Black mage changes are probably my breaking point with this game

[yuurei94]

I must say, Carighan and Hikari have the absolute right of it. I've played Black Mage since the beginning of my FFXIV career near the end Stormblood and I considered it my main job, once upon a time. But it soon fell out of favor with me because of how tedious and joy-killing it had become for me.

I knew its kit in depth (though I never really got around to adding Sharpcast in my rotations) and could reliably play all normal content (I still remember how I played the Cloud of Darkness Eden raid to this day and where I'd put my Leylines down), but I grew tired with it. One single slip up, one single necessary movement, one unpleasant target and your whole rotation could be ruined and your uptime lost. This wasn't fun. Nowhere near enjoyable. It caused me to look elsewhere and that's where I found Summoner and Red Mage.

Here's something to consider: I always play mage-type characters in every game. It's what I'm naturally drawn to and enjoy. All three mage specs in WoW. Wizard/Sorcerer in Baldur's Gate 3. Astrologer/Sorceries build in Elden Ring and Dark Souls. The list goes on and on into the stream of time. So I know what to expect often from these sorts of classes and through almost all media, I excel in these fields since it comes naturally to me. Across most of these games, spellcasting mechanics and movement can vary wildly (I have the most fun with it in Elden Ring/DS and BG3 and, to an extent, XIV).

With that said, as I mentioned before, I had grown distasteful of Black Mage due to how it played and how tedious it was to do anything when other casters were more enjoyable even though I knew how to play (and still could) Black Mage. When I heard about the changes, I was skeptical and almost hopped on the bandwagon of "changes bad, simplification bad". When I actually decided to *play* Black Mage post-changes, I was swiftly proven wrong. Just the simple removal of the timer and the slightly faster cooldown of some abilities was like a breath of fresh air. As if the old pipes had been oiled and ran smoother than ever.

Funnily enough, I didn't find it all the much more different to play than before. But it was more enjoyable and still had some of its earlier edge in placing your Leylines correctly/optimally. It was magnificent just how the removal of the timer on Astral Fire and Umbral Ice improved my experience so much. The only critique I would have to say is that I would like Paradox to be more meaningful and have more mechanical impact than it just being another Xenoglossy/Foul. Thunderhead being permanent is meaningless. Fire III having a timer on it *could* be good giving somewhat more complexity, but again, it's not terribly impactful.

What I'm most happy about is that like with the other casters, I don't have to have my attention split three ways now and can more fully focus on the boss and mechanics.

All in all, I'm largely happy with but a few critiques. That is all.

[Carighan]

Simplicity doesn't have to be bad, but I don't think it's good either and I wouldn't label extreme simplicity as an ideal of class design. Complexity by itself can be fun and I think there has to be some level of complexity somewhere to make an activity interesting once the novelty is gone. The complexity scale can also be a differentiating factor between classes. A class that is simple to play can feel different from one that is complex just as a slow class can feel different from a fast one. If everything is kept simple, you lose that flavor.

Hrm, to a degree I agree, but again it's important to keep in mind that two separate scales are constantly conflated:

* Simplicity <--> Complexity
* Shallowness <--> Depth

As an example from board gaming, Chess is vastly more complex than Go. Yet it's not easy to argue it derives more depth from that added complexity, and a common take is that in fact Go is one of the deepest games around, despite it's almost laughable simplicity of design. On the other end, Frosthaven is one of the most complex games possibly playable, but once the original novelty of the new classes and items wears off, surprisingly shallow because it's one big source of depth (the action selection) struggles to float the mountain of complexity on top of it, and hence why many groups feel so burned out after enough time with the campaign.

Now of course, there is some interaction here:

* Adding depth without adding complexity is extremely difficult, and depends a lot on the specific context as to whether it can actually be done. Likewise, removing complexity without bleeding depth is often difficult just as much (although there are a lot of easy things to do in FFXIV in particular because much of the button bloat is super-artificial without any effect on gameplay).
* On the flipside, adding complexity that does not contribute to any depth of gameplay is almost trivial in particular in CRPGs and MMORPGs.

And sure, a job with just fully static rotation super complicated with 20+ buttons but very little depth (flat static rotation after all) can be fun, but only if it is in contrast to most which are low-complexity-high-depth. It's a break then. But in FFXIV, everything is high-complexity-low-depth, so ... eh?

[Rozeee]

I knew its kit in depth (though I never really got around to adding Sharpcast in my rotations)

This has to be bait right? You did not know its kit in depth if you didn't add sharpcast to your rotation

[yuurei94]

Thankfully Sharpcast is no longer in the rotation! Begone, sweaties.

"Anything that doesn't agree with my opinion is bait." Thank you for proving my inner expectations correct. Also, the fact the fact that you don't have anything more to add to your post other than "you don't use Sharpcast, you bad", is very telling.

[Supersnow845]

Thankfully Sharpcast is no longer in the rotation! Begone, sweaties.

"Anything that doesn't agree with my opinion is bait." Thank you for proving my inner expectations correct.

But I mean you straight up said a contradictory statement. Sharpcast was an integral part of BLM when it existed. Saying “I knew it’s kit in depth but I never added sharpcast to my bars” is like saying “yeah I’m a really good WHM, I have no idea what these lily spells do though”. Like if you didn’t use sharpcast by default you didn’t understand old BLM’s kit

How else do you want us to interpret that because even if it was done in good faith it sounds like a bait statement

[Rozeee]

"Anything that doesn't agree with my opinion is bait." Thank you for proving my inner expectations correct. Also, the fact the fact that you don't have anything more to add to your post other than "you don't use Sharpcast, you bad", is very telling.

