Make Blizzard IV instant. Here's why:

[spelley]

Additionally, and I would appreciate it if an expert Dragoon could clarify this for me, but if a dragoon screws up their Fang and Claw or Wheeling Thrust application, can they not just simply start their combo chain over with the other one? Also, can't they simply fire off Fang and Claw or Wheeling Thrust every 2.5 seconds once they have sharper or enhanced wheeling up, or at the very least on demand?

When a Dragoon has Blood of the Dragon active, whenever they complete the 3rd ability in either of their 1-2-3 combos (True -> Vorpal -> Full Thrust or Impulse Drive -> Disembowel -> Chaos Thrust), it procs EITHER Sharper Fang and Claw OR Enhanced Wheeling Thrust (50% chance of either, one or the other always pops). These are 10s buffs that allow the ability to use 1 of the 2 abilities. If you use ANY other Weapon Skill, you lose the "4th hit" buff and once you use the ability, it consumed the buff and adds 15s to your Blood of the Dragon buff timer (up to a max of 30s).

By itself, this is very easy to maintain. Heck, you can go entire dungeons keeping the buff up 100% if the tank pulls quickly enough...until you factor in Geirskogul. Geirskogul is an oGCD that consumed 10s of your Blood of the Dragon timer. The optimal rotation for Dragoon involves trying to push 3 Geirskogul's per minute. This gives approximately a ~0.5/1s window where you MUST refresh the buff if you want to keep using Geirskogul (assuming your skill speed is even high enough to keep it up). Jumps, mobs dying at the wrong time and even latency can break it if you are trying to push Geirskogul as much as you can.

Just so you know, I agree that BLM have more difficulty in maintaining Enochian (which is why I'm not opposed to B4 being insta-cast), but Dragoons DO have to worry about something similar (which, if you fail, you lose access to Fang and Claw/Wheeling Thrust, Geirskogul AND 30% damage to 2 of our other oGCDs)

[Yeldir]

When a Dragoon has Blood of the Dragon active, whenever they complete the 3rd ability in either of their 1-2-3 combos (True -> Vorpal -> Full Thrust or Impulse Drive -> Disembowel -> Chaos Thrust), it procs EITHER Sharper Fang and Claw OR Enhanced Wheeling Thrust ...

Very educational. And concise, in fact, I'm going to refer a Dragoon friend of mine to it. Do you still get to use the other 1-2-3 combo if you screw up the first, and, do you need to use both of those combos to keep up your Geirskogul spam, even under optimal conditions where nothing was interrupted?

That's called not pressing the button in time. Blm has always had to plan for boss jumps and invulnerability phases and such. That's just more true now.

This in no way invalidates my concern. "In Time" with a long cast bar in raids where there is a fair degree of random targeted AOE spam that seems to favor people at range and *has* to be avoided (see: ley lines complaints) isn't always "in time". This one facet of our rotation is a uniquely Black Mage problem, and it isn't like we're getting superior single target raid damage from having the most difficult rotation. We all know we aren't on top right now, even when things do go perfectly for us.

An alternative would be to buff F4 damage so that the risk matched the reward, but that's a terrible idea as it would cause the game to slant dramatically in our favor in fights we were allowed to sit around and press our little buttons in the happy little order we see posted on these forums. I don't favor this solution at all.

Do you guys see my goal, yet? Our rotation should be no more easily disrupted by random mechanics than, say, the Dragoon's combo chaining, and when it is disrupted, we should be punished no worse than any other class. Why? Let me stress this again: We do not put out the kind of numbers necessary for how big of a hassle our normal rotation is, relative to other classes.

[Malevicton]

This in no way invalidates my concern. "In Time" with a long cast bar in raids where there is a fair degree of random targeted AOE spam that seems to favor people at range and *has* to be avoided (see: ley lines complaints) isn't always "in time". This one facet of our rotation is a uniquely Black Mage problem, and it isn't like we're getting superior single target raid damage from having the most difficult rotation. We all know we aren't on top right now, even when things do go perfectly for us.

An alternative would be to buff F4 damage so that the risk matched the reward, but that's a terrible idea as it would cause the game to slant dramatically in our favor in fights we were allowed to sit around and press our little buttons in the happy little order we see posted on these forums. I don't favor this solution at all.

Do you guys see my goal, yet? Our rotation should be no more easily disrupted by random mechanics than, say, the Dragoon's combo chaining, and when it is disrupted, we should be punished no worse than any other class. Why? Let me stress this again: We do not put out the kind of numbers necessary for how big of a hassle our normal rotation is, relative to other classes.

As far as the first paragraph there, I have to disagree. "In time" for a blm means you started 3 seconds ago. That's always been the case. Much like Hallowed Ground for plds or Benediction for whm: if you use it when you need it then you used it too late. We've always benefited the most from situational foresight. It's not "did I start casting blizz4 with enochian up" it's "Did I finish the cast with enochian up" that you should be focusing your attention on. If you haven't started the cast and have 2 seconds on enochian (and don't have swiftcast) then it's already too late; the time to deal with that came and went and you missed it. "In time" with a long cast bar has always been a thing for blm to deal with. Now it's just more important and less forgiving to deal with. It is uniquely blm, but what you see as a problem I just see as the playstyle.

Odds are most of the time we have to dodge an aoe we'll need to adapt around that, but in most cases there's a solution. The only really problematic time is if you have to dodge while casting blizz4, but even then the first 2 rounds of enochian give you a couple of seconds of leeway. If you miss it on the 3rd round then enochian will reset soon anyways. Hate to be the elitist, but if you're having trouble keeping up enochian with consistency in fights that you know well, then it might be a case of "get gud." Other blm, myself included, can maintain effective enochian uptime, enough at least to remain competitive.

