1. FFXIV Reset Timers
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  1. #1
    Relic Weapons
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    I'm not enjoying 3.0's BLM - anyone else?

    BLM used to be a rather relaxing and carefree job - it was probably the most basic job, even moreso than PLD.
    It was a nice change of pace from other jobs such as MNK and DRG that required positional attacks and upkeep of debuffs and dots. Other than Thunder we didn't have anything to worry about besides surviving/moving and keeping our DPS output at decent enough levels. In comparison to SMN it was easy mode. There was a lot of gratification from firestarter and thundercloud procs. I used to love those procs - especially the rare occasions when you would get 3-4 procs back-to-back.

    Now, this basic but key mechanic is lost. They are detrimental to a BLM's damage output when BLM is being played properly/skillfully. On the rare occasion they will be available when you need them, which is once every few hundred fights?

    Furthermore, I don't particularly like the stress of having my eyes glued to my status bar 24/7 watching the count down of Enochain and preparing to refresh while SPLAT, never mind what I was saying I just ate an aoe and died because I was trying to keep track of my enochain and astral fire countdowns...

    Oh well, I guess 1,200-1,300 dps on the dummies is something I can brag about.

    I'm aware there are some BLMs out there that have mastered the new 3.0 BLM and have the skill and dedication to really make the job shine. But they don't represent the majority of BLMs. Others are happy to fall back on the 2.0 rotation/mechanics and only use the new enochain mechanics during "safe" periods. All I'm saying is this is an exceptionally difficult job to master at the moment and to get any kind of decent dps out of requires you use the new rotation. Otherwise, like me, you're a gimp BLM.

  2. #2
    The Syrup To Waffles's Waffle
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    Enochian is being fixed, likely tomorrow.

  3. #3
    Relic Shield
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    Rehn Valor
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    I hear you. Coming from 2.0 era to 3.0, BLM just feels much more busy, and probably not in a good way. Enochian/fire4/blizz4 synergy made me fat finger-y for a while, but I'm getting used to it. Hardest part now is just adapting to each fight, and knowing when to throw buffs up to not waste them.

  4. #4
    Salvage Bans
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    Damage output is strong, but ugh the play style is so wack. Ignore all my moves to cast fiv's ignore aoe's ignore mechanics god forbid something goes wrong and you turn into the crappiest dps.

  5. #5
    Sandworm Swallows
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    Interesting you say blm was "relaxing and carefree". I think it really depends on the person. Until 3.0, I personally found pretty much every other job (except mnk) easier to dps on. There is something about blm that really messes me up even though it seems like it should be so easy, and I've heard quite a few others say the same. Stuff like "my group needed a caster and I suck at blm so I'm doing smn". Honestly among all the jobs I think it feels the strangest to play overall, it's just so completely different from the rest. I wonder if I would enjoy it more or even less with the new abilities.

  6. #6

    Eno-chan isn't what makes it annoying, its the fact fire4 for some reason doesn't refresh stacks and if the appropriate stack wears off while you're casting the casting is interrupted.

    Simply making it so you can finish a cast you already started, even if stacks fall off, would give me the room needed to enjoy playing blm.

  7. #7
    Strider/Doom/Cyclops
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    Seems like staring at hotbars while performing mechanics is the new meta for several jobs.

  8. #8

    Sweaty Dick Punching Enthusiast

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    Quote Originally Posted by Spider-Dan View Post
    Seems like staring at hotbars while performing mechanics is the new meta for several jobs.
    For me it's always been that way, but the ARR rotation allowed freedom of movement.

    And yes the cast interruption the moment a stack falls is downer at best.

    It's also depressing because BLM has huge DPS potential and getting there is a bit of pain. One move, lose lots of DPS.

  9. #9
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    As a 59 blm that's not even playing with Fire IV yet, I can already second this. I hate when I have a second left on the cast bar of Ice IV when enochain falls off and the whole thing stops.

    I also hate it when an enemy dies that you were casting on, and you still finish the entire cast for nothing. Yes, you can just move, but in a pile its sometimes hard to tell which mob you were on. It'd be nice if you instantly stopped casting on a dead target. Just seems like shoddy programming or an oversight. I don't like games that try to pass off bad design as an "intended challenge" mechanic. We already have the shitty delay on life-saving abilities actually working: lets not keep the shit train rolling downhill.

    Other than those two, I still love melting faces from the backlines, although some of these 3.0 boss fights are totally anti-mage.

  10. #10
    New Spam Forum
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    Hitome Naoki
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    I like the complexity. I think, even in 2.0, BLMs got a bad rap for having an easy time but good BLMs were hard to come by. Now we have some substance and a larger gap between skilled BLMs and ones who don't know what they're doing.

    I'm glad they're fixing enochian tomorrow/today and they've said they will look at thunder since it has very little use right now in level 60 content. BLM feels a lot like NIN when it was first released: so much to look at and keep track of. But practicing NIN a lot made many mechanics and timers second nature to me so I have a feeling it will be that way with BLM as well. I do kind of wish I could move a specific buff from my buff bar elsewhere and make it larger (rather than the entire buff bar) for several jobs.

    I haven't had a chance to level DPS jobs outside of NIN, SMN, and BLM. Do the other jobs have similar rotations where the buff bar is more important? I know SMN's DWT and NIN's armor crush/huton seem to rely on buff bar awareness.

  11. #11

    Sweaty Dick Punching Enthusiast

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    They upped the potency of Thunder spells. Refreshing enochian now resets it back to 30. They didn't specify if that happens if you use the skill itself, or through Bliz IV, or is applied to both.


    Edit: Bliz IV refresh is still -5 on every re-application.

