Blue Mage damage

[Phoenicia]

If that's the case for BLU, then why do you parse the same when casting dots vs not? That's what I'm really getting to. The parse gives you between 400 and 500 when casting song of torment for instance. If you parse and never cast it, the dps doesn't go down. Does Song of torment do no damage?

Song of Torment is being cast. And if you drop it you lose DPS. If your parser is not logging the DoT, you configured it incorrectly, or aren't running it as an administrator. Check google as I don't want to get into details on the official forums. (Again, the SMN loses 20% for not using Bio and Miasma which we know for a fact because it logs so).

Also, DPS in general is all about damage over a period of time. Think of it Damage per GCD (Since GCD is a unit of time). If a DoT like Aqua Breath is used, which applies Dropsy, it directly deals 90 potency and Dropsy deals 10/tick, which in 12 seconds is 3~4 ticks. The GCD you used net you 120~130 potency.. Might as well just cast Glower. Aqua Breath into High Voltage is 130/GCD, so unless you "want" the paralysis to be extended, just cast Glower/Flamethrower/etal. This for example is why using Thunder Cloud on BLM is not considered "clipping the DoT" because the GCD you spent nets you the total value of a thunder + refresh the DoT. But if you use 2 TCs in a row you "waste" a GCD that could've been spent on Fire 4 which is higher potency than a TC before the DoT ticks.

BLU having no actual off-GCD actions and its damage boosters "costing" GCDs lowers the average Damage/GCD (DPS). That's why Bristling everything is a net loss. Song of Torment is worth the Bristle use though. Because every GCD you spend is 130 (using as base line), SoT is 300 potency (inital damage + dot), Bristle will give you 150 which is higher than the 130 baseline. Parsers WILL show you this.

Based on the above 2 points, if you are using Bad Breath and Aqua Breath for the DoT component, you are not "gaining" damage since they total 130 for the GCD they cost you to cast. Meaning Aqua Breath + its DoT = Glower. As such you will parse the same.

There is also DoT uptime or clipping. If you let the DoT drop or you cut it too early it might make no difference. This is mainly because BLU's "DoT"s are laughable at best 300 (song) or 130 (aqua and bad breath) vs 130 fillers. On the other hand, the SMN's Bio is 500 and Miasma is 550 vs it's filler GCD being 120 in Ruin 3. Or the PLD's Goring Blade being a 570 GCD when the PLD's average GCD is ~250 or so. Black Mage Thunder III is 390 total, and TC is double that.

The thing that WILL throw your parse out of whack though is the usage of Missile/Tail Screw. Against Ramuh I was doing 350-ish, which is low since with 7 BLUs rotating Peculiar Light we should have a permanent 30% increase, but also no one had primal spells and the Fear that most of the team didn't know how to break made the average so low. However, if one of us lands the first tail screw their DPS shoots to 800 (and when the fight ends they would "average" 700). But that's not really "DPS".... It's called "Cheese". And this can be adjusted to only work for certain things instead of being "OP".

Edit: Sorry for the edits. Typing on the phone sucks and auto correct doesn't' help lol. And I tend to derp because my fingers don't like to listen to my brain... bad fingers!!

Last Edit: I just remembered this: The margin of error in the DoT calculation is that the parser does not know which DoTs crit so it tries to estimate the crits. This is mainly an issue if you have multiple DoT classes (BRD+DRG+SMN+BLM) or multiples of the same DoT (i.e. 2 SMNs). FFlogs corrects it to be more accurate crit/dh rate (not exact). Total damage done will be exact, however, so DPS will not be affected by this.