Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

[Lilyth]

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Hm... let me see how I can explain this. I wanna captalize on this quote here: "The fact 3.X can afford to bypass B4 and go T3>Foul in UI is why it yields higher pps."

The calculations I did regarding the 3.0 rotation assume that you will, everytime, bypass the casting of a filler by having a perfect server tick (the same scenario of casting foul) and have full mana upon returning to AF. Which means the only spells you use during UI is T3. No other filler. It yields 139,3057081 PPS. And for the 4.0 rotation, you will use Blizz 4 (the filler) and Thunder during UI. The yielded PPS is 140,1707923. Both results do not include Foul. I believe so far you reached the same results, no? What we're pondering is whether or not including Foul makes a difference. So to illustrate this, let's make a thought experiment. Let's assume you have a spread of Fouls where you can stack Fouls indefinitely, and everytime you gain Polyglot (30 secs) the Foul stack is increased by 1. You no longer lose Fouls by not casting them before the next Polyglot is obtained. So far we agree that with the new 2.8 cast time and without Foul, 4.0 wins over 3.0. Here are 3 scenarios:

1: You use only the 4.0 rotation in a dummy for 300 seconds and then use all your Fouls. The total potency in this dummy would be something close to (140,1707923) * 300 + 10 Fouls.

2: You use only the 3.0 rotation in a dummy for 300 seconds and then use all your Fouls. The total potency in this dummy would be something close to (139,3057081) * 300 + 10 Fouls.

3: You use a mix of the 3.0 rotation with the 4.0 rotation in a dummy for 300 seconds and then use all your Fouls. The total potency in this dummy would be something close to [(139,3057081 * 150) + (140,1707923 * 150)] + 10 Fouls.

Would you agree that, whether or not I used the Fouls inside the rotations or at the end, the results would be the same? All this considering the 3.0 mana ticks are perfect, which means no filler is needed inside UI? If so, then the only meaningful variables are the rotations themselves. And thus, scenario 1 is the winner.

[Tingaling]

On the live letter it highlights that foul will cost 0mp to address mana issues on black mages. Doesn't this do absolutely nothing to the mana issue because the way theyre suggesting is transpose foul instead of letting us b3 foul

[Thela]

So I was crunching some AoE numbers and this is what I got. Posted it on the "Something interesting..." thread and thought I'd throw it here too.



Please someone tell me I'm wrong.

As far as i know F2 F2 Flare Flare is a pps gain at 4+ targets.

[Galvuu]

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I want to let the readers of the thread know that Thela, Lilyth and I are basically discussing details of experimental method which amount to very small pps gains. I'm doing this because it's fun

Anyway, Lilyth, you just stated the issue with your premise. It's that you don't cast two spells in the UI cycle of your 3.X rotation (when you absolutely must).
Further, there's also the implicit assumption that the rotation is composed of a fraction of 3.X and 4.0 rotations, but it's an sum of (integer) multiples of each.
It might not look like it, but these will slightly skew your results (this part will also address what Thela said).

Consider now a dummy scenario in practice. Let's assume three players. One is only doing the 3.X rotation which, on average, lasts less than 30s.
The second is doing the 4.0 rotation which, on average, lasts longer than 30s.
The last is alternating between both with the scheme I said.

The first player will, at some point, invariably run into a situation where he won't have Foul up in UI. He'll use an arbitrary fill spell (say Blizzard, or Blizzard IV) that's worse than Foul. He'll then continue to use the 3.0 rotation.
The second will, at some point, get to a point where he has a Foul charged and another almost ticking in- he has to use his Foul immediately or lose one Foul. There's some pps cost to the whole rotation if he's forced to this in AF.
The last won't, at any point, run into these issues- he will always use exactly only two spells in UI, and whenever he does, those are the maximum pps available. Further, when he does this and he's forced to use B4, he gets the highest non-Foul pps possible.

The bottom line is: you want to optimise your UI cycles. You want to use exactly 2 spells on your UI cycle at all times, and the highest pps available. So you'll go T3>Foul whenever possible (3.X rotation) and then T3>B4 when you can't (4.0). This way, you spend the least amount of time in UI. Your calculations "mask" that your 4.0 version will spend more time in it's UI cycle.

If you were to repeat the three previous scenarios indefinitely and then stop them at random points in time, both 3.X-only and 4.0-only can be stopped at various poor situations- an AF where you had to Foul for 4.0, a B4 3.X- but the third is always on an "optimal" scenario for his given resources. This is not accounted for when people make pps calcs like that. That's why it's important to see what yields the most gain if you can T3>Foul, and what yields the best gain if you can't and must go T3>B4 (though you wouldn't waste your Umbral Hearts if you just B4'd, but it turns out that even if you considered that, 4.0 would be optimal in the no Foul scenario).

If you were to make a very long table with realistic rotations (trying to put Foul in there and not adding it at the end), the issue would show up.


(This one is a bit harder to digest...)

