Quote Originally Posted by Ramath View Post
It has nothing to do with making good or bad choices. I can know when to save or use my procs effectively. I can know when to hold off casting for a moment knowing a burn phase is coming up. That is completely independent of the issue I'm trying to get you to understand. Casting Fire3 directly after Blizzard3 is better than casting Fire1 three times. It puts us at maximum efficiency faster and with less mp spent. That is a choice made by the player. That is a difference between good and bad BLM's. However, the fact that even if I make the better choice of casting Bliz3>Fire3 still doesn't fix the issue that I am punished for paying attention and casting Fire3 the moment I'm able to, instead of sitting around.

A parallel can be drawn with my DRG.

The point you are making (as far as I'm able to understand it) is that when I perform my rotations correctly, I should be rewarded over a player who uses his abilities in random orders. This I agree with. Better use of abilities should produce better results. This is a choice made by the players.

The point I am trying to get you to understand is aside from what abilities I decide to use. Casting Bliz3>Fire3 is a better choice than casting Fire1 three times. We get to Astral3 faster and with less mp spent. This clearly is a better choice made by the player. However, even with the better choice made, I can still cast Fire3 after Bliz3, like I'm supposed to, and have it start casting even before Umbral3 is applied. I am punished for paying attention and maximizing my ability use (casting spells as fast as my Spell Speed stat allows). Also, spamming Fire1 until I'm either out of mp, or until a free/instant Fire3 procs is the SOP for BLM's. The fact that I'm potentially losing out on wasted Fire3 procs is something I can't avoid if I'm running my abilities correctly.

Yes, I understand that correct player choices should be rewarded over poor player choices. However, the point you are still failing to understand is that I'm talking about a MECHANICAL fundamental that is out of our hands.
The funny thing is that when this game released, BLMs never had this problem with being punished for spamming their spells. In fact, they were rewarded for doing so, because you could double dip into AF3/UI3 benefits when switching into the conserve/burn parts of your rotation. Getting a halved cast-time Fire 3 and Fire 1, the latter having AF3's increased damage, felt nice and fluid.

Unfortunately come 2.1, they decided to have AF3/UI3 removed on cast instead of on hit as an attempted fix to double flaring, leading to some of the annoying problems we have as BLMs today, including unsynced mana ticks and the very problem you speak of.

Sometimes I wish they'd just go back to that.