BLM Fire II incredibly lack luster

[juniglee]

No, it is 120 potency per mob that you hit. Otherwise, if what you say where true, BLM would lay waste to WP speed runs because 10+ mobs would = 1200 potency.

If you hit one mob for 200dmg with Blizz II, you hit them all for roughly same damage depending on the roll of the dice, some might be off +/- .5 to 1%, but that's about it. You are not hitting each mob in the encounter of 10 for 1200 potency each. Also, this is not factoring in any resists, misses or stoneskin effects that any mob at any given time within that pack can reduce that potency.

It is really not a hard concept or equation to understand.

Most of you are misunderstanding the simplistic nature of how DPS is measured across a group of mobs and that it is an accumulative amount of DPS, not multiplicative.

Your posts in this thread so far seem pretty confusing, you're confusing a really simple matter. Check what ananda posted in the previous page.

Also, yes, 120 potency on 10 targets = 1200 potency. 120 x 10 = 1200 in total. If you are hitting each one of those 10 with a single attack, that is. Not sure where you are getting 1200 potency per mob from...that would be 12000 potency?

Using some real world examples, when I run WP my BLM is equipped with Sanguine Scepter HQ:
Average Fire I damage per mob = 490. Average Fire II damage per mob = 310. However, consider that Fire II is also an AoE attack, meaning it hits more than 1 target.

Assuming I hit 3 targets (and they had 5k health each), and that I have Astral Fire III up, and have limitless mana (this part is not real world but just to illustrate my point):
It would take me just over 10 Fire I spams to down each one. That's 25 seconds per mob (2.5s GCD x 10 attacks = 25). This gives me 75 seconds in total.
It would take me about about 16 Fire II spams to take down the entire group. That's about 48 seconds in total (3s GCD x 16 = 48. Fire II has a slightly longer cast time than Fire I).

Of course, single target spam wouldn't be that slow, since I will probably have some Firestarter procs in between. This also doesn't factor in crits, which can sway the results of one scenario. And finally, this doesn't include the situations where I run out of mana:
- On Fire I spam, I'd go Blizzard III, then Thunder II then Fire III and repeat Fire I/Firestarter spams
- On Fire II spam, I'd round off with Flare, then Transpose to Umbral Ice I, and use Blizzard II twice, then Fire III and back to Fire II spams, and round off with Flare again until dead. Also, don't forget Flare + Convert/Flare. Flare does roughly 830 damage, which is almost triple of what Fire II does for me.
- Fire II does cost more mana per cast, but the ending Flare usually rounds it off by doing double or triple what a single Fire II in Astral Fire III can do. Once again, not including an additional Convert/Flare.
- Single target Blizzard I does roughly the same damage as Blizzard II would on a single target, as I don't recall it gets a potency buff while under Umbral Ice.

I agree with you that there is a break point where it's more efficient to single target than AoE-ing, and I find this is usually at 2 mobs remaining, due to reasons stated above.