The Black Mage Rotations

[xyaie]

im sure im worst mage US, but apparently mages can ignore twin's fly by swoop things? i imagine mana wall? (seems like it would be 2 out of 3 swoops on one of the phases?)

[Youmu]

im sure im worst mage US, but apparently mages can ignore twin's fly by swoop things? i imagine mana wall? (seems like it would be 2 out of 3 swoops on one of the phases?)

Yes, I usually pop manawall on second set of divebombs, as added insurance against mess ups. If you dont get hit by divebombs, you can go burst the next snake adds and tank a few hits before tank has agro back, since it should still be up.

[Sleigh]

What does everyone use Swiftcast for mid-combat? Not on a Fire III after your Thunder at the start of combat, but once it's back up.

(When you can't do any more Fire I but still enough for Flare) Swiftcast Flare -> Convert -> Fire I -> Blizzard III > Thunder II regardless of Piety -> regular rotation seems to be the biggest ST boost you can do, but you can only do it once every 3 minutes whereas you can Swiftcast once per minute. Also, the dilemma with this is I usually use Swiftcast to put on my non-GCDs for free, thus, the best time to use this rotation would be a time when I wouldn't have Swiftcast to begin with.

I've used it on Thunder III often in the past, both for a DPS buff and the perfect time to fit in my non-GCDs if I want, but it seems to be a marginal gain of DPS over Thunder II, and often procs or MP issues (depending on Piety) make it unviable. Fire III is the other big hitter we could use it on, but I'm unsure if it's truly even worth it compared to just a Fire I due to losing a Fire I from your rotation. The weirdest thing I can think to use it on is Fire I, to gamble on a free proc, but that's all you gain, a proc chance where you probably need two Fire Is anyway.

I'm unsure where it best gets use.

[Allyrion]

Snip

If you Swiftcast Fire III after Thunder, you will not get a reduced cast on the Fire I following it. I've used it sometimes on a Fire I but I'm not even sure if that's much of a gain.
I think it's usage is largely situation and mainly for including Flare (with Convert).

I've tried it on Thunder III, but I've found that the GCD lock is clunky and seems to take longer than 3 seconds in practice (due to swiftcast animation). Since you probably will clip Thunder III anyway, it might be a dps loss anyway.

[Waliel]

If you Swiftcast Fire III after Thunder, you will not get a reduced cast on the Fire I following it. I've used it sometimes on a Fire I but I'm not even sure if that's much of a gain.
I think it's usage is largely situation and mainly for including Flare (with Convert).

I've tried it on Thunder III, but I've found that the GCD lock is clunky and seems to take longer than 3 seconds in practice (due to swiftcast animation). Since you probably will clip Thunder III anyway, it might be a dps loss anyway.

I'm pretty sure using Swiftcast on Fire is a dps loss unless you're moving. What you're basically doing is adding an extra second of animation waiting in the beginning and then triggering GCD, which is exactly the same as normal Fire cast anyway. In the end, all you did was that you delayed the rest of your spells by one second. Do correct me if my thought process is wrong.

You can use Swiftcast with Flare if you have your potion or Convert cooldowns up. With Convert, you can even get one extra Fire after the Flare before using B3. Other than that, Titan after jumps. Switch to UI3 with B3 with your last few seconds of AF3 after the guy lands, and when you're moving into position, fire off an instant T3 and continue normally from there. Don't have any real Coil experience with my BLM yet, so can't say anything on that.

[PessimiStick]

The cast time bug (and missing mana ticks) are probably latency related, I'm not sure there's much you can do about it. I almost never have either happen unless I'm lagging.

[Synovius]

The cast time bug (and missing mana ticks) are probably latency related, I'm not sure there's much you can do about it. I almost never have either happen unless I'm lagging.

I have zero lag in this game and I pull it off with consistency. In fact, I can't remember the last time I hadn't gotten two 50% cast time Fire spells back to back.

[EasymodeX]

Fixing the back-to-back Flares under UI3 has a reasonable chance of resulting in some sort of impact to double-dip mechanics, although any actual impact is still speculation.

[Synovius]

Agreed. Although they've confirmed they are only fixing the back to back Flares, I am a little scared it may "fix" the overall ability to double-dip as you mentioned. If that were to occur then the AoE rotation I've posted would probably need to be scrapped and a Fire II AoE rotation be adopted.

[O-Deka-K]

Agreed. Although they've confirmed they are only fixing the back to back Flares, I am a little scared it may "fix" the overall ability to double-dip as you mentioned. If that were to occur then the AoE rotation I've posted would probably need to be scrapped and a Fire II AoE rotation be adopted.

I tried it for a little bit this morning. As far as I can tell, double-dip is gone. What's weird is that you still need a slight delay when changing from Blizzard/Freeze to Fire. Just try spamming B3 > F3 > B3 > F3 to see. I forgot to actually try the double-Flare.

Also, the rumors about the mana tick syncing to your UI buff seem to be false. It's every 3 seconds as usual.