Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

It really just depends. Do you raid? Do you need the accuracy? I had the 250 crafted pants as a filler until I got the A11S pants. It really just comes down to what stats you need and making it work until you can upgrade. There is no right or wrong answer.

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With my current set up I have like 800 acc. It is really too high. It brought my crit down to 560 or something and det to 450. I do raid as an Astrologian but it doesn't mean I don't want blm pieces afterwards. What would be best then? Do I keep them as filler? I guess the problem is I have no scripture pieces yet.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

I'm sorry, but you are incorrect.
In no way is Fire IV better on 3+ targets. The only exception would be if, mechanically you needed to burn down a specific mob first/quickly to prevent it from casting something.

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Considering your MP let you cast a different amount of those spells on the Single and AoE rotations. You only did half of the calcs.
From full MP the AoE rotation (that has an extra Fire II) is slightly better than Single only if finishing on Flare and having Enochian up. Since the targets will probably not die with just that, over time its better that you just do repetitive Single Target rotations because that one will always start from full MP, thus by the end of the next rotation, your PPS will be higher (considering none of the targets had died). While if you go on AoE, to prepare for the next rotation you'll either cast a filler spell at Ice that will already lower your PPS so you can get full MP on Umbral Ice I or Blizzard III from a Convert.

Lets go into numbers:
Single = 4FIV + F = 841.6
AoE from full MP = 9FII + 3Flare = 855.9
AoE with 2FII = 6FII + 3 Flare = 795.9

So by the numbers provided by this thread: in three targets the best would be AoE rotation with Enochian, Convert and Blizzard III for full mana. So yes, there are ways Fire IV is better in three targets. I never put so much tought on PPS for the AoE rotation, so if something is off please tell me so, I'd love to use something better than I use at the moment. But I think this has been discussed a lot in the past of this thread. I just became a poster but recently.

It's easy to make the mistake of thinking Fire II always beats Fire IV on 3 targets just by looking at potency, but there are other things to consider like MP cost and how much HP the mobs have.

Fire IV rotation with a Fire II to refresh AF3, spreading Thunderclouds and ending with Flare is pretty powerful if the 3 mobs have enough HP. Overall I'd say it's safer too, if you miss one mob or one dies before Fire II goes off then it's a DPS loss.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Lets go into numbers:
Single = 4FIV + F = 841.6
AoE from full MP = 9FII + 3Flare = 855.9
AoE with 2FII = 6FII + 3 Flare = 795.9

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First, I have a question, and that is what are those numbers? Is that total potency? If so, that means nothing. PPS is what counts. So you'll have to clarify what you mean by that.

Second, you're thinking on the right track, but you are not taking quite a few things into consideration. I will try my best to explain but its a lot of numbers and math so I will try to not muddle it up too much:

So lets say there are exactly 3 targets, and we'll assume they are alive for the entire duration. Using the baseline GCD, it will take 65.25 seconds to do an entire Enochian rotation, ending with Blizzard IV. No buffs, no Ley lines, etc. In that single target rotation, you have to take into account your Blizzard III time and potency, Blizzard IV time and potency, and unless you get an extremely fast server tick after Blizzard III, you'd need a filler or you won't have full MP. But I'll actually go ahead and omit that because it still doesn't help that argument. You also need to account an additional half a second for casting Enochian. I've done the math and you can double check if you'd like but here are the numbers.

ST rotation - 65.25s / 9375.00 total potency = 143.68 PPS

Now here is where things get a little tricky. Transpose + server tick is the X Factor. For the sake of argument, I'll go ahead and say that after you Transpose you end up having to wait the entire 3 seconds for a server tick (which is rare). Doing the standard AoE rotation during the same time, I would have done 9xF2s, 4xF3s, and 4xFlares. Now I'm calculating the full 3 seconds after transpose into this time and it looks like this:

AoE rotation - 66.00s / 10874.40 total potency = 164.76 PPS

If after transpose the wait is only 2 seconds, that jumps up to 172 PPS. Compared to 143 PPS on the ST rotation, that's extremely significant. Also keep in mind, I'm giving the ST the benefit of the doubt and getting a fast server tick after all 3 Blizz 4s and not needing a filler. With fillers, that PPS drops to around 140 PPS.

