FFXIV - Every Black Mage Skill From Every Expansion (Retrospective)

[@bandi138138]

Scathe always has a special place in my heart because it provided me with an epic moment that will be unforgettable. It was the final boss in Aurum Vale, and everyone in my party died except me. The boss only had a small amount of health left, so I ran around like a mad man, spamming Scathe as I went. Eventually the boss died and I got to nab all the commendations and the most exhilarating “I can’t believe I’m alive” high from this game.

[@DracoSuave]

Thunder I, II, and III never became each other, but the buff was overwritten in ARR, so you could not use all three. The thing was, TIII's cast time was slow and actually less damage, so the play was T1 to keep the dot up, but TIII when Thundercloud.

[@bsc649]

I don't play the job nearly well enough to actually play it this way, but I love so much that higher level BLM play basically discards the idea of a rotation entirely. Optimizing the job works by running through a series of "lines" (a sequences of casts which ends after an AF phase), where as one line is ending you decide which one you're going to run next based on on procs, MP ticks, upcoming forced movement/downtime, and available resources (polyglot stacks, sharpcasts, triplecasts, swiftcast, paradox). The gains are very small so it's not mandatory (or even important) for anything except absolutely top tier parsing or maybe world first racing/day 1 prog, but it opens up an improvisional, extremely high-skill playstyle that just doesn't exist for most other jobs. (It can also be used for the other extreme, precisely mapping every cast for an entire fight for parsing purposes, which turns it into Spreadsheets: the Game instead lol) The one big problem is that a fair bit of that optimization unavoidably depends on the dreaded Third Party Programs, because with the vanilla interface there's no way to see the timing of your MP ticks while you're in AF or to predict the timing of your Lucid Dreaming ticks and those timings can dramatically alter which lines you have available.

[@x_Xith_x]

non standart playstyle is super fun

[@silentfox9359]

Manawall, I will always miss you. Just being able to stand in stuff or emergency tank till the healers got the tanks back up was so usefull.

[@reason9750]

I’m 100% sure the confusion on how fire 3 should be used still happens. I figured it out after like, 3-4 dungeon runs, but it was definitely not intuitive and easily something I’m sure a lot of players miss or don’t understand

[@voidhunter2800]

Very much still happens, i get blms at 90 on occasion who don't know about it.

[@Aioaverona]

I am guilty of this. I've been leveling BLM now for the past month, and I realized a few weeks ago just how MP hungry Fire 3 was until I realized that its used for a quick 3 stack and going to f1 or now a days iBlizzard 4 into fire 3 into fire 4. It make sense looking back at it, but really not intuitive on how it works.

[@DrowningInDoggos]

yh i've just gotten my BLM to 40 and I did not know this at all oops

[@sonoskay]

@Voidhunter that hurts because at 90 fire 3 really Is only used to transition or fire starter. When i was leveling. I would spam the hell out of fire...3. Until I got fire 4. Then I got so confused about how to use fire 4. Then I used fire 3 to re up Astral fire. For a little while. I felt like I was losing Astral fire too often and then realized not only does fire 1 cast faster, but also uses less mana, meaning you can get 2 or 3 more Astral fires out before running out of mana.

[@voidhunter2800]

@@sonoskay I often end up teaching that, as well as basic aoes and mitigation at 90, drks not using tbn on cd during big pulls, smns not using their summons, schs not using cooldowns to make healing a joke, rdms not knowing they can get finishers off of moulinet, dncs not seeing that standert step does a massive amount of damage and is aoe, nins using doton on single target at 90, you name it and i have seen it by now and see it every week.

[@rndm2655]

I like how you mentioned the Lucid Dreaming tick shenanigans as being in the past when its still very much a thing today. Consistency!

[@obamaorb7426]

Yep, gotta love those inconsistent double transpose openers

[@Ren99510]

Hello, Scathe defender here. Obviously, it's use in savage/trial/raid content is basically non-existent but in the open world or a dungeon if a mob has a tiny sliver of health left Scathe usually finishes the job without having to hardcast anything.

