DAWNTRAIL 7.1 BLACKMAGE OVERVIEW & THOUGHTS

[@blackmagecompendium]

TLDR 1. Blackmage seems to still behind picto in personal dps, despite bringing no party buffs 2. Design philosophy is confusing - buffs through speed, nerfs to overall dmg. -> this means their buff feed is lower, lowering party dps during buff windows when using blm compared to before. 3. Thunder is still an issue that some expected to be resolved or changed. 4. Flare cast time is... half the time unimpactful, and still doesn't resolve the actual aoe issues of High blizzard and high fire 5. We need harder metrics before we can have a final determination 6. we have to re-do melds for lower spell speed again due to instant cast and more leylines 7. 2 charges of ley lines equates to a couple of extra casts over the duration of a fight, typically - and loses alot of value if its not full uptime leylines, lowering the overall impact. 8. Instant cast despair is going to cause many play adjustments for blackmages 9. non standard is still manafont dependent.

[@mismismism]

I do not understand the fear they seem to have, of making BLM have the highest DPS ceiling. It's been many moons since the ranged tax made sense. BLM is the hardest job to play perfectly by a pretty large margin, I don't think that's even a hot take, it has no utility, but yet they nerf the damage... I need these devs to make it make sense.

[@adamtaylor106]

If blm was in lines all of the time, pct would still do more dmg

[@Sethir]

This is really what drives the point home.

[@ruka9700]

Good. I like cute.

[@ChandaniAranka]

The overpowered situation is PCT has made me genuinely despise the job. And if I am grouped with a PCT in a duty roulette, I will never give them my commendations. I tend to commend my fellow DPS as a BLM. But I will never give them to PCT as they are just OP and doesn't deserve it imo. If I didn't get penalty for leaving the instance, I'd do so for every dungeon a PCT is in sadly. Plus I hate the sploogde noise effects they have

[@TheArnoldification]

I think a facet people who think blm players are over-reacting don't get is many of these changes are just nonsensical. The easiest to understand example is they buffed flare cast times, when it was already so much better to just cast flare that you would transpose to ignore hf2. It just makes the devs look clueless and makes me less hopeful we'll see good changes and instead we'll see more counterproductive changes over the course of the xpac then they announce a BLM rework and completely destroy the identity of the job like how I felt with summoner in EW. The discourse of BLM being too antiquated for modern content is also just infuriating, god forbid there's a job out there that actually plays differently from the rest...

[@LightTheBlackMage]

My issue with Ley Lines is that it’s still on a 2 minute cooldown. If you were to burn through both Ley Lines relatively quickly, unless the fight has major downtime, you’ll rarely ever see that second stack of Ley Lines because the 1st stack will always line up with 2 minute buff window, making it feel like old Ley Lines again. Pointless change if you ask me.

[@IaconDawnshire]

I'm surprised they haven't dumbed down BLM for the casuals

[@scaper12123]

I looked at that Enochian nerf and cried "bruh". I can foresee two possible directions they're going with BLM: - They're trying to shift the class away from a focus of high damage and more towards consistency with fire phases. fParadox and Despair were always sticking points that defined how I acted during rotations and mechanics and now that they're instacast, there's a lot more flexibility. We can succeed at fire phase far more reliably. Or, of course, - They really don't know what they're doing and don't wanna even risk make BLM stronger than PCT for even a fraction of a second. I would appreciate if they were doing the former cause lord knows I believe this class has accessibility problems. But they aren't going far enough, possibly because they're saving that for 8.0, and none of this solves the underlaying problem of Black Mage: That its optimal rotation is BLM > PCT. This is all to say: I think you're right, and they don't know what they're doing.

