Black Mage: Thunder Ready/Firestarter Ready for non-PVP Content

Hi!

As part of my series of threads regarding my personal/community suggestions for BLM, I'm going to make this one an OP deliberately for the Developers to recognize that it is the head of a thread. Please bring your friends to like and comment, much appreciated.






Honorable developers of FFXIV,

As you may be aware, in 2.0 the bulk of Black Mage damage came from instant cast procs, namely, Firestarter and Thundercloud. These instant casts allowed for plenty of opportunities to weave off-GCDs such as swiftcast, aetherial manipulation, virus, lethargy, etc. When 3.0 hit and the bulk of BLM damage came from Fire IV, this meant not only did the job become stuck hard-casting with little opportunity for weaving, but the number of procs obtained became significantly lower, despite the addition of sharpcast, purely because Fire was being cast less.


Here is a meaningful solution to this issue that would help with both movement and damage, inspired by the PVP action Thunder Ready:



Lv. 60 (Trait) Thunderstorm: Upon successful use of six Fire IV spells, three Fire II spells, or two Flare spells within the duration of a Thunder DoT on a target, grants Thundercloud. Resets upon usage of Thundercloud


Lv. 68 (Trait) Firestorm: Upon successful consumption of three Umbral Hearts with Fire IV or all three Umbral Hearts with Flare, grants Firestarter.




Let me break this down: Since procs are unreliable sources of damage for BLM, it makes sense to provide a system to make some more reliable.

In the Thunderstorm example, granting a Thundercloud proc gives incentive to keep up Fire IV damage (or keep up AoE damage during Thunder II/IV), which rewards players for strategizing with additional damage in the form of not only the Thundercloud, but no longer requiring another hardcast of Thunder. Furthermore, this is an opportuinty to weave off-GCDs, since everyone complains about having to clip and how Mana Shift is a strugglebus on BLM (which, it most certainly is). Further still, this theoretically shortens/cleans up the Umbral Ice phase since no hardcasting of thunder, meaning faster damage with less clipping.


In the Firestorm example, this changes the rotation from Fire IV x3 > Fire > Fire IV x3 to Fire IV x4 > Firestarter > Fire IV x3, which is an inherent damage increase, removes the need to cast the lowly weak Fire I spell at level 70 (I mean, come on now), and provides a 2.5s window in which to move reliably if necessary. Furthermore, in AoE situations with transpose (or Freeze, if you read my other thread), the Firestarter proc can be used to get back into Astral Fire III without needing to slowcast/hardcast it, tightening up the AoE rotation, and again providing an opportunity to use off-GCDs.

Both of these, on top of the RNG based procs for Thundercloud/Firestarter would go a long way to helping the reliability of BLM instant GCD damage, and by extension mobility and weaving.

Thanks for reading and considering!

Having fire/ice 1+thundercloud proc last for 30 sec would be great just like how RDM procs works. And remove the hardcast on ice 3 if your lower than umbrella ice/astral fire 3.

Would drop Thunderstorm from 6 F4 to 3 this way you would have both procs after a triple.
Also in the wording it seems to me that you mean that it must be the same thundercloud effect to receive the dmg for it to proc, dunno if intended.

They only perplexity I have is that in this way sharpcast is more or less useless and as such maybe we can give it a new use.

In some other threads I said we could use of a CD that would double our intellect for the next spellcast only (mimicking kaiten in a way. ofc the effect is Placeholder) what you think of it? personally I find it odd that as a dmg job we lack any form of self buff dmg

Sharpcast would still be useful for guaranteeing a proc at the end of fire phase after you've used the proc from Firestorm/Thunderstorm. Also, I'm about to write another thread involving how Thunder might be adjusted to do more damage and be more meaningful that would perfectly fix this critique.