I thought I would hate Blm. I was wrong.

[Liam_Harper]

BLM has a surprisingly high amount of fairly impactful decisions to make on short notice for a job that is said to have a strict and simple rotation. Escpecially when mechanics come in to play.

Seems so. I'm still getting used to getting the most effective use from Sharpcast too. It's surprisingly difficult to use it on CD, use it efficiently and not waste the proc prioritizing other things. Switching rota under LL on a SSS target dummy is one thing, but doing it under pressure from mechanics is another.
I'm at 3666 SpSpe, any recommendations on best opener?

4% is my best try, might scrape it with a pot/food, but for comparison my 480 Sam and War breezed through first try and I barely play both.

[Rilifane]

Seems so. I'm still getting used to getting the most effective use from Sharpcast too. It's surprisingly difficult to use it on CD, use it efficiently and not waste the proc prioritizing other things. Switching rota under LL on a SSS target dummy is one thing, but doing it under pressure from mechanics is another.
I'm at 3666 SpSpe, any recommendations on best opener?

4% is my best try, might scrape it with a pot/food, but for comparison my 480 Sam and War breezed through first try and I barely play both.

With relatively few weaving windows and even fewer on demand that don't mess with your rotation I sometimes lose uses of Sharpcast aswell. It's something I'm still working on in bossfights when planning my instants; sometimes I had to use an instant for movement and Sharpcast wasn't ready yet and when it came off CD I had at least 3-4 hardcasts ahead before I could weave it.
With better planning on my part I could probably avoid all losses. But it's something that happens easily during an actual fight, escpecially if something unforseen happens and you have to adjust.
If you play sharp any and lose a F3 proc it's not actually that bad as F3 isn't really a dps gain but more useful for movement, refreshing Enochion and weaving. Definitely makes a fight more comfortable and sometimes Sharpcast is worth holding for F1 over T3 but generally it's only a very light mistake.

At high SpS like 3666 I found no B4 loses value as you outpace Polyglot and tend to outpace manaticks aswell. So you either need to refresh T3 really early (at 12+sec), have that awkward short wait for the next tick/ Xeno or deal with only getting one mana tick if you're unlucky. I'd go for Jp if you don't track ticks. If you do, try 10F4. I prefer the latter but early movement in boss fights screws you because the timing is extremely tight.

I just tried E8s SSS; still had my 480 though a couple of pieces weren't melded and had around 3200 SpS which felt a bit weird at first. Put on the Ruby weapon to make up for it and it was extremely close. Didn't drop my dot, refreshed it really close to expiring, didn't lose Sharpcast uses or procs, was able to use 10F4 in my 2nd Leylines, used the 10F4 opener and finished literally last second with Despair & Xeno. Oof.
Will try it on other jobs for comparison but seems extremely tight on BLM. With pot it would've been safe but without it was so close it might aswell have been pure crit/ dh luck.^

Edit: Just tried it on DNC. Super easy. 20sec left, average 480 gear and not even overmelded, no buff food, no pre-pull Standard buff.

[Hasrat]

I normally just think about how to make my fire spell stronger from the start and then squeeze out as many explosions as I can until I'm out of MP before hitting Transpose and then doing a Blizzard to restore MP to keep doing it again. but again I'm only Level 68.

Learning opportunity. After level 40 and getting B3 and F3, Transpose doesn't see much use (for single target fights). When at 3 stacks of UI or AF, spells of the opposite element have reduced cast time. So when you're all out of 'splody juice, B3 for the quicker regen. By the time you refresh Thunder, B4 for hearts, and maybe cast a Foul, you're all recharged, and F3 will quickly swap you back.

[Liam_Harper]

Aye seems BLM dummy is a fairly hefty requirement now I look into it, 16798 dps for E8S, compared to 15605 for Sam. War also requires nearly 1k less than the other tanks and Dancer 1.5k less than Bard.

[Rilifane]

Looked at the chart yesterday and thought the same. Sure, Dancer loses a lot of dps due to not getting Esprit from party members but with two insane burst windows and the option to delay the 2nd Technical a bit if you got really unlucky with Feathers/ Esprit it seems really generous.
Red Mage looks pretty hefty aswell. 15622, so pretty much the same as Samurai and only 1,1k less than Black Mage. Even with two selfish Embolden that's probably going to be hard.
Time to dust off my pokey mage and give it a go.

[Mhaeric]

Looked at the chart yesterday and thought the same. Sure, Dancer loses a lot of dps due to not getting Esprit from party members but with two insane burst windows and the option to delay the 2nd Technical a bit if you got really unlucky with Feathers/ Esprit it seems really generous.
Red Mage looks pretty hefty aswell. 15622, so pretty much the same as Samurai and only 1,1k less than Black Mage. Even with two selfish Embolden that's probably going to be hard.
Time to dust off my pokey mage and give it a go.

RDM dps is not bad these days. Dancer DPS is (outside of AoE in dungeons which can be great). I'm not surprised by those dummy numbers.

[Rilifane]

RDM dps is not bad these days. Dancer DPS is (outside of AoE in dungeons which can be great). I'm not surprised by those dummy numbers.

That's true but with just 1,1k behind the noticeably harder hitting Black Mage and them barely scraping it the tuning is once again a bit weird. Also Red Mage gets part of its dps from buffing others with Embolden, so the rDPS that is shown on statistics is not entirely its own.
SSS is not a perfect reflection of dps balance let alone fair across the board. That has already been stated plenty of times in the best. So a job having good or bad dps doesn't really mean anything unless you're implying that the undertuned SSS for Dancer was out of pity.
You currently breeze through it on Dancer (and apparently Samurai and Warrior aswell) while on other jobs it's much harder.
This time Black Mage and Red Mage seem to have it harder.

[Lauront]

The highlight of it for me are those Triplecast 3x Fouls in a row in AOE. The job just oozes with raw power and it's a treat to play ever since ShB. I am looking forward to see what new abilities it'll get come 6.0.

[Leidolf]

Yeah, but there's nothing worse than hitting Triplecast only for the boss to suddenly become untargetable.

[Macleod]

Finally been leveling up BLM recently, too. I had leveled it to 30 something a long time ago and got sick of the slow clunkyness. Now that I'm running out of jobs to level, I went back, things finally started feeling pretty good around 50ish I'd say, and kept getting better at 60, and even better at 70...and now I'm 76. Glad I pushed through, it's really fun once you pass the clunk.