Black Mage : A few questions

Hello, I am level 80, but I consider myself a beginner. Indeed, I have been playing for several years in a relaxed way. I'm just doing the main story. I have a few questions about this job.

1- First of all, I regularly see rotations that start with ice magic. In my head, ice magic is good for gaining mana. Since at the start of a rotation I still haven't used any mana, why start a rotation with ice?

2- I don't understand the Umbral soul spell at all. (level 76) I may well reread the spell, but I don't see the point. Can someone explain it to me?

3- Some spells use all mana. I imagine the goal when using one of these spells is to use manafont afterwards?

4- Fire IV has 300 firepower. Despair has 340 firepower, but it uses all mana. Is it really a benefit to use Despair for 40 more?

thanks all

1. the ice openers are rather outdated, nowadays the standard black mage opener starts with a fire 3
2. Umbral soul isa spammable ability you can press over and over to keep refreshing your 15 second enochian timer and gain a stack of umbral ice and umbral heart, basically you use it when you don't have a target to hit, in which case it's impossible to gain umbral ice any other way, you start spamming umbral soul after you use transpose from astral fire.
3. nope, manafont has way too long of a cooldown to be used for every time you use a ALL MP spell
4. As a black mage you are expected to burn all your MP bar and recover it quickly using ice phase, spells like despair and flare consume all remaining mana, and combined with the enhanced blizzard 3 trait that allows you to cast blizzard 3 at 0MP, you are expected to switch to umbral ice to recover your mana after burning all your remaining MP. depair requires a minimum of 800MP to be cast and is always used as a finisher in fire phase.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

1- First of all, I regularly see rotations that start with ice magic. In my head, ice magic is good for gaining mana. Since at the start of a rotation I still haven't used any mana, why start a rotation with ice?

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At level 80, casting Blizzard IV gives you 3 ice stacks. Each of these stacks allow you to cast a fire spell for no MP. So once you switch back to Astral Fire, you get 3 Fire IV for free and the rest costs MP, but before you cast the ones that cost MP you usually need to refresh Astral Fire with a Fire I cast. That moment spent in Umbral Ice doesn't just restore your mana but also allows you to be in Astral Fire for longer.

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2- I don't understand the Umbral soul spell at all. (level 76) I may well reread the spell, but I don't see the point. Can someone explain it to me?

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In my experience it's most useful for AoE. After you have got off your flares, going back to Umbral Ice and using that gives you ice stacks which will allow you to do extra flares by mitigating the MP cost. It's frequently used for maintaining Umbral Ice between pulls as well.

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3- Some spells use all mana. I imagine the goal when using one of these spells is to use manafont afterwards?

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If it uses all mana, you are supposed to use it when mana is low but not depleted as a finisher before switching. But you should read the tooltip because it may only be intended for attacking multiple enemies and not as part of your single target rotation.

Despair is used only when the mana is low and you have got out all of the Fire IVs that you can, before switching to Umbral Ice.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

1- First of all, I regularly see rotations that start with ice magic. In my head, ice magic is good for gaining mana. Since at the start of a rotation I still haven't used any mana, why start a rotation with ice?

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You can start with Fire III, just be aware that you will have to pay Fire III's base cost of 2000MP because you didn't start in Umbral Ice, and you will have to pay full price for all your spells because you don't have any Umbral Hearts, which means your first fire phase will be shorter than normal because ...:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

casting Blizzard IV gives you 3 ice stacks umbral hearts. Each of these stacks hearts allow you to cast a fire spell for no MP its base cost. So once you switch back to Astral Fire, you get 3 Fire IV for free the base cost and the rest costs the usual double MP

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Without Umbral Hearts fire elemental spells cast under Astral Fire cost double their base cost. Umbral Hearts let you cast a fire spell for no increased cost. You still have to pay the base cost of the spell. Effectively, each Umbral Heart gets you half an extra fire spell in your fire phase, and these 1.5 extra fire spells should be a Fire IV and a Despair.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

3- Some spells use all mana. I imagine the goal when using one of these spells is to use manafont afterwards?

4- Fire IV has 300 firepower. Despair has 340 firepower, but it uses all mana. Is it really a benefit to use Despair for 40 more?

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Flare and Despair use all MP, but they have a minimum cost of 800 MP. You can confirm this by reducing your MP below the 800 MP minimum and then checking the Action Help for Flare or Despair. Incidentally, this 800 MP is the base cost of Fire and Fire IV, or half of their Astral Fire cost. Remember the part where each Umbral Heart gets you an extra half spell in Astral Fire? One of those 800 MP savings should be spent on a Despair when you're below 2400 MP.

If you have 2400 MP you have enough to cast Fire IV (1600 MP) followed by Despair (800 MP).

