Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

[Lilyth]

So nobody talks about Crit anymore... it's a LOT of SS, a bit of Piety and what remains in Crit ?

Pretty much. These are the two highest stat-weighted BiS (with food):

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/ZJ2P

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/ZDXS (284 PIE)

It's really sad you can't stack more crit in either of them since you need so many points in acc. ;--;
But hopefully it will become a dead stat along with parry when SB hits!

[Transient_Shadow]

is it better for me to use flare at the end of a aoe rotation or blizzard 3? I know flare does more damage but it really feels like a hinderance when I'm out of mana

[Silverquick]

Well the reason I use Flare at the end of an AoE rotation is because you can Transpose immediately and in less than a tick you have enough MP for a Bliz 3... so you can actually have it both ways.

[AlphaFox]

I remember before we were talking about if Freeze or Flare would be better. Granted this was 4 months ago so don't know if its still relevant now? But here is the post.

Page 210 is the start of this whole conversation if your wanting to read further into it.

I realized with editing my post I can actually show the math, so here goes.

	3 mobs	4 mobs	5 mobs	6 mobs	7 mobs	8 mobs
F3	168	168	168	168	168	168
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
B3	168	168	168	168	168	168
Freeze	300	400	500	600	700	800
Total	2796    3616   4436     5256  	6076  	6896
18s DPS	155	201	246	292	338	383

This beats the F2 x 2 -> Flare rotation but needs full MP. That means we actually need to compare it to this:

F3 -> F2 x3 -> Flare -> Transpose

	3 mobs	4 mobs	5 mobs	6 mobs	7 mobs	8 mobs
F3	168	168	168	168	168	168
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
Flare	1264	1591	1872	2106	2340	2574
Total	3052    3919    4740    5514    6288    7062
18s DPS	170	218     263	306	349	392

This is about the same time frame assuming roughly 3.1s for F3, 2.6s for F2/Freeze, 3.5s for Flare, and the worst case 3s for Transpose's server tick, so I just used the 18s total estimate. Actually the Flare rotation is slightly faster, but it probably evens out considering you will cast F3 in UI3 for the Freeze one.

I think the theory is sound because thinking about it, you gain 234 potency on Flare for each mob past the 5th, versus 180 for F2 and 100 for Freeze, which should eventually cancel out the big initial Flare bonus, but it certainly needs more than 8 mobs. I'd do the math to figure it out myself but I'm real bad at formatting these tables. For the rotation AFTER you Flare, yes the Freeze one beats out the Flare rotation, but you'd have to Blizzard 3 from UI1 and wait for a server tick, which seems suboptimal. You also have to consider, as more enemies die, Freeze gets worse, so if you expect anything to die within 18s and drop the total amount of enemies below the magic number, you should do Flare anyways.

But at a certain point, Freeze should actually be better! It just needs a lot of requirements that aren't likely to be met (enemy #, UI3, enemy durability).

[Transient_Shadow]

ok but what if I don't have convert or a potion ready to use right after all my mana has been drained? it just feels really slow to me when I could just use blizzard 3 to keep the mana flow going.

[Lilyth]

ok but what if I don't have convert or a potion ready to use right after all my mana has been drained? it just feels really slow to me when I could just use blizzard 3 to keep the mana flow going.

If you don't have convert nor another MP restorer, you should still use Flare. Do a transpose right after you Flare and as soon as you get a mana tick, start casting F3. Before you finish casting you should get another mana tick which will allow you to do two more F2s and another Flare. Rinse and repeat until stuff is dead. After the first Flare if you don't have any interruptions, the MP tick aligns perfectly with your transpose so this rotation becomes pretty fluid.

[Transient_Shadow]

Ok so while running som al hard I encountered a blm who did something very unusual. She was using enochain in her AOE rotation.

It was essentailly
Enochain
Fire 3
Fire 2 spam
Blizzard 3
Blizzard 4
Repeat until enochain was running out
Swift flair
convert and blizzard 3 if available or transpose

Repeat.

I asked them why they were doing so and they said enochain gives a 5% damage boost. so I tried it my self and it feels like I'm doing a better and longer chain than with just dropping flair on the end. but I'm not as experienced of a black mage as other people.

what do you guys think?

[AlphaFox]

It doesn't sound bad, granted I guess it depends if your looking to end game raid as a BLM in which exact and precise numbers and timing are needed to push out the absolute max or if you just want to play it and have fun. Long as your putting out consistent and good damage, I don't think any group would really rage over that. Still better than some BLMs I get who refuse to ever pop Eno, or that dreaded Ice mage.

[Bahd_Monkey]

It was essentailly
Enochain
Fire 3
Fire 2 spam
Blizzard 3
Blizzard 4
Repeat until enochain was running out
Swift flair
convert and blizzard 3 if available or transpose

I do the rotation a bit different:
Enochian
Fire 3
Fire 2 (3x if I have full mana i.e. start of a battle, 2x after using transpose)
Flare
Transpose
Blizzard 4
Go back to the Fire 3

You can always throw in a convert-> swiftcast -> flare, if you want, but convert has a long cool down so I tend to save it for emergencies and boss fights.

You can even pop LL and RS at the start too.

[Maero]

I don't know, people meld a bit of piety but you would need more then "a bit" for it to be noticeable.
Crit however and this goes for any job, it is completely random and is rng based, so yes sometimes you may get 10K + crits other times your damage can be around 6-7K.
Spell Speed is the only true stat that makes a difference and piety if enough is melded i suppose.

And yes if you have enochian available for aoe situation for sure use it.