[@1Shayz1]

Yeah, for the early levels before you get triplecast and other instant cast procs scathe is a great way to hit that last 1% of HP. At least that's how I would use it in low level dungeons

[@___Yang___]

tbh, I took it off my hotbar and forgot about it, but that actually sounds really nice. The amount of times I have to hard cast a fire 4 just because nobody else wants to do the last 1% on a dungeon mob is kind of insane.

[@huntermccaskill3938]

I'd love to see Scathe become an early version of Xeno At least it's more useful than Blizzard 1 Scathe has a home on my bar and always will; unless they fix B1, it will not

[@SwordOfPersona]

Yep, I still like scathe. Haven't played blm for a couple expacs, so... hmm, sleep was really good, used it on levequests, sleep targets and go 'search' locations.

[@hellfrozenphoenix13]

​@@huntermccaskill3938honestly, this would be cool. Make Scathe turn into it late game, frees uo that one slot, and maybe make room to keep this going. Because i want BLM to stay what it is.

[@Lord_Raviel]

It is worth mentioning that the potency changes to Blizzard II and Freeze actually happened really early in ARR long before Heavensward released. Specifically they nerfed Blizzard II and Buffed freeze when they gave other classes Blizzard II as a cross class skill instead of Thunder in Patch 2.1

[@GBurnYa]

I liked when freeze was a placed AOE rather than needing a target

[@ssjgokuhan]

@@GBurnYa It was counter to every other skill BLM has and it's fantasy of a glass cannon magic turret. No thanks.

[@gbtygfvyg]

Ah the good ol' blizzard II scholar because you had no aoe other than Bane and Shadowflare.

[@luckydragon6067]

honestly, scathe should be reworked into an almost mini polyglot to get players used to that sort of thing and give black mage at least a semi earlier ogcd to use, kinda like how they did with giving monk meditation while still a pugilist.

[@HyouVizer]

That would make SO much sense

[@RavorRants14]

I started playing ffxiv at the tail end of shadow bringers; I played Black Mage almost exclusively for my entire run through the MSQ and normal content, but when I started doing extreme/savage/ultimate content, I got intimidated, didn’t want to be a burden on parties by sucking so and I switched to phys ranged. I want to get back to it though, it’s such a fun job

[@CamperCarl00]

We enjoy an easy enmity system today, but back in ARR, if a Black Mage did a double flare before the tank could really get aggro, they could completely strip them of threat. This is why quelling strikes was so important and became even more so in Heavensward when stance dancing became more prevalent. I remember being blamed as a Bard for grabbing aggro off the tank in early Stormblood _after_ quelling strikes had been removed.

[@GimmeTOKYO]

The base potency calculations that you mention around 37:00 actually wasn't equalized until Endwalker! They did it coinciding with the stat squish. :)

[@FrenziedFury]

As someone that played on a PS3 until they killed support for Stormblood, Blizzard II was a godsend for hunts and Odin/Behemoth. It was nigh impossible to actually see any of the targets, but since Blizzard II didn't require a target, I would absolutely stand where I thought the target was and spam the hell out of it. Lost count of the number of A and S ranks that I got full credit for that I never actually saw. Oh,btw, Lethargy was ultra useful in Turn 5 against those owlknight adds and the Allagan nodes in Turn 11. #BlackMagicMatters

[@TheAuron32]

can still be an issue on Bullet Trains on standard PS4, so i just spam my AoE rotation with Tank Stance one lol

[@baelof]

Confirming that I was a Black Mage confused by Fire III. I only corrected my behavior when I unlocked Firestarter and the spells made more sense at that point.

[@leonfurry]

So you’re telling me I had to put those Alacran thugs asleep instead of meticulously sneaking past them!? 😂

[@tbz709]

I started XIV during early Shadowbringers, played DRG first but then wanted to pick up Black Mage second as it's one of my favourite FF classes. My friends kept talking down on it but I loved it and it's still my preferred caster.

