Glad umbral soul gives mana, but it's still at 76? This really oughta be available at lower levels. Not getting full mana between dungeons pulls when synced down or not being able to regen mana during downtime without losing enochian in synced down content (like ucob) is going to feel very bad
I was just thinking exactly this. The job is going to feel less engaging at lower levels from the loss of thundercloud procs, and you apparently can't get mana back in between rounds of combat if you're synced. I feel like this is an oversight they'll fix, I hope I'm right.
@Blade12113 but the thing is, say you end a pull with flare, now you got 15 seconds of astral fire meaning no mana regen, and you gotta walk all the way to next pull, maybe it takes more than 15 seconds but are you gonna be at full mana if it takes 20-25 seconds? (About the length of sprint.) Im not so sure, god forbid you have a single puller for a tank
i guess you can still do fire iv x4 -> paradox -> fire iv x2 -> despair -> flare star and smuggle the f3p into ice. then without ice paradox, itll either cost you a swiftcast blizz 4, a xeno, or a thunder to use tranpose f3p to replace a ui3 fire 3. but then in this second fire phase, youd probably have to use the f3p proc in it to get everything in due to starting fire phase at the start of a gcd rather than the end. unless you triplecast the last 3 fire iv's, maybe. a lot less freedom for sure but i think this one thing may have survived lmao
With fire paradox being instant cast now as well, the loss of time from starting the phase with f3p instant is basically cancelled out. You'll still have a safe window to f4x4 into paradox, though honestly the only difference is if you'll need to move a gcd early or later, or to fit the last f4 into a raid buff/potion window.
And as with current blm you can add spell speed as needed to smooth it out or tighten the rotation timing, which will probably be needed to minimize drifting of manafont.
All I wanted really was more ice spells since I like the visuals but it looks like they went the other way. With that and Thunder changes it feels more like a fire mage than a black mage =(
Thank you, I'm not the only one who honestly feels like it's turning from Black Mage into Fire Mage! If I wanted to play a fire mage, there are plenty of other games out there I could be playing instead.
Yes! I really wanted to get rid of the timer aspect and turn it more into like a pendulum to let us swing from fire phase to ice phase and let ice feel like a part of the rotation. I like the ice and want to be able to use it a little more
Now that you mention it yeah, it is pretty ridiculous how heavily this class is leaning towards fire. Really does seem like all Ice is doing is just chugging an energy drink to get back into the mix. And what with lightning being reliant on going into fire... seriously, what the heck?
Fantastic info, thank you for sharing! Now all I need to know is, what will they do about everything below level 75?? Level syncing with BLM is such a nightmare. I'm not holding my breath, but it would be nice if they actually did something about it.
To be fair, level syncing with everyone is a nightmare - The ability pruning over time has reduced what all of us have access to at mostly low levels. Machinist is really annoying to play in 50 or lower dungeons because you can build heat off your aoe, but you cannot spend it on an aoe until 52 and Auto Crossbow unlocks. SMN just ignores 1/3-2/3 of their gem-granted spells because Ruin 3 is stronger until certain breakpoints. Though, I suppose for blm, not having Transpose to keep Enochian rolling will be particularly annoying.
@@TransientWitch I 100% agree that level sync is awful for everyone. But Black Mage is a special case where, not only does it become a completely different class at certain levels, but going _above_ 60 also makes it feel _worse_ to play, and it only gradually becomes better as you get the various skills needed to maintain your casting. From 35 through 59, Black Mage is an RNG class and basically plays like Bard, because you're single-target rotation is repeatedly spamming Fire 1 until you get a proc for a Fire 3 instant cast. At 60 this completely changes because you need to spam Fire 4, which 1) Has a cast time longer than your GCD timer, 2) does not proc any instant casts, AND 3) it does not refresh your fire stacks or Enochian timer. So you become a turret mage who loses DPS the moment you have to move, and everytime you do you have a high chance of losing your entire rotation. It's only at 76 that you have all the tools needed to mitigate all of those downsides. So the 60-75 range is (IMO) worse than being level 50, even with level 50 BLM being an RNG class.
Looking at the Aspect Mastery tooltips (thanks for including!), I think it will be much more intuitive and easy to understand as new players level up with a more incremental progression as you go from 1 to 50.
After DT release can confirm this will 100% get a mid expansion rework, i don't know a single BLM who likes these changes. And seeing how PCT has some complexity (at least in how it is applying movement and when to paint) there's no reason for BLM to be so on rails now, since they are letting another caster do such weird things
While I like not having stupid RNG with Thunder that may or may not naturally just give, the re-place with Leylines and the full reset on Manafont, some of these changes are kind of rough. Thunder only being available when you cycle through your attacks fully plus it not doing all its DoT damage due to not having recast, Paradox doesn't really make sense now since the point of it is being a weird middleground that can be casted in both Astral and Umbral, and you're now extremely narrow in how you play it. Its nowhere near as bad as something like SMN, still a class that you gotta not just pew pew with technically but truly we're losing here a bit.
Tbh I always used thunder in ice anyways. With the new umbral ice changes, you can just blizzard 3, high thunder, blizzard 4 and be full on mp without having to worry about regenning the thunder's cost.
@@dacomputernerd4096 Yeah it squishes Thunder into a state of not needing to worry about it or actively forceproc it with Sharpcast while in Umbral so its just more smooth than before(currently in Endwalker). Could be worse I suppose.
The idea of paradox is now weird, not being able to cast it in Ice phase, but functionally, you don’t need to use it in Ice anymore: you just do B3, Thunder, B4 at least to be full on mp
Flare Star isnt Ultima but its got a dome explosion so i guess it counts lol. Just wish the Astral Soul tokens fit neatly into the fancy job gague. I mourn the loss of Ice Paradox, but I guess we dont need the filler cast while we wait for a MP tick. Theyre doubling down on More Fire with Manafont too. Thundercloud was such a cool skill so I'm sad to see it die. And the thunder changes just feel...pointless? We always want to cast in Enochian, which is basically what the "buff" replicates. So now its just a once per element cycle I guess? Really scratching my head here.
I'm really glad they got rid of the random lightning procs. It makes it easier to manage as we will always know when to proc our thunder spell instead of guessing if it will proc and canceling our current animation to cast it. Personally, I think it's a great quality of life change to the otherwise obscure lightning abilities BLM have.
So the BASIC fire rotation straight from ice now seems to be: Fire IV x3 --> Paradox --> Fire IV x3 --> Fire III (firestarter gained from paradox) --> Astral Flare or w/e --> switch to ice OR manafont and repeat
Wouldn't it be better to do Fire 3 --> Fire 4 x2 --> Paradox (instant) --> Fire 4 x2 --> Fire 3 Firestarter (instant) --> Fire 4 x2 --> Despair --> Flare Star? So you have 2-3 GCDs of free space between each instant depending on the instant removing a GCD of time from the fire phase. Unless you REALLY care about using an instant F3 to start the phase with.
Just thinking about the AoE rotation turning into High Fire2 x2, Foul, Triplecast, Flare, Flare, Flare Star, Foul, Manafont, Triplecast, Flare, Flare, Flare Star. Not exactly in that order but the idea is there.
I only use non-standard if im forced to do long movements when im out of triple cast and swift-cast. Seems like I need to be more aware when to bank my polyglot, triple cast and swift for heavy movements but we shall see on release.
This right here. With how much movements are in fights it’s almost impossible to always bank them. The addition of retracing is good but not sure it will be enough
Maybe if you know you’re not going to have enough time to hardcast all 3 fireIVs, you could do: Fire4-Fire4-Paradox-Fire4-Fire4-Fire3-Fire4-Fire4-Despair-Flare Star This way you only have to cast fire 4 twice before doing an instant cast spell. I don’t see any reason this wouldn’t work but maybe I’m wrong
I was completely on board with what I heard about DT BLM until this video... Sharpcast is gone??? No thunder procs??? No ice paradox??? Wtf? I play mostly-standard BLM but with a double transpose opener. I expected to lose my opener and a few niche optimizations I do but I did not expect... this...
You still have your Thunder spells they are now 100% guaranteed to be proc, they will work exactly how it used to it’s just that one less button to press since you don’t need Sharpcast to guarantee that proc, why would you want Ice Paradox is not like your Ice Phase is to DPS anyway plus it gives your Fire Starter 100%
dude, they actually killed BLM. With the hell would I spend 10 secs casting 3 mediocre -400 potency at best- abilities when I can ogcd 2 1000 potency, 3 2.5 secs 700 potency and bonk people in the head with picto....
