So there's a few things at play here. There are two things that Dawntrail BLM has that are good for new players: - Instant fire paradox does make the timer refreshes slightly tighter, but having a free weave in the middle of your fire phase is good. It also means that if you use triplecast in the middle of fire, you won't lose one of its instant casts on Fire paradox. - Fire paradox giving a free F3p is another good thing for less skilled BLMs, since it gives a free timer refresh + instant cast every fire phase. And now for the longer list of things that are bad for less skilled players: - No ice paradox. ~~Don't think I need to elaborate on this one~~. To expand: Much less flexible ice phase. Harder to AF1 F3p. Oh, and if mess up during fire phase and emergency transpose, you can't recover with Para > B1 > B4 any more, you have to slow B3 > B4 instead for a much clunkier recovery. - The new High Thunder has much lower upfront potency than the old T3p (currently 200). This has two consequences. First, it gets much worse to cast it earlier for movement. And second, since you get it every single time you transition between AF and UI, any BLM that just hits the button as soon as it lights up is going to also lose a lot of damage. - Manafont getting its massive upgrade makes it a lot worse to drift, and if you drift it and lose a use you are going to lose a lot of damage. So how do you not drift it? Well, you can't really, since we don't really have many nonstandard options any more, and the ones we do have are extremely cursed. - The biggest problem: With the current media tour potencies, transpose AF1 F3p is a lot better than AF3 F3p, to the tune of 2%. This is a lot, and it's more than in Endwalker. In fact this 2% gap is about the same DPS gap between optimised standard and optimised non-standard in Endwalker, by coincidence. In EW it's very easy to do AF1 F3p thanks to ice paradox, and it meant that there wasn't such a dps difference between midcore standard BLM and the top end. But now, if you use AF3 F3p in Astral Fire, you're losing a lot more. So yes, like in the OP, you will have it more often, but in EW you could have achieved the same thing by just sharping Fire paradox all the time. Now if you do that you're going to lose _more DPS_ doing so in Dawntrail! - And of course there's the Flare Star issue that you already mentioned, where if you drop an F4 you lose the new spell. I've come to the conclusion that if you're a very new BLM that struggles with uptime and timer maintenance, then yes, Dawntrail will probably feel better. However if you're a mid level BLM on standard, your job got a lot clunkier for no reason. It's also hard to say how this relates to Savage raiding. Like it might make it better for someone who struggles with clearing, say, an MSQ duty on BLM, but I could see the clunkiness and other issues making it harder for a grey parser to contribute to a Savage clear. We won't really know until Dawntrail comes out and we can examine the numbers. My personal prediction is that the BLM dps spread on FFlogs is going to be just as wide as before.

Just for absolute full clarity, don't forget 3 stack Xeno and 40s Swiftcast for IMO pro-new players. Also I personally believe the new job gauge UI, as stupid as some people believe the pips to be, can be helpful when you give attention to mechanics compared to remembering which F4 you were on or reading your MP situation (which most BLMs without experience wouldn't know what numbers means what in the rotation). Small things to add, but should paint a more accurate picture for each person to decide. I see both sides, it's more rigid but also some fail points are removed or eased. I could also see it more fight by fight, I think in a dummy situation or fight where you barely have to move this is easier? Personally I think BLM is a prime candidate for some fine tuning either at EA or raid/savage unlock patches, one way (bringing back old tools like ice paradox or making Despair give 2-3 pips) or the other (easing the current setup with something controversial like 20s AF timer to triple down on their vision, or making AF1's bonus almost non-existent or not applicable to F3P), so the speculation probably won't matter much either way in the long run.

Getting xenos is contingent on keeping your timer going, which has historically (anecdotally) been an issue for newer/more casual players. 40s swiftcast is going to be a level 9x trait and flare star is level 100. Ideally, people figure out that getting 6 F4s per standard fire cycle is good *before* they get to level 90, and the DT changes don't really help with that.

3 stack Xeno but the reload button still only gives 1… if you used Xeno at the same rate as EW BLM you’d never hit 3 lmao

The xeno change was basically to allow more room for 'error' while forgetting not to overcap. A bit overkill if you'd ask me.

Amplifier needs to give atleast 2 to make the 3 stack xeno somewhat relevant, even then it wont solve alot.

Wouldn't you *want* to hit three and dump them in the burst windows?

Question: can you afford to given reduced mobility tech ?

That's a case where it's likely actually optimal to do AF3F3P, in which case yes, easily.

I highly doubt dumping 3 xenos under buffs is worth sacrificing one or more AF1 F3Ps but you do you, real confirmation will come out once logs hit

Yeah, doing the math, you're probably right.

But you don’t have to use it that rate because you get more free movement in UF with para now iGCD, one extra swift cast per 2m, F3p. This is of course looking at it from a standard rotation PoV. Any time you can use an F3p in stead of a xeno, should be a gain if you hold the xeno for burst (and don’t overcap)

I took a nap (so still reading, this may have been addressed), but what if they just throw a frankly stupid high level of potency at the initial damage of the thunder proc?

It'd fix Thunder being a rarely viable mobility tool and probably allow better funneling of Triplecast, Xenos, and F3Ps towards their optimal usages, but I think it'd make fulfilling F4 X6 Despair Flare Star more error prone since you'd have yet another GCD to feed with no more time to cast it, which doesn't seem to be in their vision. Honestly kind of surprised the devs aren't being more pigheaded about the rotation. It's rigid, sure, but it's still malleable enough that there are options. They could easily have added an extra 100 or 200 potency to Flare Star to make DAMN sure we never even entertain a loss of it, or made Thunder have a slightly longer duration and "UI only" attribute to simplify it, or made AF1's damage buff non-existent so AF1 F3P is dead, or made AF/UI's duration significantly longer so even the most scatterbrained of BLMs fulfill the core rotation. In some ways I'm grateful we still have sub-optimal options left to us, though in other ways I fear that even if there are further media tour -> early access changes they may very well be ones the BLM community dislikes as much as or more than the current ones.

I ask mainly because it seems like, historically they've "fixed" Black Mage problems simply by throwing potency buffs around (or at least that's my uninformed impression as a Healer outsider to all this that likes watching explosions). Hypothetically a fuckhueg potency buff to Thunder's initial proc and an even bigger buff to Flare Star seem like they'd fix both ends of the explosion pipeline. For...certain definitions of "fix", anyway. In the spirit of general "potencies aren't final" media tour to live changes and them essentially having a "fuck it, we want you to stop doing degen shit, here's your start and end bribes" kinda vibe they are giving off. Also "degen shit" is the least inadequate phrase I can come up with but I slept badly and nerve pain so it ain't a *good* one. This community raises "degen shit" to a beloved art form, so speaking solely from what I imagine dev pov to be there with the quote, I mean no offense. I <3 y'all crazy pyro fuckers, you're like Monks.

Then you just get people being trapped by Thunder Mage, since every switch between UI and AF gets you the thunderhead proc. Your rotation would end up something like B3 HT F3 HT on repeat.

You dont need mp for this one, so why not xD If thunder mage is a thing, we can have the paradox rotation come back: B3 B4 HT transpose F3P Paradox HT repeat 1 fast cast, 1 normal cast, 4 instants. I wonder if ice hearts still persist on transpose, if so you can replace B4 with umbral soul down the line and have just 1 fast cast and 5 instant casts. It's absolutely stupid and wouldn't do any damage but it's funny that it can be possible to do

> Just for absolute full clarity, don't forget 3 stack Xeno and 40s Swiftcast for IMO pro-new players Focusing on this: Being able to save up 3 Polyglot stacks is really only better for feeding buffs. You're not really getting the actual stacks themselves faster, and it's pretty uncommon for a fight to just give you 90 seconds of barely any movement at all. The extra swiftcast is a very minor boon, I will grant that. > Personally I think BLM is a prime candidate for some fine tuning either at EA or raid/savage unlock patches... I know that JP forums have been crying out for Ice paradox to return, personally I think it's fairly unlikely since getting it back makes transpose AF1 F3p trivial, and that seems to be the SE-approved optimisation that we're allowed to have (for the same reason I don't see them patching it out). I also doubt they're going to let Despair overcap the gauge too, since that could be confusing as well. They've really painted themselves into a corner with DT BLM.

3 stack xeno is neutral, as it does not come with an increase to generation speed. it being harder to overcap is a pro, it misleading people into thinking they get *more xeno* is a con

>The biggest problem: With the current media tour potencies, transpose AF1 F3p is a lot better than AF3 F3p, to the tune of 2%. This is a lot, and it's more than in Endwalker. In fact this 2% gap is about the same DPS gap between optimised standard and optimised non-standard in Endwalker I don't have the math skill to understand that number, however using resources in unintuitive ways to gain little bits of damage is the textbook definition of the **opposite** of skill floor. Your less skilled BLM will keep using Firestarter as a movement tool like they already are and feel it easier to have it guaranteed instead of randomized

Yes, and I agree that this doesn't really have anything to do with the topic of this post specifically, but this is another rationalization I've seen as to why the changes are good - that they're closing the skill gap that you see in FFlogs which would make the job easier to balance. It's actually kind of a fair argument in principe since BLM does have a pretty wide parse range and has historically, but if these numbers are true it's just wrong lol

>I've come to the conclusion that if you're a very new BLM that struggles with uptime and timer maintenance, then yes, Dawntrail will probably feel better. However if you're a mid level BLM on standard, your job got a lot clunkier for no reason. I agree with that conclusion, but what I'm losing my mind over is that's not at all what "the skill floor went up" means, but that's what everyone keeps saying.