[@AbsalomArchives]

Right before Endwalker came out, I was doing St. Mociane's Hard Mode with a Black Mage that was *still*, at that level, spamming Fire 3. I had to explain his rotation to him, while also explaining the last boss to the group, while trying to spam dungeons a few hours before the severs went down for expansion launch

[@3dsalmon]

Fun fact - the 90 second leylines didn’t even make it to 6.0. Even after using it as an example in a live letter of a skill that wouldn’t fit as a 2 minute cooldown it still, inexplicably, became a 2 minute cooldown.

[@cparle87]

10:30 I had to instruct a black mage in an Ultima weapon msq roulette who was spamming Fire III, then spamming Blizzard III until he was full, then back. At least he was also Lightning'ing, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been. But like you said, not intuitive. 15:00 Yeah, the firestarter proc problem is still a thing. 1:05:10 All the black mage players went "I'm not doin' that." lol

[@CryoJnik]

I feel called out with that Fire 3 Blizzard 3 rotation comment. I totally wasn't doing that yesterday, btw.

[@cyphi474]

Mana Shift was great for progging or general stuff, since you could give healer some mana after ress to get him restarted faster, instead of waiting to regain some mana to heal himself, then others. At time healers didnt have endless mana like they have today, so it was giving sense in scenario where dps loss didnt matter that much.

[@scwh3181]

Back in the day, I used to like scathe for weak, fast-moving adds. I found often with the long cast times, they would be dead or moved past me before I could get a proper spell off, and for things that had really small health bars, a couple of scathes was great for taking them down. Anything that would die quickly and potentially had multiple people attacking it worked well against.

[@hkoizumi3134]

Been a BLM main since 2.0. I remember during the launch week, FATE train was the best way to level and groups were seeking our THM or BLM because they were the only class or job that could spam AOE without resting and they made it so easier to tag enemies for EXP.

[@N.G.H.]

Hey you forgot to mention the fact that going from Shadowbringers to Endwalker Ino-chan went from being a skill to a trait! It's now no longer a button and just activated when you are able to build 3 stacks of Astral Fire and Umbral Ice by Heavensward (level 56). Are people still afraid of playing Black Mages? Cuz you no longer have to worry about dropping Ino-chan and waiting for its cooldown to reapply it.

[@VGPorage]

It make sense but still I thought it was kinda funny since not only did you lose dps but your Fire 1casts of shame where also shown on the party list like the game screaming to the whole party "look this guy dropped enochian". There is no hiding your mistakes on BLM.

[@richardwicker8456]

1:30:20 I believe once Enhanced Flare is granted it remains as a continual buff until either astral fire drops off or you switch to umbral ice?

[@daanroelofs119]

That's how it works yeah

[@NabaniSaa]

So, for 7.0/Future BLM. I could see SE going the route of the WoW Arcane mage, or just taking some inspiration from it and adding multiple "burn" phases (Fire phases) to the rotation. Where through a spell or through "over producing" enough Ice stacks, you can either go "negative" mana or keep your mana in stasis for a short duration, or something along those (ley)lines, huhuh.

[@lushdontu4015]

I just hope they get rid for fire 4 and blizzard 4! I loved it but now I am bored of it because we had it for years now. I can tell they are struggling to animate a better fire animation

[@seraphendipity]

The Umbral Hearts is essentially the “over producing of ice”

[@SwordOfPersona]

Crossclassing back in ARR ,I had aero, poison, thunder, miasma on my arcanist/summoner.

[@Miyzuo]

Back in 1.0 "Thunder Mage" was definitely a real thing lol

[@Memilish]

Can confirm, Fire III spam still happens on occasion. I have seen this.