I've only ever really played standard BLM so I'm sure I'll still enjoy the job in dawntrail, but forcing this type of gameplay on what was one of the most nuanced jobs in the game really sucks, nor do I think it even makes the job more accessible to new players. Sorry to all you nonstandard players out there 😔
It wasn't really "forcing" them to do it. The whole mana tick that was terrible. Full stop. You had to have add ons to even understand it. It was bad and needed changed. .1% of people won't be able to do a different rotation that was better in 5% of fights of the whole game. It's not that big of a deal
This has happened literally every expansion since Stormblood. They add some enforcement of standard lines that breaks previous nonstandard lines, and then new ones are found. Give it time.
@@Dingus2 No they didn't dumbass. All you needed to do was slow the gcd down and you could guarantee your non-standard lines worked 100% of the time with no add on. Thanks for pretending like you know what's going on.
@@Dingus2Good players understood mp ticks and adapted on the fly years before UI plugins existed. It's not that hard at all. Plus, the way this is now changed opens up way bigger problems anytime you get downtime and can't umbral soul either because you're stunned/in cutscene or *are playing any fight under lv 76*. It doesn't take a phd in parsing to see that coming from a mile away yet evidently no one at SE did.
Overall I'm satisfied with the changes, but the lv 100 new spell feels really out of place. First it forces a full fire phase which might not always be possible nor ideal. (especially in ultimate). Second, it's just another finisher. We already have Despair, why another one? I wouldn't mind if it were only doable once every 2-3 cycle but every cycle as the last spell? Sounds like something we already have. I also don't like that its recast is shorter than its cast. It means that after every despair we can do Xeno/Thunder/FireIIIproc > swiftcast > Flare Star to gain 0.5s. Which sounds like more mobility but it's actually less because instead of choosing where you want your instant it's kind of stuck at the end of your astral phase. I'm also concerned about the Thunder proc. ATM the big impact damage makes it so that just casting it is still a decent chunk of damage even if the previous thunder Dot didn't tick that many times. The new thunder initial impact is really small, only 200 potency which means that only the DoT will matter now. With 2 stack per cycle but a cycle lasting nowhere near 30s, it feels like we'll have to waste 1 stack every time. Manafont rework is nice altough it would have been better if itnstead it were a buff that triggers once you're oom. This would allow you to do it on CD and not just whenever your firephase happens to finish which can be 15s after the CD becomes available.
I picked up blm as my first class last year and even I was floored by these changes. I have faith that Yoshi-P wouldn't let his main become bad but I'm also taking solace that everyone else is gonna have to re learn the class alongside me
I've never even played non-standard but I can appreciate that a lot of people enjoyed it and it had some fun optimizations, so I'll pour one out for that. However, I don't understand the removal of ice paradox, might as well just change it back to fire at this point, I guess the new thunder spells make up for that somewhat since they're instant, but what if I don't need to refresh but need an instant during ice? A lot of the optimization of standard BLM in Endwalker was playing around thundercloud procs, that's now dead too. Rip sharpcast, Manafont change is sick though.
Imma be real, I'm not sure how all of these changes are benefiting BLM for casual players. In my mind, the fact that BLM's rotation could be a flexible was extremely important for when I had to move out of AoEs and thus fall off my rotation, necessitating adjustment to get what I can out of my burst window. If they really wanna make this class more accessible, they should have tried to reduce the number of buttons in this class. Seriously, I have no idea where I'm gonna put Flarestar on my three hotbars. edit: And the fact that you HAVE to get 6 Fire IVs to get the most out of your rotation will mean any new or learning BLMs will have to git gud or drop the class, and doing the fire rotation ain't easy. I leveled BLM as my first class after joining FFXIV during Endwalker and it took me until the 80s to do it consistently. That's a long time to struggle!
As a sole BLM user, I've been calling for retrace since ShB. I got literal death threats from the community for so much as politely proposing the idea. Look who has the last laugh!! Ha! Not a fan of the other changes, though. Fire Mage it is, I guess.
Going to be honest I think the jobs have been reworked to get everyone on the same page. While complexity has been removed there seems to be spaces for something more complex In future expansions. For example they could add spells that give different stacks of gauges or even new spenders that doesn’t consume all 6. That seems to be the general direction I’m sensing.
@@15harry150 yes because despair resets your AF timer and u have at base SpS exactly 4 slots on either side of the Para/Fire 1. Now u just do F4 -> F4 -> F4 -> Para -> F4 -> F4 -> F4 -> Despair -> Flare Star
@@no00ob keep in mind that Para being instant means you have 2 seconds less in the 2nd half of AF because the spellconfirm is at the start of the GCD, not the end. So it seems like 4x F4 -> Para -> 2x F4 -> Despair -> Flare Star is more balanced. 3/3 split also reaches the limits so you wouldn't be able to put another GCD like Thunder or Xeno in the 2nd half
Not sure if I understand correctly, but losing the enhanced mana ticks in ice phase sounds like a massive loss. On fights with long drawn out cinematics, or phases where you have to move for long period of time, not being able to setup your mana to re-engage properly sounds down right attrocious ._.'
Umbral soul will grant full MP. If synced under Umbral souls level, you still have natural mana tick regen. If there is a long drawn out cinematic or extended movement phase so long as you are in Ice, you can pop Lucid Dreaming and be fine
If you can't manage to blizz3+lucid before downtime, you just hard/swiftcast blizzard 3>blizzard 4 for mana Yes it's a damage loss, but black mage had its superior damage justified by its difficulty of execution, and the "inevitability" of dropping casts to execute mechanics. However BLM has been more mobile than RDM for the entire expansion, and with content being full of full-party checks, verraise is virtually useless. BLM players have just been too spoiled. It is the same logic that everyone calls out why ranged tax shouldn't be a thing since melees have full uptime anyway, by that same metric, BLM doesn't get to be top damage for no downside. And on the note that SMN/RDM are unfair for eventually having equal damage + a raise, the raise shouldn't even be there, which the devs said is on borrowed time (still insane that they're not removing it right now) If BLM is still doing considerably more damage than SMN/RDM, expect that gap to be fully closed come Ressurection/Verraise removal
@@vaan_ I'm not aware of the damage output for each casters, RDM is not my cup of tea and SMN's rework is a total snorefest, nor does it really matters since potency values can always be modified at some point if a class is really lacking or over performing. My concern is with game-play. Holding what the class was perfectly managing on its own behind a cast time or the sacrifice of a swiftcast just sounds completely dumb on paper. Ultimately, I know it's best to wait for the release to figure things out with practice, but still...
@@Keilink Yeah it's just gonna suck. Even if you lucid immediately before downtime and get its full 7 ticks of improved regen (200 base + 550 added from lucid) you will have just 5250 mp by the time it runs out 21 sec later. Having to reopen with b3 b4 looks to be unavoidable as of yet.
Isn’t it quite the contrary? Critical based blm having higher dps than spell speed blm was a result of nonstandard rotation. In fact spell speed being too high makes nonstandard rotation unstable. Now that blm will be forced back to standard rotation in Dawntrail, spell speed build would surely be the mainstream
@@hospitaller3740 Problem is too fast SpS will make your thunder casts worthless, and you always want to cast those every ice phase now cause fire phase is just that busy. If you rotate too fast, you'll be either losing thunder tics by refreshing too early or screwing over your fire phase by needing to use thunder during it. In that sense, its even more inflexible now since you'll probably want a very specific comfy spell speed for it to work optimally
@@Vindex010I understand your point with the thunder, but that would have been a concern if thundercloud work the way it works now but now that Thunder spells don’t work the same they have an Upfront Damage so is worth refreshing your DOT
@@Vindex010and thunder spell will not mess with the your Astral Fire Timer because now Paradox is instant and grants fire starter, if you have good manage of those skills you shouldn’t drop your Astral Fire specially in a Spell Speed BLM build
I feel like I'm missing something about Flare Star. It just doesn't sound impressive enough to be the level 100 skill for Black Mage. A 350 potency AOE doesn't sound like much to me. It's not just BLM either. I've watched most of the breakdowns of the new abilities at this point and I really only thought GNB and SCH felt like a true capstone ability.
it's just me or flare star is just... not worth it? i mean, in aoe, sure, but for single target 350 potency is not really big, it's just 50 potency higher than a fire 4, and has a pretty big cast time, plus require you to build stacks to use, and don't even refresh enochian. Paradox deals more damage, and is now instant and refreshes your enochian/fire phase too, but doesn't require any buildup. I feel like it should do more damage at single target at least, considering how much you gotta build up to get it. I also noticed from the tooltip... does paradox now always grants firestarter? That's pretty solid, considering you could now always use it to refresh astral fire a second time should you need, to guarantee the rotation works well. I can see a rotation like: fire 3 > fire 4 > fire 4 > fire 4 > xenoglossy > paradox > fire 4 > fire 4 > fire 4 > high thunder II > fire 3 > xenoglossy (triplecast) > flare star > despair (mp potion) > despair(swiftcast) > flare star(manafont) > (repeat the same rotation) > blizzard III > blizzard 4 > high thunder II > (repeat from start). i mean, i just made that in a minute and can definitly be better, but seems like blm astral fire phase was made longer and umbral ice phase was made shorter.
