"Future battle design may cause difficulty with casting spells"

[Taranok]

Even if casting spells would become harder, why would SE remove BLM's timers? They could just give the job more instant casts and decrease the cast time for Fire IV, and yet they didn't stop at that. It's clear that those changes were made to simplify the job for the casual FFXIV player. Once again, the intelligence of the community is underestimated. Most people know what's actually happening.

Because the timers are a skill floor mechanic that only offered to structure the classes formation while being excessively punishing of mistakes. If you follow the history of all the procs and timers on the class, it's very easy to see this. The devs took a structure that existed in ARR and was intended to just have 100% uptime if you had something to attack. Why did they want to do this? Because a major complaint of SMN players was ruin 1 spam. I'd imagine BLM mains complained about fire 1 spam as well. Because the rotation was just fire 1 over and over and over.

If they added fire 4 without forcing a break in the rotation, that is allowing fire 4 to refresh the timer, then they'd replace fire 1 spam with fire 4. So the timer was coopted into a structural component to break up the rotation from what would be 5 fire 4s into 4 fire 4s and 1 fire 1 per AF cycle. They also had to buff the timer duration from 8s to 10s due to netcode and travel time issues (AF didn't reset until the fire 1 contacted the target, so being further away made it worse! This is also when procs....procced. They fixed this in HW IIRC.) And later in the expansion because the class was too easy to mess up, from 10 to 11.

Original eno-chan had a couple really nasty edge cases. The original buff was a 30->25->20s buff that refreshed duration in descending fashion as you cast blizzard 4, on 1 minute cooldown. One fight, Nidhogg EX, had a very nasty trap in it where if you refreshed eno-chan, the boss would jump, eno-chan would wear off before you could refresh it, and you were stuck fire 1 spamming, again. This is where umbral hearts was first made.

Moving to stormblood, eno-chan was semi-permanent but had a 1m cooldown and required a button press for what is functionally a passive now, polyglot is now tied to eno-chan and if you lost timers, you lost eno-chan, and lost polyglot. They changed it from 4 fire 4s to 6 per cycle, 8 with manafont. But because of having more fire 4s, they had to, of course, increase the timer duration. The goal was to structure the rotation, not to add difficulty to it. So they bumped it from 11 to 12, and shortly after to 13.

As ShB swings around, I can't quite remember what they did to eno-chan, maybe just made it a 30s cooldown. But because they added despair, BLMs needed space to cast despair, a seventh fire 4. So, of course, AF timers bump from 13 to 15, which it would keep until their eventual removal. This is where hypermeme and transpose tech comes in. Transpose tech hadn't existed at all between ARR and ShB until they buffed the duration of firestarter in ShB.

EW comes in, the devs made the 'difficult' decision of making a semi-permanent passive actually just always active in AF/UI, and more importantly, added Paradox. A button you always wanted to press because it did more raw DPS than fire 4. At this point, paradox was doing the job of the timers, but the timers were still there.

Going into DT, the final change before removing timers was to make players desire to cast 6 fire 4s. Which came in the form of flare star. This is a direct and targeted nuclear strike against what the devs never wanted players doing. Things like hypermeme where you completely ignore blizzard 4 and just do 4 fire 4s or w/e and swap back. Now, with all pretense removed and other sources of structure, timers were just a completely redundant skill floor to structure a class that now has other things structuring it. Doubly so when the nuclear strike against hypermeme and other rotations like it is at risk from minor misplays in a class that can easily spend 4 xenoglossies in a row (5 on ex4!) and risk losing timers.

That is why timers were removed.

Procs are much the same. The only difference is sharpcast was added while BLM was kinda/sorta a proc mage, but were added in the same expansion that removed it being a proc mage. The timers weren't long enough to justify sharpcast for transpose tech until ShB or EW, and most BLMs used it for fire 1 for a safety firestarter, which was always used in AF3 because you couldn't loop it to transpose tech. The original transpose tech being a fire 1 that procced after you started casting blizzard 3, so you were in UI, were refreshing thunder 1, maybe a blizzard 1 (definitely with transpose tech) and transpose-firestarter'd to get back in and reclaim some of the lost damage.

