Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

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Originally Posted by SavageRico

I only have BLM to level 50 but i really feel so powwerful compared to my ninja and leveling it i always "felt" i was doing alot of damage in group. This job is so freaking fun

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Enochian will make it a more interesting and challenging job to play once you get there... And make you more bitter about tornados :D

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

Started up this progression as SMN, ended up as BLM. Dang, I think we're still looking at a very well dressed up, hidden ARR situation where BLM still smokes SMN by 10% minimum (on ST, of course) and where there's a will to mitigate movement, there's a way, and BLM is just more damage. Then again, SMN's got a lot of advantages to it, AoE, consistency, and different, sometimes more handy utility, but golly BLM is so good. It'll be hard to decide where I fall next progression, but then again I think we'll be using shared tome gear from now on and it's gonna be a situation where we pick and choose all day per the fight without downsides.

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Don't forget to mention only BLM can do the Strafdoll cheese in A4S lol. SMN get rekted again by mechanics.

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

You might not be able to cast F1 right at the end of F3 cast, but you can queue it up to cast right at the end of the GCD. F4 requires the animation to complete before it lets you think about starting a cast.

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There's actually a very small window during AF3 and UI3 transitions with F3 and B3 where you can't queue any skill when the cast finishes because the GCD isn't far enough (that you will propably never even notice, unless you aim to specifically hit your button there), but for whatever reason you can't queue F4 at all until you have AF up.

I did some quick testing because bored, and both F3 and B3 apply their respective stacks at the end of their cast animation when you see the damage on your screen, but for god knows what reason F3 has double the animation length of B3. Wouldn't surprise me if it had something to do with the double Flare fix.

Fix pls.

So many little things concerning the fluidity of the BLM rotation were shattered with the "Flare Fix", which have only been worsened by the inclusion of Enochian.

After fire 3 weave a ogcd skill like manawall, will force fire 3 to hit sooner and leave you able to cast fire iv instantly after manawall or whatever animation goes

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Originally Posted by arrie-prime

After fire 3 weave a ogcd skill like manawall, will force fire 3 to hit sooner and leave you able to cast fire iv instantly after manawall or whatever animation goes

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No. You weave an OGCD skill because you have GCD animation lock to prevent the infinite flare bug and its better to weave an OGCD than to sit there fiddling with yourself. Not to make the F3 hit sooner.

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

So many little things concerning the fluidity of the BLM rotation were shattered with the "Flare Fix", which have only been worsened by the inclusion of Enochian.

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I had never got any Flare Transpose bug in 2.x but I've been getting those a lot in 3.x. Because there is a delay on stacks when you cast a spell, when I Fire IV x2 + Flare, I need to way before Transposing and I transpose nothing. This is very frustrating.

What exactly affects WD? I don't see it as it's own stat really.

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

So many little things concerning the fluidity of the BLM rotation were shattered with the "Flare Fix", which have only been worsened by the inclusion of Enochian.

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All that was needed was to make Flare require AF to cast, but they had to go and make the whole job very awkward at times with how timings can work. If Squenix was also so concerned with the occasional fast F1 after F3, just make the damn spells apply your stacks immediately after cast is finished instead of some arbitary time after.

Now that I think about it, it doesn't make any sense for not to get your stacks if your spells miss or you hit an immune unit. Does your fiery soul cool down or something when you can't hit your target? Or are we just so egoistic that if the spell didn't land, we think we didn't actually do anything and nothing happened, erasing the "failure" from our memories because we're perfect.

{Hello!} {black mage} {Chum}s. I'm working on bringing up my black mage up to speed after getting my summoner up to a decent item level, as I want to use both jobs in Alex Savage. My group's currently working on A3S, but we still have a way to go (furthest we've seen is the first Gaol), so I'm planning around what I can get with Esoterics and A1S/A2S tokens. I was wondering how this set based on what I can get over the next three weeks looks:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLCD
(Hopefully this shows up okay, with starred items being what I currently have, and highlighted items being what I'm wearing/what I'm planning to get)

Currently sitting on two page 1s, one page 2 and 915 Esoterics, so in terms of resets:
- Week 1 (tomorrow): Esoterics weapon
- Week 2: Esoterics body, Gordian wrist via A1S tokens (Weekly Esoterics balance goes to 0)
- Week 3: Esoterics ring, Gobcoat for ring via A2S tokens
- Week 4: rain of fending/healing accessories from a1s continues; maybe get the Esoterics earrings and beg for a gobcoat

I was aiming to cut out the serious excess of accuracy I have and increase spell speed primarily, while also balancing it so that I'd get accessories that would work for my summoner too (Gordian wrist, i210 Eso ring). I am wondering if the 636 spell speed I end up with could be better, but at the moment my spell speed on BLM is really low (459) and anything would be an improvement really. (I see a lot of "- Enochian + Enochian" after Blizzard 4, even on long Enochian timers...)

Looks solid to me. Everything after ring + weapon + chest is just fluff, most of the good stuff's Gordian.

