The Black Mage Rotations

[Ramath]

Yeah, I'm having the same issue. What's worse, I can cast B3 > B2 > F3, and still end up only getting 1 tic.

They really need to fix this. It's making BLM very clumsy to play.

[NeoAmon]

Why does my BLM feel funny? I could not put my hand on it since I was ded tired yesterday. Something was different just could not tell what -_-/.

[SirGazuntai]

I'm not really getting the MP tick problem as often as others. Even testing right now I can get to full MP as long as I wait roughly the same length of time as before. I would always end up with about 2/3 MP if I went Fire III > Fire spam > Blizz III > Fire III as soon as UI activates. If I waited a second, I'd be at full MP.

If I wait a second and then cast Fire III right now I'm usually at 100% (minus Fire III cost).

However, usually is the keyword there. I won't complain about the DPS loss as it was, in the end, a bug that we knew was going to be fixed before we were told it was going to be fixed (and if you didn't know, you probably shouldn't have an opinion on balance at all), BUT right now BLM is strangely inconsistent. I sometimes find myself waiting like 4 seconds before I get an MP tick for no apparent reason. While it isn't happening often, it still is. Not to mention that I now seem to find myself losing UI just before my Fire spell finishes casting but then I have to move, which leaves me with no AF or UI, which is horrible either way.

While it makes me feel weak and slow to the point where I'm not enjoying it (not because of low damage, because of inconsistency), I was tanking with a BLM with very similar gear to me. He seemed to be doing okay damage, yet similar to me he would find himself standing there doing nothing because of weird inconsistencies. Our WHM easily outdamaged everyone, even though Holy was nerfed a little.

I don't want our bug back, I want consistency back. We already have a variable that determines our DPS (Firestarter/Thundercloud), making MP ticks another variable makes it extremely clunky to play. Whether this is just another bug caused by the change to AF/UI or by choice, it needs to change. I want to stay on my BLM, not jump ship to the best class like the majority of MMO players. I have so much love for BLM with Vivi as one of my favorite video game characters of all time.

[Allyrion]

Yea, the mana issue is caused by UI ending early since sometimes you'd get mana at the very last millisecond to top you off.
Regen is not slower, it's just that our UI phase ends if we use the same order of spells.

Any consideration of using Thunder III to offset this?

[NeoAmon]

Any consideration of using Thunder III to offset this?

Already doing that, it fixed it for me, Thunder III almost always guarantee full mana before Fire rotation starts.

[SirGazuntai]

I've started casting Scathe as soon as my first tick of Mana pops. This usually makes it were I end up at full MP just after I start casting Fire III. However, sometimes I run into the issue and sometimes I don't. Maybe I'm just finding it hard to adjust in terms of timing ticks, which I could do easily before but if that's the case I'll happily admit I'm wrong.

[Waliel]

What is happening is that AF3 and UI3 buffs disappear about 0.5 second before the cast is finished, and that is the reason why you don't get a mana back like you used. You only get the normal mana tick of 2% instead of UI buffed one.

Do I have to quote myself? You get the 2 mana ticks like always, but the other one is just a neutral mana tick of 2% when you are not in either UI or AF stance. All you have to do is add an extra 0.5 seconds of wait before casting F3, unless you got the mana tick early, and you wont miss the UI3 buffed mana ticks. Or use Thunder 3 as was suggested.

[NeruMew]

Why does my BLM feel funny? I could not put my hand on it since I was ded tired yesterday. Something was different just could not tell what -_-/.

In my opinion, it's mainly mana ticks being funky and completely unreliable. Since they are tied to the clock and no longer our own character (trying to save processing maybe???) soemtimes they go off fast sometimes you wait a lot. Before it was stone solid. Other than that, we can't double cast with 2x speed anymore... that changed the feel of blm greatly for me. but more than anything, Mana ticks.

[Kenji1134]

Well they fixed the double cast by having UI/AF drop when the spell is ~85% through its cast... So why not just undo the change to ticks, and maybe... just maybe... put a 5-10s recast on Flare?
The issue was that Flare could be double-cast by timing the tick correctly. The solution was to sync UI ticks differently... But this obviously has made BLM feel more clunky and just less fun, dps loss aside.
If we just make it so Flare cannot be double-cast by putting a decent recast timer on it, like 10s, then it doesnt matter how the ticks sync up.

This raises the question of "wont that kill Flare-Convert-Swiftcast-Flare?"
Simple solution. Make Swiftcast refresh the cooldown of all of BLM's DAMAGING abilities (assuming this can be coded).
But really the only damaging spell that would even need to be refreshed would be Flare... so it may be easier to code Swiftcast to reset Flare's cooldown... in addition to reducing cast time by 100%.

[SirGazuntai]

In my opinion, it's mainly mana ticks being funky and completely unreliable. Since they are tied to the clock and no longer our own character (trying to save processing maybe???) sometimes they go off fast sometimes you wait a lot. Before it was stone solid. Other than that, we can't double cast with 2x speed anymore... that changed the feel of blm greatly for me. but more than anything, Mana ticks.

I don't think it goes by the clock anymore. I can consistently get insta-ticks after using Transpose in my rotations every single time except the first one (if I start the rotation with a Fire III > Swiftcast > Flare > Transpose > and go back into my rotation the first Transpose tick works fine, however that's something for another time...). People (including myself) jumped to conclusion about it and didn't do enough testing to figure it out. I can still do about 400 DPS in a 3-target AoE, which is still pretty good.

Well they fixed the double cast by having UI/AF drop when the spell is ~85% through its cast... So why not just undo the change to ticks, and maybe... just maybe... put a 5-10s recast on Flare?
The issue was that Flare could be double-cast by timing the tick correctly. The solution was to sync UI ticks differently... But this obviously has made BLM feel more clunky and just less fun, dps loss aside.
If we just make it so Flare cannot be double-cast by putting a decent recast timer on it, like 10s, then it doesnt matter how the ticks sync up.

This doesn't work, either, because we got a pretty decent boost from a fast-cast Fire III > fast cast Fire I. In fact, my rotation as a BLM before was Blizz III > fast-cast Fire III > fast-cast Flare > Transpose > Repeat. This was so quick due to how ticks worked and how fast Flare was. When they fixed the bug, they made this rotation do a reasonable amount of damage opposed to an insane amount. Double Flares weren't the only issue.