The buff numbers are weird, but by the time EW rolled around, thundercloud was a ~68% proc rate, firestarter a 40%, and sharpcast was a button that could obviously press itself. So they got rid of it. While the loss of original thundercloud is somewhat sad, the end result is a streamlined class that doesn't press a button that I'd rather just pressed itself.

None of this is strictly because of simplification. BLM itself is a class best described as a comedy of errors. Lazy dev decisions (not faulting them, it just is lazy,) an inability to fix what isn't broken but is slightly leaky and a bit of a mess, and a desire to structure the rotation are why timers existed the way they did, and why removing them is only good for the class. At least if this wasn't dawntrail and fight design wasn't a nightmare for casters to begin with, but that's another topic.


TL;DR: Timers were always intended as a structural component, not a difficulty component. Any flexibility they offered beyond where you placed fire 1s was completely unintended, and now with other structural components in place, the timers were more harmful than good to the class. It's not a simplification, it's a skill floor drop and a cleanup. There's just as much ceiling now as before, with regards to rotation pacing. The cast time reduction is the real simplification. For most skilled BLM players, the timers were a nuisance at best, and a major source of anxiety at worst. Good riddance to bad rubbish, may the timers rot in hell.

[Aysin]

snipped the yapping

By this logic hitting the wrong button on a melee should not break combo because losing your combo is a bad punishment. Heck why do combos ever drop? Make them permanent that would be more in line with the recent BLM changes. Let my buffs and combos stay indefinitely, so I can transition a boss to next phase and start with a godly opener...

The point of a fail state is not simply a punishment, it is also a teaching tool. The timer made you consider how much you did not cast if you focused on only movement. And the number one most important rule in this game is always be casting. Where you would want short bursts of movement vs long bursts of movement. You couldn't break rotation in order to spam xeno for movement, again this was bad practice but a new player won't know that. And these changes do not help new players finding that out.

The ceiling is also much lower because now you have no incentive to end fire in downtime, you can sit in fire the entire time and continue where you left off, because you would want to go to ice to freeze timer and regain MP and hearts, sometimes if enough time and depending where you left of previously you would transpose to fire and back to ice to make a paradox, this is now unnecessary. There is only 1 answer and it's continue fire so you can flarestar.

In regards to sharpcast, I'd rather still have it because it was a flexible rotation tool. Yes you would primarily use it on thunder but often force it into paradox when you had spare, and the usage on 2 targets was insanely fun. I would rather have it stay with a different effect if paradox was still guarentee'd proc, my answer was to buff fire starter damage so you had a use for it in manafont as it is a completely damning thing to use in your fire rotation, and would rather not use it for movement. Your argument on why it doesn't need to exist is the same as Kaiten, sure it doesn't need to be there, but it's way more fun for me if it is. Doing fun stuff matters.

In summary: your speculation on the changes were entirely driven by your subjective opinion and is not how the majority feel and definitely is not how job design should continue. A game needs a risk reward state, these help with heightened enjoyment of a positive outcome, or higher highs in other words.

[HikariKurosawa]

By this logic hitting the wrong button on a melee should not break combo because losing your combo is a bad punishment. Heck why do combos ever drop? Make them permanent that would be more in line with the recent BLM changes. Let my buffs and combos stay indefinitely, so I can transition a boss to next phase and start with a godly opener...

The point of a fail state is not simply a punishment, it is also a teaching tool. The timer made you consider how much you did not cast if you focused on only movement. And the number one most important rule in this game is always be casting. Where you would want short bursts of movement vs long bursts of movement. You couldn't break rotation in order to spam xeno for movement, again this was bad practice but a new player won't know that. And these changes do not help new players finding that out.

