Firestarter, and other on-ability procs

Hello guys,

One of the things that has always bugged me about the Black Mage is how you must watch for the Firestarter proc at the end of each cast of Fire. This means more time spent watching your hotbar/buffs and less time watching the fight. Perhaps this changes later in the game, but at level 70 it's a gripe that I don't think is necessary.

The mechanic reminds me of on-hit procs in World of Warcraft, and the fluid way they worked.

To summarise:
In Final Fantasy XIV:
You must cast Fire III to use your Firestarter buff before finishing another cast of Fire I, to prevent the possibility of overwriting—and therefore wasting—your Firestarter buff.

In World of Warcraft:
Upon gaining a Firestarter buff, you may finish casting another Fire I and then immediately chain a Fire III, using the buff before that Fire I's proc is calculated.

This means that you have time to notice that you've procced Firestarter during your next Fire I, and allow you to react in a much nicer attack flow.

Another nice feature is to have graphics that show you have procced things like Firestarter on the HUD, situated somewhere around the centre of the screen where you're likely to see it in your peripheral vision without having to look for it.

Let me know what you guys think. Are there other abilities on other jobs that could benefit from this proc-chaining change?

What if Firestarter bluffs could just stack.
We don't need to change anything, but if we cast that fire 1 and get a proc we don't need to panic if we noticed too late and already started casting another fire 1.
Letting it stack twice (or letting you get two separate procs) would probably be simpler.

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Originally Posted by Bahnran

Perhaps this changes later in the game, but at level 70 it's a gripe that I don't think is necessary

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Is it even a problem at level 70? Or 60? The firestarter proc makes the F3 cast free, does it not? So you can just put it at the end of your fire phase (or a few gcds before for movement/fire refresh) and you still get the benefit from it. There's no major benefit to using the F3 proc immediately after F1. By the time you're a GCD after firestarter you can already recognize you got the proc (you can see the buff). And if you're using sharp you already know you're going to get the F3 proc and can just mash it out... and with the changes to when the firestarter proc shows (Since 5.0? 5.1?) if you're really desperate for that movement you can keep an eye out for the buff as you mentioned.

If given the choice to be forced to chain F1-F3 and being having the choice to do either that or use it later I'd prefer the flexibility.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

What if Firestarter bluffs could just stack.

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Honestly this would work just as well.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Is it even a problem at level 70? Or 60?

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Well the issue is that if you're casting Fire I over and over again, and you get a Firestarter proc, you may overwrite that proc with the next chained Fire I if you don't watch the hotbar to see the proc happen a split second before Fire I finishes casting. Overwriting a Firestarter proc is a pretty big dps loss.

It literally is not a problem once you hit 60 and get Fire 4 as you should be saving the Fire 3 proc for movement or you can slap it onto the end of your second wave of Fire 4s so that it doesn't go to waste.

As for the proc itself, it applies the buff about half a second before the end of the cast, so you have time to react. You might not get it everytime, but it isn't crucial at the lower levels.

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Originally Posted by Bahnran

Well the issue is that if you're casting Fire I over and over again,

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If you're spamming fire 1 at level 70 you've got much bigger problems than 'I sometimes overwrite firestarter'.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

If you're spamming fire 1 at level 70 you've got much bigger problems than 'I sometimes overwrite firestarter'.

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There's 18 levels between getting Firestarter and getting Fire IV. I'm not spamming Fire I at level 70.

I know that Fire I is not cast more than once in a rotation cycle at post-60, but the issue is with the way procs are handled for abilities such as this, where the spell that causes the proc is chain-cast and requires the mage to watch their hotbar at the end of every cast to make sure they don't begin another Fire I before using Fire III.

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Originally Posted by Bahnran

The mechanic reminds me of on-hit procs in World of Warcraft, and the fluid way they worked.

In World of Warcraft:
Upon gaining a Firestarter buff, you may finish casting another Fire I and then immediately chain a Fire III, using the buff before that Fire I's proc is calculated.

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This is no better; it shifts the timing fuzz from the end of a cast to the beginning of the next cast, and for the vast majority of actions in the game, this would be a very bad thing. It would prevent the next action from benefitting immediately.

If you want a very real example of a job that already gets screwed over by buff application timing, see RDM. Dualcast application happens so late that it's very sensitive to latency. A small amount of lag will start your next spell slowcasting with a 5s cast time instead of an instant cast.

Firestarter is unique in its mechanical implications because BLM is 1) the only job with cast times 2) where such a proc would dictate what their next action should be. Other jobs with procs are either instant action jobs that have another 2.2s-ish after the proc to realize they got the proc, or they would have followed with the same action regardless of the proc.

The easiest fix is increasing max Firestarter stacks to 2, but honestly it's not worth prioritizing a fix because the only place it really matters is syncked Lv50 raid/trial content, and if you're doing syncked Lv50 raid/trial content you should be practiced enough at BLM that you can keep track of the buff timing or work around it by using an available Thundercloud after Fire to avoid the possibility of double Firestarters.

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Another nice feature is to have graphics that show you have procced things like Firestarter on the HUD, situated somewhere around the centre of the screen where you're likely to see it in your peripheral vision without having to look for it.

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Your Status Effects bar can be split into Enhancements, Enfeeblements, and Other (FC buffs, mounted status, etc) and each part can be positioned separately.

Everyone should put the Enfeeblements bar right in the middle of the screen at max size.

Jobs that need to keep track of procked buffs should have Enhancements in a similar position or an enlarged spare hotbar with just procked actions. Not everyone can spare a hotbar, but everyone can blow up the Enhancements UI element.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Dualcast application happens so late that it's very sensitive to latency.

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I'm glad I've never had this happen to me.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Jobs that need to keep track of procked buffs should have Enhancements in a similar position or an enlarged spare hotbar with just procked actions

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Well y'know, that could work but it seems like an inelegant solution. The issue with the enhancements UI element is that it shows all enhancements, including party-wide cooldowns. Firestarter would easily be missed in all of that. The hotbar trick seems cool, but again, it's a bit like what people did with auras back in the old days of WoW before the developers put built-in proc notifications on the UI.

It's a good idea and works really well. I loved having procs pop up around my character area for various abilities.