That said, if you've got SMN at a decent iLVL already, why not roll with that if you're aiming to down A3S? SMN's perfectly great for A3S, and that's when your group will truly start getting geared up, from the pants/twines. If it's to gear BLM up for A4S, well, can't really argue there, but your interest otherwise should be in what gives you the most chance of drinking Pepsiman up IMO, and that would be continuing gearing up the better geared of your casters.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLCS

That's the BiS I've been looking at. I actually don't know if the Eso 210 weapon would be better. I'm gonna assume Crit is far superior than Det on that. This is also low of Esos, like Sleigh mentioned, your gear is from Gordian.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Much appreciated! :D

As to why I'm using BLM instead of SMN for A3S, it's more of a personal thing really. I was a BLM main for all of Coil, but I got into SMN before Heavensward, and although I like both classes, I just really miss playing BLM. I've kind of lost track of the time but I think I've done about three-four weeks on A3S as SMN, and although my damage was good, I just had more fun when I tried it out as BLM this weekend, and we still continued to make good progress. My group is good, but we're not like a server first group or anything, and we still have to clean up execution of mechanics in A3S and learn the final phase. (We're also gearing up someone who replaced another member a couple of weeks ago.)

As far as gear strength goes, the weapon and the body are the main gap between my BLM and my SMN after 'losing' Esoterics by getting the Gordian gloves and belt after having got the Eso ones. It seems like now is my best opportunity to get BLM up to speed.
Here's my SMN if you're curious: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLD5 (I have the i200 Eso hands, but the Gordian gloves dropped and sent my accuracy back into the stratosphere.)

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLCS

That's the BiS I've been looking at. I actually don't know if the Eso 210 weapon would be better. I'm gonna assume Crit is far superior than Det on that. This is also low of Esos, like Sleigh mentioned, your gear is from Gordian.

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Yeah I'm at a cross roads on the weapon thing. I've still got i190 weapon but I'm clearing A4S so IDK if I should buy i200 weapon then get a Gobdip (which would probably be after DRG gets it, so not next week) or gamble on Gordian dropping or 7 more pages to guarantee it. From my perspective, crits are really, really godly on BLM, stat weights be damned, because when you're fully buffed and each crit is adding 3-4k damage straight up it's kind of a big deal, but the DET + higher SS on the Eso weapon i210 might be a life saver in your Enochian timers every now and then. Then again, I look at SS as having two benefits, one being turret DPS gains, and the other, rotation ease and QoL and consistency, but I'm not sure if maybe .01 GCD would be worth giving up about 2% real crit rate.

Basically I like the Gordian better but it's gonna take way too long to get unless RNGesus hits me up. I might even have relic by then. Might have to go the Eso route.

/1st world problems, having two good ultimate weapons

I'm currently lost at what I should do with my esoterics.
Is it worth getting the caster headpiece/gloves/pants?
Pants would be overstacking way too much accuracy, both gloves and headpiece give det, so I would lose either spellspeed or crit in exchange for a few int and vit.

It depends, anything that boost your iLevel is worth. I got the Eso pants becvause I didn't get the A3S pants yet.

I'm leveling up BLM to use for A4S instead of SMN. I've got a good number of 210 pieces (full right side, half left side or so) and some gobtwines waiting to be used.

Would I be better off spending my ESO this week (will have 990) on the weapon or getting the body piece and upgrading it to 210?

Edit: This is what my gear looks like right now.. http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLMV

If it's i180 chest > i210 chest, chest. If it's i190 chest, weapon.

The big thing about chest vs weapon was that you could get a ring + chest back in the day vs weapon (ring + chest was better, much to many people's dismay/disbelief) but you lack that option so weapon's gonna be the winner if you have the i190 chest.

Great stuff, Aikaal. Thanks for your effort here!

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Originally Posted by Aikaal

It depends, anything that boost your iLevel is worth. I got the Eso pants becvause I didn't get the A3S pants yet.

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Same for me, I got eso pants and now eso hat cause i got incredible bad drop luck and it'll take some weeks until I can buy those a3s bis parts with pages. I still hope that pants or head or gloves or boots or earrings or choker might drop once in our group :P I guess everybody has a tank belt soon.

I wanna discuss this too, Surely we would want to squeeze all the dps we can make when we play with a competence group (if you lucky enough you will even get one from DF), BUT, There will be time to time (Almost all the DF situation for dungeons) that you would some how run a roulette with a newbe or FATE-graduated tank that cannot keep our AoE frenzy (the worse tank can even hardly keep up with SMN bane)

Now problem will be how can we dps in this situation? I use to do wait 1-2 sec. sleep the group of mops as possible then do only single target without touching fire III and not mention to never use any HW ability. I know this will make the dps extremely low but how can we deal with this situation without compromise our DPS too much?