@@mizuhashitsunoka "He literally just did. The entire update is lord awful. If only not updating the game was an option." you sound insane. i don't think this game is for you
@@conculon >job builds identity of flexible optimization over years of iterations >devs kill that identity in the space of a single update >people who are attached to that gameplay identity are disappointed How very silly of these people, yes. Honestly, why were they playing this game in the first place? We all should just welcome any change the devs make no matter what.
There are people who complain reaper is too hard, im sure those same people will try out black mage and complain 4441444 for 10 minutes is too hard as well
These changes don’t seem bad to me, and level syncing under 70 isn’t bad either. I’ve never had many issues playing BLM at any level, and these changes sound fine to me.
@@ciaranmadden9469you still get MP tick like any other class in the game, the didn’t removed it from BLM, the only thing they removed it was the Extra MP restore from Umbra Ice via Mana Tick, but the normal base mana tick that every class has in the game BLM will have it so you will be able to cast ice spells and get your MP back,
They really nerfed this job with the Umbral Ice changes, removal of Thunderprocs(that was fun why remove it), removal of double Transpose Paradox rotation for super mobility and now pigeonhole you into Fire 4/Flare spam. Not sure who this job is for if they want to make it play like ARR BLM again. Friendship over with BLM. Picto is my new best friend now. This is crazy.
My biggest issue learning BLM in EW was overextending my Fire4s before refreshing my Astral Fire, so having the Flare Star gauge will help tremendously in keeping track of that.
...how? Lol. You do three fire IV's and then paradox, or rather, you have three "casts" of any kind before paradox on either side of it. You can fit w/e you like, and even more, if you have a Fire III proc. It's really that easy. Damn. I guess this is why they also dumbed Monk down as well because people literally couldn't sus out that you do DK and Boot alternatively, and two True strikes for every Twin, and three snaps for every demo. Lord. Well. At least it helps you lmfao.
@@marcusaurelius4777 Some people can't count to three I guess. It's why we can't make fun of the crayon vomiting summoners. They can't help it, they were born that way.
Sooooo IF I understand right (and I encourage you to correctly with the right way to do this), I would need... Say I go from Ice to Fire with Transpose, I would need to cast Fire1 and then Fire IV 6 times?
You'll only ever want to go from ice to fire with transpose if you have f3 proc. Otherwise just f3 without transpose. Then 6x f4 with a timer refresh through paradox somewhere in the middle.
I feel like I'm the only one that thinks these changes are rad* *edit: after thinking this over I think I get it LOL, kinda sad on further thought about how we lost Sharpcast and freedom with Thunder casts :( besides that I think I'm still excited though
Guys that AOE rotation with the new Manafont will be NUTTY. HF2 ->HT2->Flare -> Flare ->FlareStar->Manafont->Flare->Flare->Flarestar->AETHER POT->Flare YOU GET A FLARE! AND YOU GET A FLARE! EVERYBODY GETS A FLARE!!!
@@nozelxo6514 Due to the extremely low potency of HF2 we will probably only use it to switch to Astral Fire. A HF2 is, if these changes stay, only 180 potency, while a flare is 432. This makes me think we will be prioritizing throwing out flares, similar to how it was in shadowbringers. (we completely ignored Fire2 there aswell, for similar reasons). And this time it also gives us a shortcut to FlareStar.
@@ButterNuss. mmmm I didn’t notice that, dam AoE rotation gonna be better than what I thought, the change on Manafont is it a Trait update or is a change we going to automatically have when we log into the game?
Why can't they just let us walk around with leylines? I mean, we're already inherently the least mobile job in the game. Why double down on that? Or the could like give us the buff unconditionally and then standing in the lines could be a party speed buff.
It will still probably be the least used caster, but at least this feels like it becomes more usable to more people w/o feeling like there is a huge barrier to entry to play the job.
I don't get what people mean when they say "BLM is one of the most mobile casters". Like, SMN is almost a phys ranged at this point, RDM has a a free instant cast every other GCD, plus 2 stacks of Acceleration and more instant casts after melee combo. Picto seems to have a fair amount of instant casts too, but might be on par with BLM.
When people usually say this, it's because fights that require movement usually require a lot of movement in bursts. Think panto in TOP or Superchain in p12s. In cases of long duration high intensity movement, black mage is more advantageous than red mage. Black mage can save up it's instant casts and can cast over 10 instant cast GCDs in a row if planned properly. Red mage has more movement overall, but it matters less since movement in this game is designed in long bursts as opposed to short controlled ones
Really just means your leveling spell progression will be different, and integrating thunder into your rotation will have to come from using other spells first.
Oh boy, *more* gauge stuff to keep track of... I think Black Mage is going to be staying a bottom-rung job for me because it seems they've made it even more convoluted and unappealing.
Taking a shotgun to its kneecaps and making it more punishing and less fun for casuals, and also ruining the point of its most recent capstone ability JUST to get rid of non-standard is frankly insane.
They didn't do this JUST to get rid of non standard. I highly doubt they even considered that in the first place. Mana ticks were horrible. Any game play you need an add on to track is horrible. It needed changed in some way
Looking forward to these changes... but damn, I was really hoping they'd do something to get rid of having to spam Umbral Soul to keep your stacks & Polyglot timer ticking. I always feel stupid spinning around nonstop like an idiot when nothing in actually happening. Oh well I guess...
Seriously. I don't agree with all the doom posters and still think this job will be fun to play. But I've been wanting the enochian timer to stop ticking when out of combat and at full stacks of umbral ice for 4 years now. Sigh, maybe 8.0....
This is the biggest middle finger they could have given us. BLM used to be flexible, now it is going to be one of the most rigid jobs in the game where you press the exact same buttons in the exact same order in every single fight. Why are they so adamant on making everything boring?
What are you talking about with BLM being flexible? It has always had the most rigid/basic rotation in the entire game. Their focus and struggle has always been to maintain uptime in fights that require alot of movement rather than a having a complex rotation unlike other jobs
@@iChannelz88 Between slidecasting, Paradoxshifting, Warp, Leylineswarp, Triplecast, Swiftcast and Sharpcast procs BLM was one of the most mobile casters in EW if you knew what you were doing and knew how to use nonstandard techniques in a combat encounter. Most of that will be removed and become a rigid job class again. You've lost your trolley.
sure was "flexible" having to go over dozens of spreadsheets and logs to see which one of the myriad of lines you had to use for each phase of each fight if you wanted to deal enough damage to justify picking it over SMN
@@MagiusNecros It’s still going to be one of the most mobile casters with 2 triple casts and now swiftcast at 40sec. BLM at it’s core is and has always been rigid, its base rotation has always been the same no matter what dumb tech people have found for small dps gains that i feel just disrupts the flow of the job. The changes they’ve made is far more positive than negative. Removing the rng aspects, MP ticks and dumb transpose tech is a welcome change for me and this comes from someone who’s not casual and has done endgame content/savage since ARR.
>remove flexobility from the job that seriously impacts ease of play amd adapting to encounters, making it harder for casuals to play >remove why paradox was a good button in endwalker, UI phase will feel shit again and it being instant in dt means you can't frontload your fire 4 rota >add even more buttons you have to find a place for on your hotbar Bro the job team for this game legit sucks lol, i dont even understand where they were coming from for half of these changes. I guess blm finally got bricked along with the rest of the jobs they ruined over time
As a blm main, the changes really suck in my opinion, they benefit no one and only hurt non-standard and flexible options available to blms. I have grievances with almost every change they did to the job. That aside, Thank you Rinon for actually testing community questions and feedback in your limited play time.
