable what are you even talking about???

So should job choice entirely just be based on visual preference? if that was the case couldn't we just make jobs different animation packs from one another so that we don't actually have to think, I always thought the point of having many classes and playstyles was that you can make classes that appeal to different types of players.

I'm a fairly casual player, especially when it comes to DPS roles and still managed to pickup and enjoy black mage even when I messed up, you know why I liked black mage? because there was actually room to make mistakes so it felt good the times where I was performing well with it. If you take out the skill expression out of a thing then sure it maybe more approachable, but theirs fun in exceeding at something difficult, I want to feel rewarded for investing some time into a job. I don't feel any reward for playing current black mage well, because theirs no actual room to play it well as a baseline you can pick it up and play it well.

[Azurarok]

Black mage and becoming a lawyer or doctor isn't even comparable what are you even talking about???

Actually maybe that holds some water. Afaik an old Scholar main in here is a medical professional and an old Machinist main's a veteran game dev.

/s

[Supersnow845]

As a doctor I can confidently say

HW BLM was harder than anything I did in med school

[Eastwall]

As a doctor I can confidently say

HW BLM was harder than anything I did in med school

Interesting information. Can l ask you when you patients Come in, do you ever ask them about their diet? Or you go right into prescription for the symptoms?

[Carighan]

You hopefully realize that just because one job has you press 2 or 3 buttons every 2.5s doesn't actually make it more involved than pressing 1 button, since the order is still a static solution?

In the absence of jobs properly based on randomness (Dancer comes closest, tbh), all jobs in FFXIV are static rotation type that might as well we played optimally by the software your gaming keyboard comes with. You could have a button for each GCD slot that'd macro the oGCDs after the GCD or something. It's ridiculous that in the absence of actual class gameplay, players in FFXIV have trained themselves to think of this rote button presses as "complexity". Yeah right. You'd implode if you played a game where classes have actual complexity mid-fight like needing to react to changing circumstances contrasting against your own non-stable rotation.

Plus wouldn't that logic make BLM the easiest job since it had long non-weaving cast times, making it even "easier" to play than Summoner (applying the same logic I mean)? That just highlights how absurd the idea that APM=difficulty really is. Summoner is easy, but it's because of the ranged physical levels of mobility coupled with the variable order of minor summons. Black Mage was difficult because of the binary failure state of either producing or not a Flare Star. Pictomancer is easy due to the extreme freeform flow of its combat (it's like a static rotation only you can just about screw it up in every way and have the same net result). Reaper is difficult because its net-negative and you need to know the moment per-fight when to roll with it. Of course, all of these are in the context of FFXIV, where lacking both non-static-rotation type classes and having no static rotation that's actually difficult to pull as they all "fit" means we're discussing "Easy" vs "Very Easy" we just call it "Difficult" and "Easy" here.

[HikariKurosawa]

Even assuming all jobs had equal impact, BLM pre-7.2 would have a lower pickrate because it is way harder to achieve that impact with and way more work. Statistically that makes BLM an unreliable pick for PF.

The stats below PCT are irrelevant, because anyone who wasn't picking PCT as their caster was playing very off-meta. Statistically irrelevant thing to bring up.

But again, like I said, if nothing changed other than the game being perfectly balanced for all dps, BLM would have had a far lower pickrate because they are just harder to achieve that impact with. It was inevitable that they were going to change it, and it's foolish to think otherwise. Especially when it is related to a job fantasy as amazing as BLM is. Every other caster is corny in comparison to BLM thematically.

[Rithy255]

Even assuming all jobs had equal impact, BLM pre-7.2 would have a lower pickrate because it is way harder to achieve that impact with and way more work. Statistically that makes BLM an unreliable pick for PF.

The stats below PCT are irrelevant, because anyone who wasn't picking PCT as their caster was playing very off-meta. Statistically irrelevant thing to bring up.

But again, like I said, if nothing changed other than the game being perfectly balanced for all dps, BLM would have had a far lower pickrate because they are just harder to achieve that impact with. It was inevitable that they were going to change it, and it's foolish to think otherwise. Especially when it is related to a job fantasy as amazing as BLM is. Every other caster is corny in comparison to BLM thematically.

BLM was meant to be designed to be harder to achieve with the reward of good damage. Almost like the game rewarded you for playing a class that required a tiny amount of skill.

Looking at it BLM Had a close pick rate then red mage in endwalker something you seem to want to avoid, I don't know where you get black mage is a low pick rate class outside of 7.0-7.1 which was mostly because it was very underpowered compared to pictomancer.

I doubt Black mage would have this super low pick rate your speaking about if it was actually performing well in fights, but everyone's meant to take your word for it i suppose.

[Aysin]

Even assuming all jobs had equal impact, BLM pre-7.2 would have a lower pickrate because it is way harder to achieve that impact with and way more work. Statistically that makes BLM an unreliable pick for PF.

The stats below PCT are irrelevant, because anyone who wasn't picking PCT as their caster was playing very off-meta. Statistically irrelevant thing to bring up.

But again, like I said, if nothing changed other than the game being perfectly balanced for all dps, BLM would have had a far lower pickrate because they are just harder to achieve that impact with. It was inevitable that they were going to change it, and it's foolish to think otherwise. Especially when it is related to a job fantasy as amazing as BLM is. Every other caster is corny in comparison to BLM thematically.

How do you, yourself bring up the other casters in their play rate in 1 post, then subsequently ask to ignore it in another? Also not once have I asked for BLM to get buffed, nor do I care if it is super strong, my entire argument on BLM is it's playstyle, and feel of playing coinciding with what used to be it's identity. We all know no matter what role it is, which job it is, if it does a lot more damage it will be played more by default. At the moment, that is PCT, last expac was SMN since it did competitive damage along side it's raise and ease of use. And usually the latest released job adds to popularity and that's how the most popular jobs usually operate.

Now in order to answer your question of why would people pick the other "off meta" jobs? Well it's now down to personal preference. I played BLM in the first tier and never looked back, I never cared about PCT. The ones who played SMN and RDM in this same tier also operated the same, whether they played a preferred play style or a preferred job based on themes and identity. You can easily alter play rates of the low 3 casters by increasing their power but that's not the discussion we are having at all because if play rate was the issue they would have already buffed SMN and RDM and MCH too. So clearly play rate is not the priority right now.

And in order to touch upon the "PF reliability" of other 3 casters. Generally the lowest point of BLM was still higher than the lowest point of RDM and SMN. So in terms of standard reliability in regards to power. BLM in the caster slot should still be the 2nd choice, based off from your own arguments and points you made in previous posts.

Hence I am concluding once again you don't know what you are arguing for and in fact do not know what you are talking about.

[PercibelTheren]

I don't play BLM myself (I dabbled in Endwalker and found it a lot of fun, but my brain is way too smooth) but I don't get these changes. Isn't figuring out how to optimize it in fast fights with a lot of movement the whole point of skill expression for Black Mage? Not to mention, you have a LOT of instant casts, you have better mobility than half the other casters. And honestly, I wouldn't mind tailoring our static's raid strats around BLM. We already default to melee uptime, why not also try for BLM uptime? Why not let BLM pretend to be a melee? Would it be optimal? Hell no. Would it be viable? Probably!