Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

[Cherub]

Really? I did the math and Alex wins unless you got some BiS gear set that makes Shire better than Alex without the ACC going way over the top.

It was a joke haha. Winner of HEARTS since it loses the spot for the best weapon.

[Maero]

Nope, with my gear i had calculated and even Relic came above Shire Rod...
Augmented would be different though, Alex staff would currently be bis

[Garotte14]

Shire rod is still the winner of hearts :v
Yea, my assumption stems from when 3.4 started. And that's where SS still was 0.38 (that's why I said skeptically, because it's just too high). It's nice to actually see the final numbers. After such a long time....

It's one of those weird things. On my knowledge of the game and how long I've played, I knew that SS was never as high as .38. I argued that fact till I was blue in my face, but unfortunately never had the data to back it up because I didn't have formulas for calculating stat weights. We all just went along with the assumption that SS was weighted so high. I never once believed it, but without math, nothing I could do. It was just a matter of waiting for Dervy to level BLM.

But, yes BiS weapon is the Alex Rod.

[SunnyHirose]

I don't think anyone should have ever believed it. Even a pure casting no-oGCD rotation shouldn't have yielded a weight nearly that high (the really rough napkin version: consider going from 1000 to 1100 SS for ~1.8% DPS increase vs. going 1600 to 1700 Attack Magic Potency for ~6.3% DPS increase--ballpark of .29, not terribly far off from Dervy's .283).

[HaroldSaxon]

It's one of those weird things. On my knowledge of the game and how long I've played, I knew that SS was never as high as .38. I argued that fact till I was blue in my face, but unfortunately never had the data to back it up because I didn't have formulas for calculating stat weights. We all just went along with the assumption that SS was weighted so high. I never once believed it, but without math, nothing I could do. It was just a matter of waiting for Dervy to level BLM.

But, yes BiS weapon is the Alex Rod.

Dervy never levelled BLM - it was more him finding out the cast times formulae for each spell as well which was the main sticking point (Spellspeed breakpoints). The stat weight of .38 was refuted and revised down a long time ago on reddit, and even then the guy never actually posted his data which was why it was always suspect. He disappeared shortly after. Just as suspect as the other guy on here saying that it was .23, who literally pulled the numbers from thin air.

The big thing about spellspeed though is that the utility (better movement) is not something that is directly measured in a dummy DPS parse, and potentially extra thundercloud procs you can use. I did plan on writing my own sim and open sourcing it, but with the game in its current state and patch cycle, I didn't see much point.

[Garotte14]

The stat weight of .38 was refuted and revised down a long time ago on reddit, and even then the guy never actually posted his data which was why it was always suspect. He disappeared shortly after. Just as suspect as the other guy on here saying that it was .23, who literally pulled the numbers from thin air.

He did show his data and his work. I even have a copy of it.

I'm not sure about the .23 thing, but I pulled a number out of thin air as well when I wrote the guide. Well it wasn't really thin air, but based solely on my experience with the game and class and how SS affected my actual parses. I predicted SS to have a stat weight of .275. And this was 8 months ago. Of course no one believed me because I didn't have hard data to back that up, and I don't blame them. I only really tried to argue the fact that SS was rated so high, because well...it is.

[Maero]

I believe that also Ariyala uses Dervy for calculations

[Yeowood]

tldr; Flare kills in small packs, not so much in giant swarms when you have high Spell Speed.

Sorry to backtrack, but I've been thinking about this a lot because of the 8 adds in A12S. Right now I'm doing this jank F3 (from UI1) -> F2x3 -> Flare -> Transpose -> Freeze x2 (to get mana to full for 4 adds) and remembered this post about Freeze being optimal for >8 enemies. Trying my casts out on a dummy though, from no stacks I don't have enough MP to do F2x4, let alone B3 after. I have be in UI3 at full MP and use F3. This is without PIE bonus and as Duskwight but I don't think it matters.

That's just an example situation, but usually I'm not going to have full MP from UI3 going into AOE rotation. Especially so once I use my first Flare! And if I am at fullish MP, F3 -> F2x3 -> Flare -> Transpose should be more pps in about the same time frame of ~18s following the estimates from those tables.

So unless I'm missing something, for all practical purposes it seems like we should keep spamming Flare unless there are some really specific circumstances. The way the ideal math works out is interesting, though!

[HaroldSaxon]

He did show his data and his work. I even have a copy of it.

Who, the .38 guy? Would be interested to see it. I know he posted his methodology but never posted his raw data and sim iirc.

I'm not sure about the .23 thing, but I pulled a number out of thin air as well when I wrote the guide. Well it wasn't really thin air, but based solely on my experience with the game and class and how SS affected my actual parses. I predicted SS to have a stat weight of .275. And this was 8 months ago. Of course no one believed me because I didn't have hard data to back that up, and I don't blame them. I only really tried to argue the fact that SS was rated so high, because well...it is.

The .23 thing was someone else iirc. But no stat weight can be considered accurate without any math behind it.

[Yeowood]

I realized with editing my post I can actually show the math, so here goes.

	3 mobs	4 mobs	5 mobs	6 mobs	7 mobs	8 mobs
F3	168	168	168	168	168	168
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
B3	168	168	168	168	168	168
Freeze	300	400	500	600	700	800
Total	2796    3616   4436     5256  	6076  	6896
18s DPS	155	201	246	292	338	383

This beats the F2 x 2 -> Flare rotation but needs full MP. That means we actually need to compare it to this:

F3 -> F2 x3 -> Flare -> Transpose

	3 mobs	4 mobs	5 mobs	6 mobs	7 mobs	8 mobs
F3	168	168	168	168	168	168
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
F2	540	720	900	1080	1260	1440
Flare	1264	1591	1872	2106	2340	2574
Total	3052    3919    4740    5514    6288    7062
18s DPS	170	218     263	306	349	392

This is about the same time frame assuming roughly 3.1s for F3, 2.6s for F2/Freeze, 3.5s for Flare, and the worst case 3s for Transpose's server tick, so I just used the 18s total estimate. Actually the Flare rotation is slightly faster, but it probably evens out considering you will cast F3 in UI3 for the Freeze one.

I think the theory is sound because thinking about it, you gain 234 potency on Flare for each mob past the 5th, versus 180 for F2 and 100 for Freeze, which should eventually cancel out the big initial Flare bonus, but it certainly needs more than 8 mobs. I'd do the math to figure it out myself but I'm real bad at formatting these tables. For the rotation AFTER you Flare, yes the Freeze one beats out the Flare rotation, but you'd have to Blizzard 3 from UI1 and wait for a server tick, which seems suboptimal. You also have to consider, as more enemies die, Freeze gets worse, so if you expect anything to die within 18s and drop the total amount of enemies below the magic number, you should do Flare anyways.

But at a certain point, Freeze should actually be better! It just needs a lot of requirements that aren't likely to be met (enemy #, UI3, enemy durability).