Aspects of the disclosure relate to minimizing the block error rate (BLER) experienced by a user equipment (UE) upon a downlink beam switch at the base station. The base station may mitigate the link adaptation convergence transient upon performing a beam switch by modifying the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) according to a difference in reference signal received power (RSRP) between the old beam and the new beam. The base station may further adjust the MCS utilizing an outer-loop link adaptation process or channel state feedback (CSF) provided by the UE after the beam switch. Other aspects, features, and embodiments are also claimed and described.