Black Mage Blizzard II (and other minor suggestions)

[Avenger]

I use(d) blizzard ii sometimes to tag s rank hunts that aren't visible when /targetenemy selects an add.

[PyurBlue]

I assume it's probably closer to your mount button than the spells and abilities you use in your main rotation, largely there just to say it is. That's not the same as actually using it and you know it.

I use it whenever I'm synced below Freeze, it's located where I can use it easily, but lower priority than higher level skills.

I assume you meant "without" a target

Yes, my mistake with that typo.

As you said, that's incredibly niche. Being able to precast an ability for mobs spawning gives you, at most, the damage of one extra cast -- and more often than not, the need to get within melee range will end up biting you more than waiting for targets.

Melee range isn't really a problem between slidecasting, AM, and prepositioning. In some cases it's a better position for a BLM (vs cone AoE's for example). Precast gives you only one extra cast (though B2 refreshes UI as well), but not needing a target saves you from the hassle of having casts cancelled by target death. That damage won't be huge, but can add up to something noticeable. It's certainly better than a canceled Flare.

... then what would the point of it be. If they have the same damage, there's still no reason to use B2 over Freeze, especially if you can cast the latter at-range which is a far greater convenience than precasting.

B2 would have precasting/target-free casting. That's at least as valuable as the range of Freeze. The ability to cast at range is an advantage but not something that a BLM needs to maintain in general.

And so long as you're using Flare, you would suffer those exact same MP tick issues until Aspect Mastery anyway. The damage of Flare is too good to pass up just because the rotation is "clunky."
The problem there is the invisible timer on the MP tick itself, honestly.

At any rate, what are you arguing against here? F2 doesn't solve that problem unless you skip Flare completely, and at that point you're still better off just using Freeze.

F2 serves as a filler so that you press transpose less. That leads to two things, less downtime waiting for MP ticks, and a higher chance of having a thunder proc to cover MP ticks. F2 doesn't remove the tick issue, but it does mitigate it a little.

And I don't think the developers are catering the job to suboptimal play.

It's not really sub optimal. If you're unlucky and you constantly have to sit waiting for MP ticks after Flare, you're losing damage. Since ticks are randomish it's harder to work out what the loss actually is. In the worst case, about 3 seconds for MP tick, Flare (now effectively a 7 second cast) becomes the same DPS as F2 at best (3 targets, base cast time). MP issues essentially negate the advantages of Flare vs F2. If you use F2 you can at least expect more procs to cover the MP ticks and maximize the damage of Flare.

But really, you're saying B2 should be preserved for the "optimal" value of being able to precast it, while also saying F2 should stay so you can use it suboptimally? Pick a side, we don't need the button bloat caused by either.

I don't have any bloat issues on BLM. My stance on B2 is there is no need to remove it, you can always take it off your bars if you find it useless. The ability to precast it is helpful and something I don't want to lose, though at the same time it needs a bit of a damage buff to really be worthwhile. F2 meanwhile has some use in trying to get around MP issues at intermediate levels, I only pointed that out and said nothing about whether or not it should be kept.

[Shurrikhan]

.. The point of a ranged/magic DPS is to stay away from monsters to begin with.

Maybe if we were playing in a game without excessively high-enmity tanks, our positioning would matter enough to differentiate between Ranged and Melee that way, but honestly it just comes down to Melee having their first pick of spots for spread AoE / tower positions while priority thereafter goes to whoever has the least mobility.

With tanks being so powerful and CC so lacking, there's no point at which you're going to lean on a Ranged's range "advantage" outside of soloing, and then only as convenient. In this game, XIV positioning near or far from mobs means almost nothing without simultaneously necessary arena positioning.

[KayliRose]

Maybe if we were playing in a game without excessively high-enmity tanks, our positioning would matter enough to differentiate between Ranged and Melee that way, but honestly it just comes down to Melee having their first pick of spots for spread AoE / tower positions while priority thereafter goes to whoever has the least mobility.

With tanks being so powerful and CC so lacking, there's no point at which you're going to lean on a Ranged's range "advantage" outside of soloing, and then only as convenient. In this game, XIV positioning near or far from mobs means almost nothing without simultaneously necessary arena positioning.

The benefit of being at a distance is to be away from melee range AoE's that would otherwise be a burden on casters who would need to move to stop casting. The enmity means nothing if you're close enough to take an AoE to the face. At which point, the argument I've been making all along should be clear: If you're close enough to use B2, you're close enough to be interrupted by close-range AoE's.
It's just common sense, which would you rather do, avoid the risk of interrupts for close-range attacks, or just stay at a distance where your only risks are the targeted AoEs that you can THEN focus your energy moving away from? There's literally no need to use B2 when you have more powerful spells that have less risk, even at low levels. Most monster groups at the levels where you would use B2 don't have targeted AoEs, and few bosses have them at all up until Haukke Manor or Brayflox. So why not just stay distanced so that you can move around less? BLM's whole shtick is by being a caster with significantly long cast times, they need to stay stationary as much as possible. Why burden yourself by needing to move every so often from a melee range cast or just to get in close enough to cast such a spell when it's just plain easier to cast from a distance?