[@aplayxplay]

I had no problem using Mana shift the only issue was I gave it to a RDM when they raised 3 ppl on the final boss in royal city then he asked for more mana 30 sec later. Changing Enochian into a trait in EW is an amazing change that alot of ppl thought was dumbing down the class and foul costed mana at the beginning of SB

[@EvenLessConspicuousHandle]

Happy talking about how transpose opti went down in shb without talking about how it absolutely skyrocketted in end walker. Optimized black mages often cast transpose twice as many times as they cast blizzard 3

[@WaveEchos]

Haha... learned a few tricks from old Enochian that don't work in current Enochian. It wasn't tied to your ice/fire stacks. So if you had a firestarter proc you could let your fire stacks run out in the middle of the rotation and get an extra fire 4 off. Then firestarter and you're back. Edit: That extra time for fire/ice stacks was part of a set of changes boost standard BLM rotations to the same levels as the broken one. There was a weird black mage single target rotation that was extremely powerful until then. Blizzard 3 > Ley Lines > Fire 3 > sharpcast > Fire 1 > Fire 4 x 4 (normally was x 3) > Fire 3 proc > Convert > Fire 4 x 2 > Blizzard 3

[@MaikeruXD13]

I also remember my spells being interrupted because the enemy/boss would move to my side or behind me mid cast. When they added the functionality where your toon follows the enemy's direction even mid cast it felt super op

[@Sil3ntLynx]

Wait hold on I need this, where's this setting?

[@dataunknown]

The extension to 40s on the Thundercloud proc was also nice

[@cyphi474]

Yes if you have firestarter proc from middle Fire, you should keep it over ice phase, then transpose to fire and use it to get full stacks. However, since GCD, you still need at least 4-5 sec remaining on your firestarter proc before transpose, otherwise there is risk you will lose it and end up with just one fire stack from transpose which is sub optional place to start with. Foul/Xenoglossy and outside events can distract your timing, so its always something you need keep eye on. Part of the job of BLM is having one eye on the timers and other on the fight. Less than it used to be in HW, but still is.

[@mirageowl]

I was definitely spamming Fire III in early dungeons until I read what the heck Firestarter was at somepoint

[@tooktookgullible]

transpose paradox is an actual gain if you do it as a planned nonstandard rotation. Its a huge instant cast spender so if you do it and end up having no resources for movement later on you kinda lose its benefits. Paradox became a contention to many players because it is so strong it enables a dozen more nonstandard lines, which makes “true optimization” on the job much more complex because without mana tick plugins (which i don’t use) you have to be able to on the fly react to your mana ticks in UI and choose an optimal cycle by accounting for rotation length, resources, movement in the near future, etc. Disclaimer: It is very probable to parse pink with standard BLM. Doing nonstandard your whole way through the fight would only net you about 5% dps gain on average, which is generally unachievable without plugins and spreadsheeting, or a massive 4090RTX brain.

[@AdachYanas]

Man if they add that green mage or yellow mage with skills like mana shift, or mana to ho convert TT it'll be nice to have that one support caster in the game

[@luniers4629]

It's weird how in wow people get all sorts of utility spells for their class and people use them cuz it makes big difference to the run, while in FF there are less and less utility spells each expansion because people just weren't using them. This feels like a design flaw on the Dev team, for not ensuring scenarios where those spells would be required to be used.

[@Alphafonz]

Maybe next expansion we get an update to scathe lol Realistically I think we will probably get an upgrade to Fire III and Blizzard III and Flare/Freeze

[@Kazgrel]

HW BLM is probably the reason I never delved into anything resembling serious raiding for years in this game. I could play it fine in dungeons, but didn't dare to try EX trials on it until Sophia in 3.4. I stopped playing for all of 3.1, though, since all I was doing was spamming roulettes each day, and upon returning to the game in 3.2, I decided to branch out and try other jobs rather than try to find a raid group. Ended up working out in the long run, but man, what a time

[@stephanieking8299]

Black Mage is my favorite job in all of FF!

[@retroelf]

Omg, your ley lines disappeared if you left them?? That would suck so bad. I noticed they changed that pretty quickly too lol

[@daanroelofs119]

Oh man, about flare. If you were smart with mp ticks you would flare twice, transpose and start casting flare so that when you finish casting you would regain some mp, enough to cast it again. And then transpose again. You could infinitely cast flares and it was stronger than the intended rotation

[@dantedarkmagic4646]

I remember play black mage doing the fire 3 spam. And instead of helping or correcting me they kicked me drop the party and said learn your rotation. Well a quick hint would of helped.

