Charakter

I am by no means an unbiased narrator, as Black Mage has been my favorite job since Shadowbringers, so of course I'm going to like the version we had prior to 7.2. I also have not run the numbers on the potency changes, as that's not what I'm here to talk about today. Even if every action was buffed to 2,000 potency, I still would not be a fan of this change.

So, Black Mage is a job that has always *felt* powerful to me. Whenever I was playing the job, I always felt like I was this avatar of destruction. A lot of things work together to create the feeling of playing a job. There's the VFX and SFX of course, if a spell looks and sounds awesome, it'll feel better to use. But there's also the mechanics of the job. The long cast times were a nuisance to work around mechanically, but they made each spell *feel* impactful, especially since the long cast times were reserved for the more powerful spells. The stronger the spell, the longer the cast, and almost nothing done in fire stance was at or below the GCD in cast time. With the changes made in 7.2, this could not be further from the case anymore.

Very few spells have a cast time beyond 2 seconds out of the 2.5 second GCD, and the ones that do are the stance-switching spells that you won't use besides to swap stance, at which point the cast time is reduced to below the GCD (except Fire II, more on that later). Right now, Despair, the spell that's supposed to be so powerful it drains your entire MP bar... is an instant cast. I have to spend time casting my significantly weaker Fire IV spells, but I can eat up all my mana to channel a powerful spell in a literal instant? It just feels off. The AoE rotation is even worse, as the two casts of Fire II that you use before doing Flare -> Flare -> Fiare Stare are longer than the much more powerful spells you cast. The only remaining instance in the job of using an instant-cast ability to increase DPS, and it's used on the weakest part of your fire-stance AoE rotation. Which brings me to my next point about gamefeel, the actual mechanics at play.

In FFXIV, every DPS job is very close to being functionally interchangeable, especially within their own subdivision (melee, phys ranged, caster). While most DPS jobs have 1-2 buttons that do some form of utility, such as the role actions of Feint and Addle, they all primarily bring one thing to the table: Damage. Despite that, each class feels very unique to play, a definite positive of the game! This is accomplished through each of the classes individual mechanics, and how those line up with the themes of the job. For example, both Monks and Ninjas are seen as super agile fighters, so they get a shorter GCD than the other jobs as they level up. However, Ninjas feel more like an assassin than Monks, and that too is reflected in how they play with a much larger focus on the Ninja's burst damage compared to the Monk's constant combos. Meanwhile, Black Mages were seen as the pinnacle of magical might, casting the most powerful and destructive spells... but that doesn't feel like it lines up with how they play anymore.

Next, I'd like to talk about rotations and how they feel. I've already said earlier that it feels super awkward during BLM's AoE rotation to have longer cast times on the weaker spells, but it goes further than that. The original class was designed with the timers in mind. Back in Endwalker, the reason we were given Paradox was to give us a buff to Fire, a required part of our combo since we had to use it to refresh the timer on Astral Fire. But with the changes made, that's no longer a consideration. As a result, Paradox kind of feels... pointless. Like it's there, but there's not really any reason for it. Like it doesn't matter when you hit it, so long as you do (since it's stronger than a Fire IV with the potency changes). And again, this move, more powerful than the Fire IV's you've been casting comes out instantly similar to Despair. Without a definite place in the rotation, it's super easy to skip over casting it entirely, as it might just... not cross your mind to do so intuitively. It doesn't feel super satisfying to hit Paradox in its current incarnation.

And finally... difficulty. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that these changes make the class significantly easier to play, which alone is not a bad thing. We need jobs in FFXIV that are simple to play. In fact, there's very few ways to drop or mess up the rotation now. Apart from dropping your DoT, about the only optimization I can see people missing with even the smallest amount of practice is spending Paradox, holding Firestarter and using Transpose at the end of your ice stance to buff the damage of the Firestarter and put you at max power for Astral Fire. It's also nearly impossible for mechanics to disrupt your rotation's flow, as you still have all the old instant cast tools we had before the change, and now the only reason to use Swiftcast or Triplecast are to move during movement-heavy mechanics where spending polyglots or casting Paradox/Despair aren't enough to move through the entire thing.

But while there's a case to be made for ensuring that easier to play jobs are in the game, there's a similar case for including difficult jobs. Complexity and difficulty can be really fun to engage with, and can make things feel stronger or weaker based on how much effort was put in to the actions you take. Speeding up the casts of Despair and Flare Star by using Triplecast was fun to do! And making mistakes can be frustrating, but that makes mastery over the rotation that much more satisfying. The right level of difficulty will enhance any experience where difficulty is a factor, and because people are so different, we need options that are both simple and complex, easy and difficult, so that people can choose what's most fun for them. Some people need more things to focus on during combat to keep themselves engaged, and Black Mage was a perfect fit for people like that. Now, it's shot far to the other side of the spectrum, where the most you need to keep in mind is to actually hit Paradox and save the Firestarter for after your post-ice Transpose.

I'm not sure if these changes will show themselves to be a net positive for the game or not. I can't see the future. Maybe I'm in the minority in disliking these changes, and making Black Mage much easier and more accessible is something that more people want over the people who wanted it to remain difficult. But what I do know is how I personally feel about this, and I felt the need to put my thoughts into text and explain why I find this such a big deal. Perhaps other people will resonate with my words, or it might spark some discourse with people who disagree with me and my points, which might help me find the value in this change. But right now, I think I'll find a new job to consider my main DPS, as I just do not like the way Black Mage feels right now.