The Black Mage Rotations

[LetBloodline]

They changed something. I only tried it a little bit, but I think UI1 and UI2 act like UI3 now. That is, when casting Fire 3, the UI1/2 buff gets removed shortly before it finishes casting, and then AF3 is applied after it hits.

It seems that if you start casting Fire 3 right when you get a mana tick after Transpose (casting time 3.5s), the UI1 buff is removed before you get the next tick, so you won't be able to cast Fire 2 before doing Flare. To alleviate this, you can wait for half a second before casting Fire 3. However, I think this causes you to miss a mana tick, so the rotation is extended by 3s. This would make Kenji's numbers correct.

More testing is necessary.

We may need to revisit the 2.0 AoE rotation: B2 - B2 - F3 - F2 spam - Flare - Transpose

You don't want full mana. You want only 2 mana tiks that means be able to cast fire 2 fire 2 flare. You must have a SS so high that fire 3 cast time is less then 3s before having issues with this rotation and the "issue" is wait 0.1 sec if your fire3 cast time is of 2.9

[O-Deka-K]

You don't want full mana. You want only 2 mana tiks that means be able to cast fire 2 fire 2 flare. You must have a SS so high that fire 3 cast time is less then 3s before having issues with this rotation and the "issue" is wait 0.1 sec if your fire3 cast time is of 2.9

I agree that Spell Speed may be a factor. However, according to PuroStrider's spreadsheet, you'd need 686 spell speed in order to reduce the cast time of Fire3 to 3 seconds. I only have 440.

In 2.0, UI1, UI2, UI3 all worked the same: UI was switched to AF3 when Fire3/Flare hit.

In 2.1, UI3 was changed so that UI3 was removed shortly before Fire3/Flare hit and AF3 was applied after, leaving a small window where you have no buff. However, it was discovered that they didn't change UI1 and UI2, so the double-Flare was modified to work under UI1.

In 2.3 now, they specifically said that they changed UI1 and UI2, so I think that they just applied the same change as they did with UI3. I haven't been watching my buffs carefully enough to confirm this though. I'm going to do some testing this weekend.

[Adamantium]

In 2.3 now, they specifically said that they changed UI1 and UI2, so I think that they just applied the same change as they did with UI3. I haven't been watching my buffs carefully enough to confirm this though. I'm going to do some testing this weekend.

You're right in your assumption. I tested it as soon as patch day hit because I figured that's the change they would have applied.