SHB BLM is the peak of this game's job design

[Kabooa]

How is saying that former expansions have shared little of the design improvements over further expansions felt at level cap pretending that ARR classes were well designed?

Jobs being designed for level cap includes when level 50 was the level cap.

And ARR jobs were a mess :P

[PyurBlue]

Thanks for that edit; i'm already using firestarter to weave swiftcast for despair when swiftcast is up and using firestarters when I need to move unexpectedly, but I wasn't sure if it was worth using those times where swiftcast is on cooldown and everything worked correctly. Do you happen to know if thunderclouds are always worth using if they don't mess up your rotation, or does thunder's DoT need to be under a certain number of seconds left for it to be a DPS gain?

I guess they would only be worth it if they gave you more damage than the average rotation PPS. It turns out that only takes 1 tick of damage from the DoT not to be wasted, so as long as the initial Thunder cast has ticked once, it should be fine to use the proc.

So what I'm getting from this is --

18-34: Fire II spam till empty, Transpose, Blizzard II (or Thunder II after 26) to full, Transpose
35-49: Freeze spam at three or more targets (as the Fire II rotation goes up by 35.9 PPS/target while Freeze is an even 40), Fire III then single-target rotation below (Fire II having arguable use at 2 targets until Firestarter at 42)
50-80: Flare is your new god

... I guess there goes the "Fire II has niche uses" argument for not just upgrading it into Flare, since it's basically mutually exclusive with Freeze.

F2 not fitting into the regular rotation isn't really a niche situation. F2 + Flare did outDPS Flare only for the fire phase at intermediate levels when I worked it out earlier. While single Flare was better overall, that was assuming thunder proc on average of 50% with exactly 100% thunder uptime and instant MP ticks. Opening your AoE rotation, thunder might not proc quickly. Using F2 filler increases the chance that you get a proc to use to cover transpose downtime and gets you more thunder ticks. F2 should also work as a filler when Triplecast is nearly off cooldown and you have an extra Umbral Heart. Because Flare is longer than the GCD not casting until Triple comes off CD is about the same as hard casting instead of waiting. However you could also fill in the last few seconds on Triple with another cast. The best one would be Foul, next a thunder proc, third F2.

That's certainly niche (unless I've made an error somewhere and it's not relevant at all, correct me if so) so I can't blame you for not caring about it, but I don't want to lose anything to button consolidation. The nice thing about a skill being useless is that it can be removed from the hotbar and ignored. I tend to hold onto everything just in case and I like it when something has an odd or situational value.

[Archwizard]

The nice thing about a skill being useless is that it can be removed from the hotbar and ignored.

Unless you do any level-synched content whatsoever -- Roulettes, FATEs, etc. Cases where you don't have access to Flare and are forced to reach back into your spellbook and pull out Fire II again. It's only "useless" after a certain level range, you still have to account for any time you go back into that range.
Just as an experiment I tried macroing Blizzard II onto the same button as Freeze (Freeze having the higher priority) to simulate the same thing, "only cast Blizz2 when I don't have Freeze such as in synched content", and there were random intervals where the macro would just skip right past Freeze and cast Blizzard II. No rhyme or reason to it -- target was selected, but weird timing with the GCD caused it to queue up the bottom spell in the list instead. Yes, I know, just another reason not to use macros, I deleted it and moved on with my life.

Kind of a big reason I advocate combining Fire II with Flare and Blizzard II with Freeze though, since most jobs no longer have to do that kind of thing with their own ranked abilities. Big contributor to button bloat.

Not to mention that with BLM basically playing like a different job every 10 levels, being a bit more forceful with phasing out tools we don't use at level cap can be highly beneficial to both veterans being downsynched and new players learning the job.

[Acidblood]

I guess they would only be worth it if they gave you more damage than the average rotation PPS. It turns out that only takes 1 tick of damage from the DoT not to be wasted, so as long as the initial Thunder cast has ticked once, it should be fine to use the proc.

I feel like this is only true if it doesn't interfere with your rotation... i.e. if you are pushing your AF timer to the point of having to cast another F1 (at the loss of a F4) then using Thundercloud at that point isn't worth it. It also isn't worth it if your rotation maintains 100% DoT uptime anyway (since the initial hit from TC is less PPS than the overall rotation); it is definitely worth using in place of a hard cast Thunder though (to maintain the DoT) because if you are hard casting Thunder every time then you are better off ignoring it entirely :/ (1 TC proc per rotation + 100% DoT uptime makes it worth it though).

Bonus tip (edited): Firestarter can also be useful for extending your rotation with Manafont; e.g. ... F4 (down to 1200 MP) > Despair > FS > Manafont (weave) > F4 > Despair > B3 ...

[Kabooa]

Bonus tip: Firestarter can also be useful for extending your rotation with Manafont; e.g. ... F4 (down to 1200 MP) > FS > Manafont (weave) > F4 > F4 > Despair > B3 ...

You lost a despair there.

[Acidblood]

You lost a despair there.

Is there enough MP (i.e Manafont only gives 3K and F4 is 1.6K)? Though I suppose ... F4 (down to 1200MP) > Despair > FS > Manafont (weave) > F4 > Despair would be better?.

[Kabooa]

Is there enough MP (i.e Manafont only gives 3K and F4 is 1.6K)? Though I suppose ... F4 (down to 1200MP) > Despair > FS > Manafont (weave) > F4 > Despair would be better?.

Assuming you didn't have any problems on the lead up, yeah. You should cap off the 1200mp with Despair unless something is distinctly telling you no.

Like a four wheeler.