[@deadrabbit9353]

It's like long DT horror dream for me. I play black mage for 2 or 3 years and what's now? even my TOP static jokes about picto swap. Disgusting. Even newbie picto can do +- equal rdps output. I will continue play black mage whatever it takes anyway

[@ABadZoroark]

I have played this game for 8 years; have seen all kinds of silliness in terms of job balance and outdated kits, mained astro since HW so I'm used to having a job that changes every expansion. But 7.X black mage? It is *utterly* one of the most baffling things to come out of this game when 6.X BLM already felt so good to use. I might have considered touching it again if its damage were in line with Picto, despite me despising the way current thunder works. But as it stands, there is literally no reason anymore for me to touch it this expansion. *Especially* for solo content. This job cannot survive in this ecosystem being a lower parsing selfish DPS with no utility. In SQEX's effort to make the job also easier to play, seems like they kinda broke it? Part of the reason I even picked this job up is because it's complex with high reward, now it's just slightly less complex with not as big a reward. Nerfing picto is the only way to safely fix this, unless square is fine with potency powercreep.

[@sh1yo7]

Me being a glass canon should come with highest dps pls

[@BeanSpey]

*Phys Ranged at the Gallows* "First time?"

[@blackmagecompendium]

@@BeanSpey lolllol

[@IaconDawnshire]

I survived when BRD had an identity crisis

[@Envinyon]

instant despair makes the back half of astral fire less tight. I don't feel like I "have" to use 4 fire IV's before paradox now, I can refresh thunder and not have to use my firestarter proc to refresh my timer before casting despair. Less rigidity to AF is welcome I also think it just makes flare star a lot easier to work around. Thunder is still an issue, nerf to enochian is bizarre, but two leylines is fun

[@DrakeFury1]

A thing that I was thinking is that since we have instant cast despair, it also means we have a weave slot before flare star, which means we can swiftcast flare star very often, leading to 2 long cast spells becoming instant. You do not need to burn your triple casts on them for a slight dps buff anymore.

[@blackmagecompendium]

@DrakeFury1 now it's triple on thr last two stickers and then flare star it seems!

[@GarnetDust24]

Went directly into the alliance raid and instant despair feels crazy. Good but so different. Going to be interesting to see when the best time to use double leylines. I’m looking forward to this!

[@scaper12123]

I ran in there slapping despairs and spamming leylines. Suboptimally, since i was playing blind day-one, but it was easier to not give a damn since my leylines are recharging while another is going.

[@pochen23]

It is interesting, 2 layline is really just 1 extra use the entire fight since the recast is still the same, so after you use the extra charge initially you are back to like before... I am guessing it is more a quality of life change so that it doesn't drift as easily.

[@blackmagecompendium]

@pochen23 yeah for sure. I also think they are changing encounter design and blm in its previous form was unable to keep up but we'll see

[@aerheart]

I *really* like the ley lines change. I think it adds a totally new dimension to fight planning that wasn't there before. In 7.05, if a horrible mechanic came up at 2 minutes, you'd just have to drop leylines anyway and try to make the best of it. Now that you have two charges, you can keep one charge in the bank so you can drop them earlier, and get full utilization. You also have to pick a moment in the fight where you go from 1 charge banked to 0, either doing an entire minute of leylines or fitting them in somewhere between bursts. Apart from saving xenos for burst, I feel like I've been completely liberated from the 2 minute meta, and can get 100% leylines uptime every time now. The despair changes I'm less happy about. It's nice to have, and it certainly makes the job easier to play, but it feels like it was the wrong thing to do to help the job. Long casts are the central piece of BLM's job identity, and despair especially being instant just feels *weird*. I'm not gonna complain too much about it, but I kind of wish they'd done something else. And yeah the enochian nerf was totally uncalled for. I don't really know what they were cooking with that.

[@asatowolfe]

This patch was huge for BLM. I just posted a video today with a new BLM Paradox Rotation that gives 100% full movement (zero cast bars) and deals high damage- enough to clear the M4S training dummy without max gear anyway. It's more of a fun, gimmicky rotation and not meant to be a replacement for the standard opener, but it's awesome that it works now. Despair into Transpose is so strong. The changes even make huge differences in the standard rotation. I'm still working out potencies whether it's more optimal saving the Swiftcast for Flare Star or for a _[Despair, Swiftcast+Transpose, Blizzard III]_ to avoid losing the 30% from switching out of Astral Fire. Likely more optimal for Flare Star in most scenarios and Sps builds, but having that option is nice.

