Do you think the devs intended multi-flare blm?

[NyneAlexander]

The average rotation being

Fire 3 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Blizzard 3 > Thunder 3 > Fire 3 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Fire 1 > Blizzard 3 > Thunder 3 > Fire 3 > Fire 1

The portion I highlighted and underlined is our have downtime. That takes on average 6-8 seconds off our DPS. Per minute it doesn't look pretty since 14 seconds is a lot of time if we compare it to 60 seconds.

Shadowzanon broke down the thunder cast "if this then cast this" pretty well in the DPS forums. Gonna quote:

If you need to cast thunder 1 instead you do so. There is no huge dps increase from using thunder 2 over1 just more convinience. Due to the fact we do have to move you just make sure you have enough mana to do the following.
If 398+ mana, Bliz 3, then thunder 2. (or just 400+ if you cannot compute fast enough
If 291 to 397 mana, Bliz 3, thunder 1. (300 to 400 to be safe)
if 290 mana to 185 mana, Bliz 3, bliz one then thunder 2. (290 to 190 to be safe)
if less than 184 mana, use any ether or take your chances on casting bliz3 waiting for mana to tick which is what you want to avoid then cast thunder 2, best save ethers if you ever bump this low.
Adapting to what you got > striving to get 251 mana and losing potential dps for convenience. You are better just getting a phantasia and going dunefolk lalafell if 251 is your goal then no gear will hold you back in groups with a scholar but that should not be something you should do. Point is we can be whatever and still preform our dps to the best of our skill. we cannot just sit back and follow our rotation to the core because if you do, you are potentially crippling your dps.

You can also sub in Bliz III, swiftcast, Thun III, Fire III and be right on timing wise to fill your mp and get back into the Fire 1 spam. But if you are hard casting T3 during the downtime, you are losing DPS regardless of how you slice it.

[Gormogon]

But if you are hard casting T3 during the downtime, you are losing DPS regardless of how you slice it.

There's a reason why I said average rotation.

And please keep that nonsense over there. I mentioned downtime and I explained it. Blizzard 3 > whatever the hell you want to do here > fire 3 is your downtime on DPS. If you can't understand that then please say you don't understand it or aren't willing to instead.

[NyneAlexander]

There's a reason why I said average rotation.

And please keep that nonsense over there. I mentioned downtime and I explained it. Blizzard 3 > whatever the hell you want to do here > fire 3 is your downtime on DPS. If you can't understand that then please say you don't understand it or aren't willing to instead.

Easy buddy. This is how stupid forum fights start. No need to be rude. Just cause I didn't agree with your description of "average rotation" or downtime, doesn't mean I don't respect your opinion or am unwilling to discuss it. No need to be so defensive.

The bottom line is "whatever the hell you want to do here" can make or break a blm's dps in a sustained fight. Thats what I was getting at.

I say 6 minutes for a couple simple reasons.

1. Its a nice number for 2 and 3 minute CD's, so the next decent timeframe would be 9, and the next ideal timeframe would be 12 minutes.
2. Its true that most of the important fights now take closer to 10-14 minutes... But then the issue becomes constructing a situation to sustain MNK, DRG, and BRD for the entire 12 minute parse WITHOUT breaks, which these long fights tend to have.
3. And then the other fun part, finding enough "equally" geared and skilled... highly skilled... people for this test, AND getting them to go at it for 12 minutes, without messing up or going braindead. =)

That said, this kind of test is really for 2 types of people. Theorycrafters, and the Combat QA/Dev team. We're the former, so if you can find the people to do it, all on the same server, same group, same data collection methods and cross-checking the data... By all means go to town.

But really, this "should" be SE's job, not ours.

PS.
I am having flashbacks to RIFT, where I was a Warrior main, and the entire theorycrafter community did spec and rotation checking for the warrior dev... Then he'd buff or nerf... mostly nerf... each spec and subclass until there weren't any outliers. Not "balance", there were a lot of specs that simply sucked. But of the small handful of builds that worked, they were all "fairly" balanced, mostly thanks to us, the players.

Ok I totally see what you mean here. And you're right, that after a 6 min test of this nature, we will probably see blm come out at the bottom. What concerns me is if the majority of the community took this test as gospel, we'd see people saying that the marginal difference in dps between top and bottom is negligible, and that us blms don't have much to worry about. When the reality is because these numbers grow further apart over time, we have plenty to worry about.

[Gormogon]

Just cause I didn't agree with your description of "average rotation" or downtime

You did neither and brought up something entirely irrelevant.

The bottom line is "whatever the hell you want to do here" can make or break a blm's dps in a sustained fight. Thats what I was getting at.

It doesn't.

Thunder 1-3 is 30-50 potency
Scathe is 100 potency
Thundercloud proc does the most but isn't always available during the transition.

So weather you Thunder I-III> Scathe, Thundercloud > Scathe x2, or Blizzard 3 > Convert > Fire 3 to try and keep uptime rolling it doesn't mean anything since the damage you do here fares in comparison to those consistent Fire 1's, thus the downtime.

[NyneAlexander]

You did neither and brought up something entirely irrelevant.

Thunder 1-3 is 30-50 potency
Scathe is 100 potency
Thundercloud proc does the most but isn't always available during the transition.

So weather you Thunder I-III> Scathe, Thundercloud > Scathe x2, or Blizzard 3 > Convert > Fire 3 to try and keep uptime rolling it doesn't mean anything since the damage you do here fares in comparison to those consistent Fire 1's, thus the downtime.

You don't think the bigger problem here is you thinking what you do in downtime during a fight is "something entirely irrelevant"?