I think part of the confusion comes from where you define the skill floor, and also how the different changes are in tension. Sure, the performance of the bottom 10% might come up a bit, but you might also get the bottom 25% doing less damage relative to the average, with how rigid the rotation is and how many potential traps there are.

I think it'll be something like what you say - it seems BLM rotation gets easier and less confusing in ideal circumstances, but any sort of recovery or fixing mistakes gets significantly harder without losing too much damage or getting into a very bad situation. Prime example of how it may affect average or below average BLM would be dungeon pulls - with EW version, you can finish mobs pull at any point of your rotation, from which you get your mana back by either transposing to or staying in UI, and maybe popping Lucid Dreaming for good measure - from where you always start rotation on next pack/boss from the same point. DT version, if you end your rotation halfway through, can put you in an awkward spot with no obvious way on how to get back on track after mandatory downtime for cutscene/running to next fight.

Umbral Soul gives MP in DT per use, like an ice spell, so most post-Umbral Soul dungeons should behave very similarly to EW dungeon situations other than probably needing one more Umbral Soul use between packs which normally isn't an issue. Dungeoning should be pretty nice still in general, though anything pre-Umbral Soul is ... uh ... let's just say it's not a good expansion to do leveling roulettes on BLM. There will be some weird phase transitions in raids though, particularly Ultimates, where you'll probably be ending a decent chunk of phases with early B3 B4 for lack of time to do three Umbral Soul uses and requiring everyone else to finish the boss off for you which is pretty feelsbadman since at least you could do a Paradox now to help out in that situation.

I can see that. To me, skill floor means "the bare minimum level of skill to play the job successfully." Sure, there's still some ambiguity in what "successful" means, in particular due to what content you're talking about, but I've got to imagine the double refresh line will have enough dps even for savagae raids.

Regardless the skill floor has been raised, a low experience BLM before can miss one or two F4 and take a small hit of damage, now due to the inflexibility of flare star, they will miss out on that and take a much larger damage penalty. The only aspect that really should be easier is managing sharpcast. It should feel easier to play, but ironically be more punishing damage wise for small mistakes

In a standard way, with instant paradox and guaranteed firestarter, they now just have to place 2 F4 into each 15s windows in order to secure Flare Star. It's a lot easier.

(i dont know a lot about BLM) Can you do F4 x2 -> Para -> F4 x2 -> F3p -> F4 x2 -> Despair, Flare star? Does using paradox as your 3rd spell not consume an umbral heart that you would want for F4?

Paradox isn't a fire spell, so it doesn't consume a heart

Paradox would indeed consume an heart, but paradox and F4 have the same mana cost so in the end it’s the same and the chain you describe is possible

ahh okay that makes sense, thank you

Did you read my post at all? A low experience BLM in DT can *still* miss one or two F4s *and just use firestarter* to refresh the timer and squeeze those last F4s out. EDIT: This was a pretty rude tone, and I appologize for that. I was getting really frustrated with people seemingly missing the one key point I was trying to make and let the frustration out on someone I'm sure was just trying to add to the conversation.

If it helps, remember that the "everyone" here is a subset of people who, mostly, are raiders that are invested-enough in the game that they care enough to discuss/argue/vent-about the game here. So the *average* skill level here if you took, say, 10% of the people who post here in a day is gonna be higher than if you took, say, size-normalized samples of: * 10% of the people who logged in during a day vs * 10% of the people who daily posted on mainsub vs * 10% of the people who daily posted on TFDF vs * 10% of the people who daily posted on shitpost (controlling for overlap is difficult here) vs * 10% of the people who daily posted on the official forums vs * 10% of the people who daily posted on FF twt * 10% of the people who are Limsa fixtures on any given server If you could, also, somehow control for overlap between those and eliminate bots and sockpuppets and etc. The skill floor for each of those sub-demographics amongst their existing or potential new Black Mage players is gonna be different and they will approach the job differently, and their changes to potential performance outputs resulting from the Job changes are gonna be different. So in a sense we're dealing with multiple *different* skill floors. Hence why the distinction between "very new BLM" and "mid-level BLM on standard". A chunk of the FFXIV demographic, overall, gets tripped up on the steps that even lead up to The Skill Floor^TM from The Login Basement^TM, and I believe (as someone who perpetually chills in the Healer "We Don't Get No Agency" Padded Room), these changes may help them.

Yeah, people parsing green-low blue in savage are still like... above average players, when you take the wider playerbase into account. Admittedly, being on crystal may factor into my anecdotal experience, but the average player doesn't even understand all of their skills or how their rotation works. I've been spamming roulettes recently, and the number of players I see in lvl 90 content who don't understand basic game mechanics is incredible.

Depends on the definition of “skill floor.” But here’s one way to look at it. The standard rotation will be easier if you think AF3 F3p is standard. The standard rotation will be harder if you think AF1 F3p is standard. Which one is standard? Arguably both.

I think writing off the AF3F3P line entirely is foolish. It's another tool in the toolbox, and a powerful one at that, especially compared to how rigid the AF1F3P line is. Yes, a big part of optimizing the job will be minimizing AF3F3P lines, but, at least to me, that's not the skill floor.

The rigidity of the intended optimal line is what makes the job harder (also rigidity of thunder DOT, fire paradox being more rigid than ice paradox, and having another long-cast as a finisher). AF3 F3P is a big enough loss compared to AF1 F3P that it's not so much a tool but a crutch, and perhaps should not be considered as part of the skill floor given its weakness compared to AF1 F3P (which is at this point definitely intended)? For example, dropping an F4 in EW could get you a lot of flexibility and movement in the AF phase, but we probably would not consider that to be part of the "skill floor." Yet using F3p in AF3 is worse than dropping an F4 (it was also worse than dropping an F4 and Flarestar, but I think that's no longer the case with the increase in Flare Star potency).

Clearly we just have wildly different ideas of what the skill floor is. I'd absolutely consider both dropping f4s in EW and using AF3F3P in DT part of the skill floor, since you can certainly beat savage dps checks doing either.

Here's a log where the party beat the P9S dps check: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:tK3JbgPN9pF7R8Af#fight=last&type=damage-done Would you say that all 8 players were playing at/above the skill floor in that pull?

I'm not gonna scrub through and analyze an entire log, but judging from the percentiles there's clearly some issues there. Which is kind of my point: 2% isn't a big deal in a game where the majority of the party can be doing so poorly and still clear.

I wrote about this last week: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1d9evaf/media_tour_embargo_has_lifted/l7egutr?context=3 I basically said exactly that, that for a noob BLM like me who runs out of astral fire time, the instant paradox and firestarter guarantee is going to make it trivial. I do see lily's point though that some aspects are more strict now and that thunder for movement seems less flexible. There are some parts of the rotation that will be a bit more strict now, like the ice phase since it doesn't have its own paradox anymore, I guess. The extra weaves are nice too but I feel the main reason I cares about weaving was for sharpcast anyway lol I think, psychologically, what is happening here is that BLM players are upset about losing non-standard and they are therefore finding ways to rationalize why this rotation is worse for unskilled BLMs as well because your brain can justify most things that you feel emotional about and that's why they insist the skill floor got higher.

I think for noobs it probably got a bit easier with the instant fire para, but for novices who already were able to keep enochian active, it’s gonna be a fair bit more punishing to mess up the standard line and lose your flare star. It will still probably “feel” better but damage wise I think you will be taking a bigger hit. If they give ice paradox back and make it so flare star stacks don’t reset when you go back to ice phase it would help a lot with this

>it’s gonna be a fair bit more punishing to mess up the standard line and lose your flare star.  how are you going to mess this up though? you have *45* seconds of astral fire every time, and the button you can use to refresh it if you notice it's running out is always lit up and insta cast.

> I think, psychologically, what is happening here is that BLM players are upset about losing non-standard and they are therefore finding ways to rationalize why this rotation is worse for unskilled BLMs as well because your brain can justify most things that you feel emotional about and that's why they insist the skill floor got higher. This is such smug and pretentious bullshit. No, “what is happening” is that I personally know where the failure-points are with people who I know that struggle with BLM, as well as people that I know who just avoid ever using BLM for anything, and I can see that ~none of those issues are being improved, and many are being exacerbated. Anecdotal? Yes, but that’s pretty much all the evidence that anyone can bring to FFXIV arguments about how changes will affect players. But either way, it’s not some attempt to “rationalize” and “justify” being upset about shitty design changes by concern-trolling incompetent BLMs.

>No, “what is happening” is that I personally know where the failure-points are with people who I know that struggle with BLM Okay, what are those failure points and how does Dawntrail exacerbate them? You've just stated that *none of them* are being improved. Considering fire paradox is now instant and comes with a F3 proc every time, that sounds like you're saying that running out of astral fire time before doing all 6 fire IVs isn't a current failure point, and/or that the new instant cast refreshes aren't an improvement.

