I made this thread because I wanted to share my own impressions about BLM's current game feel, after having played the current normal raid tier and extreme trial, and also see what other players feel.
What do you currently enjoy about BLM's gameplay, and why ?
Similarly, what do you currently not enjoy, and why ?
Now for my impressions :
I currently feel like I'm a Fire 4 machine gun, and every 2 minutes I become a Xenoglossy machine gun for 10 seconds. It's not very engaging or interesting.
I think the Astral Fire timer had the huge benefit of adding some amount of stress to the rotation, making me feel like I'm taking some risk when I almost run out of time, and feel very rewarding when I can refresh the timer just in time.
I very often forget to cast Paradox and cast an additional Fire 4, because Paradox doesn't feel useful since we don't need it to refresh Astral Fire anymore.
I often feel lost in my fire phase, because I don't realize I have already cast six Fire 4.
I think this also comes from the removal of the Astral Fire timer, because before that I had to keep track of it and there was some rhythm to the "Fire 4 casts -> refresh -> Fire 4 casts -> fire finishers" line.
I don't like that I can't use Thunder spells without the Thunderhead buff being active. It just doesn't feel good or natural for me to have to wait until I switch to Astral Fire or Umbral Ice to do it.
For example on the latest extreme trial, often just after the adds phase I just can't apply Thunder to the boss because I have already spent it on an add and I can't just switch to UI to get Thunderhead because I'll lose my Astral Souls stacks. It just feels bad when stuff like that happens.
I still find some enjoyment in the core gameplay of alternating between Fire and Ice phases, but now that the "pressure" of the timer is gone, it just feels really bland to me.