[@obamaorb7426]

Oooh I was looking forward to this one!

[@mr.jeorgexiii1732]

Been waiting for this one!

[@Dharengo]

Didn't the magic/physical damage equalization happen in endwalker? Or near the end of shadowbringers?

[@SageofLight777]

Part of me wants to like Black Mage, but I just don't enjoy how the job feels. I respect people that are good at it, though. Absolute madlads.

[@ActionBob]

scathe is great for deleting lowbie enemies quick and low potency damage on enemies while moving through dungeons fast

[@justaman4887]

Scathe helped me alot when i did my arr relic

[@Dubh13]

I remember starting on ps3 and when grinding fates to level, stuff wouldn’t spawn so I was forced into playing BLM so I could blizz 2 and still get credit

[@shadieeryaqati4514]

God, I wish they'd bring back complexity and the need to think for XIV.

[@rd-um4sp]

in some video you could include the character sheet from way back when with the adjustable attributes and all the elemental resistances (I still had a wind materia in shb for some reason. damn hoarder)

[@dubaimidnite6145]

Been waitin for this one!❤

[@BeanisMcbongwater]

Started back in October I was dewn full rotation transposing every time up until like 60 💀 we don’t talk about it as a 90blm XD

[@ianchandler3282]

Even now a days I still see low level black mages transposing even at level 50, always give them a tip to try the fire and ice 3's to swap and sure enough they get frustrated the game never tought them it. Always help your low level fire bombs!

[@davidlynch9469]

This has to be all from 2.0 in 1.0. I swear manaward was tied to your mp and it would just use your mp bar as your hp for a specified time so using it was like cutting off your arm since the only mp refresh came from aether pots or foods and if you used it when low on mp all you could do was run away as you would run out of mp. Can you find the info of the job from 1.0 as a comparison? Because I remember having different skill builds depending if I was solo ( stoneskin etc) vs in a party.

[@Xorua]

I feel like it was too quickly glossed over that for a time Ley Lines ended if you left them

[@Qazqi]

I can't hear about fear of jobs getting a rework without thinking about how RDM got yet another combo extension this expansion and not much else in terms of shiny new buttons. Between accel shifting the focus to ogcd alignment, the move to 2min meta, mana gauge+stacks, and manafication, it almost feels like RDM got a mini rework but with no room made for it to grow unless they like hand us a 7th combo hit and call it a day.

[@iPlayOnSpica]

I feel like if you just got a second stack of Firestarter, we wouldn't need to react so fast to using it. Although, this is only an issue below lvl 60 when we get Fire 4. Issue nevertheless.

[@travisproo87]

I abuse scathe between triplecast cooldowns when I’m running relic weapon, anima weapon content

[@silvinity4939]

From now on blm just gets higher level fire and ice spells and enochian gives more damage. 10 years from now their rotation will be the same but their damage will be so high you just take 8 blm and kill every boss before their first auto even goes off.

[@Max_Azafel]

BLM main here, first time watching retro series and found it kinda interesting having started playing FF:14 last year october..like 2 weeks before endwalker sales halt and 10k queue times. However, (1:07:25), I was hoping you would go over PvP because BLM has an identity crisis. And not many people talk about PVP. Sure I get that it's unbalanced, but yeah.

[@Memyx]

Pretty sure the issue of Firestarter showing it's proc late is still a thing. Not as bad, but it still exists.

[@sonoskay]

Leveling black mage, at least in shadow bringer, was a confusing mess. Especially the 50 to 70 period. Where your rotation completely upended. Ans how important fire 3 seems to really change throughout leveling. And it is not obvious that fire 1 is your Astral reup and fire 3 is only for transitions from Ice to fire and the occasional fire starter.