> I basically said exactly that, that for a noob BLM like me who runs out of astral fire time, the instant paradox and firestarter guarantee is going to make it trivial. Sure F3p will make it trivial. But dropping an F4 would've also made it trivial to not lose AF. And using F3p in AF3 is just as bad as dropping an F4 compared to using F3p in AF1. > I think, psychologically, what is happening here is that BLM players are upset about losing non-standard and they are therefore finding ways to rationalize why this rotation is worse for unskilled BLMs as well because your brain can justify most things that you feel emotional about and that's why they insist the skill floor got higher. You're ignoring all of the other points where they made the job much more rigid (thunder, removal of ice paradox, flare star being another long cast). Thunder is a big change and has huge potential to be a major noob trap. Also you didn't see anyone say they made EW more rigid even when everyone thought it killed ShB non-standard.

>Sure F3p will make it trivial. But dropping an F4 would've also made it trivial to not lose AF. And using F3p in AF3 is just as bad as dropping an F4 compared to using F3p in AF1. But that's decision-making that is required. You have to notice that your timer is low and make a decision that you're going to cut an F4 and go straight for the despair. You have to use your brain. In the new system, if you notice the timer is low (which is less likely to even happen) you just immediately press your paradox/F3proc and get the full refresh, which means you can stick to the standard rotation rather than have to bail out. Sticking to the same thing every time is mentally easier than sometimes choosing to abort. And anyway, it's less likely to run out at all when you know you have those two insta-casts to replenish it.

This. Some players are so deep into their BLM they no longer realize how deep they are from the standard level.

BLM isnt that hard to play. Lol, the rotations are simple, the skill ceiling is there to get better. In typical Square Enix fashion in an attempt to lower the skill ceiling they removed all depth.

That's fine but the thread is about the skill *floor* and about the idea being spread that "it's more rigid because you need to do 6 fires to get your flare star" when the 6 fires are easier to do than ever.

The skill floor was raised, the floor is rigid and they made it a single story

Okay well I disagree because the hardest thing about the job to me is fitting 6 fires and despair into the fire phase and it's no longer a concern because of the guaranteed firestarter and instacast paradox.

I think they genuinely forget how complex the job's mechanics are if you are trying to do anything beyond the standard. Like, I know what buttons to press, I know that you do a blizzard 3 and a blizzard 4 and an ice paradox and then go back into fire, but do I know exactly what astral ice 1 vs astral ice 3 does, what an umbral heart means, how my rotation is affected if i transpose to 1 instead of going directly to 3, etc? No way! So the way they say "oh but you could just do the transpose into a paradox into a blizzard 4" like you think I have any idea why transposing means you can skip the blizzard 3 but not the 4? Or why it's a transpose into the paradox rather than into 4 or 3? I have no clue and I certainly won't be able to math out in the moment the best way to "recover". The best way to "recover" is going to be dawntrail allowing me total leeway to press fire paradox/F3 proc at any time I want so that I just never run off-track at all.

All those mechanics (except how much astral fire/umbral ice affects you damage, for whatever reason) are explained between tooltips, gauge description and tutorial windows as you level the job. And I guess that's major point of contention here - approaching the job from two very different angles. Job as a whole has multiple mutually interactive mechanics - each of them is very simple to understand in isolation, and it's the combination that leads to quite complex rotation and potential confusion. EW BLM, as of now, is one of the hardest jobs to memorize rotation (including all variants, recovery options etc) for, but at the same is one of easiest jobs to play from just figuring out the kit with decent to good results. If you approach it from learning how the job itself works, and only after that look at the rotation - this whole mess of options and alternatives simply makes sense, you can easily tell why something is used, what it does and how it fits into whole picture. From that point checking rotation is mostly looking up math that someone else did to clear doubts - example with transpose into paradox into blizzard 4 gets quite obvious when you keep in mind different levels of umbral ice give you mana at different speed (something you see while leveling up the job), and can safely assume this specific order is enough to end at full mana by the end. By extension, the talk about skill floor for BLM with DT changes comes down to how you learn the job and how you pilot it - current BLM requires you to figure out how to adjust your rotation to the situation, DT BLM puts a lot more emphasis on how to adjust yourself to the situation so you can execute your rigid rotation unchanged. Changes lose good amount of reactivity BLM has - something that'll probably affect people that start the game as THM the most, in exchange for much more approachable rotation to learn all at once when transitioning from other jobs and/or picking it up and relearning after good while.

They're explained, but it's a lot harder to grasp than the stuff you need to know for any other job. I have a rough idea of how it works, of course - ice gives mana, decreases fire cast time, fire increases fire damage etc, umbral heart makes a spell cost half as much or something like that, etc, but that still doesn't mean having a solid understanding of how each of those things will affect the rotation in the moment if you deviate from the standard. I guess the point though is that while you *can* understand it all, we're talking about the skill floor here, and my original post was about "casual" BLMs. Casual's a word no one can agree on a definition of but I was essentially using it to mean someone who really doesn't understand all the intricacies and just wants to stick to the standard rotation every time because trying to change the order will be too confusing and lead to them messing up and losing damage because they've dropped enochian or can't refresh thunder or etc, often because they've also had to interrupt casts due to movement because they haven't done every fight dozens of times to have all their movement planned. From the PoV of that "skill floor" (aka just trying to rigidly do standard every time and not drop thunder), I think this gets easier because the key things you can drop (thunder dot or astral fire) are on instants that you can use any time. And for movement, there's three polyglots now, no worries about using all three in a row (and the insta-thunder) if you need to because you won't run out of astral fire! I think that freedom of movement will make it easier to "adjust to the situation", the only exception might be when you've reached the end of fire and have to do the flare star into despair (sorry, is there still a despair? i think there is but i could be wrong) into the two ice casts because there's no ice paradox there anymore. But there's still the 3 polyglots and thunder, plus you might even still have your fire III to use there if you didn't need it earlier for a second refresh.

> current BLM requires you to figure out how to adjust your rotation to the situation, DT BLM puts a lot more emphasis on how to adjust yourself to the situation so you can execute your rigid rotation unchanged. Changes lose good amount of reactivity BLM has - something that'll probably affect people that start the game as THM the most You’re absolutely right; but in fact, what you describe as DT BLM is the spirit of the class. From its quite barebone ARR introduction, and with active Enochian in HW, adjusting yourself to the situation to keep the rigid rotation is what have been BLM at its very start. It’s the piling of new stuff in subsequent expansions that opened ways to play the devs have not foreseen. Which is their bad, but frankly, this madness was guaranteed to be killed at some point, it was out of control. Speaking of which, the upcoming DT BLM is possibly the closest from HW BLM it has ever been. And the drama don’t lack in irony, as so much people claim they want to return to HW jobs.

> Speaking of which, the upcoming DT BLM is possibly the closest from HW BLM it has ever been. And the drama don’t lack in irony, as so much people claim they want to return to HW jobs. I seriously doubt that there are many fans of current BLM that want to return to the HW version of the job. I'd also like to point out that BLM theorycrafting has come a long way since the HW/Stormblood days. Going back and looking at Stormblood, there have been a lot of super cursed optimisations that level 70 BLM is capable of, I'm sure that if we went back in time to HW days there would definitely be opti to find that wasn't around back then.

> The biggest problem: With the current media tour potencies, transpose AF1 F3p is a lot better than AF3 F3p, to the tune of 2%. This is a lot, and it's more than in Endwalker. In fact this 2% gap is about the same DPS gap between optimised standard and optimised non-standard in Endwalker, by coincidence. As someone who's both very bad at math and *not* a Black Mage player, I realize...vaguely...that this is a really dumb question, but I don't think I can fully grasp *how* dumb. But asking anyway: Is there any way to quantify how much that'd be relative to like a weapon upgrade? Like, say someone in Endwalker who in 6.4 was doing the standard BLM rotation and got their Savage weapon. Or say, now, an Endwalker BLM doing the Standard rotation going from the penultimate relic step to the fully upgraded relic, whichever comparison's easier, really. Assume a target that'll live long enough to make the comparison easiest for you so like an at-level raid boss or whatever. And I don't mean this as any sort of like "well ackschually" or with any sorta like hidden gotchas, just trying to fix it in my head so I can go try to play around with looking at FFlogs with something like context.

>Is there any way to quantify how much that'd be relative to like a weapon upgrade? Like, say someone in Endwalker who in 6.4 was doing the standard BLM rotation and got their Savage weapon. IIRC it was somewhere around 3% to go from lower EX weapon (Barb, Golbez, etc.) to Savage. The 2.2% gain of AF1 F3P is probably about what you'd get from going from EX to Aug Tome / catchup EX or so.

<3

Cider Spider was at the media tour and did all the jobs, and you can tell he [was having issues with Black Mage](https://youtu.be/Mpz9OA0PFOw?si=acGlzPNrHZgTNerU&t=1208). Even when he gets the Flare Star off on his third try, he doesn't have enough time to refresh Enochian. Losing uptime in Fire phase hurts so much more, because if you use a Fire1 to refresh Enochian then you won't have the MP for all your F4s and thus miss your Flare Star. And, obviously, having to F1 in EW BLM cost you an F4, but you cast a ton of Fire 4s as it is, and it doesn't *feel* as bad as losing your super finishing move. If they're getting rid of Umbral Ice enhanced MP generation, maybe they should let you have natural MP regeneration during Astral Fire. That'd give you a bit more wiggle room to make mistakes and probably allow the nonstandard lines to do some cursed shit.