I'm kinda lost on what to upgrade at this point - my group is on a3s progression and I made the mistake (i believe) of blowing my a2s books on the belt. Any advice? Here's my current gear: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLS1

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Originally Posted by Stroking

I'm kinda lost on what to upgrade at this point - my group is on a3s progression and I made the mistake (i believe) of blowing my a2s books on the belt. Any advice? Here's my current gear: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RLS1

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I bought the belt with my first 4 tokens as well, it's a nice upgrade and I don't regret it because it hasn't dropped yet :P

That gear is fine for clearing A3S, maybe wait until you're hitting 1% wipes before buying any more gear if you wanted to use your Eso on another job. Looks like you're a bit short on accuracy for A3S with the Gordian belt, so you should use some higher acc food to hit 530 acc.

Was "fortunate" enough to get Gordian chest from A4S even though I have i210 SMN and BLM chest. It's ugly as balls dyed, not wearing this crap ever again.

http://puu.sh/kdAyY/70a4522865.jpg

i210 weapon though, it's not half bad dyed! The moon part glows. Hope I get Gordian sooner than later though.

http://puu.sh/kdAzR/747e91b9bd.jpg

Dunno how much of a gain i210 is over i200 because I only had i200 for about 30s but it's about 7% raw damage increase over i190.

The shoulder spikes ruin it.

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

Was "fortunate" enough to get Gordian chest from A4S even though I have i210 SMN and BLM chest. It's ugly as balls dyed, not wearing this crap ever again.

i210 weapon though, it's not half bad dyed! The moon part glows. Hope I get Gordian sooner than later though.

Dunno how much of a gain i210 is over i200 because I only had i200 for about 30s but it's about 7% raw damage increase over i190.

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Could you post the dye preview in Jet Black for the robe? :O

Not sure if anyone will find this useful, but I was bored so I made a macro and tested the i210 Gordian Boots against i200 Esoterics since I have way too much accuracy right now. I did 400 casts of Blizzard III with each, and the difference is 5 INT vs 50 Det.

10 highest and lowest damages for each not counting crits:

i210 Gordian Boots Max - 2048, 2048, 2047, 2047, 2046, 2046, 2044, 2043, 2043, 2042
i200 Esoteric Boots Max - 2050, 2049, 2049, 2049, 2048, 2048, 2048, 2047, 2047, 2047

i210 Gordian Boots Min - 1859, 1859, 1856, 1856, 1855, 1854, 1854, 1854, 1854, 1854
i200 Esoteric Boots Min - 1864, 1862, 1861, 1861, 1860, 1860, 1859, 1857, 1857, 1857

Seems like i200 gives slightly more damage than i210 Gordian which I suspected, but I wanted to be sure. The only thing you lose is 4 crit.

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Originally Posted by Lavitz_

Could you post the dye preview in Jet Black for the robe? :O

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http://puu.sh/kdN6T/fdb7a78785.jpg

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

http://puu.sh/kdN6T/fdb7a78785.jpg

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Thanks! Looks pretty good

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Originally Posted by Lavitz_

i210 Gordian Boots Max - 2048, 2048, 2047, 2047, 2046, 2046, 2044, 2043, 2043, 2042
i200 Esoteric Boots Max - 2050, 2049, 2049, 2049, 2048, 2048, 2048, 2047, 2047, 2047

i210 Gordian Boots Min - 1859, 1859, 1856, 1856, 1855, 1854, 1854, 1854, 1854, 1854
i200 Esoteric Boots Min - 1864, 1862, 1861, 1861, 1860, 1860, 1859, 1857, 1857, 1857

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I figured the boots was just barely better... That's quite sad it's only like 4 damage per spell. 4 Crit is seriously how much %? lol

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

http://puu.sh/kdN6T/fdb7a78785.jpg

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Btw, next time you're hanging around on the forums, could you try get Sleigh to pm me on reddit/my blog/youtube/twitter?

This message was from iDervy.

The robe is ugly for sure, lol
I am using the Fur Coat from Sohm Al as glam, more of a FF10 Look :)

Congrats Sleigh! :)

Yah I agree. I'd say most of the Alexander gear is ugly or meh. :(

Even less motivation to gear it.

That first opener on the picture, I'm not sure it's right. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I generally don't have the mana for the flare, at 266 piety I'm normally on 450 or something like that. I think you can only do it if you get the right mana-tick.

Yay BiS, cant wait to start doing speedruns next week :3

the enochian bug needs squashed, its freaking annoying. To elaborate, sometimes when you hit enochian, it doesnt trigger... wonderful.

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Originally Posted by Xisin

the enochian bug needs squashed, its freaking annoying. To elaborate, sometimes when you hit enochian, it doesnt trigger... wonderful.

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Can't say that has ever happened to me.

Yeah I can't say I've seen this one happen to me yet. Are there any other conditions to it? Movement, getting hit, super lag?

Sometimes when I'm pressing lots of buffs in a row I'll move on to the next one before the prior one could be activated, so it doesn't go off, might be that.

Though I did once have ley lines go on cooldown but not put down a circle or give the buffs.

I've had Ley going on to cooldown and nothing happening happen to me once, but nothing else.

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