Recap:
Blizzard II is useless. Pre-5.0 it was useless as well, but it at least had Bind on it that allowed it to be used as an escape if you were being attacked by a group, or a Tank lost control. Post-5.0 it doesn't even have bind. Freeze is a better ice-based AoE - it has targeting (doesn't need to have everything beside you), does double damage of Blizz 2, and can upgrade your Umbral gauge to 3 immediately.
Blizzard II pretty much only gets used by new players who don't understand its uselessness, or by the die-hards who badly wanna find a strategy where it would be useful.
Suggestions:
1. Remove Blizzard II, change Freeze's name to Blizzard II. Freeze is pretty much what Blizzard II needs to be anyway. It's also in perfect level alignment since Freeze is obtained before Blizzard III, so it would still stay in chronological order. This would be the simplest solution, but not necessarily most popular since we would have a small gap for learning a new Blizzard skill. (Maybe tweak the levels to when you learn some skills to make the gap shorter.)
2. Upgrade Blizzard II to Freeze at the level you would get Freeze. A lot of abilities "upgrade" already anyway, like Thunder I changing to Thunder III and Thunder II changing to Thunder IV. This would make more sense for a change to how Blizzard II works since it would "evolve" with your ability to cast Ice-aspected magic.
3. Tweak Blizzard II and Freeze so that both have different uses, but similar effects.
A good example would be to make Blizzard II stronger than Freeze in potency, have the same targeting ability as Freeze and still cost 800 MP, while Freeze would still keep its Umbral 3 buff to be used as a "quick-buff" ability. This would give Freeze the use of being an Umbral buff, and Blizzard II can become the standard AoE Ice spell that maintains the buff. This suggestion is the one I'd like most to see, since it would give both abilities a unique use, and remove nothing from the repertoire of spells that BLM has.
Other thoughts:
I do also think Ley Lines should have a shorter cooldown, like maybe 60 seconds instead of 90. Ley Lines is kind of one of those essential skills that tend to make Black Mage's job a lot easier, but it's also one of those skills that can be easily screwed over and wasted under a number of unforeseeable conditions (such as if the tank decides to keep running when they probably should've stopped, or if a boss casts a long-term AoE pool right in your Ley Lines' space just as you've sat comfy with the spot.) It would be nice to be able to get those casting speed boosts out more frequently, and recover from those bad luck placements faster. This is just a small opinion of mine, but I thought it worth mentioning while I'm making this post.
Continue reading...
Blizzard II is useless. Pre-5.0 it was useless as well, but it at least had Bind on it that allowed it to be used as an escape if you were being attacked by a group, or a Tank lost control. Post-5.0 it doesn't even have bind. Freeze is a better ice-based AoE - it has targeting (doesn't need to have everything beside you), does double damage of Blizz 2, and can upgrade your Umbral gauge to 3 immediately.
Blizzard II pretty much only gets used by new players who don't understand its uselessness, or by the die-hards who badly wanna find a strategy where it would be useful.
Suggestions:
1. Remove Blizzard II, change Freeze's name to Blizzard II. Freeze is pretty much what Blizzard II needs to be anyway. It's also in perfect level alignment since Freeze is obtained before Blizzard III, so it would still stay in chronological order. This would be the simplest solution, but not necessarily most popular since we would have a small gap for learning a new Blizzard skill. (Maybe tweak the levels to when you learn some skills to make the gap shorter.)
2. Upgrade Blizzard II to Freeze at the level you would get Freeze. A lot of abilities "upgrade" already anyway, like Thunder I changing to Thunder III and Thunder II changing to Thunder IV. This would make more sense for a change to how Blizzard II works since it would "evolve" with your ability to cast Ice-aspected magic.
3. Tweak Blizzard II and Freeze so that both have different uses, but similar effects.
A good example would be to make Blizzard II stronger than Freeze in potency, have the same targeting ability as Freeze and still cost 800 MP, while Freeze would still keep its Umbral 3 buff to be used as a "quick-buff" ability. This would give Freeze the use of being an Umbral buff, and Blizzard II can become the standard AoE Ice spell that maintains the buff. This suggestion is the one I'd like most to see, since it would give both abilities a unique use, and remove nothing from the repertoire of spells that BLM has.
Other thoughts:
I do also think Ley Lines should have a shorter cooldown, like maybe 60 seconds instead of 90. Ley Lines is kind of one of those essential skills that tend to make Black Mage's job a lot easier, but it's also one of those skills that can be easily screwed over and wasted under a number of unforeseeable conditions (such as if the tank decides to keep running when they probably should've stopped, or if a boss casts a long-term AoE pool right in your Ley Lines' space just as you've sat comfy with the spot.) It would be nice to be able to get those casting speed boosts out more frequently, and recover from those bad luck placements faster. This is just a small opinion of mine, but I thought it worth mentioning while I'm making this post.
Continue reading...