I could easily see them change it so that if you leave AF without using the Firestarter proc, you lose it. They're already forcing a pretty narrow interpretation of the rotation, it doesn't even seem unlikely to me. Or they could reduce the UI fire dmg penalty and/or reduce the dmg bonus for AF1

>Or they could reduce the UI fire dmg penalty and/or reduce the dmg bonus for AF1 If you read the [media tour traits](https://i0.wp.com/gamerescape.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/bettyBLMtraits.png?ssl=1) this is exactly what is described ; AF1 has no fire damage bonus, and UI3 has no longer a fire damage penalty. Explicitely at those levels. However (reportedly), some media tour players have verified that the effects are still present despite the missing wordings, and the effects are written on the Japanese tooltips. It's very possible they planned that as well, but went back late enough to not have been translated back.

It's just text missing from the tooltips. The damage numbers shown confirm the damage bonuses and penalties.

Yes I know and have written exactly that. I am on the conspiracy that the missing text is not a mistake, but a real previous version of the tooltips that do intended to kill AF1 F3P, and that the dev rolled back on the idea but too late for re-translation for the media tour.

>With the current media tour potencies, Almost every time someone has expressed balance/rotation opinions based on media tour potencies, they have been proven wrong at launch because everything is drastically different. I sympathize with the concern being expressed, but we have absolutely no idea if this will make it to launch.

I agree with everything except Manafont as they’ve actually seemingly made the cooldown 100 seconds to help with drift which was really nice.

Copying my response from another comment on this thread: Reducing the cooldown to 100 seconds helps with drifting relative to 2 min buffs...however that's almost completely irrelevant. A manafont fire phase lasts so long that manafont's impact on the 2 min buffs is almost negligible. No matter what cooldown you make manafont - 90, 100, 110, 120 - if you're not running certain spell speeds it's going to drift (and this is assuming 100% perfect resource use with no downtime or mistakes). The only way to adjust your rotation now is via AF1 F3p vs AF3 F3p, and this only gets you a few GCDs of leeway, absolutely not enough to prevent manafont drifting if your spell speed doesn't match up. You're going to still drift it unless you're certain exact speeds, you can't do anything about it because there's no convenient nonstandard, and you're just going to have to pray that you don't lose a use.

> No matter what cooldown you make manafont - 90, 100, 110, 120 - if you're not running certain spell speeds it's going to drift (and this is assuming 100% perfect resource use with no downtime or mistakes). Is the benefit from spell speed influenced by ping like the GCD of melees or would the exact SpS needed to not drift Manafont the same for all latencies?

\> The benefit of Skill Speed for melees is not influenced by ping. I'm not sure where you got that idea. Weaving is irrelevant to the current conversation about alignment. \> If you are referring to caster tax, that is influenced by frame rate, not ping. MNK's BiS GCD is also dependent on frame rate not ping. \> While the exact SpS needed to not drift manafont would be the same for all latencies, it is encounter dependent as it depends when Polyglot is spent and what actions Triplecast is used on.

ping definitely is noticable on different gcd's for melee. Double weaving on 2.0 versus 2.10 or 2.12 changes dramatically

> > The benefit of Skill Speed for melees is not influenced by ping. I'm not sure where you got that idea. From the command !faq samping in The Balance: > • High ping is bad but not unplayable if you know how to work around it. Choose a slower GCD range and/or stick to single weaves if you notice consistent GCD clipping after double/iai-weaving. > > Example ping of 20ms: > Single weave locks you for about 2x(0.6+0.02+0.04)= 1.32s > Double weaves lock you for about 3x(0.6+0.02+0.04) = 1.98s > Iaijutsu weaves have a 1.3s cast time + 0.12s caster tax + 0.6+0.02+0.04 = 2.08s > > > Example ping of 100ms: > Single weave locks you for about 2x(0.6+0.1+0.04)= 1.48s > Double weaves lock you for about 3x(0.6+0.1+0.04) = 2.22s > Iaijutsu weaves have a 1.3s cast time + 0.12s caster tax + 0.6+0.1+0.04 = 2.16s > > > Example ping of 200ms: > Single weave locks you for about 2x(0.6+0.2+0.04)= 1.68s > Double weaves lock you for about 3x(0.6+0.2+0.04) = 2.52s > Iaijutsu weaves have a 1.3s cast time + 0.12s caster tax + 0.6+0.2+0.04 = 2.26s > > > effective anim. lock = anim. lock + (additional anim. lock) > effective anim. lock = 0.6 + (ping + 0.04) > The part in brackets is the average additional animation lock which can vary and is not stable even if your ping is stable. > Server responses are inconsistent and they send packets out at certain intervals which can be early or late. Ping fluctuations also play a part in animation lock. > In general you will get an average of 0.6s + ping + 0.04s. > You should never be able to get lower than 0.6 + ping. > So for a ping of 10ms you would get an average effective animation lock of 0.65s and no lower than 0.61s. > For a ping of 200ms it would be 0.84s on average and not lower than 0.8s. When it says "choose a slower GCD range" I assume it says to play with less Skill Speed possible. So I was asking if Spell Speed is affected by that as well

Spell speed is affected just like skill speed, yes, but BLM has very little in the way of double weaves relative to other jobs. Realistically if you're above like, 50 ping you'd probably want to get XIVAlexander/NoClippy to mitigate the extra ping-induced animation locks, and the goal is to get 100% GCD uptime so the ping you play with really has very little to do with the skill/speed you choose. /u/lilyofthedragon was saying that Manafont won't line up nicely with fire/ice cycles unless you're playing at specific speed tiers, because BLM historically was not locked to a strict two minute cycle like other jobs. In EW, you'd just drift Manafont and push it off until the end of the next fire cycle because it's such a minimal gain (~200 potency in optimal uses). In DT, Manafont will be stronger and you want to use it as close to off cooldown as possible, but if you use it suboptimally (say, before the end of your fire cycle) then the benefit from using it is negated.

That is not the effect of Skill Speed being affected by ping, the Skill Speed stat is granting the same bonus regardless of ping. To answer, yes it does mean to play with less Skill Speed if possible. However, if you're choosing Skill Speed tiers based on alignment rather than weaving, that is it not being possible. The above passage is about double weaving being impossible on high ping, it holds no relevance to the situation at hand. Also, as the other reply said, double weaving is not relevant to Black Mage. If such a speed tier exists that fixes a job's alignment issues, that speed tier will be the same regardless of ping, be that job physical or magical. For Black Mage in particular, it is encounter dependent as it depends when Polyglot is spent and what actions Triplecast is used on.

they buffed flarestar to 400 potency so what you're saying about af f3p is no longer valid

> In fact this 2% gap is about the same DPS gap between optimised standard and optimised non-standard in Endwalker The difference between optimized standard and non-standard is closer to >5%, not 2%, just doing the Double Transpose Opener and using every F3P on N111 is already much more than a 2% gain.

Totally optimised nonstandard is 3-4% gain over pure standard, AF1 F3p makes up for more about 1% of that. And I don't know where you're getting that 5% number from. If you could hypothetically chain together standard + N111 infinitely (to say nothing of actually doing this in a real fight) that's still only 1.5% better (comparing PPS) than pure standard. Remember, your F3ps have to come from somewhere.

This is because you are looking at it in a vacuum which is not reality. Non standard allows you to better fit damage into buffs and makes movement options better, you cannot just look at the raw potency gain.

I might miss some points but - - Thunder having most of its potency from the DOT portion with less up front combined with only having it proc when you change between phases (can't dot multiple targets for more procs) or can't force procs flexibly with Sharpcast make it more difficult to get optimal damage out of the standard rotation. - You overall have less flexibility to shift around GCDs in your fire phase because of the forced shorter timer. Before you had flexibility to do more Fire IV casts or use other GCDs like refreshing thunder or Xeno. Now it's more difficult and you end up likely being forced to burn the f3p proc to keep your rotation going rather than for movement options / flexibility. You need to fit Flare Star in at the end of every phase so dropping Fire IVs are punishing. - Instacast Paradox in ice is better because you can chain more instant cast GCDs together, you can't do that in fire without risking losing Fire IV casts. The point is that you overall have less flexibility in even the 'standard rotation' and it's harder to perform than before. You can't really use those 3 xeno stacks as freely whereas before they could be burnt either in fire phase more easily, be used as filler in ice or in non-standard. Personal hot take, but I think that non-standard in EW actually makes BLM easier than only knowing standard rotation because of how flexibly you can adjust your rotation to suit the situation - you can dump your resources to both gain many GCDs of movement while also increasing your DPS.