Non-standard gameplay was extremely rigid for a theoretical 0.7%-2% DPS increase if you were making perfect use of all the nonstandard lines. For people to loose their shit over the changes call it non-standard flexible is just pure irony
if i have red blue and yellow cards in my bag and i only want the red ones of course that's rigid but i'm never locked out of taking the other two but if you take the red ones out the bag entirely then i HAVE to pick either blue or yellow. does that make it easier to understand why people are frustrated?
OK, that with the losing of stacks of the new gauge had no one other mentioned yet, who i saw. A little sad, but in overall should that be no big meaning. Aside of that, do i see only improvements by the blm. Except of the thunder thing, who looks unnecressary (i want to start with beeing a Sith and shoot lightning^^). And a little questionable with no Paradox for ice phase (ok, you only need 1 ice attack for full mp, so, is there no big reason to stay in ice phase, except by down times from enemie).
Why are they making this game so simplified? Where is the challenge and joy of mastering your job? It’s that was MMO’s are about? Might as well play a single player RPG if I want my role simplified that anyone can use and play out the get go.
They fully abandoned the MMO part of this "MMORPG" with Endwalker. I expect them to go even further into making this game as rigid and appeasing to as many as possible. BLM was one of the last holdovers of the MMO class design part of this game, and it's safe to say they have killed it here. Jobs are basically skins and animation swaps with few individual distinct merits within their roles.
High Fire 2 does not give Enhanced flare anymore. Utterly useless. Having an AoE variation, just for the sake of having one is just bad game design, why would I use High Fire 2 when I can just do Fire 3 and Spam Flare?
the thunder change is absolute ass you get 2 procs per rotation but can hold only 1 and your rotation is about 30s lmao plus non-standart is dead for no particular reason whatsoever except yoship didnt like it i absolutely hate all this job streamline changes, if it still continue to happen we will have 20+ smn jobs after 2 or 3 expansion, and i for one absolutely dont wanna see us pressing single button that just light itself up differently for every encounter ever
this already happened before dude. and square will continue to do it with the jobs that are left. MCH, SMN, SAM, NIN, DRG, MNK, AST, SCH have already been through this. you will get used to it.
@@Rataldo20 the hell you mean get used to? Get used to what? Developers being wrong about their decision to make game *easier* for new players? This blm rework is something no one asked for, this change is the smn level change. When job has just 1 annoying issue (mana ticks for blm and pet ai for smn) and instead of making a workaround they just straight up change the flow of job. Idk I’m extremely angry about the change I can rant all day about it. Plus they keep adding new fire spells for fire phase instead of focusing their attention on the enchanting the feel of ice phase. Blm will be super easy to play now, imagine adding 3 GUARANTEED instant casts in every astral fire phase for literally no reason whatsoever and removing the fun complexity of sharpcast entirely Like playerbase needs to actually riot against those changes, cuz they are objectively bad and will 100% lead to game downfall in longterm
Great, they managed to streamline the only fun job in the game. All I can hope is that my opinion changes when it's like, but seeing the changes... man, that's sad.
Holy shit this is worse than the SMN rework... They at least got busted in low level content... We got a dps and mobility nerf for anyone that wants to do TOP/DSR? I can already see PF banning BLM for uwu+ucob+tea+dsr+top now...
Good. BLMs demanding custom shit for their "movement" was cringe. SMN is easy af and brought a buff, RDM brought a buff and a mit. BLM just brought griefers. Legit. Every TOP PF I ever had with a BLM they were utter dogwater lmfao. I'd take a blue SMN glue eater over a cry baby BLM any day. They ALWAYS bitched about changing things for them, deviating from PF strats that were well oiled and ingrained in everyone's psyche. Good riddance bro.
Bear in mind fire spells get buffed a solid amount by the astral fire multiplier, so it's doing 1.8x that damage in most scenarios. Despair is 340 base so it's a tiny bit higher than that
Glad umbral soul gives mana, but it's still at 76? This really oughta be available at lower levels. Not getting full mana between dungeons pulls when synced down or not being able to regen mana during downtime without losing enochian in synced down content (like ucob) is going to feel very bad
I was just thinking exactly this. The job is going to feel less engaging at lower levels from the loss of thundercloud procs, and you apparently can't get mana back in between rounds of combat if you're synced. I feel like this is an oversight they'll fix, I hope I'm right.
It shouldn't be that bad in normal dungeons between pulls with natural non combat mp gain. As for down time... I couldn't say...
@@Blade12113lucid dreaming having some sort of use pre-76 moment?
@@DannyPotato very possibly
@Blade12113 but the thing is, say you end a pull with flare, now you got 15 seconds of astral fire meaning no mana regen, and you gotta walk all the way to next pull, maybe it takes more than 15 seconds but are you gonna be at full mana if it takes 20-25 seconds? (About the length of sprint.) Im not so sure, god forbid you have a single puller for a tank
Awww……i enjoy the thunder colluded proc it’s really fun tbh. I dont want BLM to be boring , i hope it plays out in a fun way.
You didn’t mention it but I noticed that Despair changes to Umbral Soul in ice phase :o
Nice! This would free up an ability slot :D
I also noticed Blizzard IV changing into Fire IV as well.
i guess you can still do fire iv x4 -> paradox -> fire iv x2 -> despair -> flare star and smuggle the f3p into ice. then without ice paradox, itll either cost you a swiftcast blizz 4, a xeno, or a thunder to use tranpose f3p to replace a ui3 fire 3. but then in this second fire phase, youd probably have to use the f3p proc in it to get everything in due to starting fire phase at the start of a gcd rather than the end. unless you triplecast the last 3 fire iv's, maybe. a lot less freedom for sure but i think this one thing may have survived lmao
With fire paradox being instant cast now as well, the loss of time from starting the phase with f3p instant is basically cancelled out. You'll still have a safe window to f4x4 into paradox, though honestly the only difference is if you'll need to move a gcd early or later, or to fit the last f4 into a raid buff/potion window.
And as with current blm you can add spell speed as needed to smooth it out or tighten the rotation timing, which will probably be needed to minimize drifting of manafont.
All I wanted really was more ice spells since I like the visuals but it looks like they went the other way. With that and Thunder changes it feels more like a fire mage than a black mage =(
Thank you, I'm not the only one who honestly feels like it's turning from Black Mage into Fire Mage! If I wanted to play a fire mage, there are plenty of other games out there I could be playing instead.
Yes! I really wanted to get rid of the timer aspect and turn it more into like a pendulum to let us swing from fire phase to ice phase and let ice feel like a part of the rotation. I like the ice and want to be able to use it a little more
100% this isjust straight up a fire mage now lol... like black mages are suppose to wield all the elements
it's getting VERY fire heavy yeah
Now that you mention it yeah, it is pretty ridiculous how heavily this class is leaning towards fire. Really does seem like all Ice is doing is just chugging an energy drink to get back into the mix. And what with lightning being reliant on going into fire... seriously, what the heck?
I’m good with these changes. I never did non-standard play, other than Instant cast -> Transpose -> Firestarter Fire 3.
Fantastic info, thank you for sharing!
Now all I need to know is, what will they do about everything below level 75?? Level syncing with BLM is such a nightmare. I'm not holding my breath, but it would be nice if they actually did something about it.
To be fair, level syncing with everyone is a nightmare - The ability pruning over time has reduced what all of us have access to at mostly low levels. Machinist is really annoying to play in 50 or lower dungeons because you can build heat off your aoe, but you cannot spend it on an aoe until 52 and Auto Crossbow unlocks. SMN just ignores 1/3-2/3 of their gem-granted spells because Ruin 3 is stronger until certain breakpoints.
Though, I suppose for blm, not having Transpose to keep Enochian rolling will be particularly annoying.
@@TransientWitch I 100% agree that level sync is awful for everyone. But Black Mage is a special case where, not only does it become a completely different class at certain levels, but going _above_ 60 also makes it feel _worse_ to play, and it only gradually becomes better as you get the various skills needed to maintain your casting.
From 35 through 59, Black Mage is an RNG class and basically plays like Bard, because you're single-target rotation is repeatedly spamming Fire 1 until you get a proc for a Fire 3 instant cast. At 60 this completely changes because you need to spam Fire 4, which 1) Has a cast time longer than your GCD timer, 2) does not proc any instant casts, AND 3) it does not refresh your fire stacks or Enochian timer. So you become a turret mage who loses DPS the moment you have to move, and everytime you do you have a high chance of losing your entire rotation.