[@TsuchiGamer06]

The blizzard 3 and fire 3 changes, while not only being staggered between lvl 35 and 40, messed up a ton of people. If you had half a brain and paid attention, you could catch their uses, but thats definitely only like 30% or Black Mages at BEST lol

[@Number2Hero]

I keep hearing so-and-so spell was really toxic or too punishing, but the legend of Black Mage was built on high risk + high reward and a part of the fantasy and class identity. Similar to Dragoon taking more damage in exchange for equally greater damage, while lots of these changes are good for the class to be more playable and less intimidating takes away from the stories and appreciation for when things line up. I totally understand making the game more accessible, but really took away from basically all classes uniqueness and class identity with the homogenization and put-off a lot of players around the over later expansions. Going back and playing FFXI recently (Horizon) made me appreciate specialized roles again and the RPG'ness by comparison to FFXIV makes modern MMOs look super flat in regards to gameplay and basically removes nuance in lots of games. Different strokes, though, they are video games. Fire III? Man, when I discovered the nuances of the class/job it was a game changer and provided that "A-Ha!" moment that you hardly find anymore. The cleanliness across classes is great for balance, but mostly removes the interesting parts of the job gameplay for minimally smaller optimizations left to find. 🤷‍♀

[@Avenaur]

11 lol

[@davajita]

It's true, I'm not sure what else they can really do with BLM. It's pretty much perfect now. If they add more movement convenience I feel it would lose its identity. Maybe something like "spending X polyglots grants a charge of Boomdust" (or w/e), and there's some giant 1.2k potency spell that uses the charge of Boomdust. Or hell they could just upgrade F4 and B4 into F5 and B5 with more potency and a new animation and we'd be satisfied.

[@typeoddnamehere2362]

I was thinking upgrading either fire 3 or 4 could be their excuse to put ardor from ff12 in. Maybe have it as an 'improved firestarter' effect where you cast it instead of f3 when you get the proc or something. Just one idea that could be worth looking into for them. This is probably not the best because of sharpcast though.

[@InsanityReborn]

Paradox Mage rotation was actually a thing. And, worse, for the point in time where Paradox WAS that powerful, it literally was the strongest rotation. Weirder, it used *Umbral Soul* in the rotation. I'm not kidding. I still have the rotation image.

[@seggy98_]

Praise be to explosions! 🔥

[@TheAero16]

I started as BLM in 2014 and that firestarter proc problem takes me back😄

[@starburst630]

I wish you would show the skill in B animation vs just a wall of text

[@Pesola]

Hold on, I feel level 50 blm STILL has the problem that when you cast fire 1, you can't see if firestarter proc is up before you start casting next spell. I do not like doing level 50 roulettes with blm because of it...

[@ascii_9727]

OH MY GOD IS THAT WHY FREEZE LOOKS SO WEIRD? I just started playing a month ago and I didn't know freeze used to be a player centered AOE, every time I would cast it I was wondering why the spell fx looks like it lacks a central effect or explosion lmao

[@GBurnYa]

I've been waiting for this one! Also, bring back apocatastasis and manawall! Also never quite understood why atherial manipulation couldn't work like dancers dash. Needing a target to teleport to in the midst of shit going on, isn't always the best.

[@AfroBlackSiren]

Probably flavour, different classes have different gap closers to make them more different from each other, much like Thunderclap is different from Ninja's gap closer and from Reaper's teleport

[@richardwicker8456]

This has gotten me thinking; why not make aetherial manipulation a ground-targeted skill? imo it would be more convenient than having to first find and target a party member that's in the area you would to teleport to.

[@GBurnYa]

​@@richardwicker8456 agree

[@HyouVizer]

Feel the same way with rpr movement actions lol

[@robincollins8215]

These videos show the basic problem with "live service" games in general and MMORPGs in particular: the concept of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is alien to the developers of these games and they seem fixated on never ending change .. over the course of 10 years EVERY JOB has reached a point where it didn't need fiddling with any more, but the devs just don't see it. "Change for change sake" is the MMO devs' philosophy and FFXIV is a perfect example when highlighted by these videos you post. The result of this endless churn is the devs' endless failure to ever 'balance' the jobs because they can't leave anything alone long enough!

