Some interesting numbers on 4.0 BLM

[Galvuu]

snip

Lots of things here.
The base 600MP is so I don't (sometimes) need to stay put for 0.5 seconds doing nothing to wait for the mana tick.
In the 4.0 rotation, if your Fire III finishes before you get a refund on your UI cycle, you won't have enough mana to F4x3>F>F4x3>B3 (you'll be left at 0 MP) and will need to Transpose. This is a dps loss most of the time.

You should always use the 8xFire IV opener to buy time on the Foul clock. This opener is quite long (like 40ish seconds), so you buy enough time to ensure the next three 3.X rotations always have Foul up. By then, you have Triple/LL up again, and should do one/two 4.0 rotations to, again, buy Foul clock time. I never even considered the old Sharpcast opener (you won't even have Foul for your first UI cycle if you do it).
I didn't math this, but I'm very confident the Sharpcast opener loses in pps when you consider the full UI cycle (Foul is no joke).

The reason why you only need a rotation is because pps is inherently normalised for time. The 4.0 rotation lasts, on average, 33.5 seconds. The 3.X lasts 26.5 (if memory serves me correctly). If the 3.x yields more expected pps than the 4.0, any arbitrary least common multiple of the two lengths of time will reflect this. Think of it as speed- if 3.0 has higher velocity than 4.0, then it'll outrace it for any length of time (travel farther = doing more damage). The only thing that can offset this is if the time it takes to clear a fight/get to a transition, for instance, would align one just as you cast Foul (maximum pps) VS as you cast the first Fire IV (worst case scenario, Thunder has barely ticked and your last spell was an unboosted Fire III, least pps). But you cannot realistically predict when the fight will end this accurately with any degree of confidence.
Or, if you want to keep that analogy from before, pps isn't a monotonically increasing function over time (it has some bumps as you enter the low pps end of the UI cycle), so you could end up on one of these valleys for one and not the other.
That said, preliminary data, if top parsing BLMs are anything to go by, shows that 3.0 wins.

Just explaining the reasoning behind stuff.

[Azyael]

Hey so I got rejected for a Static the other day because my dps was "low" (3200 in Susano and 3600 in V2).
I was doing the 4.0 rotation on each fight.

Read your post but could someone post out the optimized "Opener" and following 3.0 rotation?
I feel like I might be messing some stuff up and would really like to know the exact rotation before adjusting.

[Galvuu]

snip

V2 is Deltascape V2? I mean, without knowing your ilv, I dunno if that's good or not x)
For the opener, do a normal 4xF8.
B3(prepull)>Enochian>T3>B4>F3>Triple(weaved into quick F3)>F4>Sharpcast>F4>F4>LL(weaved)>F>F4x3>Firestarter>Convert(weaved)>F4x2.
If you want to pot, pot on the second triple cast. Pot should get all F4s (not sure about Foul, haven't tried the long pots yet).

Rotation is just F3>F4x2>F>F4x2>B3>T3>Foul.
If you see you won't have Foul up for the next rotation, do the 4.0 one to let it "catch up". I tend to do this if I have Triple and/or LL.
That's all

[AlphaSonic]

God I just wish Umbral Hearts guaranteed a Crit and Direct Hit too...

[soslinky]

That would actually be a good tweak to it. It rewards you for studying the fight and choosing when to B4 or not as determined by your positioning and boss mechanics. Using it poorly results in a DPS loss and motivates you to do better by reminding you that you would probably fare better with the 3.0 rotation. I like that.

[Kabooa]

What. If it guaranteed double crits, you'd always B4.

That's a 1.8x damage increase, effectively making 3 as good as 5.5. It'd be arguable that you'd lose more DPS by following through with more Fires than just straight up B3 B4 F3 3F4 spamming

[RyeMinx]

Thanks for your very interesting posts, RyeMinx, I agree on a lot of stuff you said.
Off topic: you can bypass the forum character limit by editing your post.

Good to know, thank you. ^^

The base 600MP is so I don't (sometimes) need to stay put for 0.5 seconds doing nothing to wait for the mana tick.
In the 4.0 rotation, if your Fire III finishes before you get a refund on your UI cycle, you won't have enough mana to F4x3>F>F4x3>B3 (you'll be left at 0 MP) and will need to Transpose. This is a dps loss most of the time.

Yes, sometimes this is unavoidable, but if you get a fast mana tick after B3, allowing for your UI phase to go B3 -> T3 -> B4 -> Foul -> F3, you wont ever have that 2400 mana problem. But obviously, this is luck based. And in the situation where you do have this, you need to do F4x3 -> F1 -> F4x2, transposing is worse than just skipping a F4.

When it comes to the rotations, I checked my work and found a couple small cast errors, which puts the rotations at very similar PPS assuming ideal casts and mana ticks. I still personally have had problems where with enough SpS (LL/Arrow) where B3 - T3 - Foul - F3 is just too fast for mana ticks. Also, if you happen to get a T3P and it is used after your F1, you don't want to reapply T3 during UI without another proc, so youll be forced to B3 - B1 - Foul or B3 - B4 - Foul, and in this case B4 is obviously better, and you are back on the 4.0 rotation.

I think a major problem right now, is T3P is even more important now, since you can cast it after 6s from your previous T3P, and it will be a higher potency than F4. In 3.0, you needed to wait at least 12s. We are thundermages now.

[Kabooa]

The small ray of light where you only get 5 F4s is you have the MP to immediately T4 or B4 as you require, meaning you are less at the mercy of a bad MP tick

[Rakhabit]

V2 is Deltascape V2? I mean, without knowing your ilv, I dunno if that's good or not x)
For the opener, do a normal 4xF8.
B3(prepull)>Enochian>T3>B4>F3>Triple(weaved into quick F3)>F4>Sharpcast>F4>F4>LL(weaved)>F>F4x3>Firestarter>Convert(weaved)>F4x2.
If you want to pot, pot on the second triple cast. Pot should get all F4s (not sure about Foul, haven't tried the long pots yet).

What's your reasoning behind using Ley Lines so late in your opener? It should be a PPS increase if you use it right before you B4.

[RyeMinx]

What's your reasoning behind using Ley Lines so late in your opener? It should be a PPS increase if you use it right before you B4.

It is actually not. You use LL after the third F4. Using LL after B4 clips GCDs, in 3.0 we really didnt have a choice, since we only had F3P, T3P, and Swiftcast to allow us to weave properly. Now that we have triple, its best used weaved in. The reason it goes there is just what spells it hits after.