The Black Mage Rotations

[Kenji1134]

Well they fixed the double cast by having UI/AF drop when the spell is ~85% through its cast... So why not just undo the change to ticks, and maybe... just maybe... put a 5-10s recast on Flare?
The issue was that Flare could be double-cast by timing the tick correctly. The solution was to sync UI ticks differently... But this obviously has made BLM feel more clunky and just less fun, dps loss aside.
If we just make it so Flare cannot be double-cast by putting a decent recast timer on it, like 10s, then it doesnt matter how the ticks sync up.

This raises the question of "wont that kill Flare-Convert-Swiftcast-Flare?"
Simple solution. Make Swiftcast refresh the cooldown of all of BLM's DAMAGING abilities (assuming this can be coded).
But really the only damaging spell that would even need to be refreshed would be Flare... so it may be easier to code Swiftcast to reset Flare's cooldown... in addition to reducing cast time by 100%.

[Allyrion]

If we just make it so Flare cannot be double-cast by putting a decent recast timer on it, like 10s, then it doesnt matter how the ticks sync up.

Unfortunately, it's not just double casting Flare that's the problem.
They don't want us to get the reduced cast time on two spells.

Can we stop talking about "syncing"? Nothing changed with the ticks. It is like you said, UI/AF changes 85% into the cast of Fire III/Blizzard III. It has nothing to do with the way the mana ticks.

[Kenji1134]

In the long run, fast-casting Fire 1 isnt/wasnt a gain. You cast it in 1.25s, and then wait out the rest of the 2.5s gcd... for example.
Fast-casting anything that was equal to the gcd didnt make the gcd any shorter... but fast-casting something longer than the gcd (Fire 3 and Flare) was always a gain.

[Jeh11]

Tanks for this Aoe rotation but what about the single target rotation? Any change between 2.0 and 2.1?

[Gardes]

As a sub blm, I always find it odd that people arent aiming to spam flare as much as possible in 2.0. I mean, it's flare. At least until I found out about the double flare tick trick.

I've never really kept track of the numbers though. What were the numbers on the old rotation compared to the 'current' fire 3>2>flare>transpose rotation?

[O-Deka-K]

Also, Louro999 submitted...

Yes, you're right! I didn't notice that the two rotations are almost the same. If you have enough mana for two Fire 2's and Flare, then it will increase PPS:

Fire 3 > Fire 2 > Fire 2 > Flare > Transpose
Potency formula: (828 x N + 198) / 15 = 55.2N + 13.2 PPS
where N is the number of targets

The extra Fire 2 adds 3 seconds because it takes one more mana tick. This is actually 0.16 PPS lower for 2 targets (which is negligible), but is always higher for 3 targets or more.

For comparison:
B2-B2-F3-Flare-Transpose (old): (668 x N + 154) / 12 = 55.7N + 12.8 PPS
B2-B2-F3-Flare-Transpose (2.1): (568 x N + 154) / 15 = 37.9N + 10.3 PPS
F3-F2-Flare-Transpose (2.1): (648 x N + 198) / 12 = 54.0N + 16.5 PPS

[Kalvin1783]

Excellent, we are getting somewhere! Ok, so you have shown that Fire 2 is always an increase to PPS, so then using that reasoning, our first rotation while we are at full mana should contain as many of them as possible before flare, right? I believe the average amount is about 4. Then after our flare > convert we should continue into Fire 3 > Fire 2 x2 > Flare rotation?

[O-Deka-K]

Yes. I would cast as many Fire 2 as possible while leaving enough mana to cast Flare. Just be sure to watch enmity if you haven't used Quelling Strikes.

[SirGazuntai]

Whenever I test them they always seem to amount to the same damage. I don't know if it's just Crit rate that's affecting it as Flare crits are going to add a lot more damage than Fire II crits, but they always seem to both jump between 400-450 for me. I managed to get the double Fire II rotation to around 420-450 just now, while the single Fire II rotation would jump between 440-450 but would often spike to 460/470 with a double crit Flare.

Crits probably affect it greatly. Fire II does around 410 per monster, while doing 620 on a crit. Flare does about 1050 on a single monster, while it crits for 1700-1800. The more monsters there are, the more Flare has a chance to have insane crits, too.

I believe the majority of monsters you have to AoE will die before you notice any real difference either way. You won't get enough crits to make it significantly better, and if you're really unlucky you aren't fighting long enough for non-crits to mean anything. Not to say you're wrong as I honestly haven't invested any time into the math side of it to know what you're talking about (had to go back just to figure out what PPS was xD), just that either way could be right. Worth looking into.

Would be so much easier if we could just switch procs and crits off completely. :x

[O-Deka-K]

I've been posting in a bunch of different Black Mage threads, so I forgot to mention here that PPS = Potency Per Second. Potency is relative and scales with your damage, so it's easy to work with.

The reason you're getting the same damage is that they are virtually the same. If you're testing on 3 targets, then the difference is only 1 PPS 0.3 PPS. To compare, these two rotations beat out the next highest rotations by over 13 PPS (3 targets), and I can't even confirm that those rotations are possible (not enough spell speed). For rotations that I can do, the difference is over 23 PPS (3 targets). The difference becomes more significant as you go to more targets.

Mathematically speaking, crit doesn't affect potency. In a nutshell, the single F2 rotation has more "buffed flares per second", but it also has more "debuffed F3's per second". Crit basically has the effect of making your damage "spikier". Edit: This is only true if the crit rate is the same for all attacks. If you had a single attack that say, had a bonus to crit chance or crit damage, then it would affect the potency.