The Black Mage Rotations

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

I would agree with that if Thunder didn't always seem to proc one right after the other. I've had procs for another one while in the process instantly casting a Thunder III proc.
The odds of that should be astronomical, but it happens quite a bit.
Or I should say, I don't get thundercloud procs much but when I do it almost always chains.

The people earlier were saying they had the same experience, so I'm not going to trust the probability in this case.

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Any anecdotal evidence, however common, means nothing if probability provides a sufficient answer.

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Originally Posted by YuriRamona

nonsense about dot ticks.

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Doesn't matter. As I mentioned, Thunder is always on the target in a normal ST rotation. You're not adding any 'ticks' of the dot, you're using Thundercloud to get the proc hit. It has nothing to do with the Thunder dot and everything to do with using a proc that does more damage than your Fire I spam.

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Originally Posted by YuriRamona

Any anecdotal evidence, however common, means nothing if probability provides a sufficient answer.

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It means something when it's common for mechanics like this to be throttled by internal cooldowns.
Everytime I got a proc right after the other because I used it immediately, I made the right choice, right? I'm 360+ potency ahead of the mage who didn't.
Plus you're really not losing much damage from clipping compared to that loss.

If we were still blindly believing the tool tips then we wouldn't even be using Thunder II and using Thunder III only for procs.
It's important for players to try to understand the underlying mechanics when it's so ambiguous and tool tips can be either misleading or outright wrong (despite being the only official information we have on the abilities).

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Originally Posted by dragonflyseksparade

Doesn't matter. As I mentioned, Thunder is always on the target in a normal ST rotation. You're not adding any 'ticks' of the dot, you're using Thundercloud to get the proc hit. It has nothing to do with the Thunder dot and everything to do with using a proc that does more damage than your Fire I spam.

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They meant that if you don't use it right away, you give the thunder dot that's already on the target more ticks. Which is more potency on top of the thundercloud proc you use at the end.

They would be right that it's more damage UNLESS you could have gotten a proc while waiting for the buff.
The assumption here is if you get a proc, you probably won't get another for a while. So it's a dps loss to clip the current dot until you have to (a second before the thundercloud buff expires or so).

I don't agree with the assumption but the argument is sound.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

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Are you implying that the tooltip is incorrect, and that there is some other factor besides the 5% chance? While this is a possibility, I'm strongly inclined to believe that the tooltip is correct, unless you have some hard data about this.
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Originally Posted by dragonflyseksparade

Doesn't matter. As I mentioned, Thunder is always on the target in a normal ST rotation. You're not adding any 'ticks' of the dot, you're using Thundercloud to get the proc hit. It has nothing to do with the Thunder dot and everything to do with using a proc that does more damage than your Fire I spam.

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Well obviously the issue here is then, how easy is it to keep Thunder up? In a standard rotation, when everything is going normal, I would tend to agree. For messier fights where you want to throw out support abilities or re-position yourself, then this is a little more dubious. In situations where you can expect your normal-cast Thunders to expire for extended periods of time without recast, then it will be viable to maximize their duration before using up Thundercloud.

I'm not really sure where you're going with this. If you cast Thundercloud, for example, near the end of a Thunder duration, do you recast it during the time you normally would? If not, then your Thunder expires during your next Astral phase. If so, then you're cutting the effectiveness of the Thundercloud.

If, instead, you'd used a Thundercloud proc in place of the hard cast Thunder, then you'd be able to fit in another spell instead (for example, Blizzard III).

In addition, doesn't Thundercloud eat up a GCD? Casting it immediately would make even less sense if it does.

I doubt that the tooltip is wrong, but I don't doubt that the PRNG used by the game might be shit. I have personally had back to back to back procs before, which should be really damn rare at a pure 5% chance.

After having many situations where I've received up to 5 Thundercloud procs in the timespan of about a minute, I always cast Thundercloud first if I have both it and Firestarter up. I have control over when my next potential Firestarter will proc, but I have no control over when my Thunder will tick. With the way DoTs work in this game (global ticks every 3 seconds), I never really feel like I'm "clipping" a DoT, more like "extending its duration".

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Originally Posted by YuriRamona

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I'm not sure how thundercloud using a GCD has any bearing on the situation. If you're having problems keeping thunder on the target, you should probably focus on fixing that first before joining discussion about maximizing dps. If you can't keep thunder on the target, I can understand why you're confused about this.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

The assumption here is if you get a proc, you probably won't get another for a while. So it's a dps loss to clip the current dot until you have to (a second before the thundercloud buff expires or so).

I don't agree with the assumption but the argument is sound.

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There is no assumption on my part. The assumption you are making is that Thunder will fall off at an in-opportune time and have to be manually reapplied. This simply isn't the case. It should be up 100% of the time regardless of whether or not you clip it with thundercloud.

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Originally Posted by dragonflyseksparade

There is no assumption on my part. The assumption you are making is that Thunder will fall off at an in-opportune time and have to be manually reapplied. This simply isn't the case. It should be up 100% of the time regardless of whether or not you clip it with thundercloud.

