Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

With the recent nerf to Fire2 and the addition of the Umbral Hearts mechanic enabling you to cast back-to-back flares, I've come up with a table for PPS. Please do note that this is my first time number-crunching so if you spot any errors please let me know!

This table assumes that you are not utilizing swift/triple, a spellspeed of 1276, and you have only 3 targets. I also included the old rotation for reference.

http://i.imgur.com/z6pDkm7.png

Will try to compute for anything beyond 3 targets soon. :)

Opener I've been using.

LL-B3-ENO-T3-B4-F3-F4-F4-F4-SHARPCAST-F1-F4-F4-F4-F3PROC-CONVERT-F4-F4-B3-FOUL-T3-B4-F3

You cannot sharpcast fire 1 anymore to get back into astral fire quicker.
Use sharpcasts during rotation on F1 refreshes.

Foul is the solution the waiting for MP ticks. My rotation feels much more fluid.

Some of my early thoughts based on how the class plays (not about comparisons with other classes and damage output yet).

I like Thunder 4. Its very satisfying to use and works well in the new AOE rotation. Same goes for TripleCast, Umbral Hearts for AOE. Foul is also very nice too.

I'd like for there to be some kind of choice to be made on where to use Umbral hearts depending on the situation - could be done by pressing an OGCD while casting?

I've noticed the Enochian dropping off while keeping Astral Fire stacks.

I'm also concerned about how you can leave Umbral Ice at not full mana - it wasn't a huge issue before, but now you can end up messed up for your AF phase. They could fix this by making it so that spells in UI cost 0 mana.

I still don't think it makes sense for F1 to be more mana than F4. You can end up losing two F4's if you get lots of procs/movement by having to use an extra F1 (instead of just losing potency on one).

Convert I feel needs to be made into a 90 second cooldown. Doesn't make sense for it to be our only 3 minute CD.

So are we figuring Triple Cast wont be used for openers, and more the utility?

Preference really.. In a perfect world you want to use it to reduce your bug casts down to the GCD but I think it will be better suited for saving during high mobility fights to keep your DPS up and help with stack management.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sunako

Enochian stay as long you can keep your fire/ice stacks. If you cast your blizzard 3 in the last second you may lose your stacks for 0.5 second. You get your cast off, but failed keeping stacks up 100% time. I dont think it is bug.

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Nope, Astral/Umbral definitely ends too early. I use Transpose as my panic button a lot while learning the new rotation, and it almost always failed when I hit it at 1 second left on the gauge timer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IllyriaKnotfred

So are we figuring Triple Cast wont be used for openers, and more the utility?

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It definitely can be yes to push your rotation into 3 1.90 recasts but after the initial opener its better to save it for vs mechanics or movement + burst required phases.

It has its uses in both spectrums really.

Their intent was to make enochain easier but made it much more annoying instead previously i could between astral/umbral within the last second of the buff and be fine, but now if i do it enochain falls off, sometimes its even just stopped my B3 and F3 mid cast.

How important is thunder 3 now? I can't find a good place to fit in procs because of our new (F4x3)^2 rotation and casting foul, thunder 3, and blizzard 4 feels like I'm spending too much time in UI

I'm absolutely in love with Foul. I'm so pleased that you can hold it for as long as you want and just use whenever. I think it will be helpful in raids for when adds pop, just save Foul when you get it shortly before you need strong AoE and boom.