[@DacianGradaMusic]

While that's a perfectly fair take and I can't say I fully disagree, that's the nature of a constantly changing environment. If you main a job that gets no changes during an expansion while the others are given new toys to play with you probably feel "forgotten", it's also just a matter of keeping things interesting and likely bring in new players that might pick up the job after certain changes.

[@DeadEye935]

Its funny hearing people bemoan having to move as black mage. Imo, figuring out how to move effectively is the entire reason the job is fun. If you could just plant in one spot and barely move, it'd be the most boring job in the game by far. Very cool seeing how its grown over the years, lots of little changes, not a lot of big ones. Heavensward black mage definitely sounds like where a lot of the intimidation comes from.

[@nickfry6000]

Wait!!! I spam fire 3 then transpose to ice....thats not how its supposed to work?? How should we be using fire/ice 3???

[@wates101]

only to swap between phases, you only use fire III otherwise if you have a firestarter proc. other than that they are not to be used for Damage,

[@cyphi474]

Foul at level 70 has cast time, but becomes instacast at level 80. Thats VERY annoying feature. Other is Freeze cast time thats longer than B4 cast time. Its remains from time before you could cast opposite element for free and you needed that extra mana tick, which is no longer needed today since you dont need full mana for your Flare AoE rotation.

[@ishirutaekakura308]

That's the thing about BLM is that, it looks and seems complicated, but it's honestly quite simple.. But to prog with, it's definitely likely the one wiping the party the most, while it has mobility kit, such as well swiftcast and triple cast, you don't always want to load them off, because they still have a 60sec cooldown, honestly, as long as you know the fight, you will know when to not waste triplecast, saving it for upcoming mechanics that require a lot of movement. There's honestly no real way to really jump into BLM and just do things flawlessly, the experience will come, you just need to play it more, it's the same with every other job really. And if you make mistakes, even in dungeons, it's fine. You'll learn the right way to deal with things that you messed up on. That's how I treat it, personally I am a bit in the middle with BLM, I love it and hate it. But I know it won't ever underago insane changes. My main issue is the timer, I always mess up and let it drop, even if I know how to play BLM, my dumbass will still somehow let the timer drop.

[@Grimnoire]

Flare my beloved

[@Numenor3791]

One big thing missed... HW Ley Lines initially faded if you moved out of it. That SUCKED. Got changed by the end of HW though.

[@yue8049]

The firestarter issue you mentionned is still not really fixed, still a pain to play BLM at 50 cause of that.

[@terrencerefendor2409]

I miss inochan 😂😂😂 i still have sleep on my hot bar for BA 🤣

[@LordOfDiablo24]

I still miss enochian as a skill I miss that animation

[@aiellamori]

I always weave in scathe when I want to use transpose, there's not really a downside. Granted, I'm only level 37 blm

[@obamaorb7426]

Early on its okay because there isn’t that much of a damage loss, but at mac level when its a 100 potency scathe costing you a 669.6 (310*1.8*1.2) its a pretty huge loss that you never wanna do, especially in fire phase even if you have to stop casting for a GCD because the loss is just that big

[@Mychael612]

19:54 No one wanted to use Flare?? What do you mean?? Every party wanted a BLM for speedrunning for tomes. Pentaflare man! It was the best!

[@lordvader4526]

OG Ley Lines used to go away if you stepped out of the circle. That used to be the most toxic thing of 3.x BLM 😅

[@DracoSuave]

'Surecast was nullified by spellcasts' No. No it was not. Not during Stormblood. It was used and up for every forced movement on Suzaku at the time and you would use it and stand there and keep casting. Whoever keeps saying this--fake news. It was completely untrue.

[@meytrap]

Finallllllyyy!!!!!

