Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

Awesome, I did not include the leylines/eno/lucid because I assume that most BLM know to use that so I only wanted to show just the attack spells. This helps greatly though and I thank you. Should we use triplecast in the opener or should we just save it for when we have to move? I have found myself saving swiftcast and triplecast for when we have to move and it is usually within the first 60 to 90 seconds (I think) that we will have to move in a lot of SB fights (boss) for that matter. What are your thoughts?

Why would you use lucid at the beginning?

You need to use it if you want your infusion pot to reach after your foul if u get a thunder proc or if you want to get ur foul and thunder 3 refresh in

because i'm not sure if lucid will give me the MP tick before i start my fire rotation so I use it just incase

I use Lucid and diversion to keep my aggro to a minimum. I start with lucid because I do a lot DF and a lot tanks I come across nowadays do not start with enmity generating combos (they get their buffs up first). A lot of physical DPS burst and go hard without giving the tank time to do anything. So I also use diversion to stop aggro generation to allow for tanks and healers to get some DPS in. I hate seeing my character perish but I love seeing physical DPS users get cleaved to death and die because they want to play tank. Lucid and diversion are my best friends, especially with the enmity issues in this expansion.

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Originally Posted by Tingaling

You need to use it if you want your infusion pot to reach after your foul if u get a thunder proc or if you want to get ur foul and thunder 3 refresh in

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Awesome, this makes a lot more sense. I need to rework my rotation and understanding of the BLM skills. Thank you for all your help.

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Originally Posted by Marianno

I use Lucid and diversion to keep my aggro to a minimum. I start with lucid because I do a lot DF and a lot tanks I come across nowadays do not start with enmity generating combos (they get their buffs up first). A lot of physical DPS burst and go hard without giving the tank time to do anything. So I also use diversion to stop aggro generation to allow for tanks and healers to get some DPS in. I hate seeing my character perish but I love seeing physical DPS users get cleaved to death and die because they want to play tank. Lucid and diversion are my best friends, especially with the enmity issues in this expansion.

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All valid points and i feel the same way basically, but you do know that using lucid when you have 0 enmity will still leave you at 0 enmity? in other words it cuts your CURRENT enmity in half and has no influence on whatever enmity you generate afterwards. I normally use it if i start seeing yellow/orange targets on enmity list to dump my enmity in half on all targets, or god forbid if i happen to pull aggro on something, can use it to instantly drop aggro and make the mob return to (hopefully) the tank.

Using diversion on pull however is greatly beneficial.

Diversion then lucid when closing in on #1. Dont lucid at the start as its a waste.

Sound advice, thanks, I will need to switch those in my rotation. Also, is there an optimal amount of spellspeed we should aim for? Some are saying 1600+ is good. Do you think that we may be able to hit 2000+? Pending we get higher ilvl increase with spellspeed on gear or is it possible to hit that now? I have been reading that there is a such thing as too much spellspeed but I do not know how truthful this is. Sorry about all the questions, just trying to get better at optimizing at BLM and possibly try out some EX-Primals seeing as how I only did a few but really enjoyed the few that I did.

1600 should be a norm to shoot for im sitting at a little over 1700 and have a 2.75 cast time on f4 and b4 with f3 approaching the high 2 seconds.
I can definitely feel the jarring clunkiness of blm slowly disappearing. Lets just hope theres no eikon gear vs primal incident again as are gear increases.

I am only at 1355. I have been getting the SpS 40 slowly with the hunt seals. I don't want to spend 100k or more at the MB for them. Also, the new raid gear has ton of SpS, so next week I will see what I can get.

sitting at around 1400 with full 6 melds and i316

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Originally Posted by RyeMinx

BLM DPS Calculator
I am too lazy to do the actually math, thankfully Eddo on reddit made a dps calculator for BLM before the patch came out. I have tried out several different methods with transpose, and they always end up being lower PPS.

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I did my own math on it and it turns out you and @GospelVhae were indeed correct. Skipping the remaining 2400MP and going for UI is more PPS than going Transpose UI even with a perfect mana tick.

Im sorry but i need to bring this up again as their was not any real discussion about it.
If Direct hit really increases Direct hit % by 1% every 38-42 points shouldnt it now be DH>SS>CRIT>DET.
All of the stuff im reading is saying that the 38-42 is true , dervy commented in one of threads n said the guy doing the study was on the right path aswell.
i understand that more SS will eventually beat out direct hit but for now and the foreseeable future DH is the new priority right? (as strange as that would be)

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Originally Posted by Zyler

Im sorry but i need to bring this up again as their was not any real discussion about it.
If Direct hit really increases Direct hit % by 1% every 38-42 points shouldnt it now be DH>SS>CRIT>DET.
All of the stuff im reading is saying that the 38-42 is true , dervy commented in one of threads n said the guy doing the study was on the right path aswell.
i understand that more SS will eventually beat out direct hit but for now and the foreseeable future DH is the new priority right? (as strange as that would be)

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Direct hit is useless though if you can't get your spells out more frequently and faster which is why Sps is still priority.

