New BLM, rotations questions and advice

[Sadana]

I'm curious, does the amount of mp you burn on a Flare make a difference in damage?

[Vortok]

I'm curious, does the amount of mp you burn on a Flare make a difference in damage?

No, remaining MP before casting doesn't impact the damage of Flare. I did a quick and dirty google earlier and found a post stating you need at least 266 MP to cast Flare - useful to know if you're planning to use Ethers.

As for single target rotation from the OP, you could likely fit in another Fire I and then use Thunder instead of Thunder II, but you risk missing the second MP tick due to Thunder being a shorter cast time. Some BLMs meld a small amount of Piety (251 was the magic number, off the top of my head - likely requires SCH party buff) to let them get a 5th Fire and still use Thunder II.

[Xen17]

Flare is slightly affected by MP, but it is so little it doesn't matter. Based on multiple parses, as broken as they may be, the best AOE rotation is Fire 3> Fire 2 (x3)> Flare> Convert >Flare >Transpose> Blizzard 2 (x2)> evaluate> repeat. Instead of using Convert a second time if you need the damage, use an ether. IF things are still alive after this, a few things need to be done, check your DPS and/or your party members or repeat the rotation again leaving out the convert>flare part.

[Zer0mr]

Another pointer I heard in another thread which I thought was smart and worth mentionning.

If your last fire happens to trigger firestarter. go B3 -> T2 -> transpose -> THEN firestarter F3 , that way you get a modifier in damage for the starting F3 in the chain. But only if you finished your rotation with a pending firestarter proc.

although, I'm not sure this will let you benefit from the subsequent quick fire1 .. maybe someone can confirm

Holy smokes batman. Thats a really good idea.

[point09micron]

You wouldn't get a quick Fire 1, because as you said, you're Transposing to take advantage of Astral for your Firestarter. Personally, I prefer just to wait a second on my last Fire to see if I get a proc then cast Fire3 or Bliz3 as able.

[O-Deka-K]

You wouldn't get a quick Fire 1, because as you said, you're Transposing to take advantage of Astral for your Firestarter.

Quick Fire 1? You finish casting Fire 1 in half of a GCD, but you still have to wait for the rest of the GCD before starting your next cast. That would have no effect on your total damage (just a small burst increase).

You should cast a quick Fire 3 here instead. Fire 3 normally takes 3.5s to cast, but a quick cast will bring it down to 1.75s, which is still lower than the GCD. Therefore, your single-target rotation should start with two quick Fire 3's whenever you have a UI3 buff.

This is known as the double-dip mechanic, because the second Fire 3 gets the advantages of both UI3 (quick cast) and AF3 (+80% damage). This also applies to the "glitched" double Flare.

Sometimes latency can cause you to miss a double-dip, but if you can pull it off then you should.

[Waliel]

Quick Fire 1? You finish casting Fire 1 in half of a GCD, but you still have to wait for the rest of the GCD before starting your next cast. That would have no effect on your total damage (just a small burst increase).

You should cast a quick Fire 3 here instead. Fire 3 normally takes 3.5s to cast, but a quick cast will bring it down to 1.75s, which is still lower than the GCD. Therefore, your single-target rotation should start with two quick Fire 3's whenever you have a UI3 buff.

This is known as the double-dip mechanic, because the second Fire 3 gets the advantages of both UI3 (quick cast) and AF3 (+80% damage). This also applies to the "glitched" double Flare.

Sometimes latency can cause you to miss a double-dip, but if you can pull it off then you should.

And double dipping is exactly what they were talking about, but as point09micron said, you can't get a double dipped Fire 1 after Transposing to AF and using Firestarter afterwards. It's also not worth it to use a second Fire 3 after the switch from UI3 as far as I know. Discounting situations where you have to burst something down inside ten seconds or so, of course.

The glitch in the double Flare has nothing to do with double dipping itself, but instead with the fact that you can even use two of them in a row without Convert or potions. You could argue that getting a mana tick after using a spell that drains all your mana and puts you in a 0 mana regen state only because the switch is delayed is a clever use of game mechanics, but it doesn't matter if it was never meant to work that way.

[O-Deka-K]

And double dipping is exactly what they were talking about, but as point09micron said, you can't get a double dipped Fire 1 after Transposing to AF and using Firestarter afterwards. It's also not worth it to use a second Fire 3 after the switch from UI3 as far as I know. Discounting situations where you have to burst something down inside ten seconds or so, of course.

Okay, but why? The only advantage to a double-dipped Fire 1 that I can see is that it uses less mana and gives one more chance of getting a Firestarter proc. The lowered mana usage could also allow for one more Fire 1 at the end of your rotation, but that depends on your mana pool.

I'll have to parse this out to check.

The glitch in the double Flare has nothing to do with double dipping itself, but instead with the fact that you can even use two of them in a row without Convert or potions.

My point wasn't that the glitch is caused by double-dipping. I was trying to say that the second Flare also gets the advantages of double-dippping, including the +80% damage buff.

I was doing some initial damage parsing over the weekend, and so far I've found that the best AoE rotations are the "glitched" double-Flare rotation and a Fire 2 rotation that includes Blizzard 2 and Flares (see Dyechamp's post above - I didn't do Raging Strikes for parsing though).

[Waliel]

Okay, but why? The only advantage to a double-dipped Fire 1 that I can see is that it uses less mana and gives one more chance of getting a Firestarter proc. The lowered mana usage could also allow for one more Fire 1 at the end of your rotation, but that depends on your mana pool.

I was going to do some testing about this, but I noticed I couldn't get a second Hasted Fire 3 off no matter hard I tried. I can get everything else hasted after Fire 3 except another Fire 3 for some strange reason. I even tested Flare - F3 for fun and I got that Fire 3 hasted every single time, as well as rest of the fire spells.

I did do a couple quick tests in the end, with the slow second Fire 3 and everything, and F3 - F1 was 15-25 DPS ahead of F3 - F3 depending on the amount Firestarter procs. You do in fact get to cast an extra Fire, regardless of you race and mana pool as you can just cast Thunder instead of Thunder 2; their DPS is virtually identical, if you cast Fire instead of Fire 3.

[Peptaru]

If you're talking about getting double fast F3's, I do that all the time. It's a matter of learning the timing - just like double flares. When I feel lazy I juts B3 - F3 - F3. There are two spots i can use thunder, and I always have mp if I need it.