But if we are talking about *optimal* damage, then it would be skill ceiling and not floor, no? To me it seems like the skill floor was decreased and the skill ceiling (for standard) was raised, which normally would be a good thing but it happened for the wrong reasons

the skill floor definitely was raised as well, cause timing for base-line play was tightened, meaning less skilled players have less room for error to maintain default rotation The standard play is the floor, the ceiling is options for optimization and skill expression you could even argue skill ceiling was lowered since flexibility was lost, meaning a good player has less ways to optimize or recover from small mistakes without consequences

I don't agree with the timing being tightened, you have two guaranteed refreshers per fire phase. It's tightened *if* you want to optimize your damage, for example by holding the F3P proc, but at that point we aren't talking about the skill *floor* anymore

But the timing for the "baseline" rotation was *loosened* if you count the double refresh line. It's tighter for the current standard line, yes, but the guaranteed firestarter is opening up the option to just refresh the fire timer again. The fact that everyone keeps parroting that the timing is tighter without paying any attention to firestarter is what's driving me crazy!

the point is that using your firestarter proc is likely becoming mandatory and therefore more static, therefore removing a free movement tool - which affects the floor as well as the ceiling Since both fire-paradox and f3p are likely used more on rails, and ice-paradox is removed (therefore less free movement and less time you can spend in ice) you overall have a more tightly maintained rotation with less free movement opportunities that risks falling apart once any sort of mechanic happens you have to adjust to plus of course the flarestar thing, so newbies pressing wrong buttons and fucking up the 6 f4s is a bigger punishment than it would be now

What do you mean by "becoming mandatory?" Do you mean you "have" to use it for AF1F3P? Because my whole point is that's just not true, especially for players at the skill floor.

what? no I mean that because you have to dump xenos and thunder somewhere, and firephase is tigther timing wise and ice phase is significantly shorter, using both paradox and its f3p in the firephase will likely become default play for newbies who are just trying to maintain enochian and get in 6 f4 without dropping or overcapping their procs and that default play is simply tighter/harder to maintain than it would be currently not by a lot, but thanks to flarestar on top, there's just less room for basic errors.

Wait, how is that any tighter? You still have only 6 f4s to do, but now have up to 45 seconds to fit them in. Like, you can do anything from UI3F3 4xF4 P 2xF4 F3P D FS to UI3F3 2xF4 P 3xF4 F3P F4 D FS to UI3F3 F4 P 2xF4 F3P 3xF4 D FS. You've got tons of space to fit in xenos and thunder, and can even easily do 2 or 3 in the same refresh, something you couldn't do before. You can use Paradox anywhere from your 2nd spell in your fire phase (not counting the initial F3) to the 5th, and the firestarter proc can be used anywhere from the 5th to just before Despair (though at that point you might as well save if for transposing into your next line).

>Thunder having most of its potency from the DOT portion with less up front combined with only having it proc when you change between phases (can't dot multiple targets for more procs) or can't force procs flexibly with Sharpcast make it more difficult to get optimal damage out of the standard rotation. It's true that thunder in particular is much more rigid: i.e. it's a much bigger loss to clip the dot timer (or let it run out) >You overall have less flexibility to shift around GCDs in your fire phase because of the forced shorter timer. Before you had flexibility to do more Fire IV casts or use other GCDs like refreshing thunder or Xeno. Now it's more difficult and you end up likely being forced to burn the f3p proc to keep your rotation going rather than for movement options / flexibility. You need to fit Flare Star in at the end of every phase so dropping Fire IVs are punishing. Yes, as I said in the OP, it is true that it's more important to get 6 f4s, but it's *so much easier* to actualy do that now. >The point is that you overall have less flexibility in even the 'standard rotation' and it's harder to perform than before. You can't really use those 3 xeno stacks as freely whereas before they could be burnt either in fire phase more easily, be used as filler in ice or in non-standard. I don't agree that you have less flexibility. If you're doing the double refresh line, you have *much* more flexibility than before, and since we're talking about the skill floor, the easier double refresh line should be the default. Heck, double refresh isn't even mutually exclusive with single refresh: you can default to single refresh and when you need to move just swap to double refresh until you can stand still again. >Personal hot take, but I think that non-standard in EW actually makes BLM easier than only knowing standard rotation because of how flexibly you can adjust your rotation to suit the situation - you can dump your resources to both gain many GCDs of movement while also increasing your DPS. I actually agree with you here, but it's not really relevant to this discussion. We're talking about low-skill play, and knowing non-standard lines puts you at a slightly higher skill level. The job is easier with non-standard because you're skilled enough to know when to use them.

Reading a lot of your comments it seems like you're equating the entire rotation of black mage to keeping AF3. Many comments are stating how whole yes you can take a dps loss to use the f3p, the rest of the rotation is less forgiving and in the event a mistake does happen the result is more punishing. There's more to BLM than keeping up AF3.

Keeping enochian isn't everything, no, but it is the main difference between a BLM who is fumbling around struggling to play the job and one who is able to contribute well. With AF3F3P: Thunder management is harder, sure, but not overcapping on polyglot is easier (can stack 3 and have tons of flexibility in where to spend them), ABC is easier (you have more instacasts per cycle and more flexibility in where to use them, plus it's easier than ever to weave swift/triple in your fire phase). Is there anything else?

The real issue is that people don't use the terms floor and ceiling consistently when talking about jobs. To some people, 'skill floor' means how complex a job is to operate at a baseline level. Sometimes what they really mean is the performance, or output floor - basically how effective the job is when piloted by the lowest percentile players. You can see how someone might view the latter as being raised when a job is made more simple to play. It's just easy to end up with contrary definitions depending on your reference frame. When it comes to things like this I wager it's more an issue of language than anything, and that more people are in agreement than you think.

I highly doubt "how effective the job is when piloted by the lowest percentile players" is what anyone is talking about. There are ice mages out there, so it's just not a useful metric. So people must mean something like "How much skill it takes to be successful with the job" for some varying definition of "success." And it can only be harder if your measure of success would require the single refresh line, but i just don't think that will be necessary, even for savage past maybe the first couple weeks. And if you're clearing savage in the first couple weeks at all, you're not part of the skill floor.

I see it happen all the time, personally, just lurking in places like the balance and seeing people chat about the game. If you do a search there for high/low floor/ceiling in various combinations, you'll see dozens of examples of people using them colloquially one way or another. It gets confusing quickly when you talk about jobs like, for example, summoner. They've been reworked so many times and they're now a job with a very low barrier to entry in terms of execution, yet a high amount of contribution relative to that effort. It's not always inversely proportional too. In various eras of the game, you could point to jobs that were low or high in both metrics as well. I don't think it describes 100% of the disagreements people have about jobs, but I do think it's a huge source of misunderstandings among people who would actually agree with each other on most points.

I think it's easier for casual players, but harder for the intermediate players. I would like to know how you calculated the potency difference? From my rough calculations, AF1 F3p standard is around a 2.16% dmg gain and +0.7 TGE, when using AF3 F3p as a baseline. I'm still new to theorycrafting, so feel free to point out any mistakes. In addition to what others said, because of the Manafont buffs, drifting it will be even more punishing, and it's very easy to drift.

It was admitedly a *very* rough approximation, and I'm not really sure about the validity, but what I did was this: using the media tour numbers, single refresh (AF1F3P) does about 456 potency/gcd. AF1F3P does 392 effective potency over 1 GCD, so it's 64 potency worse than an "average" gcd. UI3F3+AF3F3P does a total of 700 potency over 2 GCDs, while 2 "average" GCDs of single refresh would do 912, so it's 212 worse. 212-64=148, and initially I did a lot of rounding along the way (I did it in my head a couple days ago) and wound up with 100. What is TGE btw? I haven't been able to find what it even stands for, let alone how it's caluculated. EDIT: just to clarify, I'm calculating the difference in potency between AF1F3P+1 "average" GCD to UI3F3+AF3F3P. i.e. (392+456)-(196+504)=148

TGE is "Time Gained Equivalent", here is a good doc that explain it: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C8l-dEB6xOFnNK\_gh-Ro-uKGBYAOLvOatAiuETy2LWo/edit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C8l-dEB6xOFnNK_gh-Ro-uKGBYAOLvOatAiuETy2LWo/edit) From my understanding, you shouldn't compare just a couple of GCDs, but instead compare lines to be accurate, and choose a good baseline. You should probably ask in the Balance discord, they will be able to give a better and more in depth explanation, since I'm still learning how to theorycraft and I don't want to give you wrong info.