So the most basic BLM rotation at Lv80 goes like this:

loop:
Blizzard III [Umbral Ice 3]
Xenoglossy
Blizzard IV [UI3, 3 Umbral Hearts]
Thunder III
Fire III [Astral Fire 3, 3UH, 100,00MP]
Fire IV [AF3, 2UH, 92,00MP]
Fire IV [AF3, 1UH, 84,00MP]
Fire IV [AF3, 0UH, 76,00MP]
Fire [refresh AF3 timer, 50,000MP]
Fire IV [AF3, 44,00MP]
Fire IV [AF3, 28,00MP]
Fire IV [AF3, 12,00MP]
Despair [refresh AF3 timer, 0MP]


The Fire (I) in the middle that refreshes that AF3 timer can come one slot earlier or later depending on your speed and situation comfort but in order to get all six Fire IVs and Despair you must cast Fire in the middle somewhere. If at any point you find yourself below 2400MP, skip Fire IV and go straight to Despair.

In re: Manafont, you can use this after Flare or Despair but you should cast an Instant spell first so that you don't lose a second of time to activating Manafont. For example,

Despair > Xenoglossy/Thundercloud/Firestarter (Manafont) > Fire IV > Despair.

In AoE you can triple Flare using Manafont. Bonus points if you have an Ether HQ or better, since Ether HQ gives you 800 MP, the minimum cost for another (fourth) Flare:

Blizzard II > Freeze[3UH] > Fire II[3UH] (Triplecast) > Fire II[2UH] > Fire II[1UH] > Flare[0UH] (Triplecast) > Flare[0MP] (Manafont) > Flare[0MP] (EtherHQ) > Flare[0MP]

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Originally Posted by Zilon

2- I don't understand the Umbral soul spell at all. (level 76) I may well reread the spell, but I don't see the point. Can someone explain it to me?

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In my experience it's most useful for AoE. After you have got off your flares, going back to Umbral Ice and using that gives you ice stacks which will allow you to do extra flares by mitigating the MP cost.

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You shouldn't use Umbral Soul for this purpose. Freeze grants Umbral Hearts while also doing damage.

Umbral Soul is for prolonging Umbral Ice between pulls or when a boss is untargetable. It also builds up Umbral Hearts so that when combat resumes you're ready to go into a full fire phase.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

4- Fire IV has 300 firepower. Despair has 340 firepower, but it uses all mana. Is it really a benefit to use Despair for 40 more?

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Without going into a big maths lecture on how to compare BLM spells to each other accurately, it's 72 more potency but only if they have the same cast time, which they do under Swift-/Triple- cast. It would be only about a 33 potency gain after account for Despair taking 0.2s longer to hardcast. Still, yes, cast Despair and get that extra potency. At the point you would choose Despair, you usually don't have enough MP to cast Fire IV anyway. Just remember the 2400MP threshold. At 2400MP or higher, cast Fire IV. Below 2400MP, cast Despair. If your timer is running out because you had to improvise to handle a mechanic and there is no longer enough time for Fire IV and Despair, you might cut your losses with a premature Despair and then restarting your rotation.

Rong to the rescue.

I still (vaguely) remember the point when I realized I could pull off the quad-Flare. It's a definite thrill when you get the chance, tho seems like half the time when you do, things start dying before the end of it anyway. Still, pressing Triplecast along with Swiftcast and watching all those booms go off one after the other is a sight to behold.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Rong to the rescue.

I still (vaguely) remember the point when I realized I could pull off the quad-Flare. It's a definite thrill when you get the chance, tho seems like half the time when you do, things start dying before the end of it anyway. Still, pressing Triplecast along with Swiftcast and watching all those booms go off one after the other is a sight to behold.

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Trash seems to die much faster now in general; or I've just been luckily paired with a lot of high AoE DPS party members lately. But it was extremely satisfying to quad Flare and triple Foul in ShB, and even if you can't always execute a quad Flare anymore, it's a nice little lesson in BLM MP mechanics.

As Xenoglossy takes a polyglot and leave you in whichever state you are in (astral or umbra), I usually always cast it whenever it is available because it doesn’t mess with my rotation… or depending on the fight I may hold it just a short bit for a finisher or final kill shot. Am I incorrect?

When it procs, foul also procs and they seem to stay enabled forever, for something like trash pack to trash packs, I save it so I can get a foul off at the start of the next trash pack.

Oh, question… for lvl 90. It occurs to me that when you get a polyglot, is it a good move to first hit Amplify to give 2 of them, so one can double up on either Xenoglossy or Foul?

Although you can use it in either element, you have more opportunity to use it in Umbral Ice because you cast a lot less in that element and it helps keep you in it for long enough to regenerate all of your MP.

You can use Xenoglossy in Astral Fire but take care it doesn't cost you any Fire IVs by running your timer down. You should have time for one non-fire spell in your fire phase but probably not two unless you have a Firestarter on hand to give you a second timer extension.