It's only at 76 that you have all the tools needed to mitigate all of those downsides. So the 60-75 range is (IMO) worse than being level 50, even with level 50 BLM being an RNG class.
Looking at the Aspect Mastery tooltips (thanks for including!), I think it will be much more intuitive and easy to understand as new players level up with a more incremental progression as you go from 1 to 50.
The removal of thundercloud makes pre-60 very annoying to play
These videos all have such a good layout, thank you so much!
Can’t wait for 7.x mid expansion /8.0 full rework
After DT release can confirm this will 100% get a mid expansion rework, i don't know a single BLM who likes these changes. And seeing how PCT has some complexity (at least in how it is applying movement and when to paint) there's no reason for BLM to be so on rails now, since they are letting another caster do such weird things
While I like not having stupid RNG with Thunder that may or may not naturally just give, the re-place with Leylines and the full reset on Manafont, some of these changes are kind of rough. Thunder only being available when you cycle through your attacks fully plus it not doing all its DoT damage due to not having recast, Paradox doesn't really make sense now since the point of it is being a weird middleground that can be casted in both Astral and Umbral, and you're now extremely narrow in how you play it. Its nowhere near as bad as something like SMN, still a class that you gotta not just pew pew with technically but truly we're losing here a bit.
Tbh I always used thunder in ice anyways. With the new umbral ice changes, you can just blizzard 3, high thunder, blizzard 4 and be full on mp without having to worry about regenning the thunder's cost.
@@dacomputernerd4096 Yeah it squishes Thunder into a state of not needing to worry about it or actively forceproc it with Sharpcast while in Umbral so its just more smooth than before(currently in Endwalker). Could be worse I suppose.
The idea of paradox is now weird, not being able to cast it in Ice phase, but functionally, you don’t need to use it in Ice anymore: you just do B3, Thunder, B4 at least to be full on mp
It's nice to have Thunder now triggered when you switch between Fire/ Ice automaticaly. It's where it was in the rotation anyway and flows better.
I am fine with losing non-standard but they should really make Umbral Soul available on low level.
They should sync everything down
@@bamberscher_offiziell7261 No.
Flare Star isnt Ultima but its got a dome explosion so i guess it counts lol. Just wish the Astral Soul tokens fit neatly into the fancy job gague.
I mourn the loss of Ice Paradox, but I guess we dont need the filler cast while we wait for a MP tick. Theyre doubling down on More Fire with Manafont too.
Thundercloud was such a cool skill so I'm sad to see it die. And the thunder changes just feel...pointless? We always want to cast in Enochian, which is basically what the "buff" replicates. So now its just a once per element cycle I guess? Really scratching my head here.
That because the sharpcast is just gone so tHey need to change it , it makes you not worry about weaving your sharpcast anymore
I'm really glad they got rid of the random lightning procs. It makes it easier to manage as we will always know when to proc our thunder spell instead of guessing if it will proc and canceling our current animation to cast it. Personally, I think it's a great quality of life change to the otherwise obscure lightning abilities BLM have.
I am sad, can't believe some of these changes made it through
I just learned how to do double transpose rotation a while ago and now it’s soon being unplayable. Disappointing to say the least
thats exactly why i didnt bother learning it right b4 xD
same feel as learning smn in late shadowbringers only for it to be shot in the head
I also feel okay with the changes, and looking forward to play it
So the BASIC fire rotation straight from ice now seems to be: Fire IV x3 --> Paradox --> Fire IV x3 --> Fire III (firestarter gained from paradox) --> Astral Flare or w/e --> switch to ice OR manafont and repeat
Forgetting Despair but yes
Wouldn't it be better to do Fire 3 --> Fire 4 x2 --> Paradox (instant) --> Fire 4 x2 --> Fire 3 Firestarter (instant) --> Fire 4 x2 --> Despair --> Flare Star? So you have 2-3 GCDs of free space between each instant depending on the instant removing a GCD of time from the fire phase. Unless you REALLY care about using an instant F3 to start the phase with.
White mage became Glare mage
Now Black mage became Fire mage 😂
Have you figured out if something like a lvl 100 black mage goes into a lvl 40 dungeon do you still have the improved addle/swiftcast?
No, it’s a trait you get at 90+ so lower levels still have the normal addle and swiftcast
Just thinking about the AoE rotation turning into High Fire2 x2, Foul, Triplecast, Flare, Flare, Flare Star, Foul, Manafont, Triplecast, Flare, Flare, Flare Star.
Not exactly in that order but the idea is there.
After manafot you will want to cast High Fire 2 times and then Triple cast Flare 2 times and Flare Star
I only use non-standard if im forced to do long movements when im out of triple cast and swift-cast. Seems like I need to be more aware when to bank my polyglot, triple cast and swift for heavy movements but we shall see on release.
This right here. With how much movements are in fights it’s almost impossible to always bank them. The addition of retracing is good but not sure it will be enough
Maybe if you know you’re not going to have enough time to hardcast all 3 fireIVs, you could do:
Fire4-Fire4-Paradox-Fire4-Fire4-Fire3-Fire4-Fire4-Despair-Flare Star
This way you only have to cast fire 4 twice before doing an instant cast spell. I don’t see any reason this wouldn’t work but maybe I’m wrong
I was completely on board with what I heard about DT BLM until this video... Sharpcast is gone??? No thunder procs??? No ice paradox??? Wtf?
I play mostly-standard BLM but with a double transpose opener. I expected to lose my opener and a few niche optimizations I do but I did not expect... this...
You still have your Thunder spells they are now 100% guaranteed to be proc, they will work exactly how it used to it’s just that one less button to press since you don’t need Sharpcast to guarantee that proc, why would you want Ice Paradox is not like your Ice Phase is to DPS anyway plus it gives your Fire Starter 100%
oh god, im still learning BLM this is gonna throw me off so much
dude, they actually killed BLM. With the hell would I spend 10 secs casting 3 mediocre -400 potency at best- abilities when I can ogcd 2 1000 potency, 3 2.5 secs 700 potency and bonk people in the head with picto....
Sorry someone explain why High fire/bliz 2 are now 100dmg when the original fire/bliz 2s are already 100. Are they being nerfed as well or something?
B2 and F2 are now 80
@@RinBanana :o
@@RinBanana Excuse me what???
Being the complex class WAS the draw of the class. Now it is a "build meter, spend meter" like RPR or MCH.
I suppose getting MCH was, in fact, good practice with what BLM is now.
Every class is "Build meter, spend meter" what are you on about
@@johndelanie3649 BLM wasnt build meter, spend meter dude. it was "DONT LET THE METER FALL OF" lol
@@Rataldo20 Were you not using your polyglots?/j
I've only ever really played standard BLM so I'm sure I'll still enjoy the job in dawntrail, but forcing this type of gameplay on what was one of the most nuanced jobs in the game really sucks, nor do I think it even makes the job more accessible to new players. Sorry to all you nonstandard players out there 😔
It wasn't really "forcing" them to do it. The whole mana tick that was terrible. Full stop. You had to have add ons to even understand it. It was bad and needed changed. .1% of people won't be able to do a different rotation that was better in 5% of fights of the whole game. It's not that big of a deal
This has happened literally every expansion since Stormblood. They add some enforcement of standard lines that breaks previous nonstandard lines, and then new ones are found. Give it time.
@@Dingus2 No they didn't dumbass. All you needed to do was slow the gcd down and you could guarantee your non-standard lines worked 100% of the time with no add on. Thanks for pretending like you know what's going on.
@@Dingus2mana ticks was but one issue, the removal of sharpcast and ice paradox is what truly killed non-standard.
@@Dingus2Good players understood mp ticks and adapted on the fly years before UI plugins existed. It's not that hard at all.
Plus, the way this is now changed opens up way bigger problems anytime you get downtime and can't umbral soul either because you're stunned/in cutscene or *are playing any fight under lv 76*. It doesn't take a phd in parsing to see that coming from a mile away yet evidently no one at SE did.
Overall I'm satisfied with the changes, but the lv 100 new spell feels really out of place. First it forces a full fire phase which might not always be possible nor ideal. (especially in ultimate).
Second, it's just another finisher. We already have Despair, why another one? I wouldn't mind if it were only doable once every 2-3 cycle but every cycle as the last spell? Sounds like something we already have.