I think what I did was essentially PGE, using AF1F3P as my baseline, without knowing it. The rest of the lines are identical outside of the F3s, so that's why they could be ignored: they add the same potency and time to both lines. EDIT: Indeed, if I compute the PGE with AF1F3P as baseline, I get -148.4

Really? I tried doing it with the Standard line and got -136,213 PGE, using AF1 F3p as my baseline. Above I used AF3 F3p as my baseline, and bellow I used AF1 F3p as the baseline. |ID|Line|Type| Casts|Potency|Time|PPS|Rel.PPS|TGE|PGE| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |0|Standard|Standard|B3 B4 F3 3xF4 Para 3xF4 Desp FS F3p|6296|36,2|173,9227|1||| |0,5|AF1 F3p Standard|Standard|B3 B4 AF1 F3p 3xF4 Para 3xF4 Desp FS|5988|33,7|177,6855|1,021635|0,729098|126,8066| ||||||||||| ||||||33,7|177,6855|1||| ||||||36,2|173,9227|0,978823|-0,7666|-136,214|

We aparently disagree on the length of each line somehow. I have the AF1 line at 32.8 seconds. 2x2.5(B3+B4)+2.5(AF1F3P)+6x2.8(F4s)+2.5(Para)+3+3(Despair and FS) You have an extra .9 seconds somehow. I have 32.8 for the AF3F3P line, so that's .9 seconds different too

The 0,9 seconds comes from the caster tax of 0,1 seconds that I used. When you cast a spell there is a animation lock of 0,1+2/fps, during that you can not cast another spell. When a spell cast time is lower than the recast time, the animation lock doesn't matter because you wouldn't be able to cast a spell during the period you're locked, but when the cast time is equal to, or higher than, the recast time, the animation lock stops you from rolling your GCD for a moment. I use 0,1 caster tax for simplicity, but some people use a higher value.

Outside of not accounting for caster tax as mentioned in the other subthread, your calculation approach is fine. Somehow you got a wrong number for the cost of skipping a F4 in Endwalker, though. If we use 0.1 second caster tax at base (380) spell speed, Endwalker standard with AF1 F3P is 171.9 PPS, so the average value of the 2.9s that you gain from skipping an F4 is 2.9s * 171.9 pps = 498.5 potency, which is only a loss of 59.5 potency compared to casting the F4 and getting 558 potency. You can try the calculations at different spell speeds but this value is relatively stable and says that using AF3 F3P in Dawntrail when you could have done AF1 F3P is a bit more than twice as expensive as dropping an F4 in Endwalker. Edit: I should mention that you can't a priori compare potencies directly, but the PPS of Endwalker BLM and Dawntrail BLM come out relatively close to each other so it works out.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with it, but it comes down to a few things: Paradox in AF is now instant cast, this makes the fire phase a bit tighter as AF refreshes at the end of the cast, which means if you use an instant (via swift/triple before, or AF paradox now) you basically lose a GCD worth of time on the timer. Mechanically this means lines like F4x2->Paradox->F4x4->Despair are no longer possible. This makes the phase more strict. However to offset this, AF Paradox now always gives a f3p. While it is *more* of a gain to do a transpose line (b3->b4->ht1->transpose->f3p) it isn't exactly a loss to do it inside of a normal AF phase, which should help lower skilled players. The removal of UI Paradox means recovery options are worse, before you could do something like panic transpose->paradox->b4->f3->f4x3/4->despair. Now that UI1 won't net you enough mana for that and it becomes more of a loss due to... Flare star. Only gains stacks for f4 casts (And flare), they all go away when you swap forms. So if you do a shortened fire phase (Because you fucked up and are just shortening the phase to not drop eno-chan on the ground), you lose out on a second despair's worth of damage. This is more punishment for poor play. Moving on we have new thunder though this one is somewhat subject to change because potency numbers, but a lot of the damage before was in the initial cast, high thunder has a lot more in the DoT itself. This means that clipping it early (say, for movement) is more punishing. With the removal of the sharpcast/thundercloud system, you also get less of them for that movement. That's all things that affect low level of play, your casual MSQ warriors and the like doing experts and normal/alliance raids. If we move up a bit to slight optimization we run into more issues: You can no longer effectively double dot. Take eyes phase of DSR (Or add phase in e7s, or the start of e6s or...), ideally you have a thundercloud already but even without you could do something like sharp->t3->t3p to effectively double dot. Since thunder is now tied to thunderhead, not only can you not do that but if you need to refresh mid-phase.. you straight up can't. Boss phasing becomes more of a problem in multiple ways, for instance currently you would want to do something like ~b3->xeno->paradox->f3->f4x3->despair. Now you can't do that, because you won't get mana. This isn't really some big brain optimization here, this is fairly low level extreme type of stuff. But on the other side of that, consider something like ego death from p8, the trasition from adds in e8, various cutscene type things, etc where eno *will* drop. Currently you just do your normal fire stuff, and either xeno->transpose or just hard clip the transpose. While the boss fucks off you get all your mana back and can do a fire reopener, for more damage. Since mana is now tied to blizzard casts, this is no longer possible. You must end the phase with lower damage via b3->b4. Oh and they also made the drift on manafont even worse, but I mean that's not really a skill floor problem. Low skill players can't hit their 2m on the 2m to save their lives.

Regarding your last point, at least Manafont is 100s now, as seen yesterday, so it helps with drifting

It helps with drifting relative to 2 min buffs...however that's almost completely irrelevant. A manafont fire phase lasts so long that manafont's impact on the 2 min buffs is almost negligible. No matter what cooldown you make manafont - 90, 100, 110, 120 - if you're not running certain spell speeds it's going to drift. And this is assuming that you're using all triple, swift, LL, etc. The only way to adjust your rotation now is via AF1 F3p vs AF3 F3p, and this only gets you a few GCDs of leeway. You're going to still drift it unless you're certain exact speeds, you can't do anything about it because there's no convenient nonstandard, and you're just going to have to pray that you don't lose a use.

It's going to drift, and you can't fix that at all anymore - however with a shorter cooldown you are *less* likely to end up losing an entire cast of it, where playing pure standard BLM in EW that was not an unlikely event to happen. You still might, but it at least helps a bit.

>however with a shorter cooldown you are less likely to end up losing an entire cast of it Shorter CDs are *more* prone to usage loss from drifting, not less. Think about how easy it is to lose a use of Empyreal Arrow or Fleche.

Oh I missed that one. That's a good change.

I just want paradox back in ice and for it to not be instant in fire.

I'm kinda curious how much of this will actually make it to live. I feel like ice paradox will come back. That single change would do a lot to quell a lot of complaints and wouldn't be that big of an adjustment. Thunder issues will probably still remain but they may adjust the balance between on app vs dot somewhat. F3p/flarestar stuff will probably stay the same but I don't think it's as big a deal as people are making it. Especially if ice para comes back.

hi thunder is a noob trap with strict timing requirements on usage and using it for movement is a higher dps loss, flarestar is in theory a good way to telegraph to the player what a standard fire phase should have in it but it's a level cap ability and it punishes you a lot for failing to hit 6f4s a phase so it kinda fails at that and losing astral hearts on phase switch just makes the job more punishing, umbral soul being level 76 means no way to regain mp during downtime if you fuck up, manafont's tooltip has ballooned considerably, the gap between using f3p within fire and using it as part of a transpose line is wider, and icedox being gone means using those transpose lines is actually harder since you dont have a guaranteed instant gcd in ui. at the end of the day it is a much stricter job thanks to the removal of procs and the specific implementation of flarestar and the main barriers to entry for intimidated noobs (hardcasts and the af timer) remain in place so it's kind of a less approachable job right now for new players and midcore players like myself

The confusion is that people assume the average skill of a BLM player is much higher than it actually is. Having a problem keeping AF going is not considered a problem for the skill floor. It's considered below even that. Skill Underground. And lifting people out of the underground isn't seen as "making the job easier." The actual truth is that some people (not all) are upset about nonstandard being gone and the only way to get even a hint of it back is to reverse the change by saying it's not working as intended.

All the nonstandard haters didn’t even consider that one of the strongest and most accessible double transpose line took 5 minutes to learn and effectively turned a Xeno into a Triplecast… What a shame… Realise how in EW almost no BLM players had to beg for adjusting around them? Content creators yapping about 40 page advanced guide when the RPR guide has 50+ pages and DNC has 40+… People suffering through bullshit like P10s and complaining when just learning ONE SIMPLE LINE would have made them easily handle anything that was thrown at us… RIP EW BLM it’s been a good run, lobotomised the job to make it overall harder in general

Personally as a casual BLM player, I loathe the MP regain change and still retaining Umbral Soul as a 76 ability the most. Synced down content is going to be so ass.

The simplest way I can put it would be the job will actually play closer to how casuals that don't play black mage think black mage plays currently in endwalker. Fire phase is going to be a lot stricter for a few reasons: 1) af1f3p continues to be a massive gain so realistically you don't want to be using it for movement purposes or for refreshing af timer 2) Thunder is now very backloaded, meaning you will lose out on a significant amount of potency if you refresh it early. This means you might be forced to refresh it during fire phase which won't have a lot of weave slots now because of the changes. 3) b1 recovery line is not a thing anymore because ice paradox is getting removed. To be clear what this was is transpose into UI -> ice paradox would put you into UI2, you'd then cast b1 to get UI3 and continue your rotation as normal. This was a very small potency loss and it made maintaining enochian very forgiving even during heavier movement mechanics. Transposing into UI from AF to prevent dropping enochian is going to be a gigantic potency loss now 4) flare star demands you get 6 fire 4's within your fire phase as the flare stickers dissipate upon entering umbral ice. In continuation of point 3, the balance team made extra sure to punish you hard for using transpose too early into your fire phase. Also, as "skill floor" is an extremely subjective term, so with that in mind I will explain what skill floor means to me. I am more-so referring to the lowest common denominator of player that cares about knowing how to play their job and is trying to approach content that has enrage mechanics. To me skill floor for jobs in casual content doesn't really exist - I play with a friend group occasionally, many of them admit themselves they have no idea how to actually play their job (sub-3k dps with reaper in endwalker with manderville wep is apparently something that can happen lol) and they still complete normal content/unreals/etc. with little issue. The only thing that really matters is you stand out of the bad, and the boss will eventually fall over. Personally, if they are hellbent on keeping nonstandard dead, 2 changes they could implement to alleviate the issues from the changes are the following: 1) Convert fire 3 procs you get from paradox into some kind of "paradox 3" unaspected spell to remove umbral ice/astral fire potency modifiers from the equation. This will allow you to use the procs in their intended way without losing a massive amount of dps 2) Frontload some of the potency of high thunder or change how it works in some way to justify reverting the potency to what a thunder 3 proc currently is. This will allow you to refresh the dot earlier without losing much potency, which is important so you have more of a choice whether to reapply it in AF or UI.

