Autistic BLMs everywhere are melting down because their job got easier and more accessible.
If you think that BLM is hard to play, you haven't played it. Baseline BLM has one of the most relaxing, easiest rotations in the game. Utter cruise control.
Only when you dip into weird rotations and optimizations did it become hard to play. Moving the Leyline is kindof whatever: it really only helps people that didn't know fight timings, and even then you'll still get to see the dupes who drop it right below a cutscene or transition and it sits there doing nothing.
Like, the change to make B4 refill your mana - who is this for? In the basic rotation, you do B3->B4~Thunder->F3. The only time this would clip your mana for AF was if you were standing in a leyline, and so you just ensure that you throw a xenoglossy in ice or use ice-paradox. It was a very minor optimization that everyone who played the job would pick up on naturally, but now that's too much thinking so it needs to play itself and have zero room to fuck up.
Fuck the haters, Sharpcast was cringe and I am glad to see it gone. Not being able to use paradox in ice is interesting
The only issue with Sharpcast was that having to expend one to ensure you got thunderhead felt like total shit. Having thunderhead's proc be RNG was annoying as shit if it didn't go off in that 30s window.
And dropping Paradox-ice is interesting in that it completely shreds an optimized line that allowed for more mobility?
Whereas before you could Despair -> Xenoglossy -> Weave Transpose + Lucid Dreaming (necessary to ensure you don't clip 1K mana and miss a F4) -> Paradox-Ice ~Weave Sharpcast -> B4 -> Refresh Thunder (ideally with thunderhead, but if hardcast followed with the other Xenoglossy) -> Weave Transpose -> Firestarter F3, now you can't do any of that and are stuck with the basic rotation. Your optimization is limited to finishing off ice with thunderhead or xenoglossy -> weave transpose - > guaranteed paradox firestarter.
I don't really like it, because part of the charm of BLM was that it had a basic, easy way to play and then 3 or 4 other weirdass rotations you could try out based on the encounter that offered up lots of opportunities to fuck up in. Their endless march to ensure there's literally just one way to play every single class, and that every rotation is simple, makes the game a lot more repetitive.
About the only change that I like is the manafont one - turning it into a more-obvious damage cooldown than what it was before, where it was just an extra F4 and Despair. Of course, this makes me think they're just leaning more into the 2-minute-meta, which BLM really didn't particpate in beyond the leyline timing. Compressing F4 and B4 to the same button will fuck up muscle memory but is an okay change; making Despair turn into Umbral Soul is... I guess also saving some space, so whatever.