This is an optimisation problem. It's a maximisation problem (obviously) under a bunch of constraints pertaining to resources and timers and whatever.
For the case of BLM, you can rewrite this as a mutant, hybrid problem- you want to minimise your time in the UI cycle (so, 2 spells, because we're constrained to 2 spells) and maximise your potency in that UI cycle. There's another weird "constraint" that acts as some regularisation parameter that represents the AF cycle pps- think of this as the cost for not using B4, since the AF cycle of 6xF4+F has more pps than 4xF4+F (Firestarter reduces this difference, but let's just assume that we add the expected pps gain from AF as we're talking about lengthier times).
You're implicitly throwing some of these constraints off the window. You're not necessarily forcing two spells each UI on 3.X (which will eventually be a non-Foul spell since the expected duration of the 3.X is under 30s), and you're not accounting for the fact that you'll get messed up Fouls on the 4.0 one. These are punitive factors to each rotation.
That's why you need, at the start of each UI cycle, pick whatever option yields the highest expected pps for the next rotation- 3.X if you know you'll have Foul, 4.0 otherwise.
Obviously procs and mechanics can extend the 3.X, and it's not unreasonable to say "you can probably get away with doing 3.X almost indefinitely". In some cases, yes.
But nothing is going to improve the 4.0 situation in regards to Foul. Unless the stars align, you'll either need to Foul in AF, or double Foul in UI and drop T3.

I'm actually going to make a huuuge table that accounts for Foul positioning just to check, and upload the file somewhere.

EDIT: Wait a minute... 3.X wins out with Foul, but eventually you'll run out of Foul and be forced into the B4 filler... and that happens to be optimal for either case? D... did the devs foresee this? Was this planned? Are they actually really insightful? O.o

[Psycofang]

I doubt it but its nice to know ive been rolling with this correctly.

So basically if i got this down properly

Foul up - 3.0 > 4.0

Foul down for another 16s(?) 4.0 > 3.0

During leylines (convert)- 4.0 > 3.0

Without leylines - 3.0 > 4.0 so long as Foul counts as "down".

Did the rules of thunder change post 4.0? Or is it still hard -> proc

Proc -> proc at sub 9s

In having a hard time pinpointing where the new triple will serve its uses.

[RyeMinx]

Sorry, I forgot I posted in this thread this morning. My numbers are fairly meaningless as of right now, since the changes will be coming soon. At most, the different in potency per second for roughly 3 min parses was only about 1.2 in either direction for 3.0 or 4.0 rotation based on your spell speed. More spell speed/reduced cast times do benefit the 4.0 rotation more and more. The concern I have still is with Thundercloud procs. With the 4.0 rotation, how safe is it going to be add that 4th spell, F4x3 + T3P while still being able to refresh AF? This was really never a problem in 3.0 rotation. It took us near the end of Alexander with 1500+ sps to safely get a third F4 before refreshing outside of LL timings, even if there was no point to it. Now that we have this much SpS, 3.0 rotation just has so much ease of use for T3P, and since we can't use T1 anymore to fish for procs, we are more likely to get thundercloud procs over the single use of T3.

I just think we will have to wait and see how the changes on Tuesday affect things. I am really hoping for a Fire 4 potency buff, that will cement the deal for 4.0 rotation.

[Galvuu]

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To be fair, with Triple on a one minute cd we'll probably be ok. Especially if you offset Triple and Sharpcast, you can pretty much always use the TC procs now.
The only undesirable drawback of that is that now you really need to plan your openers (around a specific kill time, if possible) to try and align Sharpcast and Convert (or just Flare or something, hard to tell until I see the MP adjustments).

sniper

I want to say this is it, but wait for some more confirmation first x)

[Ferrasper]

Wait, so 3.0 if foul is up and 4.0 if not is not up?

Edit: With the new changes coming, I am guessing we won't be left with 2400 mana anymore, and will Fire/Bliz 4 really change the situation we are in with 3.0?

[jamvng]

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I see the benefits of mixing 3.x and 4.0, i have two issues/questions:

1) if you came from 4.0 rotation and wanted to switch to 3.0, you'll be using B3 > Foul (won't have mana for anything else), > T3 > F3. If T3 doesnt get refunded before AF, you end up w/120mp on next B3, unable to cast anything. Isn't that just bad?

2) If you do 3.x rotation, get a T3P near the end and have to use it in AF (cant save for UI), then go B3, it's no longer worth hardcasting T3 since you just refreshed the DoT. You're forced to use B4 as a filler spell instead (Foul + B4 as the two filler spells). I guess this isn't really an issue, more like it forces you to do 4.0 rotation again.

I see 4.0 rotation being the primary rotation to use, with 3.x rotation being used in certain situations. Namely, being closed to losing Foul/having to use it in AF, or movement causing loss of F4. And even if I go to 3.x rotation, I'm sorta scared to get mana screwed (120MP)...?

[Ferrinus]

After reading this and the other BLM thread I've started doing the thing where you only cast B4 in your opener and roughly every 90 seconds and am really enjoying it. In my experience, syncing your B4 casts with your triplecast/leylines CDs protects you from ever having to include B4 in your other cycles, although I guess really bad proc luck could do it.

Square really needs to buff umbral hearts if they want B4 to be cast every rotation like it used to be. Maybe they could halve cast times and/or give fire spells their UI3 mp cost rather than their default mp cost.

I'd also like to see umbral hearts substantially buff F2 somehow so that we ever had a reason to cast it after level 68.