Black Mage PSA

Because I still see a whole lot of people talking about it and using it, I wanted to let people know that Transpose out of UI -> F3P is no longer a thing that should be used at all.

Technically speaking you still can do it, however there was a change to the way AF1 works, making transposing out of UI and casting F3P essentially the same damage as just hard casting F3 from Ice. Based on the numbers, you're much better off just using the F3P during the AF section you got it from, than trying to save it.

Edit: For those who are thinking I'm going off the tooltips and not my own testing, I'm not saying it's not a gain to transpose F3P anymore, I'm saying that it's more of a gain to simply use your F3P in your AF3 phase now. Yes you gain some damage doing a transpose F3P line in that moment, but overall you'll lose damage.

If you actually test it, rather than just read tooltips, you'd realize there is a potency increase if you transpose into Fire III. I didn't calculate it, but it's probably x1.4 as it was

I would love it if they removed the wrong-element damage penalty because using F3P in AF3 makes it a lot easier to build up to 6 astral hearts and I hate knowing that I'm technically missing out on a little damage as I do so, but, yes, testing shows that an AF1 F3P does indeed do around double the damage of a UI3 F3P (as you'd expect going from x0.7 to x1.4).

The OP is completely incorrect and is getting baited by incorrect tooltips. Just test the damage yourself on a striking dummy and you will see that F3p in AF1 does double the damage of F3p in UI3.

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

I would love it if they removed the wrong-element damage penalty because using F3P in AF3 makes it a lot easier to build up to 6 astral hearts and I hate knowing that I'm technically missing out on a little damage as I do so, but, yes, testing shows that an AF1 F3P does indeed do around double the damage of a UI3 F3P (as you'd expect going from x0.7 to x1.4).

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This is the one part of DT BLM I like. If you get all 6 F4s without needing to use F3P, you get to cash it in for some extra damage. It's a little reward for good planning.

Also yeah OP is tripping

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Originally Posted by Print_Screen

This is the one part of DT BLM I like. If you get all 6 F4s without needing to use F3P, you get to cash it in for some extra damage. It's a little reward for good planning.

Also yeah OP is tripping

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This is a fair point, and it speaks to the main point of rotational flexibility and risk/reward skill expression I see in the DT BLM, which is whether you manage to use your oGCDs and instant casts to maximize damage or if you need to burn them for pure self-preservation/uptime.

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Originally Posted by Realfoxy

The OP is completely incorrect and is getting baited by incorrect tooltips. Just test the damage yourself on a striking dummy and you will see that F3p in AF1 does double the damage of F3p in UI3.

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It's actually the opposite of what he's saying, the relative gain of the AF1 Firestarter is greater now.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

It's actually the opposite of what he's saying, the relative gain of the AF1 Firestarter is greater now.

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What makes it greater? Is it just that fewer total non-F4/Despair/Flare Star GCDs means a higher over-the-fight density of hard-hitting spells?

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

What makes it greater? Is it just that fewer total non-F4/Despair/Flare Star GCDs means a higher over-the-fight density of hard-hitting spells?

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Basically, yea. Using it in AF also delays your next Despair/Flare Star (the latter is a big deal). Strictly speaking, if it doesn't cost a cast over the encounter, the math gets muddier (though Tpose into AF1 Firestarter still wins).
It's like how using Holy in White in Picto is a damage loss in a dummy because it delays your next subtractive combo (so, your nuke combo).

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Originally Posted by Ferrinus

What makes it greater? Is it just that fewer total non-F4/Despair/Flare Star GCDs means a higher over-the-fight density of hard-hitting spells?

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

Basically, yea. Using it in AF also delays your next Despair/Flare Star (the latter is a big deal). Strictly speaking, if it doesn't cost a cast over the encounter, the math gets muddier (though Tpose into AF1 Firestarter still wins).
It's like how using Holy in White in Picto is a damage loss in a dummy because it delays your next subtractive combo (so, your nuke combo).

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They also just increased the base potency of F3, which simply makes the potency gain of putting it in AF1 over UI3 larger.

