It wasn't until 7.2 that black mage got large reductions to its cast times but every patch since 7.0 has gradually weakened enochian. Why did they think that made sense back when pictomancer was dominant? I feel like black mage didn't need to have faster cast after getting timers removed. Instead we should have made flare hit way harder for being a really slow cast and add traits to high fire and blizzard to empower flare. I like the idea of black mage being slow and nuclear. To reduce button bloat I'd like despair deleted and replaced with a stronger flare. Flare has traditionally been top 2 most powerful spells in old final fantasy games but in ff14 it feels weak as heck. Also make the animation for flare and flare star bigger. They don't accurately represent their range and got lost inside giant boss models. Black mage hasn't been gutted completely of its mechanics like dragoon has been since end walker but we're getting dangerously close to 5.4 monk levels of weird. Like shadowbringers monk we have high level skills that don't get used (High fire/blizzard)and we just lost timers like when monk lost the greased lightning gauge. I really hope black mage and machinist disjointed aoe rotations get looked at in 8.0 because it's a mess with those two. I feel really bad for casters and physical ranged dps. There aren't enough party slots or incentives to bring more than one of each anymore because melees are so strong. Black mage is trapped between being either so strong it bullies out all casters or being a selfish dps with heavy movement restriction and lackluster damage. Its a balance nightmare created by a divided player base and out of touch dev team
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