Not to mention this new "complex" dance routine completely eliminates two entire other styles of dance from the equation: in this case, the notion of using procs in any tangible way (either for instant big damage or instant reintegration into a main rotation) and the notion of dots entirely (seriously, try to keep up a thunder dot on the enemy while still maintaining the highest maximum DPS).
Why even have these spells anymore? If you don't want people using something, why even have it in the game? Other games remove outdated tech all the time, and either forget about them, repackage them into new abilities with tweaks, or re-release them once they fix whatever they didn't like about them. SE just layered a new set of toys for us in our bedroom, then built up an electric fence around half of our old toys with guard towers and dared us to try to play with the old ones again.
Just get rid of the spells. You don't even have to tell me why. At least then I'd catch a whiff of a professional company that knows what they're doing and has an absolute goal with the job in question. Leaving the shit in the game while throwing in new moves that completely obsolete the old ones in any practical situation just reeks of amateur hour. It smells like a college-age Dev team trying to hang with the big boys by making shit up as they go.
Flying by the seat of your pants is not a good look in a games-as-a-service system that literally asks for you to pay them every month.
To be honest, Proc's did have their downsides in 2.0 (overwriting a proc before using it) - and Fire 1 spam was boring.
That said, I like that we have to actually manage Astral fire now (because you never really had to manage it before, and we've got Enochian to manage too. When you get more spellspeed and you get used to it, it isn't so bad. But I dislike that you have to waste a thundercloud proc sometimes (as there are times when you can't use them - they should have at least had a trait for Thundercloud to extend your Enochian duration by a short amount. I also dislike the amount of procs now - the solution could simply have been to allow the stacking of up to two procs of each type.
As someone who just recently got BLM to 60, I can see exactly why the skills are still in the game. And keep in mind, there are players who 100% don't or can't use 3.0 skills for various reason. But for BLM, I would say that nothing has been changed for the old skills because the devs expect players to drop enochains, use sharpcast thunder, hard cast fire 3 if they did too many fire IV's and lost AF, etc. Once again, we don't have any meters in the game so there is nothing to really tell you how harmful it is to cancel fire IV to dodge aoe then fail to refresh AF because you were targetted a 2nd time. For many players, its not too far a stretch for them to think this is intended gameplay.
Edit: For the post above, they should have made thunder oGCD with a cooldown like empyreal arrow. Idk how difficult it is to program but i think empyreal arrow's ws status could help a lot of caster issues.
Battle Litany is 52, Blood is 54.
While the 2.0 rotation was pretty simple and boring, getting 100% of it while moving was kind of fun. Fights like Titan EX were the norm and blm could destroy there because we could choose to ignore a single physical attack or save procs for when we had to move.
If fire 4 had a chance to proc, and thunder procs extended eno-chan it would play out more like 2.0 did.
SE will probably never be able to give us a fight like Titan EX again now without excluding blm entirely, but maybe that isn't a bad thing. Idk.
Remember when Manawall was something BLMs would use strategically to continue their rotation before it got nerfed twice into the ground?
maybe i'm just being an ass but ive always hated blm since the early days of FFXI when blm's had privledged status and melee were just their magic burst bitches. I hope they never get the ability to cast on the run.
In my mind any trial that has as complex a dance as Titan ex is "a fight like titan ex". Ravana comes to mind. In fact Ravana is harder imo. It has all the things that could kill you in Titan and more.
yes, that's exactly what is happening here. i dont know what kind of people you ran with, but as a melee i never, ever felt anything less than part of a team when doing skillchains/MBs. I was always very disappointed to find no mages capable of MBing in a party. in fact, skillchains and MBs are involved in the majority of my fondest memories from XI.
that's the kind of mechanic I want to see in XIV. Actual teamwork, not just co-existing in the same arena and all individually doing tasks.
edit: also, surecast needs to allow casting while running for like 10 seconds or some shit. not instant, just moving doesn't interrupt you (and, while they're at it, fix the goddamn facing shit). it's so fucking worthless right now.
Ravana is also fun as fuck and probably the best Primal thus far. Kudos to whomever put that fight and the theme together.
Ravana theme best track in the game.