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No, I am making the assumption that it's possible to get a proc while having the thundercloud buff. Which it is, since you can't control the thundercloud procs as you can with fire starter. I'm not talking about the dot falling off at all.
Back to back procs happen enough that I'm not taking a chance to miss it. That's all there is to it.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

No, I am making the assumption that it's possible to get a proc while having the thundercloud buff. Which it is, since you can't control the thundercloud procs as you can with fire starter. I'm not talking about the dot falling off at all.
Back to back procs happen enough that I'm not taking a chance to miss it. That's all there is to it.

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I'm sorry I guess I mis-interpreted your first post

My main point is that clipping thunder is fine, because it will get refreshed in a normal rotation regardless of how many ticks were 'overwritten' by using Thundercloud immediately as opposed to saving it. Thundercloud is like free damage in addition to a free refresh of Thunder any time you get it. The only cost is a GCD which would otherwise be filled with a less damaging spell.

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.

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Originally Posted by PessimiStick

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

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You can, sort of. It ticks every third Eorzea game clock tick. Not too hard to time up.

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Originally Posted by Youmu

You can, sort of. It ticks every third Eorzea game clock tick. Not too hard to time up.

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It's every game clock tick (1 Eorzean minute), but since almost nothing you do is a multiple of 3 seconds, you can't actually do anything useful with that information.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

How about Flare - Transpose - B2 - B2 - Flare - Flare - Transpose - B2 - B2 etc., etc. aoe rotation?

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Once you have the timing down, that does seem better. On a single target (Not that you ever would), using Flare instead of Fire III would be close; slightly extra cast time for slightly more damage, but as soon as it's more than one enemy, Flare takes the lead. The only downside is, as you stated, the increased cost of a mistake. A mistimed first Flare could make the second Flare either a full cast time or nonexistent. It is pretty easy to do consistently, though.

This makes me think of using Mage's Ballad for Blizzard III > Flare > Flare... I've done no testing to see how useful it actually is or isn't, but it certainly is fun to have a near constant stream of Flares to complement Holy spam.

Replacing F3 with Flare is a lot of risk for marginal gain. UI3 Flare is 182 potency, and the cost of a miss is that you stand around twiddling your thumbs for 5+ seconds doing 0 damage, and never getting out your 468 potency Flare at all.

Edit: Played around with this some more, and assuming you're not lagging it's actually fairly safe. The timing is really awkward to get HASTE on both Flares, but getting the mana tick is pretty controllable. I'll probably run WP with double Flare and see if it works as well as on dummies. I was parsing ~435 DPS over 3.5 minutes against 3 targets. That had some hardcasted second Flares in it, so theoretically it should be higher if you time it perfectly, but I'm still working on that.

It may not work for everyone, but personally, I use a monosyllabic word as a counter for the timing. As soon as I see the tick, think/say "one", Flare -> Flare. Once I started doing that, I haven't had any issues getting the quick casts on both every time.

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Originally Posted by PessimiStick

It's every game clock tick (1 Eorzean minute), but since almost nothing you do is a multiple of 3 seconds, you can't actually do anything useful with that information.

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Why I said sort of. You can start your 4 second flare cast right after a tick and ensure you can transpose for tick immediately afterwards, but this implies you stop casting to wait for the tick... so very situationally useful

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

On a side note, there was a bug that caused players to be able to use flare twice in a row, but that will be addressed.

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Well... there goes that. I will miss triple Flares with Convert. I hope we can still do F3 -> Flare.

nice guide here. Used the AOE for WP Speed runs! thanks for the guide

im sure im worst mage US, but apparently mages can ignore twin's fly by swoop things? i imagine mana wall? (seems like it would be 2 out of 3 swoops on one of the phases?)

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Originally Posted by xyaie

im sure im worst mage US, but apparently mages can ignore twin's fly by swoop things? i imagine mana wall? (seems like it would be 2 out of 3 swoops on one of the phases?)

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Yes, I usually pop manawall on second set of divebombs, as added insurance against mess ups. If you dont get hit by divebombs, you can go burst the next snake adds and tank a few hits before tank has agro back, since it should still be up.

What does everyone use Swiftcast for mid-combat? Not on a Fire III after your Thunder at the start of combat, but once it's back up.

(When you can't do any more Fire I but still enough for Flare) Swiftcast Flare -> Convert -> Fire I -> Blizzard III > Thunder II regardless of Piety -> regular rotation seems to be the biggest ST boost you can do, but you can only do it once every 3 minutes whereas you can Swiftcast once per minute. Also, the dilemma with this is I usually use Swiftcast to put on my non-GCDs for free, thus, the best time to use this rotation would be a time when I wouldn't have Swiftcast to begin with.

I've used it on Thunder III often in the past, both for a DPS buff and the perfect time to fit in my non-GCDs if I want, but it seems to be a marginal gain of DPS over Thunder II, and often procs or MP issues (depending on Piety) make it unviable. Fire III is the other big hitter we could use it on, but I'm unsure if it's truly even worth it compared to just a Fire I due to losing a Fire I from your rotation. The weirdest thing I can think to use it on is Fire I, to gamble on a free proc, but that's all you gain, a proc chance where you probably need two Fire Is anyway.