I also don't like that its recast is shorter than its cast. It means that after every despair we can do Xeno/Thunder/FireIIIproc > swiftcast > Flare Star to gain 0.5s. Which sounds like more mobility but it's actually less because instead of choosing where you want your instant it's kind of stuck at the end of your astral phase.
I'm also concerned about the Thunder proc. ATM the big impact damage makes it so that just casting it is still a decent chunk of damage even if the previous thunder Dot didn't tick that many times. The new thunder initial impact is really small, only 200 potency which means that only the DoT will matter now. With 2 stack per cycle but a cycle lasting nowhere near 30s, it feels like we'll have to waste 1 stack every time.
Manafont rework is nice altough it would have been better if itnstead it were a buff that triggers once you're oom. This would allow you to do it on CD and not just whenever your firephase happens to finish which can be 15s after the CD becomes available.
Never understood why people button smash so early on a GCD and so aggressively.
I picked up blm as my first class last year and even I was floored by these changes. I have faith that Yoshi-P wouldn't let his main become bad but I'm also taking solace that everyone else is gonna have to re learn the class alongside me
Look, Fire Mage.
Some of the changes sounds weird but I'll give it a try
I've never even played non-standard but I can appreciate that a lot of people enjoyed it and it had some fun optimizations, so I'll pour one out for that. However, I don't understand the removal of ice paradox, might as well just change it back to fire at this point, I guess the new thunder spells make up for that somewhat since they're instant, but what if I don't need to refresh but need an instant during ice? A lot of the optimization of standard BLM in Endwalker was playing around thundercloud procs, that's now dead too. Rip sharpcast, Manafont change is sick though.
Imma be real, I'm not sure how all of these changes are benefiting BLM for casual players. In my mind, the fact that BLM's rotation could be a flexible was extremely important for when I had to move out of AoEs and thus fall off my rotation, necessitating adjustment to get what I can out of my burst window.
If they really wanna make this class more accessible, they should have tried to reduce the number of buttons in this class. Seriously, I have no idea where I'm gonna put Flarestar on my three hotbars.
edit: And the fact that you HAVE to get 6 Fire IVs to get the most out of your rotation will mean any new or learning BLMs will have to git gud or drop the class, and doing the fire rotation ain't easy. I leveled BLM as my first class after joining FFXIV during Endwalker and it took me until the 80s to do it consistently. That's a long time to struggle!
Replace it for sharpcast?
Or your blizzard 4? They said they consolidated B4 and f4
They're also consolidating Umbral Soul and Despair, so there's yet another spot
As a sole BLM user, I've been calling for retrace since ShB. I got literal death threats from the community for so much as politely proposing the idea. Look who has the last laugh!! Ha!
Not a fan of the other changes, though. Fire Mage it is, I guess.
Going to be honest I think the jobs have been reworked to get everyone on the same page. While complexity has been removed there seems to be spaces for something more complex In future expansions. For example they could add spells that give different stacks of gauges or even new spenders that doesn’t consume all 6. That seems to be the general direction I’m sensing.
We said this same exact thing about summoner... and instead they gave smn solar bahamut....
@@Jay-mx5kyyes but but Yoshi P confirmed that for 8.0 they will focus more on class identity so..
@nozelxo6514 and we were essentially told that summoner would be getting expanded upon with 7.x
@@nozelxo6514 So why even play 7.0 at this point?
@@PlazDreamweaver nobody is forcing to play it, you can skip this expansion and wait for 8.0 is your choice
so they force you into 4441444... why? :(
good video, thanks for the effort
No it's 444paradox4443->new flare
@@15harry150 no, you'll carry over the F3P into your next firephase and transpose into AF1 -> F3P.
@@Ikari1212 will you have enough time to do 3x f4 then the new flare and despair if you don't f3?
@@15harry150 yes because despair resets your AF timer and u have at base SpS exactly 4 slots on either side of the Para/Fire 1. Now u just do F4 -> F4 -> F4 -> Para -> F4 -> F4 -> F4 -> Despair -> Flare Star
@@no00ob keep in mind that Para being instant means you have 2 seconds less in the 2nd half of AF because the spellconfirm is at the start of the GCD, not the end. So it seems like 4x F4 -> Para -> 2x F4 -> Despair -> Flare Star is more balanced. 3/3 split also reaches the limits so you wouldn't be able to put another GCD like Thunder or Xeno in the 2nd half
Can't wait for Eksu Plosion to get his hands on it and make a banger of a guide again. xD
Or quits blm
@@bamberscher_offiziell7261 doubt
@@bamberscher_offiziell7261 good
@@bamberscher_offiziell7261 Picto main frfr ong.
@@bamberscher_offiziell7261 good
Dear lord what a letdown. Very thoughtful of SE to release their embargo in time to cancel preorders though.
Not sure if I understand correctly, but losing the enhanced mana ticks in ice phase sounds like a massive loss.
On fights with long drawn out cinematics, or phases where you have to move for long period of time, not being able to setup your mana to re-engage properly sounds down right attrocious ._.'
Umbral soul will grant full MP. If synced under Umbral souls level, you still have natural mana tick regen. If there is a long drawn out cinematic or extended movement phase so long as you are in Ice, you can pop Lucid Dreaming and be fine
If you can't manage to blizz3+lucid before downtime, you just hard/swiftcast blizzard 3>blizzard 4 for mana
Yes it's a damage loss, but black mage had its superior damage justified by its difficulty of execution, and the "inevitability" of dropping casts to execute mechanics. However BLM has been more mobile than RDM for the entire expansion, and with content being full of full-party checks, verraise is virtually useless. BLM players have just been too spoiled.
It is the same logic that everyone calls out why ranged tax shouldn't be a thing since melees have full uptime anyway, by that same metric, BLM doesn't get to be top damage for no downside.
And on the note that SMN/RDM are unfair for eventually having equal damage + a raise, the raise shouldn't even be there, which the devs said is on borrowed time (still insane that they're not removing it right now)
If BLM is still doing considerably more damage than SMN/RDM, expect that gap to be fully closed come Ressurection/Verraise removal
@@vaan_ I'm not aware of the damage output for each casters, RDM is not my cup of tea and SMN's rework is a total snorefest, nor does it really matters since potency values can always be modified at some point if a class is really lacking or over performing.
My concern is with game-play. Holding what the class was perfectly managing on its own behind a cast time or the sacrifice of a swiftcast just sounds completely dumb on paper.
Ultimately, I know it's best to wait for the release to figure things out with practice, but still...
@@Keilink Yeah it's just gonna suck. Even if you lucid immediately before downtime and get its full 7 ticks of improved regen (200 base + 550 added from lucid) you will have just 5250 mp by the time it runs out 21 sec later. Having to reopen with b3 b4 looks to be unavoidable as of yet.
Will this mean that speed based blackmage won't be viable anymore :/? I just got a good set for speed mage :(
Isn’t it quite the contrary? Critical based blm having higher dps than spell speed blm was a result of nonstandard rotation. In fact spell speed being too high makes nonstandard rotation unstable. Now that blm will be forced back to standard rotation in Dawntrail, spell speed build would surely be the mainstream
Wait, making blizzard casts tied to MP regen instead of server ticks means that Spell Speed BLM just got a small viability buff instead
@@hospitaller3740 Problem is too fast SpS will make your thunder casts worthless, and you always want to cast those every ice phase now cause fire phase is just that busy. If you rotate too fast, you'll be either losing thunder tics by refreshing too early or screwing over your fire phase by needing to use thunder during it. In that sense, its even more inflexible now since you'll probably want a very specific comfy spell speed for it to work optimally
@@Vindex010I understand your point with the thunder, but that would have been a concern if thundercloud work the way it works now but now that Thunder spells don’t work the same they have an Upfront Damage so is worth refreshing your DOT
@@Vindex010and thunder spell will not mess with the your Astral Fire Timer because now Paradox is instant and grants fire starter, if you have good manage of those skills you shouldn’t drop your Astral Fire specially in a Spell Speed BLM build
I feel like I'm missing something about Flare Star. It just doesn't sound impressive enough to be the level 100 skill for Black Mage. A 350 potency AOE doesn't sound like much to me.
It's not just BLM either. I've watched most of the breakdowns of the new abilities at this point and I really only thought GNB and SCH felt like a true capstone ability.
it's just me or flare star is just... not worth it? i mean, in aoe, sure, but for single target 350 potency is not really big, it's just 50 potency higher than a fire 4, and has a pretty big cast time, plus require you to build stacks to use, and don't even refresh enochian. Paradox deals more damage, and is now instant and refreshes your enochian/fire phase too, but doesn't require any buildup. I feel like it should do more damage at single target at least, considering how much you gotta build up to get it.