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Originally Posted by Zyler

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Don't think of spellspeed like this.
Don't take it as a pure dps stat. First, because the actual "pure" dps contribution for speed is hard to calculate.
Second, because the real worth in spellspeed is through the extra mobility/versatility it brings.
If you have a lot of it, the leeway window you have on your rotation to get AF and UI refreshes increases (or, put another way, the amount of time each 13 seconds of AF III you have in which you can afford to not be casting increases).
If SS made your Fire IV cast be 2 seconds, you'd be able to fit two procs in your F4x3>F>F4x3 rotation (or run around for 6 seconds).

Given how sluggish and tight our current rotation is, and how whimsical Enochian behaves overall, I'd say the utility of speed cannot be understated right now.
That said, the rest holds; DH>Crit (not sure where det stays for sure, but probably last).

I would recommend you max out SpS then proceed to fill the rest with DH>Crit.

except we cant get out cast down to 2 seconds. what im asking n what i want to have is a convo about exactly what ive said. under the current gear limitations does DH beat SS in terms of dps output. the current amount of SS we can get has a very tiny effect on cast time. At a lil over 1700 psycofang's fire is down to 2.75 , my direct hit is at 1750 (my SS is 1433 my fire 4 is at 2.80) and im averaging out at 34% (1% higher then expected) in all the content ive been doing since hitting that amount.
A direct hit does 25% extra damage, so basically 1 in 3 of every cast im doing is putting out 25% extra damage.

i have to assume to assume this far outweighs the 0.05 cast time advantage that 1700ish SS gives you (again i understand that it allows you to be more mobile n makes the class fell less clunky)
now im not great at maths n i know im likely overlooking some stuff here ( such as how much direct hit psycofang has and his DH% ) but pyscofang would need to make 55 casts of fire4 in a fight (lets say on a dummy for now) before that spell reduction over mine would grant him an 1 extra cast where as with having DH>SS with those 55 casts i would have 18 direct hits adding 25% damage to each of those casts which would equal 4.5 extra fire 4's damage wise.
One of the threads i mentioned before is this ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...rect_hit_data/ ) derveys comments are roughly a third of the way down.

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Originally Posted by Zyler

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Like I said, modelling and quantifying the dps gains of speed is extremely hard and I cannot give you a definite answer.
I'd hazard a guess that if you're in a vacuum (like, hitting a dummy), DH should beat speed at our current secondary stat level.

But I can almost assure you with full confidence that if you're speed is too low, you're going to have to sacrifice Fire IVs on your rotation in actual raids because of it (which is our primary cause for dps loss).
And it'll all around feel worse to play, too.

Let's talk AOE rotations on 3 targets. The number of posts regarding 4.0 BLM AOE is limited and the math behind the posts are scarce. People are recommending the F4>F4>Flare>Foul>Flare>Transpose while I have been skipping the F4s and going straight for Flare>Foul>Flare>Transpose. T4P is used as much as possible anywhere you can fit it.

I've posted the math on a previous post and it came out with the latter being more PPS. This comparison assumes that both are casting B4 for the UH. The window for my PPS computation starts with B4 and ends with Transpose. Has anyone figured out a better AOE rotation (with math please)?

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Originally Posted by Zyler

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Keep in mind on a high movement fight, loss of control areas and general f u blm fights speed has always translated over better than power. Keep in mind thole lower your ss the less casts youll get off before mechanisms decide they hate your job.

This results in general lost casts and harder to adapt rotations. On a dummy sure DH heavy builds will win but i said a bit ago its better to have a healthy amount of both despite what the weights say.

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Originally Posted by soslinky

Let's talk AOE rotations on 3 targets. The number of posts regarding 4.0 BLM AOE is limited and the math behind the posts are scarce. People are recommending the F4>F4>Flare>Foul>Flare>Transpose while I have been skipping the F4s and going straight for Flare>Foul>Flare>Transpose. T4P is used as much as possible anywhere you can fit it.

I've posted the math on a previous post and it came out with the latter being more PPS. This comparison assumes that both are casting B4 for the UH. The window for my PPS computation starts with B4 and ends with Transpose. Has anyone figured out a better AOE rotation (with math please)?

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Do you still have the pps numbers handy so I don't have to recalc it?
That said, it's either one or the other, since Fire II is less pps that Fire IV in 3 targets.
Did your calculation include the subsequent UI rotation?
I'm curious about "steady" dps (dps with both rotations over an arbitrary long time period if time).

