AOE combo skills

[Silverquick]

I thought Fire II did 180 potency of damage. This is because I read that astral fire at 3 stacks increases the damage of fire spells by 80%. Mind you I haven't played BLM in months and barely payed attention to how much damage my Fire II was doing so I don't really know. Either way it seemed like it was stronger then just 130.

I used to wonder why things dropped so much slower when I would be AoEing as a BLM at levels 30-49. Could not figure out why as a SMN I was able to drop things so much faster with AoEs... but then when I broke it down... I understood...

As a BLM at those levels I was using Fire II, with 2 or 3 stacks of fire. Potency of 140 or 180 for Fire 2 Spam.

As a SMN I was using Bio, Bio 2, Miasma.... and then stepping in and spamming Bliz II. Potency of 40 + 35 + 35 for 110... for the DoTs that tick once every 3 seconds.

Bliz II has a casting time of 2 seconds... so is actually 75 Potency for 3 seconds. (it's 50 per 2 second cast) but spamming it is an extra DoT for SMN.

So I discovered even at those levels I was far outstripping BLM AoE damage with SMN.

Fire II was 120-180 Potency
DoTs (Bio>Bio 2>Miasma) 110 potency + (Bliz 2 Spam) 75 potency = 185 potency
I could not for the life of me understand why even at lower levels AoEing large numbers of mobs as SMN was stronger than when I would do it as a BLM until I broke it down.

And once you get to level 52 as SMN your AoE power takes off to even higher levels.