Black Mage

[Elix_Moarbase]

However we still don't know how the new raids are designed yet. For all we know, we could be getting all sorts of forced mechanics insisting on magic or AoE damage.

No. That's not true. We know that one part of the raid is going to be aoe centric. It's most likely going to be one of the lower tiers. Therefore, it's not going to make BLM or SMN meta. It's going to make SMN niche, and BLM will remain the same.

[Ceallach]

Between the changes to Firestarter, Thundercloud, and Transpose, black mages should basically never lose Enochian ever and have an easier time staying in rotation. Aetherial Manipulation, at least in my opinion, was supposed to be the main dodging move all along, so the new ten-second recast is great. Fire IV's change is welcome, even if it's not as much as people hoped for.

[Lelila38]

Between the changes to Firestarter, Thundercloud, and Transpose, black mages should basically never lose Enochian ever and have an easier time staying in rotation. Aetherial Manipulation, at least in my opinion, was supposed to be the main dodging move all along, so the new ten-second recast is great. Fire IV's change is welcome, even if it's not as much as people hoped for.

Not saying the changes aren't welcome. Just, they don't address the core issue Blm has been having for a long while. That it's simply more beneficial to the party to bring something else.

[Ceallach]

Not saying the changes aren't welcome. Just, they don't address the core issue Blm has been having for a long while. That it's simply more beneficial to the party to bring something else.

Sure, I understand that raid DPS is better than personal DPS, but that's kind of the problem samurai and black mage both have: they're meant to be selfish DPS jobs. Hopefully the current changes to black mage will increase their overall DPS enough, and if not, we can always keep screaming at the devs for more buffs, especially since we still have the DRG/NIN/MCH/BRD issue.

[Sfia]

Sure, I understand that raid DPS is better than personal DPS, but that's kind of the problem samurai and black mage both have: they're meant to be selfish DPS jobs. Hopefully the current changes to black mage will increase their overall DPS enough, and if not, we can always keep screaming at the devs for more buffs, especially since we still have the DRG/NIN/MCH/BRD issue.

Unfortunately we already know it's not enough
It's a step in the right direction, but falls short.

[HaroldSaxon]

Unfortunately we already know it's not enough
It's a step in the right direction, but falls short.

Imagine if SE had made these changes in 4.1 instead of now. We might actually have had a real buff this patch.

[Fyce]

I have a question regarding the new Firestarter proc duration. Well, two actually:

1. Will there enough time to keep hold of Firestarter for a use of Transpose => Fire III at the end of the Ice cycle?
2. If yes, would it be a DPS gain to do so instead of using the proc during the Fire cycle?

[RyeMinx]

I have a question regarding the new Firestarter proc duration. Well, two actually:

1. Will there enough time to keep hold of Firestarter for a use of Transpose => Fire III at the end of the Ice cycle?
2. If yes, would it be a DPS gain to do so instead of using the proc during the Fire cycle?

At first I thought, na this is just silly, this wouldn't be a potency gain at all, nor would it work. But, If you do a 3 x F4, F1, 3 x F4 into B3, B4, T3, Foul. You have roughly ~.35s to get the Firestarter off, assuming you have the highest current SpS tier this patch. In my mind, the chance of pulling that off consistently without clipping or anything at all, seems unlikely. But if you could pull it off, it would be a very tiny potency gain, roughly .5 PPS. Which adds up, but the problem with this is it is rng based most of the time since 1/3 of all sharpcasts lines up with convert. And even so, it is almost always better to sharpcast a T3 than a F1.

Now here is the part I was hoping for, but sadly didnt turn out right with the math. Back at the start of SB, several of us discovered a slight variant to the typical rotation that involved skipping B4 and only using 5 F4s throughout. This was a decent potency gain, but it has 2 huge caveats. 1. You HAD to go into the rotation with full MP, meaning you needed to use Foul, T3P, or get a lucky mana tick right before you cast F3. This part wasn't too bad. 2. You HAD to have a Foul, T3P, or get a lucky mana tick after you cast B3 as well... this was a bit harder to always get lined up. Foul was really the only option. The reason you had to have T3P/Foul/get lucky mana tick, is this rotation would leave you at 480 Mana to cast B3, which left you with 120 Mana to start casting spells in UI phase, i.e. Foul or T3P... or just get lucky with a fast mana tick.

Now the firestarter being used I thought would save enough mana to actually cast B4 right after B3, which is the cheapest spell we still want to cast that isn't free. Sadly, if you replace F3 with Firestarter, you are left with 1080 mana to cast B3, leaving you at 720, which is slightly too low to cast B4 at 960.

In conclusion, with enough SpS, this might be worth it in the next patch, but the increase in damage is fairly low.

[Fyce]

[...]

That completly answers all of the underlying questions I had, especially regarding mana ticks for that old trick I heard about but never really looked at. My base thoughts was that AF3 F3 + UI3 F3 normalize at 300 potency while a AF1 F3 provides 336 potency. So, while the increase isn't great, my base assumption was that a Firestarter proc would cut one GCD from the rotation and that would eventually add up.

Since I only play BLM on a casual basis, I wasn't too familiar with specific details regarding the tight execution that might result from this postulate. So thanks for clearing that up.

So I guess the conditions to get it right are quite hard to come by, and even then, won't really be worth doing. Too bad, it'd have been a nice little change in the pacing of the rotation depending on the lucky Firestarter proc. Oh well.

Thank you for the nice and dedicated answer.

[popotaro]

Meh. They did say we would not understand the changes anyway..