I see your goal, but it's not my goal. It's not a universal goal for blm. It's your goal. Maybe others' as well, but certainly not universal. Sorry, but it kind of just sounds like you don't enjoy the blm playstyle. All of those complaints have pretty much always been true, they've just been exacerbated by the expansion.

[Sensyon]

snip

I don't think you're examples are very good. If you hit Benediction or Hallowed Ground it goes off. It might be too late, but it registers. Using B4 3 seconds out, then having to interrupt, will require another ~3 seconds. So now its plan further ahead just in case. Interrupt twice and now you need more than 6 seconds, and so on. Also, no BLM was not always played this way. In 2.X, AFIII falls off you put it back up with a single cast. Enochian falls off and you're using you're 2.0 rotation for 30 seconds...

[Malevicton]

I don't think you're examples are very good. If you hit Benediction or Hallowed Ground it goes off. It might be too late, but it registers. Using B4 3 seconds out, then having to interrupt, will require another ~3 seconds. So now its plan further ahead just in case. Interrupt twice and now you need more than 6 seconds, and so on. Also, no BLM was not always played this way. In 2.X, AFIII falls off you put it back up with a single cast. Enochian falls off and you're using you're 2.0 rotation for 30 seconds...

Oh c'mon, your argument against the examples is semantic. As for planning ahead based on 3 interrupted casts... if your cast is interrupted 3 times then you didn't plan ahead.

[Sensyon]

Oh c'mon, your argument against the examples is semantic. As for planning ahead based on 3 interrupted casts... if your cast is interrupted 3 times then you didn't plan ahead.

Well, not really. Its not the same at all, but you tried to say it was to help your point. There's a difference between not timing you're instant action abilities perfectly versus timing your cast abilities perfectly and having to interrupt them. The former is you're fault completely (outside of server lag issues) and the latter can be manipulated by outside forces (mechanics, AoEs, etc.) If you can see the difference, than half of your argument is moot. As for the second comment, I agree to a point. However, what do you do if you don't have SC, and you interrupt your cast to avoid an AoE, but by the time you can be stationary you don't have enough time to cast B4? Bismark EX, for example. You interrupt your cast or wait to cast it, because a puddle forms, and now its following you..?

[Yeldir]

Other blm, myself included, can maintain effective enochian uptime, enough at least to remain competitive.

So can I; and I never said I couldn't. I use and even described the strategies you're throwing at me to mitigate the problems of Enochian in prior posts. You're not telling me anything I haven't said myself. Your reply is full of "huh, I guess you're not as good as me", but you never really address my primary concern:

The Black Mages of today has to do far more and gets less for it, and when they screw up, I stand by my claim that they're punished harder than any other class.

... All of those complaints have pretty much always been true, they've just been exacerbated by the expansion.

What? If I screwed up my Blizzard three, I just had to press convert, and I'd be back on my feet in several seconds. If it wasn't up, you always had transpose available. If I screw up Enochian, there's no recourse open to me. I can't do anything to recover what I've lost. I have to wait thirty seconds, and I'm a drag on whatever raid I'm in until then. There was no punishment mechanic like this in 1.0, 2.0, or anything in between. Black Mage was an incredibly easy class to play for almost all of 2.0.

Again, I should restate my concern to you, as you don't seem to even touch it in any of your responses: Black Mage difficulty does not presently match Black Mage reward. If you disagree with that based on personal experience, look to the people around you, their parses and perhaps consider that maybe the melee you raid with isn't all it could be.

Spelley: Thanks! That was quite informative.

[Malevicton]

Again, I should restate my concern to you, as you don't seem to even touch it in any of your responses: Black Mage difficulty does not presently match Black Mage reward.

But you're trying to compare a subjective metric (difficulty) to an objective reward (dps numbers). I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I disagree and we can both be right.

[spelley]

snip again

The 1-2-3 combos are just basic GCD combos that we've had since 50. What basically happens is that our rotation goes from 1-2-3 to 1-2-3-(random 4th) while under the effect of BotD for a net DPS gain. You have to use both combos because 1 combo (Impulse Drive -> Disembowel -> Chaos Thrust) applies a Piercing Debuff (Disembowel) and a high-damage DoT (Chaos Thrust) whereas the Thrust-1-2-3 combo provides higher flat potency. The rotation is set up the way it is so that we clip our DoTs as minimally as possible while maintaining uptime. Basic rotation WHILE BOTD IS UP is:

Heavy Thrust (15% damage buff) -> Impulse Drive -> Disembowel (debuff) -> [Use Blood of the Dragon] -> Chaos Thrust (DoT) -> 4th (+15s BotD) -> Phlebotomize (DoT) -> True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust -> Full Thrust -> 4th (+15s BotD) -> Repeat

Geirskogul is considered "safe to use" anytime you have >21s of time left on your Blood of the Dragon buff after using your 4ths, assuming you have approximately 590 Skill Speed. Optimal Geirskogul use basically means you "ride the line" at 22s for nearly the whole cooldown time of Blood of the Dragon. The issue, as you can imagine, is situations where you use Geirskogul at 22s immediately after applying your 4th, leaving you with about 11.5s to use (Heavy Thrust/Phleb) + a 1-2-3 combo PLUS activate your 4th. Assuming a 2.4GCD, using those 4 skills before your 4th takes approximately 9.6s (which is closer to 10-10.5 depending on latency). This leaves about a 1-2s window where you can be "disconnected" from the boss.

Please note, all this data can be found (and more!) from Dervy's amazing Dragoon guide: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...A-DPS-Paradigm