[@blackmagecompendium]

@asatowolfe this is sick I'll check it out right away

[@asatowolfe]

@blackmagecompendium Thanks! I just wanted to mess with BLM today and search for some untapped potential and came up with a revamped "Infinite Paradox" rotation. It works so much better now that Despair is instant cast. You only need Swiftcast/Triplecast for Blizzard III since your Umbral Hearts are never get spent. It doesn't give back max MP, but will still give back about half of it from an Umbral Ice III tick; which is more than enough for a Fire Paradox > Despair. So you can alternate between the 40-second Swiftcast and Triplecast for that, and it's rather self-sufficient. It was more of a "to see if we can" more than a "to make something optimal" moment. But it works.

[@bolladragon]

These “buffs” are terrible. I feel SMN got the attention BLM needed.

[@ReynaSunshineFFXIV]

“I dont really know what hes saying, im gonna be honest” LMAO me too

[@DacianGradaMusic]

I believe you can separate ley lines and retrace buttons for a better cd visualization.

[@cordrac]

Should I be treating second leylines as an odd minute burst? Or are there so few odd minute buffs now that there's not much reason to?

[@kinginknova9844]

Tbh picto is a new job and the only way SE sees people Playing picto is if it has high damage since that’s all people care about rather than playing a job for the fact that you just like that play style. Because people love number crunching and exploiting getting the best numbers SE will slowly make changes and see how people exploit it so you don’t get people coming up with rotations that will have the job play a way SE wasn’t intended it to play. 8.0 blm and picto will be very close to having the same damage if they don’t already by the end of 7.x and people will play picto cause they like it and people will play blm cause they like it. SE development team listens which is fantastic. Enjoy playing the job you enjoy playing and don’t be so caught up in numbers. Enjoy.

[@NotTheWheel]

My compromise for this as a non-blm player is this. Black Mage should always nomatter what expansion be the top casting DPS bar none. If you're gonna give other casters res's or group utility or make them easier to use. Black Mage specially at its highest level should deal most damage. That's my easy fix. *also Maybe you guys could get your own tempra coat thingy but maybe it could change depending on what damage phase you're in so Ice you press the button and you give a party wide "Ice Shield" and if you're in your fire phase you give people a fire buff that boosts raid damage

[@LightTheBlackMage]

I feel like if they give BLM a party buff that’ll just give them an even higher incentive to keep Picto at the top. They’ll flip the philosophy around and say “Well now it has a buff so Picto HAS to do more damage.” But they don’t realize the only people playing Picto anymore are old Black Mage veterans. I rarely ever see Pictos in the over world, let alone duties.

[@spetsu1]

I wouldn't use manafont every 100 seconds, I would hold it for the standard 2 minute buff window so every 120 seconds? I'm not sure if an extra mana font is worth misaligning with the raid buff window.

[@blackmagecompendium]

@spetsu1 it's very likely that's the case yeah great point

[@adamrussell9573]

Uses are much more important than buff alignment in the case of manafont, especially because it doesn't enable any specifically powerfull tools outside of our normal loop: it just cuts out an ice phase per use. 2 minute windows gain the most when dumping extra xenoglossies and atleast one despair + flare star, and the additional fire phase created by manafont is too long to realistically place the second despair + star within that 20 second window. Optimally speaking, you'd want to try and use a shorter double/quadruple transpose line to forcefully realign your fire phase, but that's delving into the nonstandard play that was created with the new insta despair. If you're not wanting to do that, just use your manafont as soon as you press dump your mp after it becomes available

[@rodimus580]

They hate blm in pvp can’t even cast spam lb anymore. You’ll be dead before the first cast.

[@thebrave9971]

Would these on average make the average Black Mage do less damage than the average Summoner or Red Mage?