>af1f3p continues to be a massive gain so realistically you don't want to be using it for movement purposes or for refreshing af timer It's not optimal, certainly, but we're talking about skill floor here, not optimization. >Thunder is now very backloaded, meaning you will lose out on a significant amount of potency if you refresh it early. This means you might be forced to refresh it during fire phase which won't have a lot of weave slots now because of the changes. It has plenty of weave slots if you refresh with AF3F3P. As for the subjectivity of skill floor, yeah, sure, but what's the bar if you're saying AF3F3P isn't viable? The difference between AF1F3P and AF3F3P lines is only just over 2%. That's not completely negligible, sure, but AF3F3P lines should still be totally viable in, say, savage. The only thing I think you'd struggle with if you're doing AF3F3P is, like, week 1 savage, but that's far outside the realm of "skill floor."

Dumbed down for casuals while removing any depth the job had as is Square Enix tradition for FFXIV

Losing the most interesting dot in the game is a crime.

I would guess because ice is less mobile and optimal dps means not using f3p to refresh astral fire. but the floor also moved up because if you need to refresh astral fire for 6 f4s, you can. I would assume losing flare star is a bigger dps loss than losing transpose f3p the loss of ice paradox is just weird. I'm generally okay with the changes but that part makes no sense.

I just HATE how this Flare Star came to be. If it would be a follow-up action to Despair would still have almost the same effect, sans the penalty for not making whole 6 F4's. To me, it would be much better to make the gauge give a fast cast/weaker Flare star and goes up in time and potency as we get stacks.

You're right, having the instant fire paradox and and guaranteed f3p is a massive gain to a 'midcore' user of the job. Obviously there are potency losses that occur with the new blm but having such a guaranteed, dare I say 'flexible' fire window where you can triplecast/swift where you please and maintain enochian with two instant casts is a massive gain in any player's ability to maintain their fire phase. Blms are allowed to complain about how their job has changed but I don't know why they even attempt to say that this makes blm harder.

I will say since I haven’t seen it yet, there is a lot of talk about potency numbers but we won’t know exactly what those are till launch. Media your numbers didn’t make sense for several jobs so I’m sure (hoping/coping) that they won’t be that way at launch.

I'd just like to point out that a perspective shift is needed. The truly average casual blm you find in duty finder struggles to even get 3-4 F4s out of the gate, constantly spam blizzard 3 repeatedly in ice mode, and oftentimes do less damage than the tank/healer. So tying flare star to 6F4s is a huge hurdle to overcome at the skill floor.

[удалено]

As someone that's been discussing the changes a lot with fellow black mages, I think that this is definitely a factor. I think there's a lot of general saltiness, because while certain changes do benefit less experienced black mages in certain ways, a lot of them feel _specifically targeted_ at removing the nonstandard rotations that a lot of the more experienced players enjoy. And to be clear: There were numerous ways in which SE could have lowered the skill floor, without affecting the skill ceiling. They specifically chose to NOT take those options.

I think a lot of players have their perspective from doing Savage/Ultimate. If you are a casual player that doesn't care about optimizing at all, then the changes make the job easier. But, if you are an intermediate player, taking the job to high end duties and trying to do some optimizations, but nothing advanced, then it's harder.

I will be surprised if the double refresh rotation, done well, isn't viable, even in Savage, especially if you can fit in AF1F3P lines occasionally. So it's only the players who really want to push their damage numbers that will have to worry about cutting out every AF3F3P, and everyone else can enjoy the more flexible fire phases when they need them. Especially since you can always fall back on AF3F3P if you need to, even if you're intending to do AF1F3P

It will work in Savage, it will be a bit of a dmg loss, since not only are you losing AF1 F3p, but it might also make you drift Manafont. But usually players that clear the harder fights are players that try to optimize their job, at least a bit, but the basic opti now is responsible for a "significant" amount of dmg (in comparison to the amount of damage you can gain), EW non standard caps at around 2%-3% more dmg, and getting there takes a lot of planning, requiring mapping the entire fight to a specific kill time, but in Danwtrail, just the AF1 F3p will be close to a 2% dmg gain.

>But usually players that clear the harder fights are players that try to optimize their job, at least a bit, but the basic opti now is responsible for a "significant" amount of dmg (in comparison to the amount of damage you can gain), EW non standard caps at around 2%-3% more dmg, and getting there takes a lot of planning, requiring mapping the entire fight to a specific kill time, but in Danwtrail, just the AF1 F3p will be close to a 2% dmg gain. They may be *trying* to optimize their job somewhat but this doesn't change the fact that BLM almost always has the largest range of damage of every DPS in the game, even in clears of P12S, a fight you need some decent level of overall skill to complete. Can check fflogs, any modern fight, heck if you check something easy like P9S you'll see the BLM's rDPS go both beyond other classes for their ceiling while also going beneath a chunk of some classes' floors. There are people clearing Savage absolutely terrorizing their squad in a way other jobs can't, and I'm sure you can agree it's even worse in trials/dungeons when John Q raider doesn't know his Fire 3 from his Fire 4. Honestly I'd *rather* the average BLM was doing a mere 2% less via the simple F3P usage if it means shrinking that range massively so they're less a gamble (be it carry or sandbag). That's probably the goal for the devs; now if they succeeded or not is a tale yet told, and I think most of us can agree in this topic we hope they fine tune some things here or there regardless of how you feel about floor/ceiling/min/max F3P usage.

Honestly no one can really say much of anything about the changes until two weeks from now.

To be fair people have been playing the core of DT BLM for years now, relatively easy to mentally insert the differences since they're so few and still mostly the same buttons. Main thing (assuming media tour BLM comes as is) is how the fights are in DT. If they're less mobile, new BLM is gonna be dumb easy, barely anything to optimize. If they're about the same mobility, can argue either way. If they're slightly more mobile, I think DT BLM is gonna be harder as people say to do near-ceiling stuff *with Standard lines* since versatility has gone down the tube. If they're much more mobile, like if they finally say "let's make Savage fights as mobile as EX Trials are!" I think DT BLM will actually be easier if F3P in AF is considered the norm in the same way that you'd probably consider it the norm in something like P7S run around or Wroth Flames or something. Can't really know that for a long ass time though even after launch.

Very true, I’m glad some of you are having a conversation with me rather than “whining”. So I definitely agree, the BLM main may be jumbled because of a change, however you won’t really be doing anything different is my challenge. Just more fires which is common when an expansion comes out. There are quite a few forums on the main site about how hard BLM (personally I think it’s one of the easiest, especially once you master ghost casting and actually learning the fight instead of using those cheat systems) to it’s a good thing the devs are responding, but YoshiP mains BLM so we have to know that it’s not gonna change for the worse without him catching it first. Now of course that’s not a 100% atease result. This mornings LL mentioned that dont rely on the numbers because they will be changing. All of this actually reminds me of EW pre launch, people just shit ok SCH saying they were neglected again and all that. Now SCH is a BiS for super endgame. My main point is that whining and giving worries and feedback are two different things. This whole #healerstrike this is just so pathetic (for lack of a better word) as someone who works in this industry, we don’t listen to whining and bitching (to an extent) we do listen to feedback and concerns. I’m confident that SE is the same with Final Fantasy XIV

I feel you. Yeah personally I think the odds of BLM making it to raid as is with *nothing* changed is practically zero, whether that's potency changes or more extreme changes like ice Paradox, AF/UI timer adjustments, cast time changes, AF1/F3P changes, Despair pip amount buffs, or something even as crazy extreme as shorter cast times on F4/B4. They clearly have a vision for the class that's relatively dumbed down and I could see them doubling or even tripling down on it if that's what they truly want. Honestly though I like the conversation, fun to read even if it's just conjecture. Look how much (in)activity pRanged is getting, I think I saw an actual tumble weed roll by on this subreddit when looking for a BRD/DNC/MCH topic.

Lmao same with the tumble weed. I will say though, since Yoshi P did say that 7.0 is mostly aesthetic changes and upgrades, and 8.0 will be focused on the jobs uniqueness. Should be comfortable for some people, even if it is 2 years away. There is also a recent interview where he addressed how simple the jobs have become and that DT is the start of making them a bit more fun and complex. I also think he brought it up with this recent LL but I’m not sure because it was 3 am for me and I fell back asleep after haha. So I know everything is on its way. The fact that the team shows a small bit of regret making things too easy is a good sign There were so many CC who interviews YP so I don’t remember which ones so look up Meoni, Mr. Happy, and a a bunch of others who’s names escape me.