[@Double0Anims]

I don't think they'll rework BLM just because. Or, at least, I should hope that's not the justification to rework anything. They might re-rework PLD (and I hope they do) but for BLm they'll likely just make new traits that result in a "new" skill

[@pablopelle7436]

I will never forget square for not naming the skills like Fire, Fira, Firaga ect Like you keep all of these final fantasy topes consistent but not the spell names???? Whyyyyy

[@DreamlessMemory]

The naming scheme changes based on what language your game is set to. There is a book in Gubal which discusses this in-universe, with people just throwing their hands up and going "whatever, call what you wish".

[@DacianGradaMusic]

I believe this got addressed by YoshiP in some QnA but not sure about the details. It was something like "we want to make the game more accessible for non-FF/JRPG fans so we had simpler ability names"

[@HyouVizer]

Wish they did that naming convention. Mainy so you wouldnt get sprout whm thinking Cure 3 is stronger than Cure 2 single target healing wise which is understandable until they actual read their action info lol.

[@cielametsuki]

It's still the same in JP, but yea wished they actually just kept the naming conventions as it is FF. "Catering to non-jrpg fans" isn't a really valid reason because people will still come to learn which one is the first, which one is a higher version and such. People aren't that dumb to figure things out contrary to their belief.

[@jacobsiron6929]

@@DreamlessMemory as yes, I love the Heavenswars BLM rotation where you learn Kafrizzle

[@HeroSosh]

Yea but BLM will have to change a bit, or at least in hope of ‘adding to it’.. cause altho ppl think their jobs are great ‘as is’, if we went through a whole expansion and they didn’t get anything, ppl would complain that… it didn’t get anything.. so it’s really a ‘rock and a hard place’ for these jobs.. cause ppl think DRK didn’t get jack from SHB to EW.. like 1 ogcd.. so I’m sure that’s a mini-nightmare for devs, trying to not just literally ‘balance’ jobs but also balance what they create/remove from jobs

[@Cassapphic]

6:20 I did a run of puppets bunker in a discord call with friends on my underpowered laptop once where no enemies ever loaded, I was playing dancer and thankfully that entire job is untargeted aoes but its funny to hear stories of other people having similar problems.

[@yeoldpubman]

>Circle fades upon leaving it. Hemingway needed six words to tell a tragic story, FFXIV only needed five words. Lucid Dreaming and mana ticks were important because you need 2 GCDs to *guarantee* full MP regeneration from your umbral ice phase, BUT if you get lucky you'll get a mana tick right after Blizzard 3 and then you can get the second one during the cast time of Fire 3. In Shadowbringers and earlier you didn't always have a Thundercloud or anything else ready to go, so your options were to waste time on another low-potency ice spell, overcap Thunder, or time your Fire 3 cast so that the mana tick happened before the spell completed. Lucid Dreaming could be leveraged to squeeze a little more MP into that time frame and potentially enable another Fire 4. None of that is important today with the addition of Ice Paradox ensuring you have a second ice phase GCD, but some of the more cursed rotations can leverage a well-timed mana tick to squeeze out some DPS.

[@iPlayOnSpica]

Whenever Blizzard IV is available at the level I'm playing and I don't need to refresh Thunder III, I use it twice before switching to Fire III. A little odd but it works when Paradox and polyglot spells aren't available.

[@SupahPowers]

Black Mage Best Mage

[@vkrunk7]

ik playing thm i hated it so much and was like fk this im done when i got swiftcast. Playing it again then getting to blm I had so much regret bc it improved more and more and kicked in more with every expansion and loved it. I don't main blm but love its kit

[@DacianGradaMusic]

very awesome trip down memory lane! as a recent BLM enjoyer I too fear of what they could change it to, but I hope they'll take PvP and Instanced battles into consideration since there are a few amazing ideas over there! Placing a debuff on enemies and then "explode" it for various effects? Could maybe work. Solution to MP ticks being ice spells generate MP? Would be amazing.

[@seraphlord]

the reason low lvl blm get so grumpy when you try and give them tips is none of them are having fun they just want to level the job to max level so they never have to play it again lol, thats exactly how i felt, i didnt give a crap how to play it correctly i just wanted it to be over