Wrong. I did test it, which is exactly why I came to the forum to post about it. The transposed F3P does around 24k with my current gear, a hard casted normal F3 from UI3 does 13k damage. The F3P used in your AF3 phase deals ~34k damage. Transpose F3P is dead. Go test it yourself before spreading further misinformation. I'm not saying it's not a gain over hard cast, I'm saying it's a loss overall.

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Originally Posted by Krakatoa

Wrong. I did test it, which is exactly why I came to the forum to post about it. The transposed F3P does around 24k with my current gear, a hard casted normal F3 from UI3 does 13k damage. The F3P used in your AF3 phase deals ~34k damage. Transpose F3P is dead. Go test it yourself before spreading further misinformation. I'm not saying it's not a gain over hard cast, I'm saying it's a loss overall.

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Please stop spreading misinformation. https://i.imgur.com/r2VBHg1.png

F3 proc is worth 196 potency tranposed out of ice. F3 proc in AF3 is 112. The big issue is that using F3 proc in AF3 is lower than your average gcd damage by delaying your other stronger gcds like Flare Star. So it's not actually a gain but negative potency to even use it. Since you have to get into AF3 from Ice the 196 potency only requires using a gcd you're already doing so it's free value.

Delaying Flare Star is really really really bad. Doing too many AF3 F3 procs is going to lose you whole Flare Stars which is a huge potency loss. So it's going to be a 300+ potency loss by using F3 Proc in AF3 instead of Transposed into AF1.

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Originally Posted by Krakatoa

Wrong. I did test it, which is exactly why I came to the forum to post about it. The transposed F3P does around 24k with my current gear, a hard casted normal F3 from UI3 does 13k damage. The F3P used in your AF3 phase deals ~34k damage. Transpose F3P is dead. Go test it yourself before spreading further misinformation. I'm not saying it's not a gain over hard cast, I'm saying it's a loss overall.

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If using your proc in AF3 deals around 34k damage and hardcasting F3 out of ice mode deals around 13k damage, that's a total of 47k and therefore around 23.5k damage per GCD. You also report that the transposed Firestarter proc deals 24k damage in a single GCD. Doesn't that mean that transpose F3P remains superior just in terms of pure white room potency per second, even ignoring its effects on the rest of your rotation?

Something this thread has me wondering is whether I should just be ignoring the spare F3P proc I get if I do a full fire phase and then Manafont to immediately begin a second. I've mostly been using it thus far but that might be a mistake.

Not taking the flexibility it adds to being able to upkeep AF3 and move, (which they very much want us to have to do this expansion so far) then I suppose realistically the change is so minimal that it barely matters at this point. Now that you bring it up though, I'm wondering myself if it's actually worth it to use the GCD to cast the F3P proc when Manafont is up, or better to skip it entirely.

Frankly this whole situation has me genuinely upset about the current state of BLM, as are most of us on this forum it would seem.

I really wish instead of amputating every means of doing anything "non-standard", they instead just looked at why non-standard exists in the first place and tried to heal that problem. Flare star as a whole feels awful, and I really wish they instead chose to go along the lines of something like, casting F4 increases the potency of your next B3 by X, at 6 astral hearts it becomes Absolute Zero and casting AZ makes your next B4 faster or turns it into Ice Paradox or something along those lines. Something that makes Ice phase interesting and worthwhile to actually use.

I do think that since umbral hearts carry over an advantage of ice phase to fire phase (specifically relating to having more MP), astral hearts should logically carry over some kind of advantage to ice phase (specifically, dealing more damage). If I was designing DT BLM from scratch I'd just use the same place umbral hearts appear to store astral hearts instead, premise umbral paradox on entering ice with at least three astral hearts, let astral hearts get spent on some kind of ice-based Despair clone, etc.

Flare Star does look and feel great to fire off, though, so I don't actually want to lose it at this point. I just want more ice and lightning magic.

I hope they fix it soon. It feels so unnatural, especially during AoE.

And the loss of High Fire II in AoE rotation sucks, too. It felt more natural to spend High Fire II's in fire phase to burn down to 1 Umbral Heart before casting Flares (because Flare gains no benefit from extra Umbral Hearts). I don't know if the High Fire/Blizzard II spells needs more potency or what (e.g., bringing back Enhanced Flare procs from High Fire II but stackable), but please bring it back so the AoE rotation is more than just Flare and Freeze spam.