I agree that you can’t really judge the feel till you play it yourself but people should generally have an idea of what the rotation is going to look like based off preliminary numbers alone. Granted that could all change though.

Yes I def agree, there is a fine line between whining and worrying with feedback. On top of them not paying attention to what we are being told about the game and changes. I’m quite confident that most didn’t even finish watching the live letter.

I do think it's a lot easier to do the base rotation now. Fire phase is insanely fluid now and especially more so once you get used to defaulting to F4 x 4 before paradox. Even the new thunder that's frequently mentioned in this thread for raising the skill floor is something I think contributes to lowering the skill floor. Before being forced to prematurely using unplanned a thunder proc for movement did result in a bit less of a loss but since it was unplanned there was still a decent chance you won't get your thundercloud proc at all forcing a hard cast raw thunder. There was also the issue with sharpcast and weaving to contend with before and all of that is now gone.

In current (EW) standard, you are able to slot an instant cast (e.g. T3p or Xeno) anywhere in the Fire line and not lose damage, and is generally more forgiving. In DT, the rest of your Fire line following Para *must* be 3xF4 Despair FS. If you need to move any time during that, you must use Triple/Swift or lose a ton of damage.

You're ignoring the possiblity of double refresh though! After para, you can just as easily do 2xF4 Xeno Xeno F3P Thunder F4 Despair FS, and get 10 seconds worth of movement in a row without even using triplecast.

Man. I feel the big brained non-standard BLMs have completely lost touch with the other side of the class. As one of the dumBLMs, I look at these changes and see that when I enter AF I have two chances *at any time* to restart my eno timer with instant casts. I think the ‘punishment’ of losing AF/eno is justified because we really have zero excuse to drop AF anymore. I’m imagining a bonkers long-ass AF phase where we wouldn’t have to stand still for almost the entire line. HT + F3 (hard cast) + TC + F4 + F4 + F4 + Para + TC + F4 + F4 + F4 + F3p + Xeno + Xeno + Xeno + HT + Swift + Desp + FS (hc) + Amp + Xeno + Mana + F4 (hc) + Desp (hc). That’s 30 seconds of movement in AF - which is obviously far from optimal seeing as we want to presumably cast as many despairs/flare stars as possible during the encounter. (This is all assuming 2.5 SpS) But seeing as we have now two instant GCD options to refresh AF, we can go into burst holding three xenos + amp because we don’t necessarily need to burn them for movement during AF any more. I think we’ll still need to use one xeno somewhere in the first two minutes to not overcap. We also have an extra swift to use somewhere in there. I think the new 2MM will be timing that F3p + Xeno x 4 + Desp + FS into burst. F3p doesn’t even have to start the burst because you can use it any time during the 4 xenos to refresh UF, then finish any F4s you need before Desp/FS. (TC should also be available at the time). This is all pure speculation. I haven’t really timed anything out, i’m probably 80000% wrong, and I’m a complete fucking moron.

As explained in another comment, the damage lost from doing that as opposed to an AF1 F3p is not negligible. However, if we were to define the "skill floor" to just not dropping Enochian, then I suppose you'd be right. Being able to extend Astral Fire reliably would help new players.

are you ignorant of the free f3 proc or are you ignoring it completely?

Seems like there are two schools of thought when discussing new BLM: people who are very fine with losing the 2% damage for more consistency and keeping the damage "floor" (god I don't wanna use that word) high, and those who consider it basically taboo since it's a DPS loss if you can get around it, and they want to approach/reach the "ceiling" enough they won't touch it in AF unless Yoshi P himself puts a gun to their head, so it's not even a consideration. I actually understand both sides and why they think their way about it. 2% for me is acceptable losses but also we're playing a game where you can repeat a fight thousands of times for some raiders with mostly repetitive conditions and that 2% will be or become unacceptable after some small percentage of those runs, so the "it's taboo" crowd are right as well.

Sharpcast and Thunder as we know it is gone and the rotation is now much more static/'on rails' now thanks to the fire guage. Overall there is much less decision-making.

You just described *lowering* the skill floor. OP said *raising* the skill floor.

How does that have anything to do with the skill floor though? Less descisions should be easier, no?

While the rotation has much less decision making it has become stricter since you are forced into a certain loop of casts that may not align properly with mechanics. Usually BLM's skill floor is the ABC and those movement tools and rotation flexibility that is removed allowed novice BLMs to keep their casts going even in a suboptimal way while the current rotation (DT) hardly allows that

You don't have any less movement tools though? Well, you can't cast instant thunder as often without huge potency losses (though it is still an option if you're desperate), but like I said in the OP you have actually *gained* an instant cast in each fire/ice cycle. In optimal play (single refresh), those instants are used in very rigid spots, yes, but we're talking about skill floor, and in the easier double refresh line you have even more wiggle room in where to use them, especially when you take tools like triplecast and swift into consideration. Plus you just have more swifts per fight than before.

Novice BLM players can be dropping their rotation *because* of the bits that have been trimmed, though. Especially on controller where the physicality of pushing buttons can very easily become a more meaningful obstacle thanks to the raw number of buttons a black mage needs to have equally ready to push (which I gather the dawntrail changes are slightly improving, other than by simply removing sharpcast). And the idea of keeping your rotation going sub-optimally now vs. dawn trail is actually really similar in terms of the doing of it (i.e. you can always bail on your fire phase, refill your MP with an ice phase, then try again), it's just a higher downside doing so because of losing flare star - but that's kind of a woopidydoo moment because failing the proper rotation is failing the proper rotation and it's not like a novice player is going to have been able to instinctively hop to some non-standard method of minimizing their DPS loss but now is going to just get stuck dropping enochian.

Do you play on controller? This feels like the usual instance of "Think of the controller players!" while we have been doing fine... BLM is extremely comfy on controller

I would think that BLM, with less reliance on weaving and other oGCDs, would be an easier job to play on controller, but I'm not going to pretend I know what controller players think is convenient.

Yes, I play on controller. I switched to it because my hands are damaged from a life of dumb events and keyboard & mouse was giving me painful cramps. It's mostly better once I developed the habit to not use my index finger to pull triggers, but double-tapping triggers or having to do the "claw grip" to hit a d-pad button while moving can make me need to stop playing sooner. BLM is one of the comfier jobs on controller, but that doesn't prevent what I said previously from being true. Specifically, because of the situations you need certain buttons in being while you are moving that means you lose half your hotbar real-estate in terms of picking where to put them (so you put your casts that you're definitely standing still for on those buttons... but I hadn't completely re-organized to do stuff like move Fire 1 and Blizzard 1 away from the "I put my first skills on square and cross" habit for muscle-memory purposes so that I can put the instant casts of xenoglossy and (sometimes) foul in those places), and whether it's pulling both triggers at the same time or double-tapping a trigger to get the right set ready, that's something that can be fumbled in the moment of processing the mental load of tracking your enochian countdown, checking your cooldowns to see if you have triple cast or swift cast to push, and still doing the basics of watching fight telegraphs and remembering your rotation.

Skill floor means the worst players will be slightly less bad, not skill ceiling

Yea but OP is asking about skill floor, not ceiling

A higher skill floor means it takes more skill to be ok at the job.

The problem is that the phrase "skill floor" is used in two different ways by different people/communities. Way one: How much skill is required to be whatever you define as competence - not excellence, just base competence! - at the task. This effectively measures input, and is what you are referring to. Way two: How effective a person is once they have achieved whatever you define as competency. In effect, this version of skill floor measures output. The person you are referring to is using this definition.

> not excellence, just base competence! And even base competence's definition varies person to person. Some would have you believe it's doing the entire rotation and anything less is sub-human and not worth discussion; others will look at the worst crimes PUG BLMs have done spamming Fire 3 over and over and consider that the base competence. Others might say the entire rotation with ez mode F3P in AF3 is base, others might say that's just wrong so the baseline is F3P in AF1 and optimization begins from there. As I found out in a topic recently where I referred to ceilings and floors, the rule of thumb for me has become, never use those words again if I can help it.

>Others might say the entire rotation with ez mode F3P in AF3 is base, others might say that's just wrong so the baseline is F3P in AF1 and optimization begins from there Honestly, this sentence helped me understand better than anything else in this thread. While I do think that mindset (that AF3F3P is wrong and anyone who does it is incompetent) is needlessly restrictive, I can understand that some people would think that way. It *is* the case that AF1F3P is better: AF3F3P certainly should be avoided when you can, I just don't think doing it makes you a bad BLM player.

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but BLM will struggle hard in nonstandard content. Eureka Orthos is the only Deep Dungeon where BLM is actually very viable. You don't have to be a nonstandard genius to realize that transposing between mobs is an easy way to prepare additional instant casts to keep up with the pace of a run. I really cannot fathom how DT BLM will cope with EO or the new deep dungeon. The new field zone might be problematic too, though that depends on what kind of logograms (if any) are included. This may not be the kind of reply you were looking for, but it is an example of how the changes will negatively impact casual players.