I also noticed from the tooltip... does paradox now always grants firestarter? That's pretty solid, considering you could now always use it to refresh astral fire a second time should you need, to guarantee the rotation works well. I can see a rotation like:
fire 3 > fire 4 > fire 4 > fire 4 > xenoglossy > paradox > fire 4 > fire 4 > fire 4 > high thunder II > fire 3 > xenoglossy (triplecast) > flare star > despair (mp potion) > despair(swiftcast) > flare star(manafont) > (repeat the same rotation) > blizzard III > blizzard 4 > high thunder II > (repeat from start).
i mean, i just made that in a minute and can definitly be better, but seems like blm astral fire phase was made longer and umbral ice phase was made shorter.
Aint 360 kinda weak for the amount of work to get it?
Black Mage potency is subject to astral fire scaling so in practise it ends up a lot higher
Thank you very much for the vid. I have nothing to say to SE though. Rip blm.
Cant wait on Eksus Opinion about this
who cares
@@conculonpeople who care about the class do
@@mizuhashitsunoka "He literally just did. The entire update is lord awful. If only not updating the game was an option." you sound insane. i don't think this game is for you
@@conculon
>job builds identity of flexible optimization over years of iterations
>devs kill that identity in the space of a single update
>people who are attached to that gameplay identity are disappointed
How very silly of these people, yes. Honestly, why were they playing this game in the first place? We all should just welcome any change the devs make no matter what.
@@mizuhashitsunoka You act like only very specific people should be allowed to care about the class.
Wonder how many bad blms will complain about not getting flare star stacks because they don't cast fire IV?
If we only had a way to count the number of comments in this video we would know.
There are people who complain reaper is too hard, im sure those same people will try out black mage and complain 4441444 for 10 minutes is too hard as well
@rickmel09 i think thats understandable and unfortunately isnt what I was referring to lol
These changes don’t seem bad to me, and level syncing under 70 isn’t bad either. I’ve never had many issues playing BLM at any level, and these changes sound fine to me.
Yeah but no mp tick between pulls at low level is a bit punishing no ?
@@ciaranmadden9469you still get MP tick like any other class in the game, the didn’t removed it from BLM, the only thing they removed it was the Extra MP restore from Umbra Ice via Mana Tick, but the normal base mana tick that every class has in the game BLM will have it so you will be able to cast ice spells and get your MP back,
Yoshi-P, i u read diz... U broke my kokoro :(
So happy with the changes to BLM. Standard reigns supreme. Umbral Soul REALLY should be available ASAP though.
They really nerfed this job with the Umbral Ice changes, removal of Thunderprocs(that was fun why remove it), removal of double Transpose Paradox rotation for super mobility and now pigeonhole you into Fire 4/Flare spam.
Not sure who this job is for if they want to make it play like ARR BLM again. Friendship over with BLM. Picto is my new best friend now.
This is crazy.
ARR BLM? It was literally the BLM that have been playing for ALL xpacs that didn't have paradox, aka.: all of them expect 1. Drama queen much.
oh my god.. i-i'm gonna- IM GONNA DOOOOM
IM DOOOOOOOOOOMING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
My biggest issue learning BLM in EW was overextending my Fire4s before refreshing my Astral Fire, so having the Flare Star gauge will help tremendously in keeping track of that.
...how? Lol. You do three fire IV's and then paradox, or rather, you have three "casts" of any kind before paradox on either side of it. You can fit w/e you like, and even more, if you have a Fire III proc. It's really that easy. Damn. I guess this is why they also dumbed Monk down as well because people literally couldn't sus out that you do DK and Boot alternatively, and two True strikes for every Twin, and three snaps for every demo. Lord. Well. At least it helps you lmfao.
@@marcusaurelius4777 cry
@@marcusaurelius4777 Some people can't count to three I guess. It's why we can't make fun of the crayon vomiting summoners. They can't help it, they were born that way.
It’s late into the expansion for this tip, but you can use the timer of AF to know when to refresh it. Anything less than 6 seconds is a refresh.
how are you supposed to use flare star in aoe? u can usually only do it 2x per fire phase. With manafont u can do it 4x...
Flare gives 3 stacks
@@DyneGadante thanks.. what an underwhelming spell
Sooooo IF I understand right (and I encourage you to correctly with the right way to do this), I would need... Say I go from Ice to Fire with Transpose, I would need to cast Fire1 and then Fire IV 6 times?
You'll only ever want to go from ice to fire with transpose if you have f3 proc. Otherwise just f3 without transpose. Then 6x f4 with a timer refresh through paradox somewhere in the middle.
I feel like I'm the only one that thinks these changes are rad*
*edit: after thinking this over I think I get it LOL, kinda sad on further thought about how we lost Sharpcast and freedom with Thunder casts :( besides that I think I'm still excited though
Guys that AOE rotation with the new Manafont will be NUTTY.
HF2 ->HT2->Flare -> Flare ->FlareStar->Manafont->Flare->Flare->Flarestar->AETHER POT->Flare
YOU GET A FLARE! AND YOU GET A FLARE! EVERYBODY GETS A FLARE!!!
No, after the mana font you will be able to cast High Fire twice and then Flare twice and Flare Star
@@nozelxo6514 Due to the extremely low potency of HF2 we will probably only use it to switch to Astral Fire.
A HF2 is, if these changes stay, only 180 potency, while a flare is 432.
This makes me think we will be prioritizing throwing out flares, similar to how it was in shadowbringers. (we completely ignored Fire2 there aswell, for similar reasons).
And this time it also gives us a shortcut to FlareStar.
@@ButterNuss. you still need to cast it for Enhance Flare tho
@@nozelxo6514 When you look at the tooltips shown in the video at 4:00 you see that the entire enhanced Flare effect is gone.
@@ButterNuss. mmmm I didn’t notice that, dam AoE rotation gonna be better than what I thought, the change on Manafont is it a Trait update or is a change we going to automatically have when we log into the game?
this is just sad, good video tho :)
Why can't they just let us walk around with leylines? I mean, we're already inherently the least mobile job in the game. Why double down on that? Or the could like give us the buff unconditionally and then standing in the lines could be a party speed buff.
It will still probably be the least used caster, but at least this feels like it becomes more usable to more people w/o feeling like there is a huge barrier to entry to play the job.
I don't get what people mean when they say "BLM is one of the most mobile casters". Like, SMN is almost a phys ranged at this point, RDM has a a free instant cast every other GCD, plus 2 stacks of Acceleration and more instant casts after melee combo. Picto seems to have a fair amount of instant casts too, but might be on par with BLM.
When people usually say this, it's because fights that require movement usually require a lot of movement in bursts. Think panto in TOP or Superchain in p12s. In cases of long duration high intensity movement, black mage is more advantageous than red mage. Black mage can save up it's instant casts and can cast over 10 instant cast GCDs in a row if planned properly. Red mage has more movement overall, but it matters less since movement in this game is designed in long bursts as opposed to short controlled ones
I'm lvl 51 blm and have no idea how this affects me other than not being able to cast thunder as my first spell .___.
I feel bad for everyone starting BLM now, but hey, once you get fire 4 you'll be alright!
Really just means your leveling spell progression will be different, and integrating thunder into your rotation will have to come from using other spells first.
@@Xadaj127 firestarter overcap is imminent
I love using the non-standard transpose lines. Very sad for these changes.
Oh boy, *more* gauge stuff to keep track of... I think Black Mage is going to be staying a bottom-rung job for me because it seems they've made it even more convoluted and unappealing.
so upset about BLM :< mained sense HW and its getting gutted.
I mained MDPS for EW and kind of want to run with BLM this go around just and looks like it will be a bit easier to play effectively now
unpopular opinion it seems, but i like this
Wait did you misspeak? Or am i misunderstanding paradox. Did you mean you have to go into ice *with* three hearts. Or leave ice with 3 hearts?
Taking a shotgun to its kneecaps and making it more punishing and less fun for casuals, and also ruining the point of its most recent capstone ability JUST to get rid of non-standard is frankly insane.