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Originally Posted by Lavitz_

Fire IV rotation with a Fire II to refresh AF3, spreading Thunderclouds and ending with Flare is pretty powerful if the 3 mobs have enough HP. Overall I'd say it's safer too, if you miss one mob or one dies before Fire II goes off then it's a DPS loss.

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Not part of the argument in any way. I can Tranpose > Thunder and spread TC procs around during a Fire II rotation as well. Fire II is better on 3+ targets. If you think a target is going to die before the next Fire II cast, you can easily cast a Fire instead. Whatever argument you have about MP or other variables on Fire II on 3+ targets vs. Fire IV, keeping Enochian up wastes too much time.

These are all things I've considered and I'm not trying to give people inaccurate information. I've thought about all of this and done the math a dozen times. I've tried to think of every scenario and it all comes down to Potency Per Second. The numbers don't lie. The math is solid. You can sit here and say "what if" all day long, but taking hard numbers, Fire II is better than Fire and Fire IV as long as it hits 3 targets.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

Not part of the argument in any way. I can Tranpose > Thunder and spread TC procs around during a Fire II rotation as well. Fire II is better on 3+ targets. If you think a target is going to die before the next Fire II cast, you can easily cast a Fire instead. Whatever argument you have about MP or other variables on Fire II on 3+ targets vs. Fire IV, keeping Enochian up wastes too much time.

These are all things I've considered and I'm not trying to give people inaccurate information. I've thought about all of this and done the math a dozen times. I've tried to think of every scenario and it all comes down to Potency Per Second. The numbers don't lie. The math is solid. You can sit here and say "what if" all day long, but taking hard numbers, Fire II is better than Fire and Fire IV as long as it hits 3 targets.

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https://i.imgflip.com/135tht.jpg

Put some respek on his name!

For anyone interested: BLM SS cutoffs

edit: Cutoffs from 354 to 1300 SS are for:

• 1.75 = AF3 B3/UI3 F3
• 2.5 = GCD and most spells cast under native stance
• 3 = F4, B4, F2 and Freeze under native stance
• 3.5 = F3 and B3 under native stance (not sure how often you'd be doing this, but it's there anyways)
• 4 = Flare under AF3

The green highlighted cut-offs are the points where you get the most bang for your buck. All the odd occurrences effect all cast times, and the even ones effect everything except cast times of fire spells in UI3 and ice spells in AF3.

edit 2: If anyone finds any discrepancies in the sheet please let me know. I used the formula I proposed on dervy's blog [BaseCast * (1.004-((SS-334)/6602.5)] , but it hasn't been completely point by point checked for all values.

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

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This is good info. If you plan on keeping it updated, If you put a legend into the spreadsheet with any information you might need to know to read it properly, I can insert this link into the guide.

Personally haven't looked into specific SS values, and how the effect the GCD. So I'm sure there are some out there that would find this info useful.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

This is good info. If you plan on keeping it updated, If you put a legend into the spreadsheet with any information you might need to know to read it properly, I can insert this link into the guide.

Personally haven't looked into specific SS values, and how the effect the GCD. So I'm sure there are some out there that would find this info useful.

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Yeah, I can clean it up a bit and put some more info into it. I just threw it together while I was having a coffee today.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

I'm sorry, but you are incorrect.

Fire IV is 280 potency * 1.8 Astral Fire III + 5% Enochian = 529.2 Potency. Its 3 second cast time makes this 176.4 Potency Per second.
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I have a question. You used 80% damage increase for Astral Fire 3. I tried to find a source for the damage increase of Astral Fire but the only thing I could find was the numbers on this site http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Astral_Fire
Do you have a source for the 80% damage increase of Astral Fire 3?