BLM Rotations

[Ceveth]

You should be using Thunder II or III, depending on how long it will take to fill your MP. I find that sometimes after doing Thunder II, I have time to sneak in a Scathe before doing my Fire III without creating additional downtime, especially if I have a Firestarter proc ready. That means that I could have just used Thunder III. The post I saw pretty much said that Thunder III is usually worth the small bit of downtime, but I like Thunder II because I like having flexibility to run from mechanics sooner if needed. As far as I know, Thunder I is never optimal.

As much as I welcome your anecdotal evidence, I'm looking for numbers as I've heard exactly the opposite answer from people who have some models & simulations of it but have withheld their findings, or at least not published them in a place I can find them.

I think it's really hard to say at this point. Two targets? Thunder I x2 for sure. 3 targets AoE. But for single targets, it's a wash. It honestly depends on the fight. Maybe you'll need to get ready to move, and getting the Thunder I early is fine. New changes obviously make Thunder I better. I'd need to run more numbers, but it's very situational and probably very small dps-wise.

Also I also have enough spell speed where I can open with;

Fire III > Fire II > Raging Strikes > [Fire II > Fire II > Flare > Convert > Fire II > Flare > Swiftcast > Mega-Ether > Flare]
Raging Strikes actually falls off the split second before the last Flare according to the Battle log, yet the Flare still benefits from it. I think this may be akin to the reason we can still double Flare for AoE.

Is there a more efficient way to be opening for AoE?