The Black Mage Rotations

What you said:

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Originally Posted by PessimiStick

I ignored the single-target DPS because it doesn't really have any impact on overall clear speed.

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Essentially what I heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Y-ua3WBi4

Damage doesn't disappear into thin air, even single target damage during aoe situations. Pretty much every class that isn't a Holy spamming WHM has some extra single target damage while doing aoe. If applied properly (depending on number of targets/situation, like someone was saying) it can make a difference, which should be enough to matter when you're talking about a 10% difference in BLM rotations.

Shouldn't be too hard to add the + xx dps to single target on top of the aoe dps.

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Originally Posted by Farmer

Flare Rotation 1 (With Mages Ballad)...

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We appreciate the effort here, Farmer, but we've already shown Fire III ==> Flare ==> Transpose ==> Blizzard II ==> Blizzard II to be the highest theoretical AoE DPS. As for ST, I'm very hard pressed to believe that fitting Flare into the rotation is a DPS gain at all considering it takes you to 0 mana meaning you have to wait on Transpose to give you a tick before you can start your rotation again.

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Originally Posted by Vortok

What you said:


Essentially what I heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Y-ua3WBi4

Damage doesn't disappear into thin air, even single target damage during aoe situations. Pretty much every class that isn't a Holy spamming WHM has some extra single target damage while doing aoe. If applied properly (depending on number of targets/situation, like someone was saying) it can make a difference, which should be enough to matter when you're talking about a 10% difference in BLM rotations.

Shouldn't be too hard to add the + xx dps to single target on top of the aoe dps.

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Clear speed is dependant on *every* mob dying. It's incredibly unlikely that the small handful of ST skills you use will change when that happens. You're nuking 7-10 mobs at a time, with RNG crits on AEs and whatnot. I usually tab to the highest target when using F3, but I'm fairly certain I could just tunnel on one mob and the overall pack clear speed would be different by like 1 GCD at most (and I wouldn't even bet on that).

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Originally Posted by Synovius

I'm very hard pressed to believe that fitting Flare into the rotation is a DPS gain at all considering it takes you to 0 mana meaning you have to wait on Transpose to give you a tick before you can start your rotation again.

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I assessed this the other day with a guy in my FC; it's pretty straightforward: a generic AF3 Flare at 260*1.8 takes 4.0s to execute, with an additional time penalty of 3.0s/2 average wait for a tick of mana after the Transpose.

Net result is 260*1.8/(4.0+1.5) = 85pps, which is lower than a BLM's normal single target rotation, which floats in the ~105-110 area according to the sim from the other thread. Hence it is a DPS loss unless you do something more interesting (like swiftcast).

Sidenote: this does, though, mean that it's a DPS increase on 2 targets, because 170pps > 105~110, unless you're T--. Nvm.

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

I assessed this the other day with a guy in my FC; it's pretty straightforward: a generic AF3 Flare at 260*1.8 takes 4.0s to execute, with an additional time penalty of 3.0s/2 average wait for a tick of mana after the Transpose.

Net result is 260*1.8/(4.0+1.5) = 85pps, which is lower than a BLM's normal single target rotation, which floats in the ~105-110 area according to the sim from the other thread. Hence it is a DPS loss unless you do something more interesting (like swiftcast).

Sidenote: this does, though, mean that it's a DPS increase on 2 targets, because 170pps > 105~110, unless you're T--. Nvm.

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That's good to know and thanks, EasymodeX. I can absolutely agree that the Flare rotation would be an increase if you have more than one mob you're hitting.

All very interesting but i think i'm more confused than before.

How about Flare - Transpose - B2 - B2 - Flare - Flare - Transpose - B2 - B2 etc., etc. aoe rotation? I was playing around with that and got about 10-15 DPS more against two targets than with F3 - Flare. If you wait 0.5 seconds after the last tick after the last B2, you can time your Flare perfectly to get 2x Flares without doing anything and both of them will have UI3 cast time, and the second one will have AF3 damage. You also get to B2 almost immediately after Transpose every time. The penalty is pretty heavy for missing the mana tick betwixt the Flares, though. I didn't do too heavy testing on this, only a couple of few minute runs, but double Flare seems better after those small tests.

Another thing, would it be worth it to Transpose to AF for the extra damage, if you have Firestarter proc up in UI3 while casting Thunder?

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Originally Posted by Waliel

Another thing, would it be worth it to Transpose to AF for the extra damage, if you have Firestarter proc up in UI3 while casting Thunder?

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Not going to comment on your flare rotation til I try it, but as far as the Firestarter procs go, if you're in a ST situation the use of transpose before your proc is usually a gain. Occasionally, youll have to wait after the thunder cast for your last UI3 tick, but generally this only to serves to negate the bonus 300 damage youre gaining (roughly) on your firestarter proc. In essence, there is no real downside, and a decent upside to transposing firestarter procs, since in a ST rotation transpose will be back off cooldown by the time you may need it again. However, I wouldnt advise it for AOE rotations involving flare, since you'll need transpose for your flare recoveries. I guess you could get away with it if youre planning to burst things down with convert/ether/swiftcast prior to needing convert.

As someone suggested on this forum, I'm playing around with the following flare rotation.

F3 --> Flare --> Transpose --> B2 --> B2

After Transpose, sometimes I get my mana back right away and sometimes, I have to wait a few seconds.

Can anyone enlighten me on how the mana refill works so that I can try to get it right all the time?

Thanks in advance!

Regen is on the same global tick as DoTs (3 seconds). There's no real way to game it.