Theyre so obsessed with getting rid of anything non standard and its so bizzare, theyve been slowly pushing this since ShB
how exactly does this make it less casual lol
They didn't do this JUST to get rid of non standard. I highly doubt they even considered that in the first place. Mana ticks were horrible. Any game play you need an add on to track is horrible. It needed changed in some way
@@sharinganproz You HAVE to get 6 fire 4's. If you miss one, you are screwed.
@@kman6004 but to a casual player this doesn't matter lol
you don't lose stacks by going into ice anyways, i don't see how this is a big deal tbh
Could you actually elaborate on what you mean at 3:45 and 4:13 ? I have no idea what you are implying.
Looking forward to these changes... but damn, I was really hoping they'd do something to get rid of having to spam Umbral Soul to keep your stacks & Polyglot timer ticking. I always feel stupid spinning around nonstop like an idiot when nothing in actually happening. Oh well I guess...
Seriously. I don't agree with all the doom posters and still think this job will be fun to play. But I've been wanting the enochian timer to stop ticking when out of combat and at full stacks of umbral ice for 4 years now. Sigh, maybe 8.0....
Wheres ultima T~T
This is the biggest middle finger they could have given us. BLM used to be flexible, now it is going to be one of the most rigid jobs in the game where you press the exact same buttons in the exact same order in every single fight. Why are they so adamant on making everything boring?
Streamlining baby!
What are you talking about with BLM being flexible? It has always had the most rigid/basic rotation in the entire game. Their focus and struggle has always been to maintain uptime in fights that require alot of movement rather than a having a complex rotation unlike other jobs
@@iChannelz88 Between slidecasting, Paradoxshifting, Warp, Leylineswarp, Triplecast, Swiftcast and Sharpcast procs BLM was one of the most mobile casters in EW if you knew what you were doing and knew how to use nonstandard techniques in a combat encounter. Most of that will be removed and become a rigid job class again. You've lost your trolley.
sure was "flexible" having to go over dozens of spreadsheets and logs to see which one of the myriad of lines you had to use for each phase of each fight if you wanted to deal enough damage to justify picking it over SMN
@@MagiusNecros It’s still going to be one of the most mobile casters with 2 triple casts and now swiftcast at 40sec.
BLM at it’s core is and has always been rigid, its base rotation has always been the same no matter what dumb tech people have found for small dps gains that i feel just disrupts the flow of the job. The changes they’ve made is far more positive than negative. Removing the rng aspects, MP ticks and dumb transpose tech is a welcome change for me and this comes from someone who’s not casual and has done endgame content/savage since ARR.
>remove flexobility from the job that seriously impacts ease of play amd adapting to encounters, making it harder for casuals to play
>remove why paradox was a good button in endwalker, UI phase will feel shit again and it being instant in dt means you can't frontload your fire 4 rota
>add even more buttons you have to find a place for on your hotbar
Bro the job team for this game legit sucks lol, i dont even understand where they were coming from for half of these changes. I guess blm finally got bricked along with the rest of the jobs they ruined over time
Cry louder
@@marcusaurelius4777 ill be there to point and laugh when your favorite job also gets ruined for literally no discernable reason
depression.
OMG 😮
As a blm main, the changes really suck in my opinion, they benefit no one and only hurt non-standard and flexible options available to blms. I have grievances with almost every change they did to the job.
That aside, Thank you Rinon for actually testing community questions and feedback in your limited play time.
Non-standard gameplay was extremely rigid for a theoretical 0.7%-2% DPS increase if you were making perfect use of all the nonstandard lines.
For people to loose their shit over the changes call it non-standard flexible is just pure irony
if i have red blue and yellow cards in my bag and i only want the red ones of course that's rigid but i'm never locked out of taking the other two
but if you take the red ones out the bag entirely then i HAVE to pick either blue or yellow. does that make it easier to understand why people are frustrated?
BLM my favorite job, never played non standard, only excited for the changes! doomers out
OK, that with the losing of stacks of the new gauge had no one other mentioned yet, who i saw.
A little sad, but in overall should that be no big meaning.
Aside of that, do i see only improvements by the blm. Except of the thunder thing, who looks unnecressary (i want to start with beeing a Sith and shoot lightning^^). And a little questionable with no Paradox for ice phase (ok, you only need 1 ice attack for full mp, so, is there no big reason to stay in ice phase, except by down times from enemie).
Ehhhhh... as a blm main these changes look... interesting. Im not doomposting but I feel like this will make the job feel very different
Why are they making this game so simplified? Where is the challenge and joy of mastering your job? It’s that was MMO’s are about? Might as well play a single player RPG if I want my role simplified that anyone can use and play out the get go.
P.S I main BLM. I have been since ps3 beta. Just doesn’t make sense to me, and I’m frustrated with the road this is going down on.
They fully abandoned the MMO part of this "MMORPG" with Endwalker. I expect them to go even further into making this game as rigid and appeasing to as many as possible. BLM was one of the last holdovers of the MMO class design part of this game, and it's safe to say they have killed it here. Jobs are basically skins and animation swaps with few individual distinct merits within their roles.
it's joever for all blm enjoyers
no
Adapt, improve, overcome. It isn't unplayable or even as bad as it's being perceived. I'll still play this.
I love me black mage!
High Fire 2 does not give Enhanced flare anymore. Utterly useless. Having an AoE variation, just for the sake of having one is just bad game design, why would I use High Fire 2 when I can just do Fire 3 and Spam Flare?
Thx for this new information, but you don't need to do a 1:30min intro everytime - just get right into it...
It’s his videos, you can always skip the intro if it bothers you so much
It had information I needed to include, there are chapters specifically so that you can skip it as soon as you've seen it once
@@RinBanana Yeah I noticed it was the same introductory every video I viewed, so I essentially started skipping to the main parts.
@@melp.5394 Do that more often instead of complaining then.
@@wtfdidijustwatch1017 careful, not everything is a dick you don't have to suck into every comment section.
the thunder change is absolute ass
you get 2 procs per rotation but can hold only 1 and your rotation is about 30s lmao
plus non-standart is dead for no particular reason whatsoever except yoship didnt like it
i absolutely hate all this job streamline changes, if it still continue to happen we will have 20+ smn jobs after 2 or 3 expansion, and i for one absolutely dont wanna see us pressing single button that just light itself up differently for every encounter ever
this already happened before dude. and square will continue to do it with the jobs that are left. MCH, SMN, SAM, NIN, DRG, MNK, AST, SCH have already been through this. you will get used to it.
@@Rataldo20 the hell you mean get used to? Get used to what? Developers being wrong about their decision to make game *easier* for new players? This blm rework is something no one asked for, this change is the smn level change. When job has just 1 annoying issue (mana ticks for blm and pet ai for smn) and instead of making a workaround they just straight up change the flow of job. Idk I’m extremely angry about the change I can rant all day about it. Plus they keep adding new fire spells for fire phase instead of focusing their attention on the enchanting the feel of ice phase. Blm will be super easy to play now, imagine adding 3 GUARANTEED instant casts in every astral fire phase for literally no reason whatsoever and removing the fun complexity of sharpcast entirely
Like playerbase needs to actually riot against those changes, cuz they are objectively bad and will 100% lead to game downfall in longterm
and so sharpcast and nonstandard shenanigans are dead and buried.
Great, they managed to streamline the only fun job in the game. All I can hope is that my opinion changes when it's like, but seeing the changes... man, that's sad.
I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to stop playing black mage now
banger vid
A bigger and moveable circle and more explosions! What more can a BLK ask?
I'm quite unhappy with this
Good, you deserve it, your job is finally dumbed down like the rest.
Man, who asked for this..
Holy shit this is worse than the SMN rework... They at least got busted in low level content... We got a dps and mobility nerf for anyone that wants to do TOP/DSR?
I can already see PF banning BLM for uwu+ucob+tea+dsr+top now...
Good. BLMs demanding custom shit for their "movement" was cringe. SMN is easy af and brought a buff, RDM brought a buff and a mit. BLM just brought griefers. Legit. Every TOP PF I ever had with a BLM they were utter dogwater lmfao. I'd take a blue SMN glue eater over a cry baby BLM any day. They ALWAYS bitched about changing things for them, deviating from PF strats that were well oiled and ingrained in everyone's psyche. Good riddance bro.
More like dead mage
this blows
how awful
Flare star needs more potency tbh. 350 is kinda underwhelming. It should be around 500 range.
Bear in mind fire spells get buffed a solid amount by the astral fire multiplier, so it's doing 1.8x that damage in most scenarios. Despair is 340 base so it's a tiny bit higher than that