Thankfully it was a statement and not an opinion. I'm just trying to find a single good BLM that has enjoyed the 7.2 change. So far, all I see is people like you, whose post can be summarized as. "I struggled to play old BLM, <include self report here>".

One single slip up messing up your entire rotation just means that you were following it too rigidly. Old BLM is just more explicit about your failure compared to other jobs. You lose far more damage drifting tech step by one GCD yet no one complains about DNC being punishing. Shitters just want systems to lie to them

[yuurei94]

You clearly fail to understand what I'm saying and judging by your signature, I can't exactly take your own opinions seriously either or your reading comprehension. I said, "I knew the kit in depth but I did not add Sharpcast to my rotation". This does not mean I didn't now what Sharpcast did or didn't do, I simply did not use it because I found it unnecessary at the time. But if you want to die on the hill of me not adding Sharpcast = bad player, so be it.

So, I knew what Sharpcast did in the past. Guaranteed procs and all that. But I didn't have to use it because I often got reliable Fire III procs most of the time. It wasn't a serious addition. I didn't play Black Mage in high end content when I was playing it because I wasn't playing high end content period and at that time, I wasn't learning hyper optimized rotations because, well... I wasn't doing high end content. Yet somehow, some way, I was doing incredibly reliable damage (most often topping the aggro meter), learning the fights well enough to know when to drop my Leylines and do my damage burst, etc.

[Supersnow845]

You clearly fail to understand what I'm saying and judging by your signature, I can't exactly take your own opinions seriously either or your reading comprehension. I said, "I knew the kit in depth but I did not add Sharpcast to my rotation". This does not mean I didn't now what Sharpcast did or didn't do, I simply did not use it because I found it unnecessary at the time. But if you want to die on the hill of me not adding Sharpcast = bad player, so be it.

So, I knew what Sharpcast did in the past. Guaranteed procs and all that. But I didn't have to use it because I often got reliable Fire III procs most of the time. It wasn't a serious addition. I didn't play Black Mage in high end content when I was playing it because I wasn't playing high end content period and at that time, I wasn't learning hyper optimized rotations because, well... I wasn't doing high end content. Yet somehow, some way, I was doing incredibly reliable damage (most often topping the aggro meter), learning the fights well enough to know when to drop my Leylines and do my damage burst, etc.

And that just proves the point being made

If you KNEW what sharpcast did and CHOSE to not use it then honestly your opinion on the design of a class is basically meaningless as you are intentionally playing a class wrong then claiming strong knowledge of it

What’s the value of the opinion of someone who is intentionally playing the class wrong? Should I go ask the SAM I just got in the levelling roulette spamming hakaze because “it’s animation is cool” how they should change SAM?

If anything an actual lack of knowledge of sharpcast’s uses would lend more credence to your opinions than this

[PyurBlue]

You clearly fail to understand what I'm saying and judging by your signature, I can't exactly take your own opinions seriously either or your reading comprehension. I said, "I knew the kit in depth but I did not add Sharpcast to my rotation". This does not mean I didn't now what Sharpcast did or didn't do, I simply did not use it because I found it unnecessary at the time.

I'm not sure what this means. Sharpcast was unnecessary in the same way that Fire IV is. You don't have to press it technically, but there is no reason to not press it as that's a damage loss. Sharpcast wasn't for F3 procs to help with the timer, that was a secondary function, which as it so happened also made the timer very, very forgiving, almost as forgiving as not having the timer, if used for that purpose.

[yuurei94]

And that just proves the point being made

If you KNEW what sharpcast did and CHOSE to not use it then honestly your opinion on the design of a class is basically meaningless as you are intentionally playing a class wrong then claiming strong knowledge of it

What’s the value of the opinion of someone who is intentionally playing the class wrong? Should I go ask the SAM I just got in the levelling roulette spamming hakaze because “it’s animation is cool” how they should change SAM?

If anything an actual lack of knowledge of sharpcast’s uses would lend more credence to your opinions than this

Your posts have devolved to such a level of intellectual dishonesty that you're now building a strawman around what I said happened in the past to the point that you have now developed this false equivalency of your hakaze quote. I'll not engage with you anymore so you can spin doctor my responses any further.

I'm not sure what this means. Sharpcast was unnecessary in the same way that Fire IV is. You don't have to press it technically, but there is no reason to not press it as that's a damage loss. Sharpcast wasn't for F3 procs to help with the timer, that was a secondary function, which as it so happened also made the timer very, very forgiving, almost as forgiving as not having the timer, if used for that purpose.

It simply meant I did incorporate it into everything else I did. I managed my AF and UC phases as one does. I played around my Leylines. I simply did not use Sharpcast. Was it not as optimal? Probably. Did it have an effect on me being able to play my job? No, not at all.

This mini-arc of me not using Sharpcast has gone on long enough and has done absolutely nothing to talk about Black Mage and its changes as a whole. Whether future readers wish to gauge my ability as a casual Black Mage in the past as poor or not is of no consequence to me or my character. I know I played well in my sphere of the game and that's that on that.