The ceiling is also much lower because now you have no incentive to end fire in downtime, you can sit in fire the entire time and continue where you left off, because you would want to go to ice to freeze timer and regain MP and hearts, sometimes if enough time and depending where you left of previously you would transpose to fire and back to ice to make a paradox, this is now unnecessary. There is only 1 answer and it's continue fire so you can flarestar.

In regards to sharpcast, I'd rather still have it because it was a flexible rotation tool. Yes you would primarily use it on thunder but often force it into paradox when you had spare, and the usage on 2 targets was insanely fun. I would rather have it stay with a different effect if paradox was still guarentee'd proc, my answer was to buff fire starter damage so you had a use for it in manafont as it is a completely damning thing to use in your fire rotation, and would rather not use it for movement. Your argument on why it doesn't need to exist is the same as Kaiten, sure it doesn't need to be there, but it's way more fun for me if it is. Doing fun stuff matters.

In summary: your speculation on the changes were entirely driven by your subjective opinion and is not how the majority feel and definitely is not how job design should continue. A game needs a risk reward state, these help with heightened enjoyment of a positive outcome, or higher highs in other words.

Combos do stay indefinitely now. If you hit the wrong button, you can still continue the combo without getting the potency increase. It doesn't change your rotation going forward from the mistake. Do you even play melee? Or when you mess up a combo, do you really start it over from the beginning instead of just continuing? Even the most basic guides will tell you to just continue the rotation, it's a dps loss to miss combo, but it's an even further dps loss to try to correct it.

[Aysin]

Combos do stay indefinitely now. If you hit the wrong button, you can still continue the combo without getting the potency increase. It doesn't change your rotation going forward from the mistake. Do you even play melee? Or when you mess up a combo, do you really start it over from the beginning instead of just continuing? Even the most basic guides will tell you to just continue the rotation, it's a dps loss to miss combo, but it's an even further dps loss to try to correct it.

1. Your combos are on a timer, 30 seconds, just because it's long does not mean it's indefinite. I was being sarcastic about these points for a reason.

2. Your combo breaking can ruin your rotation. No it is not always again to continue with the combo and sometimes it is outright not possible. Here are some examples: DRG not actually getting chaotic thrust because of broken combo, you don't get the DoT, you don't get the extension of the combo, you lose Drakesbane. Reaper on the other hand can continue the shroud combo at a slight potency loss. GNB if you break Gnashing fang combo, or Reign of beasts combo, you lose these combos outright cannot continue at all and a ton of potency goes out the window.

I cannot believe you confidently sat there and made those points that are just blatantly incorrect and asked me if I even played melee to begin with. I think it's time to discard your opinions.

[Yeonhee]

Good thing to pounce on though, you really showed me for not having much experience with being wrong in my rotation.

It is a good thing to pounce on, indeed. For someone throwing a hugely condescending sentence like "Do you even play melee ?" only to then immediately say something blatantly wrong and displaying your lack of basic knowledge about melee is kinda hilarious.

[HikariKurosawa]

It is a good thing to pounce on, indeed. For someone throwing a hugely condescending sentence like "Do you even play melee ?" only to then immediately say something blatantly wrong and displaying your lack of basic knowledge about melee is kinda hilarious.

Basic knowledge about failing rotations, sure.

[PyurBlue]

EW comes in, the devs made the 'difficult' decision of making a semi-permanent passive actually just always active in AF/UI, and more importantly, added Paradox. A button you always wanted to press because it did more raw DPS than fire 4. At this point, paradox was doing the job of the timers, but the timers were still there.

Paradox and the timers served different functions. While Paradox did help in breaking up Fire IV spam, by itself it doesn't contribute to the rotation structure of decision making. We can see that now where it gets cast whenever in the rotation and is sometimes skipped without the timer putting some additional constraints on the rotation.

For most skilled BLM players, the timers were a nuisance at best, and a major source of anxiety at worst. Good riddance to bad rubbish, may the timers rot in hell.

I don't see how they would be a nuisance. They were the class and without them you're pressing a handful of buttons without much consideration. The timers were a good thing when you look at how FF14's gameplay works. Removing them just sabotages BLM.