  12. #12
    My Little Ixion
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    I think the fix to the base Enochian timer will make a big difference. I was already at the point where I could extend my F4/B4 rotation until Enochian's timer had reset. Now it's just a matter of being able to extend the second Eno until Leylines comes back up, and Eno can be running almost full-time.

  13. #13
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    Moved my status hotbar from the top to right on top of my ability bars. I'll literally be staring at hotbars to maximize this damage. It feels strange coming from a tank where you had to look at the enemy moreso than not.

  14. #14

    If you need to pay more attention to the fight, a (raging-lay lines if up) f3 (eno-chan if down) f4 f4 f1 f4 f4 b3 b4 repeat combo is simple and easy to do and will break 1k dps without having to stare at anything. The gap between maximing dps and a simple rotation isn't huge.

  15. #15
    CoP Dynamis
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    Quote Originally Posted by Olo401 View Post
    I think the fix to the base Enochian timer will make a big difference. I was already at the point where I could extend my F4/B4 rotation until Enochian's timer had reset. Now it's just a matter of being able to extend the second Eno until Leylines comes back up, and Eno can be running almost full-time.
    As you noted, you could have Enochian up almost continously before, so long as you knew the fight and didn't get shafted too hard on AoE placements, Quarantines and other insults. All this update really does is remove the utter "fuck you" that happens if you hit Enochian too soon after it drops off and the server goes, "nope, still up on my end, here's 15-sec Eno and enjoy your 45-sec follow-up of shit dps".

    Quote Originally Posted by Lucavi View Post
    Moved my status hotbar from the top to right on top of my ability bars. I'll literally be staring at hotbars to maximize this damage. It feels strange coming from a tank where you had to look at the enemy moreso than not.
    My status bar was already there (go away, memories of Cursed Voice/Shriek!), but after a couple of weeks on BLM you start to get a sixth sense about the timers and only need to look if you were distracted by something, like a Jagd Doll ripping your face off because the tank sucks at life.

  16. #16
    Salvage Bans
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    I enjoy the "new" BLM, or at least the concept of it. But there are still core issues where BLM's are :

    - Punished for using too many procs (or even using a single proc in some parts of the rotation) - by having to cut your rotation short to refresh enochian.
    - Quadruple punished for doing a mechanic (1. Interrupting a 3 second cast, 2. Having to use Fire 1 early, 3. Losing an extra Fire 4 due to Fire 1 costing more mana, 4. Having to cut your rotation short to refresh enochian).

    Compare the class with say, a monk - which already does more DPS. Twin snakes doesn't have diminishing returns on refresh like Enochian. If you don't manage to refresh Twin Snakes (by using another move to change stance), you don't get prevented from using your bread and butter DPS move.

    Proc wise; Compare it to any other classes that get procs. Bard and Bloodletter. Do they get punished for using procs? A few people have said make Thundercloud OGCD, but that would be, well, boring and unoriginal.

    I'd like to see Thunder 4 - I think they really missed a trick with it. It would have been interesting to see something with that, and tied around a small (5 second) increase in Enochian, but only usable when under enochian. It would have to be different compared to Thunder III - maybe more of a raw dps move with Thunder III being the DoT. So when you get a thundercloud proc, you choose between a less damage more DoT Thundercloud, or a high damage but no DoT refresh.

    I think the 10 seconds of Astral Fire III is too tight, in combination with cast times and latency. This is coming from the perspective of a 150ms ping time playing from the UK on a server based in NA, so this may well change in the future (with new EU servers in 3.1, and with added spellspeed on the gear). It can effectively mean an AOE can break your rotation.

    The Enochian timers are fine for the most part until you factor in procs as i've discussed above. There is still a bug where you get extra animation lock when going Umbral Ice > Fire 3 > Fire 4 (located between the Fire 3 and Fire 4) - which seems to stem from the fix they did to the ever flare technique. I also think a rework of Thunder 2 would be nice - maybe a very weak AOE DoT? Its been useless for a long time - but it isn't crucial right now. Reducing the Mana cost of F1 would also help with easing of the punishment.

    I like the direction, but I don't like the clear lack of in fight testing that was missed by SE.

  17. #17
    Relic Weapons
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    I agree with all of the above. They could get really creative in ways to make BLM less punishing without breaking the game - give BLM the option to pause enochain Pause can not be more than 5 seconds and prolong astral fire by 2. Those 5 seconds will fix everything. make it so the next fire IV spell will deal 25% less dmg.

  18. #18
    CoP Dynamis
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    They could solve a lot of the issues with one simple fix: If you start casting a spell, you're allowed to finish it, regardless if its precondition(s) fall off during the cast. So for example, if AF3 and/or Enochian fall off during Fire IV, their damage boost(s) are not applied but the spell still completes. If UI3 and/or Enochian falls off during Blizzard IV, Enochian is still refreshed at the reduced duration.

    This should stretch the timers just enough to allow for an occasional interruption and/or proc usage without totally wrecking the show as it does now.

  19. #19
    Strider/Doom/Cyclops
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    I think that's taking it a little too far. While I do agree that you should be able to finish the cast, I think if you finish a F1 cast that you started right before AF3 wore, it makes sense that you would get AF1 and not AF3. So I'd say that if it wears, it wears, and conditional buff reapplication should still be applied normally.

    Of course, an alternative to this would be to shorten all the buff durations by ~2s and then allow any completed cast to refresh any buff that was on when it was started... but I doubt that would be seen as a "buff."

  20. #20
    CoP Dynamis
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spider-Dan View Post
    I think that's taking it a little too far. While I do agree that you should be able to finish the cast, I think if you finish a F1 cast that you started right before AF3 wore, it makes sense that you would get AF1 and not AF3. So I'd say that if it wears, it wears, and conditional buff reapplication should still be applied normally.
    I'm not sure how this is different than what I said...?