[@blackmagecompendium]

@thebrave9971 act/logs weren't updated yesterday, so I can't yet say but it would be unlikely. I do not believe so but haven't seen hard numbers yet.

[@ReynaSunshineFFXIV]

I love the changes so much :D

[@DW073]

Wow so cool nice

[@acatssoftnose3940]

On average, should I just use my leylines back to back, or should I use my second leylines when I have a charge of triple cast up?

[@blackmagecompendium]

Leylines reduces the GCD while triple cast removes the cast timer - so both are a net gain. You provision the resources based on the fight typically. Easiest thing I can say is do what feels right. If you dont need triple for movement and its going to cap two stacks, just use it during a leylines. In your opener you'll do that pretty much every time (except like, TOP. TOP is a different story.) I think its more common to need the triple outside of the leylines though. Experiment and do what works well - You can use some of my exguides or savage guides for some examples or check out eksuplosion's pov videos!

[@jpranindito]

hey the sps guy here, there's no more reason for sps build with instant despair now

[@blackmagecompendium]

@@jpranindito my MEELLLLDDDSSS lol

[@KanetsidohiKanotoush]

Black Mage is the only job I like, and the changes in this expansion, and patches, have been mediocre at best so sadly, I still don't have a reason to resub :(

[@blackmagecompendium]

I keep saying to people that it is unfortunate because the battle-content right now is really, really good! If blackmage was in a great spot, this would be peak gameplay wise.

[@nixexiv]

2:55 doing sphene ex and i keep putting down new leylines trying to retrace x_x

[@blackmagecompendium]

@@nixexiv noooo IT BEGINS lol

[@nixexiv]

@ was a skill issue tbh but muscle memory needs a bit of a rework lol its harder to greed those last couple seconds without actively paying attention to my timer

[@randomgenretalk8151]

They should change Leylines so that the duration stops ticking down once you left them, so that it's stays until you use the full duration while standing in. This allows you to leave the Leylines for mechanics and make sure that you always use the full duration without interruption. I also think at this point it would be too much if certain skills give extra seconds to you Leylines if used correctly.

[@rjhick1]

I stopped playing because of how they ruined BLM

[@guldonis1155]

Black mage gameplay is completly dog shit now , who taught that was good idea to remove thunder and despair incantation ? Bro you just have to extand astral fire to 20 or 25 sec and let me cast my spells. We are walking like summoner now. What a disaster.

[@shelflord1686]

If u need 25s AF ur probably running around not playing right anyway😂 just dont move if u dont want to its that simple, this is such a weird criticism to have

[@guldonis1155]

@@shelflord1686 do you struggle to understand a simple text ? Despair and thunder cast time have been remove from the game to make the job more accessible to average player or its Killing black mage incantation identity. I play black mage because i want cast my spells not walking arround like summoner. Having so much instant make the very the whole gameplay cluncky. Do you understand that ?

[@Sammysapphira]

​@@shelflord1686 blm is supposed to be a rooted caster that is rewarded for higher difficulty in applying damage in fights. "Just don't move" is deranged.

[@nog137]

​@@guldonis1155 I mean thunder never had a cast time if you were good before anyways, sharpcast was right there. I do agree that insta despair was probably not the right option but complaining about thunder cast time is laughable since weaving sharpcast/dot uptime is what was the actual skill of thunder before not it's cast time.

[@guldonis1155]

@@nog137 whats you said is factually wrong , thunder as cast was a part of your leveling, opener in end game and on specific boss you had to re apply it manually if the intermission was too long. In addition they also removed fire paradox as cast. Shb and ew blm combat flow / rythim was perfect. Right now the current cast sequence is cluncky as hell: 3 cast 1 instant cast, 3 cast 1 instant cast, sometimes 6 instant cast In row its awfull. Its like trying to listenning music whit someone who cut it every 6 sec tu hype up the crowd. But whatever damage is done already.

[@Dndstories]

Honestly they just need to scrap the current play style of BLM and bring it up to a more modern style.