BLM Changes Are Fantastic. The timers were so annoying. Thanks FFXIV team ! :)

[OliverQ]

The changes were needed for the sake of the game. Since it's kinda stupid for one single job to hold back the entire game's encounter design due to being so slow, static and dependent on timers.

Almost everyone agrees that the new faster paced encounters in the new raid series is extremely good.

On a very important side note: I chuckle at the people completely invalidating your opinion and frankly anyone's who didn't like the old blackmage. Cuz ofc it doesn't matter if you want to *specifically* play blackage. Classic official forums toxicity, lol smh.

Why do you assume it was holding fight design back? BLMs have done every encounter including Barbariccia and TOP.

[Carighan]

Why do you assume it was holding fight design back? BLMs have done every encounter including Barbariccia and TOP.

Because that's the reason given. Like, you can disagree, but that doesn't change the fact that the devs - from all we can know - changed it because, in their perspective, it held encounter design back. "Future fights would not be doable if you have to cast a lot" <-- paraphrased, but that's the stated reason.

Do I agree? Not really, because of the next part. But it's the reason they gave. /shrug

It isn’t one job holding back the game. The most immobile class is SCH and the most immobile damage caster prior to these changes is RDM. BLM has been extremely mobile for 2 expansions now

That is true, and I wish more people understood this. It's been a long time since BLM was "the casting caster". That has been Red Mage, for a while now (I'd contest SCH because while suboptimal you could always switch to instant spam and be fully mobile). I mean I assume mid-term they'll take at least 1 charge of Triplecast away again now, since that was a bandaid solution to a problem that no longer exists.

[Supersnow845]

Because that's the reason given. Like, you can disagree, but that doesn't change the fact that the devs - from all we can know - changed it because, in their perspective, it held encounter design back. "Future fights would not be doable if you have to cast a lot" <-- paraphrased, but that's the stated reason.

The devs have also said more times than I can count that they are adding x healing actions (to whatever class take your pick) because the healing is going to be increased

Spoiler alert it literally never gets increased

The devs have shown multiple times that they will make the change then retroactively attempt to justify it with no action on their “justification”

[Carighan]

In which case, what would be your explanation? It's the job Yoshi P plays himself, is he getting old and struggled personally with the outdated design?

Like, of course it might be a different reason, but just "so noobs can play it" isn't actually something that motives a dev (other stuff to do, no time anyways, more pressing issues). In this case it'd have to be a manager who has a personal pet peeve and hence clears the backlog and prioritizes "Make Black Mage easier to play!". Otherwise it would not happen.

It could be a host of other reasons, but none of those would be something not communicatable by marketing:

* Fight design will no longer fit <-- we are here
* Future engine changes don't work with the internal mechanics on a code level.
* Something inherently broken about the implementation.
* Upcoming full scrapping and re-impelementation of the job requires some pre-work. <-- this is just about the only reason where I can see why you'd want to not talk about it yet
* Lots of player feedback how the job is annoying to play. <-- we know they say this independent of whether it's the actual reason or not, and they did not, so that's food for thought
* A Black Mage died, once, and Yoshi P took personal offense.
* Needed to rework a job, ran out of ideas, and nobody knows where the code for Scholar is kept so they couldn't do that one no matter how much the job could use it.

There's just no reason they would not just name, tbh. Except that one. I suspect that as always the encounter designers got the first dibs on every design decision, and they said "Screw Black Mage holding us back since Shadowbringers, take cast time off or be laid off" or something to that end.

[Supersnow845]

Likely the same reason they flatten any job, because it makes it temporarily more popular due to the flood of people who sub 10 parse it in dungeons giving it a second chance

They just can’t say that’s the reason “yeah stuff you mains who like it it’s not popular enough with the WHM is hard crowd so we are changing it. When people flood to it in 7.2 and RDM ends up abandoned we will rework RDM as well”

[ThurinTurambar]

I know most players only care for raid performance of a job, but for me the changes are great as the timers were extremely tedious in situations when you have multiple enemies to kill that die relatively fast.
Im actually excited to take blm to deep dungeons now, it feels like proper job in them now. Less cast time also plays well for situation when its you who has the aggro (aka soloing), allows for stagger kiting that other casters could do without issue.

[NitsuLeviathan]

I know most players only care for raid performance of a job, but for me the changes are great as the timers were extremely tedious in situations when you have multiple enemies to kill that die relatively fast.
Im actually excited to take blm to deep dungeons now, it feels like proper job in them now. Less cast time also plays well for situation when its you who has the aggro (aka soloing), allows for stagger kiting that other casters could do without issue.

And it will be! for the 3 days that you play it before never touching it again until 8.0.

Congrats bub. You're exactly who the changes were meant for.

[Carighan]

Congrats bub. You're exactly who the changes were meant for.

When you're this angry about a video game that you can't even let someone else be happy about it, you really ought to take a step back. And I don't just mean from the forums.

[Fellgon]

This threads should be in frontpage!

[branflakes1413]

As a very casual BLM player... (As in, I level it to max last because I'm lazy, awful at it,and dread it! )

...this was a surprising but welcome change. No longer did I have to say "Well there goes another polyglot!" because I ran out of time trying to dodge too much crap. Looking at you, Vanguard.

Actually, it's made me want try and learn the rotation instead of just back and forth spamming whatever I can manage to get off while i wait for the next Triplecast to be up.

Okay, but in all seriousness. For people who don't play BLM but want to get into it, it's great not to have to worry SO much about beating the clock to get your Despair off. Now it feels like you just unload all your mana, rinse and repeat. Not so complicated and doesn't give the feeling like you are always missing your Thunderhead and Paradox casts because Enochian is expiring.

Just my 10¢.