Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

[Ferrinus]

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I think what you're missing here is not that Foul is good, but that Blizzard 4 is bad. Or rather, that Blizzard 4 is the third best thing for a BLM to cast in their umbral cycle, while Thunder 3 is second best and Foul is best. (Arguably T3 is better if you take into account expected total potency from the overall ~57% chance of a thundercloud proc which has its own chance etc etc)

Foul adds the same potency/sec to every rotation, even one that exclusively uses Fire 1, Enochian, and Transpose. But what Galvuu discovered is that Foul has a second, subtler advantage: it allows us to NOT cast Blizzard 4, which we used to have no real alternative to in every umbral cycle. Now, B4 is a sometimes food: we are frequently better off without it, because it bloats our rotation without necessarily strengthening it.

Blizzard 4 is like an 8.4s spell for 1196 total potency. That is worse pps than F4, T3, and Foul. So why cast it unless we have to?

[jamvng]

I think what you're missing here is not that Foul is good, but that Blizzard 4 is bad. Or rather, that Blizzard 4 is the third best thing for a BLM to cast in their umbral cycle, while Thunder 3 is second best and Foul is best. (Arguably T3 is better if you take into account expected total potency from the overall ~57% chance of a thundercloud proc which has its own chance etc etc)

The two extra FireIVs you get make the BlizzIV worth casting.

[Ferrinus]

The two extra FireIVs you get make the BlizzIV worth casting.

You'd think so, but it's not the case. B4, with the extra F4s included (e.g. you spend 8.4s seconds for a total 1196 potency) is worse in terms of potency per second than every other spell in our single target rotation except Fire 1. Now, it's still better than the REST of our spells - regaining mana with B3, T3, B4, F3 is superior to B3, T3, B1, F3 - but it is still bad compared to our powerhouses.

If you only ever needed to cast one spell between F3 and B3 you'd never want to use B4, and the math bears this out. Unfortunately I'm stuck posting on my phone and can't type out all the numbers easily (for some reason I can log into the lodestone on my PC but not the lodestone forums, something about a session key).

If Square wants us to B4 every cycle, they need to dramatically improve umbral hearts somehow. My idea is UI-style doubled cast speed along with the existing mana discount.

[jamvng]

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We can't just single out the PPS of Fire IV x 2 + Blizz IV like that. Because the Blizz IV also buys us the ability to do more Fire IVs in one rotation, meaning more Fire IVs for every other weak spell we have to cast like, F3, B3, F1. With a B4 cast, we're getting two additional F4s for every F3 B3 F1 we cast.

People have already done the math and discussed this in depth in past posts, but if you look at the F4 x 6 rotations compared to the F4 x 4 rotations as a whole instead, F4 x 4 PPS is only stronger because of Foul; but you cannot guarantee a Foul every rotation. This is especially true with the cast time nerf to 2.8s, as it'll be especially harder to get a Foul every rotation if you only do 4 x F4.

It's true that the difference is not huge, and B4 is still a weak spell on its own, but the difference is still there.

[Ferrinus]

It's a wash, though. Without B4, you cast 6 powerful spells and three weak ones. With B4, you cast 8 powerful spells and 4 weak ones. That's assuming Foul; without it, B4 is always good.

You don't GIVE UP B4... you just do your best to minimize its usage. In 4.0 using it in your opener and every ~ninety seconds seems to do the trick. In 4.05 we'll probably use it more often because more frequent triplecasts and shorter cast times will require that we buy even more time. But that's B4's real utility: stockpiling Foul charge.

What I wonder is if it's better to only cast B4 when you have no other choice or if you want to use it preemptively at certain intervals. I suspect the latter but haven't really done math on the former.