I'm unsure where it best gets use.

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

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If you Swiftcast Fire III after Thunder, you will not get a reduced cast on the Fire I following it. I've used it sometimes on a Fire I but I'm not even sure if that's much of a gain.
I think it's usage is largely situation and mainly for including Flare (with Convert).

I've tried it on Thunder III, but I've found that the GCD lock is clunky and seems to take longer than 3 seconds in practice (due to swiftcast animation). Since you probably will clip Thunder III anyway, it might be a dps loss anyway.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

If you Swiftcast Fire III after Thunder, you will not get a reduced cast on the Fire I following it. I've used it sometimes on a Fire I but I'm not even sure if that's much of a gain.
I think it's usage is largely situation and mainly for including Flare (with Convert).

I've tried it on Thunder III, but I've found that the GCD lock is clunky and seems to take longer than 3 seconds in practice (due to swiftcast animation). Since you probably will clip Thunder III anyway, it might be a dps loss anyway.

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I'm pretty sure using Swiftcast on Fire is a dps loss unless you're moving. What you're basically doing is adding an extra second of animation waiting in the beginning and then triggering GCD, which is exactly the same as normal Fire cast anyway. In the end, all you did was that you delayed the rest of your spells by one second. Do correct me if my thought process is wrong.

You can use Swiftcast with Flare if you have your potion or Convert cooldowns up. With Convert, you can even get one extra Fire after the Flare before using B3. Other than that, Titan after jumps. Switch to UI3 with B3 with your last few seconds of AF3 after the guy lands, and when you're moving into position, fire off an instant T3 and continue normally from there. Don't have any real Coil experience with my BLM yet, so can't say anything on that.

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Originally Posted by ShinryuReishiki

It may not work for everyone, but personally, I use a monosyllabic word as a counter for the timing. As soon as I see the tick, think/say "one", Flare -> Flare. Once I started doing that, I haven't had any issues getting the quick casts on both every time.

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I'm sorry for the confusion, but, to clarify... you're casting B2 > B2 then waiting for a tick of regen... then a monosyllabic word? Then cast Flare > Flare and there will be a MP tick between?

Is there any other series of actions in between mana ticks that we know to be somewhat timed to the MP regeneration tick?

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Originally Posted by Panteleon

I'm sorry for the confusion, but, to clarify... you're casting B2 > B2 then waiting for a tick of regen... then a monosyllabic word? Then cast Flare > Flare and there will be a MP tick between?

Is there any other series of actions in between mana ticks that we know to be somewhat timed to the MP regeneration tick?

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The word is to make sure you get haste on both Flares. Even if you cast as soon as you see the tick, you'll still get both Flares off. but the second one will be a hardcast. You need the slight delay to make sure you get the mana tick later, so that you have mana to cast the second Flare before you are put into AF3.

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Originally Posted by PessimiStick

The word is to make sure you get haste on both Flares. Even if you cast as soon as you see the tick, you'll still get both Flares off. but the second one will be a hardcast. You need the slight delay to make sure you get the mana tick later, so that you have mana to cast the second Flare before you are put into AF3.

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hmm I see what you mean about getting the two flares off with the UI3 buff, but any tips on ensuring that you get the tick of mana to cast the second flare to begin with ? When I attempt its spotty at best, not the mention it seems sometimes I get that cast time lag with flare like some do when casting f3.

The cast time bug (and missing mana ticks) are probably latency related, I'm not sure there's much you can do about it. I almost never have either happen unless I'm lagging.

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Originally Posted by PessimiStick

The cast time bug (and missing mana ticks) are probably latency related, I'm not sure there's much you can do about it. I almost never have either happen unless I'm lagging.

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I have zero lag in this game and I pull it off with consistency. In fact, I can't remember the last time I hadn't gotten two 50% cast time Fire spells back to back.

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Originally Posted by Doogsi

I just went to Whitebrim and tested your rotation and it's better than I thought, but the highest dps I was getting in 2min period came from Fire3-> fire2 spam -> flare -> transpose -> Blizzard2 and then repeat. At least I learned that 1 blizzard 2 is sufficient and a second is not needed.

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Just a quick question as I tend to run on BRD but my BLM is now almost 48. I am leveling it to 50 to have another ranged DPS and more options for SR's in the future.

Why are you using 2 min parses? On any boss fight I have done the adds don't last that long? And on a WP SR the groups don't last that long either? Or it sure doesn't seem like they last that long anyways.

Would it be better to test a rotation for less time? More of a burst AOE rotation based on average up time?

Just wanted to drop in to say a couple things:

1) I'm still using the rotations I outlined in my OP and I'm consistently well over 300 DPS ST. I have not been able to obtain these numbers with any other rotation.

2) You may have heard that a "fix" is coming with 2.1 for Black Mages. There's a lot of misinformation about what this fix entails. The fix does NOT do anything about being able to cast two fire spells for 50% of the cost as some have speculated. The fix is simply removing the ability to cast back-to-back Flares when under the effects of Umbral Ice III. This is something I've never bothered using anyway because I don't feel it's useful to have a Flare hit for 500.