Black Mage

[Llugen]

Under my proposed correction to the Thunder dot becoming additive, it would be even better to Sharpcast Thunder III because that would mean 48 seconds of thunder ticking all at once (or 60, if they increased the dot to 30 seconds like I think they should, or 54 if 27, or what have you). The implications of this are firstly, less wasted ticks from early procs, secondly, more total chances at procs since you're adding not refreshing, and lastly, less penalty for needing to use a Thundercloud proc to move (or more incentive). Between that and increasing the duration of the actual proc to 30 seconds like RDM/SMN, the RNG would certainly still be there but it'd be much further in our favor than it is currently. In fact if your RNG is great, you may never need to hard cast another Thunder III in Umbral for a long time, meaning shorter Umbral phases.

I'm not sure where you're coming up with eight Fire IVs, it should be seven since the current rotation is F4 x3 > F1 > F4 x3 + Firestarter if you're lucky.

Might also be worthwhile if they allow ANY fire spell to proc Firestarter, so you could get one even from casting Fire IV, or if they would let you firestart Fire IV (or "combo" Fire > Fire III starter > Fire IV starter) as I suggested before. The biggest issue I see with this is further de-synchronization from Foul timing and a potential loss of the theoretical 45 second Blizzard IV magic vuln (if I'm pretending like I have a magic wand and get to fix the class however I want).

This is where the leniency of the Astral/Umbral timer would better help with upkeep, alongside instant casts for quick movements, and the implied PPS increases of more Thunder dot up for longer (and therefore more value for every Thundercloud), and theoretically more Fire IV and/or Firestarter per fire phase. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say the potency of the job is fine if we re-imagine it to be more conducive for procs, movement, and management of the timers.

THIS is how 2.0 BLM worked. You got to move for a full five seconds if you got a Thundercloud back to back with a Firestarter (almost eight if you also used swiftcast!!), AND this is where the class's damage came from. See how much more mobile that is? Firestarters abound, and you could Aetherial Manipulation during ANY of them.