BLM: Endgame guide and rotations

[SirGazuntai]

Quelling Strike is not needed to maximize DPS. If you're stealing agro you just have a bad tank. For example, I'm i89 and I've ran Turn 4 with PLD's at i80 and they don't lose agro to the Soldier's in the second phase, nor do they lose agro to the bugs yet I've ran with i90 PLD's and WAR's who just aren't very good and lose agro to the Soldier's constantly.

Quelling Strike is only useful when your tank sucks. If they're decent you have no need for it.

i find this whole "rotation guide" thing very silly.

keep dots up, switch to ice stuff when you run low on mana. spam fire 1.

It's this kind of thing that makes people write guides like this. BLM is not BRD, they don't play the same way. Rotation guides are necessary when a lot of people don't know how to play their class. I've seen plenty of BRD and SMN who don't keep their dots up and they'd do well with a guide for those classes, too.

[Peptaru]

Quelling Strike is not needed to maximize DPS. If you're stealing agro you just have a bad tank. For example, I'm i89 and I've ran Turn 4 with PLD's at i80 and they don't lose agro to the Soldier's in the second phase, nor do they lose agro to the bugs yet I've ran with i90 PLD's and WAR's who just aren't very good and lose agro to the Soldier's constantly.

Quelling Strike is only useful when your tank sucks. If they're decent you have no need for it.

I know for a fact that I can steal hate with a crapton of frontloaded damage on a soldier in T4. It isn't optimal to do it, so we don't do it, but good tank or bad its easy to rip hate early. If you want to hit the ground running at full speed, there is no way around quelling strikes. That's why when we build rotations we usually open slowly so we can unload more consistently and safely as the fights progress. We being.. well.. all of us who aren't silly; me, you, any respectable blm.

[kenventa]

QS is a nice skill but the additional 700 dps is not worth leveling a bard just to get quelling strikes, imo. I throw swift t3 (for boss battles) or start with t2 before i fire the enemy up to let the tank build agro. When i'm getting agro, i switch on another target just to cool things down a little. This is what i do for t4 or garuda EM. So there's an alternative if you don't have the skill yet. If you do, use it please. + BLM's DPS is dependent on RNG unlike other dps jobs. 3-5 crit procs can make a huge difference both in dmg and enmity.

[Ooshima]

QS is a nice skill but the additional 700 dps is not worth leveling a bard just to get quelling strikes, imo. I throw swift t3 (for boss battles) or start with t2 before i fire the enemy up to let the tank build agro. When i'm getting agro, i switch on another target just to cool things down a little. This is what i do for t4 or garuda EM. So there's an alternative if you don't have the skill yet. If you do, use it please. + BLM's DPS is dependent on RNG unlike other dps jobs. 3-5 crit procs can make a huge difference both in dmg and enmity.

Not sure if it's just me but quite a lot of people I know view a BLM without QS is being bad.

[KyrsIsley]

Not sure if it's just me but quite a lot of people I know view a BLM without QS is being bad.

There are situations where QS can be very useful, I wouldn't call BLM w/o QS bad but they are definitely not as prepared as possible.

For example,
I usually save my QS for the clones at Garuda extreme, so that even if I have a Firestarter proc I don't have to wait for the tank to build initial hate before I fire it off on Chirada as soon as she spawns. Without QS, you won't be able to do so. Same thing for the Egis at Titan extreme.

It is true that a tank should have no problem holding hate against a BLM given the tank is reasonably geared, even if the BLM pop Raging Strike right off the bat and go for the maximum damage rotation. But that is no excuse for a BLM to not better prepare himself by leveling up Archer and give yourself a useful skill even if it's only situational at best, since your alternative would be Ruin and Hawk's Eye.

[Kimura410]

This may be a dumb question. Im not online at the moment, but if I remember correctly, the flare ability states that it uses remaining mana. So why cant you get down to 1 mp and use flare still? I tried the other day and I think I had 256 mana, and flare was greyed out and couldnt use it. What am I missing.

Also, just to clarify because I got lost in a sea of arguing, for single target rotations: Should I use flare every time? Or just when I have swift cast, flare, and raging strikes? What about if I only have Swiftcast up, would it be worth to use since it would be instant? Or would there be a dps loss of some sort, since flare without convert would require transpose and the slow mana ticking from UI 1.

[Mhaeric]

This may be a dumb question. Im not online at the moment, but if I remember correctly, the flare ability states that it uses remaining mana. So why cant you get down to 1 mp and use flare still? I tried the other day and I think I had 256 mana, and flare was greyed out and couldnt use it. What am I missing.

There's a minimum amount of mp you need to be able to cast it. I don't recall exactly what it is off the top of my head, but it's around 270 or so.

Also, just to clarify because I got lost in a sea of arguing, for single target rotations: Should I use flare every time? Or just when I have swift cast, flare, and raging strikes? What about if I only have Swiftcast up, would it be worth to use since it would be instant? Or would there be a dps loss of some sort, since flare without convert would require transpose and the slow mana ticking from UI 1.

For single target, the only time Flare is effective to use is when you have both Convert and Swiftcast available. Since that's only once every 5 minutes, I usually don't bother. If you don't have both the casting time is too long for the dps and the regeneration phase afterwards is too slow to maintain the slight dps spike that Flare provided.

[Hitome]

Hm this is why I love BLM. So many things people do differently than others.

Honestly, the only time I use quelling now days is on Titan egis. On turn 4 and 5 AoE sections, I get the PLD to just use cover on me if I tell him I'm going to go nuts. I almost always steal aggro on the soldiers in the beginning: with or without quelling so it doesn't matter. I pop manawall and nuke it down with the SMN. On snakes in T5, I just switch targets between snakes (if I'm using single target) so that the tank isn't overwhelmed. If I'm AoEing, good luck to him. Usually cover works just fine.

I also prefer to not go into the umbral ice phase without using my firestarter proc. I'll move halfway through the cast if FS procs and use it. I find transpose + fire 3 isn't much of a DPS increase. FS AF3 is our highest damaging ability outside of RS + pot + flares. Might as well make use of it.

[Qvoth]

is it worth resetting my stats to get 251 piety?
i'm roegadyn hellsguard, as of now i get 249 with sch, someone told me i should increase piety stats by 2 and reduce my 30 bonus int to 28

[Grimmelsa]

Wow, my AOE rotation was definitely wrong. Thanks for this thread! That's going to make a big difference.