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Originally Posted by Ferrasper

I am only at 1355. I have been getting the SpS 40 slowly with the hunt seals. I don't want to spend 100k or more at the MB for them. Also, the new raid gear has ton of SpS, so next week I will see what I can get.

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Why don't you just do hunts? They're faster than grinding seals and they have a 50% chance to drop a cracked cluster which you can trade in for materia VI.

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Originally Posted by VitalSuit

Why don't you just do hunts? They're faster than grinding seals and they have a 50% chance to drop a cracked cluster which you can trade in for materia VI.

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Honestly, too much work and running around like a chicken with my head cut off annoys the shit out of me. I am not a fan of the Hunt LS as well.

@Galvuu
I ran the numbers using the BLM DPS calc by Eddo in reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...adsheet_thing/

I did wonder about 'steady dps' but due to the mobs in dungeons dying after 2 or 3 rounds of AF AOE I never really bothered with finding out.

Here are the results (sample window was the opener plus the succeeding AF phase):
https://image.ibb.co/bOUFVF/AOE_MATH.png

UPDATE:
On 4 targets or more, F2>F2>Flare>Flare yields greater PPS.
At 5 targets the difference is 240PPS vs. 224PPS with F2>F2>Flare>Flare being the former.

You would want to add thunder in your aoe, no? It's potency now that we have aoe thunder cannot be dismissed.
I always add thunder but alas i really hate math so do no calculations, lol

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Originally Posted by Maero

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Correct. In fact, since Flare>Foul>Flare is more pps, Blizz 3 is actually useless. You don't need full mana, just enough to Flare+Foul, so two UI ticks are enough.

Flare>Foul>Flare>Transpose>B4>T4>F3>(repeat)
Is probably the best aoe we have for 3 targets.
Sharpcast going to T4 means that if Swift/Triple are up, we can use the proc after we hit Tranpose so we're dpsing while waiting for the manatick (T4proc>B4>F3 should still give us the mp we need).

I'll look into the numbers more carefully when I'm back from work...

Yeah my bad, you skip the B3s and go straight to B4 after Transpose. You could even start the pull with B1.

a few short questions to cast times:

by how much (and which) fire spell cast times get reduced under ice or fire astral? and only under fire or ice astral 3?.. blizzard 3 also gets reduced if casted under fire astral 3, right?

but fire 4 and blizzard 4 never get reduced cause of a astral a?

Blizzard spells get reduced cast-time on AF3, Fire spells get reduced cast-time on UI3. The cast times are reduced by half.

You can't cast Fire4 on UI3 nor can you cast Blizz4 on AF3. Although if you highlight their tooltip they'll show reduced cast times.

It seems some of the highest, including the current highest BLM Susano parses on fflogs are omitting Blizzard 4 from their rotation and only using it during opener.

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Originally Posted by Rakhabit

It seems some of the highest, including the current highest BLM Susano parses on fflogs are omitting Blizzard 4 from their rotation and only using it during opener.

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Oh? Its understandable considering it becomes a waste if you cant net all of the bonus f4s which susano generally deters you from doing.

This is quite possibly the same thing as the optimal drg rotation leaving out WT/FC on certain cycles

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Originally Posted by Rakhabit

It seems some of the highest, including the current highest BLM Susano parses on fflogs are omitting Blizzard 4 from their rotation and only using it during opener.

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Yea I admit I've been doing that. I still use Blizzard 4 but only in the same way we used Blizzard 1 in 2.0, basically a filler spell if I need something to cast waiting on an umbral ice tick.

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Originally Posted by Rakhabit

It seems some of the highest, including the current highest BLM Susano parses on fflogs are omitting Blizzard 4 from their rotation and only using it during opener.

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Yup it's a thing. You know something is not right in the design when you can skip one of the core new mechanics of the job (Umbral Hearts) and still do good numbers. Far less punishing AF timers and more wriggle room for procs.

Funny how a key feature is yet again broken on blm. What a silly day this is.

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Originally Posted by Psycofang

Funny how a key feature is yet again broken on blm. What a silly day this is.

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Silly day? SE haven't cared about the original casters for the past 18 months. Its nothing new. And nothing will change.

And Blm can't get any spots in any raid statics either anymore, it's "go rdm or f...k off", at least as Smn you can promise to use the pet the party wants for their buffs

blm at 70 is actually fun, but they made the new classes Rdm and Sam so OP, and gave EVERY other dps some sort of dps buff, except blm

The game has imo more serious balancing problems than before, not only for Blm.

Been testing the UH every rotation vs UH on opener only on the susano sss dummy and (anecdotally) its not looking good for UH heavy play styles and its falling behind.

If you consider practical settings this is only going to translate badly for UH.

Wow...just wow...
I feel like an idiot not thinking about doing my rotation without UH. Then again, PS4 players still can't see their own numbers.