[Shurrikhan]

The benefit of being at a distance is to be away from melee range AoE's that would otherwise be a burden on casters who would need to move to stop casting. The enmity means nothing if you're close enough to take an AoE to the face. At which point, the argument I've been making all along should be clear: If you're close enough to use B2, you're close enough to be interrupted by close-range AoE's.

It's technically not a matter of either. It's solely a matter of whether the devs want to make use of that gameplay loop (being within melee range, and all the concerns and gameplay decisions that come with that) or not.

Sure, between any two choices, taken without any care for context or consequence, we'd rather have whatever is most effective, which tends to coincide tightly with whatever has the fewest requirements, considerations, and vulnerabilities. We'd rather not manage our rotations during IR. We'd rather not have to remember to pop Blood Weapon before Delirium to make the latter do anything. ...At least, at first.

But it's not just between two equally profitable choices. It's between BLM having X and not having X. A salient weakness does as much for identity or distinguishing phases or playstyles as a salient strength does.

At present, Blizzard II does not fit BLM's kit. I'll fully agree with that. But that shouldn't solely cue its need to be removed or standardized. It should also cue the question of whether we'd ever want to have the ability to, say, periodically AM into melee range and AoE frost nuke everything around us for rewards commensurate to its risk, in our kit.

If that appeals to no one, then by all means, let's standardize Blizzard II. But questioning whether Blizzard II not be... not crud... while still introducing the same gameplay loops Blizzard II has in its best times, should at least be the prior question.

[Ardox]

I'm glad you asked!

So thanks to the buff Freeze received this expansion and its sub-GCD cast time, under current circumstances, at 35+ the math is that you get more value out of just spamming Freeze (and Thundercloud) for your entire AoE rotation than you get from using the standard "spam F2 until you run low on MP then swap to ice phase to recover", partly due to the damage lost on F3. At best you get more situational burst out of F2, but at the cost of PPS over the entire encounter.

So from 35-49, you spam Freeze. You get Flare at 50, but F2 has not become more appealing or gained any value so it's best to just skip it still (just going Freeze, F3, Flare, Transpose ad nauseum until a TC proc or Manafont gives an extra Flare -- bearing in mind Flare scales its cost so you can swap elements after 1 MP tick in UI this way, which equates to more burst that F2s would only dilute), and you shouldn't be stopping to B4 during your AoE, making an Umbral Heart calculation moot until Freeze gains the ability at 68 (at which point you get a second Flare, so F2 is still moot) and Aspect Mastery at 72 (at which point you skip Transpose, making it only marginally less "clunky").

So in short: F2 is equally dead weight after 35, so there's zero reason not to swap it out later on.
The fact that it maintains symmetry with the suggestion for B2 to upgrade to Freeze is a happy accident.

F2(A3) potency is 144 on a 3s cast and Flare(A3) is 187 (for the additional targets) on a 4s cast. Freeze is only 100 potency and you still need to wait over 2.2s because of the GCD (at level before aspect mastery). If you add the extra time for the mana uptick, the fact you'll have to use F3 more often to come back to do your single flare... What you're proposing neither feel good nor give you more DPS

[Iscah]

I use(d) blizzard ii sometimes to tag s rank hunts that aren't visible when /targetenemy selects an add.

Yeah, targetless AoEs are good for that. It's prettymuch the only use for summoner's Physick, too.

I've decided healing spells are easier though, if you have one at the right level - especially if you can cast Regen pre-pull so there's no chance of missing out on old marks that die quickly.

[Archwizard]

What you're proposing neither feel good nor give you more DPS

You say that like I'm the one who came up with it, or this is some fringe theory, when the reality is it's already generally accepted as how BLM works. F2 ceases to be a substantial gain once we have alternatives -- the most favorable math puts a F2+Flare rotation a mere 3.5 PPS higher than Flare alone on 4 targets in sustained combat, which means losing the burst advantage of the Flare-focused rotation. Burst which tends to be more valuable in add encounters.

At any rate, Flare in general doesn't "feel good" until you get Improved Umbral Hearts (or Aspect Mastery in some opinions), no matter what rotation you use it in. That's a matter that's best patched by adjusting how UI provides MP, not by B2 or F2.

[Yorumi]

You say that like I'm the one who came up with it, or this is some fringe theory, when the reality is it's already generally accepted as how BLM works. F2 ceases to be a substantial gain once we have alternatives -- the most favorable math puts a F2+Flare rotation a mere 3.5 PPS higher than Flare alone on 4 targets in sustained combat, which means losing the burst advantage of the Flare-focused rotation. Burst which tends to be more valuable in add encounters.

At any rate, Flare in general doesn't "feel good" until you get Improved Umbral Hearts (or Aspect Mastery in some opinions), no matter what rotation you use it in. That's a matter that's best patched by adjusting how UI provides MP, not by B2 or F2.

I think overall it's moot in dungeons below ShB. I've been leveling my blm and just hit 60. Doing HW dungeons every pack is just Freeze > T2 > F3 > Flare and maybe I get one more freeze off before the pack dies. I'll see if SB dungeons change anything but right now nothing survives long enough to matter.