The Black Mage Rotations

[Peptaru]

It was posted barely a few posts again, you can still do double flares, fire 2 is a timing control to make sure transpose is ready again. Surely you've been reading all the posts in here....

[Kenji1134]

Sadly/ironically yes, you can still double flare. I'd wager its actually stronger now than before...

Flare under UI3 is 70% potency, under UI1 is 90% potency and under AF3 is 180% potency.
The old double-flare, IIRC was 2 Flares back-to-back, but then you had to wait for transpose to get back into UI for mana. It was UI3, Flare at half speed, get the tick after Flare goes off, Flare again at full strength, and be out of mana again, and wait for transpose. So Flare*(.7+1.8)/12 - recast time of Transpose.
Or was it F3 in UI3 -> Fast Flare under AF3... and wait for transpose... either way.

The new trick is to go out of UI1 and double Flare using the right timing. The new method is Flare*(0.9+1.8)/12... so its actually better than the old trick, just slower, but more potency over the 12s time period.

So the bandaid fix for UI3 dropping partway though a F3 cast has failed to address the "core problem" and only served to make the ST rotation more awkward...

Yeah, can we get this "fix" reverted please? Just put a 10s recast on Flare, and make Swiftcast also refresh the cooldown on Flare.
Then we would have fluid mana ticks all the time. We wont be able to spam double Flares. And we can still Flare-Convert-Swiftcast-Flare, since Swiftcast would refresh Flare.

#BlackMageFixed

[Dorin]

Yeah, can we get this "fix" reverted please? Just put a 10s recast on Flare
#BlackMageFixed

LOL no. Flare consumes all your mana, I think that's a big enough of a punishment for using it, we don't need bull like 10 secs recast time.

[Waliel]

I would gladly take a 10 second cooldown on Flare if it meant that we're getting the old UI/AF changing back.

[Kalvin1783]

I think the best fix to using double flares would be to make it so bad that no one would ever want to use it. It would be very simple to do. Just give it the same properties as Fire 1 instead of Fire 3 regarding AF/UI stacking.

As is, Flare gives you a full stack of astral fire when casted. Double Flare from umbral ice is strong because the first Flare is reduced potency, but it grants AF3, and the second Flare is full power.

If Flare acted like Fire 1 instead, the first Flare would be reduced potency and only remove umbral ice, while the second Flare would be under no umbral ice or astral fire.

This would make double Flare via umbral ice so impotent that no one would waste time with it, while at the same time not nerfing the spell in any way for it's intended purposes. Flare is clearly meant to be used while already under AF3, not as a means to attain AF3, as the spell drains all of your mana. Making this change would only emphasize that intention.

Implementing this "nerf" could effectively kill double flare and then hopefully they would give us back our previous UI/AF swapping mechanics.

[Allyrion]

The change wasn't just about double flare. They also said that they didn't want us double dipping from the reduced cast times.
Though I agree that it was a band-aid fix since I doubt the awkward UI phase was an intended consequence.

[Pinworms]

The core problem wasn't double flare itself, but casting speeds involved with doing the flares iirc. So they did "fix" the issue,

Looks like the guy above beat me. Lol

[Kalvin1783]

While I agree that it's a glitch and I understand that no game designer wants one in their game, I wonder what is so bad about having double dipping...assuming they fixed double flare somehow? For the sake of conversation I would point out that, as far as AOE rotations, double dipping rotations wouldn't be as strong with the Blizzard 2 nerf. We have a "legit" rotation now that's almost as strong as the pre 2.1 double dipping, un-nerfed Blizzard 2 rotation. Plus, how much did double dipping really help ST rotations? DD'ing your first Fire 1 didn't really gain dps due to GCD, although it did give you enough time to see if your F1 proc'd. But that's something we should be able to do anyways. DD'ing into another F3 was more damage but only allowed you to cast 4 F1's, giving you one less chance at a free F3 proc...kind of a wash.

So, I suppose the question is, post 2.1, assuming double flare was fixed, would double dipping be so good as to be considered broken?

[O-Deka-K]

Thanks for all the math, Deka. I'll update the OP accordingly.

You're welcome, but your math has a number of mistakes:

• Fire 3 after Transpose has a potency of 198, not 154. This is because Transpose puts you into UI1, which is only a 10% damage reduction. I made the same mistake before.
• You're not taking multiple targets into account, which means that all of your formulas are based one target. That is, if a 100 potency attack hits 3 targets, it counts as 300 potency. That's why I have N in my formulas.
• Taking multiple targets into account, Fire 2 generally increases DPS for 3 or more targets.
• You don't have to average out the wait time for a mana tick. I already explained that in a previous post. Each rotation is an exact multiple of 3s.
• If you cut out Fire 2 entirely, then you'll have 5.5s of doing nothing because you'll be waiting for Transpose's CD (and you won't gain any mana ticks because you'll be in AF3 the whole time). This is (468N + 198) / 12 = 39N + 16.5 PPS.

As I said, I haven't tried the double Flare rotation yet. I need to practice it before being able to say anything else about it.

[Synovius]

You're welcome, but your math has a number of mistakes:

• Fire 3 after Transpose has a potency of 198, not 154. This is because Transpose puts you into UI1, which is only a 10% damage reduction. I made the same mistake before.
• You're not taking multiple targets into account, which means that all of your formulas are based one target. That is, if a 100 potency attack hits 3 targets, it counts as 300 potency. That's why I have N in my formulas.
• Taking multiple targets into account, Fire 2 generally increases DPS for 3 or more targets.
• You don't have to average out the wait time for a mana tick. I already explained that in a previous post. Each rotation is an exact multiple of 3s.
• If you cut out Fire 2 entirely, then you'll have 5.5s of doing nothing because you'll be waiting for Transpose's CD (and you won't gain any mana ticks because you'll be in AF3 the whole time). This is (468N + 198) / 12 = 39N + 16.5 PPS.

As I said, I haven't tried the double Flare rotation yet. I need to practice it before being able to say anything else about it.

1) Thanks for pointing out that UI1 is 10% and not 30%. Noted.
2) I see what you mean about multiple targets. My error was one of semantics in that what I've shown is basically an AoE rotation done on a single target. To extrapolate this out to multiple targets, I obviously wouldn't want to multiple everything by N where N is the number of targets because Fire III is ST. So I wouldn't say there was an error in my math here - just a difference of semantics.
3) I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at when saying that Fire 2 would increase DPS for 3 or more targets. Are you implying that it wouldn't be a DPS increase for 2 targets? What is this a DPS increase over?
4) I may be mistaken but I thought mana ticks were done on a global 3s timer meaning that when one starts their rotation would matter and therefore I can't comfortably make every rotation an exact multiple of 3s. You also might want to consider some human error or latency here.
5) I already said exactly what you just said: that cutting out Fire 2 entirely will cause you to wait around on Transpose.