You want to keep Amplifier on cooldown so you get as many extra polyglots out of it as you can, but make sure whenever your bar fills you have room for the new charge. It's all the disappoint when you realize you don't have time to spend a stack before the bar fills up and that whole charge bar gets tossed into the lifestream.

Ah, good point… use Xenoglossy after finishing any Fire IVs (don’t think on my feet near as quickly as I did several decades ago).

While you could Xenoglossy, I would actually Despair first.

A good standard rotation at level 90 is:

Blizzard 3
Blizzard 4
Thunder 3 or Xenoglossy [a filler spell to ensure you fill mana before swapping back to Astral Fire]
Paradox [if you have it]

Fire 3 [will be a fast cast if coming off of Umbral Ice]
Fire 4
Fire 4
Fire 4 - you should be about out of time here
Paradox/Fire 1 [This should ideally be paradox, but either paradox or fire 1 will refresh your timer here, if you happen to have a Fire 3 proc sitting around, this is also a good place to use it]
Fire 4
Fire 4
Fire 4 - you should be both about out of time and out of mana
Despair - will refresh your timer AND deplete your mana, but Blizzard 3 while in Astral Fire costs 0 mana.

Start back over at Blizzard 3.

You should have enough time in Astral Fire phase to cast one additional spell during the time period. But remember that unless you have a Fire 3 proc or can immediately cast either Triplecast or Swiftcast beforehand, you can't attack and move and refresh your timer. If you can't consistently get 3 Fire 4's off, drop down to 2 Fire 4's.

Here's a video I was given recently when I was looking for rotation improvement as my group of friends just recently started a static:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oitfdOPiqpw

There's more in there than you will need, I know there were sections there that I decided I wasn't going to bother with currently as they are more advanced. But it's got answers for the majority of the off global cooldowns and where and how to fit them into your rotation.

For my filler, I use Thunder 3 with Sharpcast having been used between Blizzard 3 and Blizzard 4 while waiting for the GCD to refresh. This gives me an instant cast thunder in case I need to suddenly move in fire phase. Then I can pop Thunder 3, then immediately triple cast or swiftcast in order to continue DPS'ing while doing any necessary movement.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

1- First of all, I regularly see rotations that start with ice magic. In my head, ice magic is good for gaining mana. Since at the start of a rotation I still haven't used any mana, why start a rotation with ice?

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Ideally you won't start with ice Anymore, You can start with sharpcast into a precast fire 3, with thunder and some fire 4s, then refresh with fire 1, and fire 4s, then dispare and manafront to get another fire 4 and dispair in then switch to ice, using your polyglots and thunder clouds in between to weave in leylines or tripplecast.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

2- I don't understand the Umbral soul spell at all. (level 76) I may well reread the spell, but I don't see the point. Can someone explain it to me? all

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TLDR you spam it in ice mode between mob pulls or in downtime. this is to keep your timer running and polyglot ticker ticking

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Originally Posted by Zilon

3- Some spells use all mana. I imagine the goal when using one of these spells is to use manafont afterward?

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idealy yes, if you have umbral hearts the ALL mana spells only cost half mana for the first cast, this is great for you can get extra fire IV and dispair in your ST rotation and a 3rd flare in your aoe roatation.

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Originally Posted by Zilon

4- Fire IV has 300 firepower. Despair has 340 firepower, but it uses all mana. Is it really a benefit to use Despair for 40 more?

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Yes for by All = minimum of 800, therefore less mana cost so you can use more fire 4s to a lower threshold of mana and still cast a fire spell that resets your timer and does damage.

Ha, that's kinda sorta exactly what I do... B3, B4, T3, F3, F4, F4, F4... BUT you say F1 to reset the timer, BUT pretty sure I am just about out a mana at that point... maybe I'm out of it, but I don't recall seeing that F3 being a fast cast... I'll hit a dummy and pay attention.

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Originally Posted by RiversideGuy

Ha, that's kinda sorta exactly what I do... B3, B4, T3, F3, F4, F4, F4... BUT you say F1 to reset the timer, BUT pretty sure I am just about out a mana at that point... maybe I'm out of it, but I don't recall seeing that F3 being a fast cast... I'll hit a dummy and pay attention.

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The hardcasting fire 3 that jacobnewblood mentioned is for the opener. Midfight you only hardcast F3 to transition from ice phase to fire phase.

Also if you go into fire phase with full MP, you'll have just enough to cast F4 three times, F1, F4 3 more times then despair. If you are running out of MP by Fire 1, that likely means you are either leaving ice phase too fast or are forgetting to use blizz4.

Ah, NIOW I see it... I made the wrong assumption that lacking umbral hearts, one could not cast a FIV. THEN I see that Paradox does replace my F1 button. Just tried it on a dummy, 3 FIVs, Paradox, timer refreshes, no umbral hearts on my gauge, BUT I can cast a few more F4s. One of these days I may eeek more than 50% of it's potential from this job!