Sooo...How to THM?

Ok, well, being a SMN, I had to level THM to 15. At the time, I thought, "cool! I loved Black Mage in FFXI!". However getting to 15 was a real struggle/chore for some reason. I know I need to level THM to at least 26 to get "Swiftcast" for my SMN, but I'm dreading just BSing my way through it for another 11 levels. I'd like to enjoy the experience. So I was curious if anyone could offer any help in the way of 2 things.

1. Could some please explain the Astral Fire and Umbral Ice mechanic to me? (I've tried googling it, but I'm at work currently and all the sites with explanations are blocked). It was a real source of confusion for me.

2. What is a good rotation for this lower level grind?

Thanks everyone! As always, any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Do fire until out of mana then use ice to get back mana then cast fire again.

Fire buff makes u do more damage but spend more mana to cast fire.

Ice buff makes u regen mana.

Switch between them to keep ur mana up, and your damage up.

What I also did when waiting for my Mana to go back up I casted the odd DOT spell and others then BOOM killed it with Fire!

Low level I thunder/thunder 2 > spam fire 1 until you are basically OOM but keep enough for another thunder/thunder 2 > transpose > repeat.

By the time you transpose and recast thunder the thunder dot will nearly be off the mob anyway.THM and BLM probably has the easiest rotation in the game.

Thanks! I really appreciate the help!

Something else worth mentioning that may be useful: If you finish a fight in Fire stance it's helpful to use Transpose so you can get mp back for the next one. This is pretty useful in dungeons to keep your momentum going.

Ok cool, so I had one more quick question:

How should I be allocating my attribute points for THM? Thus far I've only been putting them into INT for THM. I'm not ruling out the possibility of going for a BLM eventually once I get my SMN up to par, so I don't want to hurt myself in the future because I'm not doing things right while I'm leveling. Thanks!

Generally you will want to go INT all the way. There are some very specific fights at the very very endgame that you might appreciate some more VIT but it's not necessary if you gear up properly.

Awesome! Thanks for the help!

Keep in mind stat allocation is different for each class, and do not affect each other. So it's generally a good idea to just go with the main stat for each class. INT in THM's case.

Its a 4 count rotation typically. The casting time on Thm is always 1 click behind whatever you just cast. That's because ice removes fire and visa vera. If you hit fire 4 times and then switch to your ice mana won't zero out.

Well after a few months hiatus, looks like I'm going to be working on leveling up THM for the next few days to grind out that "Swiftcast". Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for help with the rotation!