Do you think the devs intended multi-flare blm?

[Ooshima]

I think you are overestimating BLM's DPS. They may be best at AoE damage, but the entire speed of the run depends on both trash+boss kills. Any DRG/BRD should have no trouble pulling higher DPS than BLM over the entire run. In fact, my fastest runs have always been with DRG + BRD.

Full run timing?

Or at least 2 boss run timing.

[whoopeeragon]

You can do an endless chain of flares if you can time it correctly. Using Flare around 2 seconds after you get a mana tic from Umbral Ice (Transpose) makes it so you receive a tic of MP after the flare goes off. That might be what he's referring to. Quelling Strikes would probably help in this situation, but you obviously can't have it up every time you need to AoE. Or even most times.

And BLMs want buffs to their "viability" anywhere there's high-movement fights, or need heavy single target damage. So, basically anything that isn't clearing Brayflox trash.

If you're using Flare from Umbral Ice, you really shouldn't be pulling hate from ANY tank considering how low damage it is.

[Gormogon]

Do you think the devs intended multi-flare blm?

Not sure if Triple through Quint Flaring was intended. Yet double Flare should have been taken into consideration because that's kinda what Convert would ended up being used for over keeping a constant F1> B3 > F3 > F1 rotation since transpose exists.

I'm glad to have Triple Flare and Super Double Flare yet not a lot of BLM's can and will Flare properly anyway. It's not really changing the game just that a lot of Black Mages are become aware of their kits full potential. Sadly getting DRG's to realize their full potential is gonna be way harder than anything else.

You can do an endless chain of flares if you can time it correctly.

Reliably you can't. Since Flare gets it's damage from Astral Fire 3 in which you gib yourself from 1 Flare doing the Transpose method, especially when you can screw up and miss the timing. Also Transpose is on a 10 second cooldown and usually your Flare is on a 3-4 second cooldown timer which leaves with too much downtime.

Now unless you're suggesting the Bards + Scholar mini/baby Ancient Flare spam. Yeah now that's totally worth doing but you need both a Scholar and a Bard for it to work.

Yet Quint Flaring is more like Quad Flaring + Fire 2. Since that Umbral Ice 1 Flare is not doing as much damage as the rest.

As for buffing BLM's I can think of a dozen ways to make it work but none that are gonna please the overall BLM community. Overall it ain't needed only reason they aren't topping DPS parsers is because they neglect the downtime caused by Blizzard 3. If it wasn't for that downtime BLM's would probably be topping the charts or be on equal footing with rest on single target damage.

[Radacci]

You can do an endless chain of flares if you can time it correctly. Using Flare around 2 seconds after you get a mana tic from Umbral Ice (Transpose) makes it so you receive a tic of MP after the flare goes off. That might be what he's referring to. Quelling Strikes would probably help in this situation, but you obviously can't have it up every time you need to AoE. Or even most times.

And BLMs want buffs to their "viability" anywhere there's high-movement fights, or need heavy single target damage. So, basically anything that isn't clearing Brayflox trash.

yes, i did bray SR. we were 2 BLM. the other BLM was 5ilv higher, and did 2x more flares than me, and did only 10% more damage in total. and i wasnt even using raging strike, convert, mp pot, food...he did.
so those ice flares....rubbish.

[Gugnir]

This paladin I do 5 min bray speed runs with all the time has a nice philosophy, when in doubt flash. The mobs are alive for only seconds when you have two black mages doing trip flares.. don't really know what the issue is. You have all the tools you need to hold hate, so why not use them?

[Zozor]

The double flare rotation by which I mean

~ Transpose -> Flare -> Flare -> Transpose -> Flare -> Flare -> Repeat forever.

Is the highest AOE damage in the game. It requires good timing but by no means precise and is incredibly easy to maintain!

Here's a video example of the wonderful Junpei Gunso demonstrating it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fiOG5axoVo

Pay attention to his MP and the timing of the casts and you'll see its actually very easy.

This Rotation, even with the casting delays when waiting to line up timing is significantly higher than casting fire 2 ever and of course even considering a rotation where a single target cast of fire 3 is used would be laughable, as even a flare without astral is still hitting multiple mobs (fire 3 600 damage vs 1 target = 600 damage, flare 400 damge vs 3 targets is 1200 damage example).

Any time you have 3 or mobs alive, you gotta do this

[Gormogon]

snip

In Brayflox HM I'd rather stick to Fire 3, Fire 2x3, triple flare than use that rotation.

[Urielparadox]

On topic of the tank,
1) if you have a lbm who specializes(or smn) in aoe damage why are you stopping multi target hate generation after 2 flashes, instead of generating plenty of hate before starting a combo? You should never be pulling less then 5 mobs(unless their aren't 5) or your wasting a blm damage. and your combo does not compensate in terms of dot, nearly enough as it would to ask a blm to slow down.

2) why is it strange for you to just now see blm using flairs? they should have always been using it, don't get mad at dps. Why aren't you using flight or fight + circle of scorn instead of the single target combo; since you have 5+ mobs on you anyway? it's just simple logic error on your end.

3)make sure the black mage is using QS if not then go ahead and correct the mage. However you are not without error on your end.

snip

I have major issues with this and mixed feelings. This is not what the devs intended and we already got hurt pretty annoyingly once because of players ABUSING the way umbral ice and tics work. Yes they said in their live letter ages ago addressing the issue that it was exploiting the system(but not a punishable offence) If this becomes as wide spread as the old double flair abuse(or even just like this thread helping bring attention to it) I expect another huge nerf/hit to black mage that will undo a lot of the incoming updates, or I expect the updates to remove this possibility by putting flair on a recast timer. Which would mean no more legitimate double flair. If se decides to change their mind and not count this as abuse then they will have to improve fire II and nerf flairs damage(at least base). which I don't want either. However SE has to work fixing this into their schedule with fixing blm which means just longer postponement on us getting made more useful.

[Akujin]

snip

I tear hate off tanks all the time with my flares lol

And actually you can do 3 at full power, boosted further with Raging Strikes. The timer on Raging is just long enough for 3 flares actually.

Raging>Swift+Flare>Convert>Flare>Pop Mega Ether>Flare>Raging ends. Couple it with Foe and it's quite a spectacular sight. Only thing that backfires is if someone else in the party is attacking the targeted mob you're on and kills it before your flare finishes casting.

- Also, to everyone who is following the thread and rolling their eyes at BLMs who are requesting some sort of boost to themselves in light of the most recent interview with Yoshi after reading this. Consider this.

The Flare rotations mentioned here require being stationary completely, you move at anytime during Flare (our longest cast) it interrupts, spoiling the potential output right away. So movement is still our Achilee's Heel. The only rotation that does not require being still the entire time, is if transpose is being used and you're waiting for that mp tick to come through before starting the next flare rotation. In which you have all of 1-2 seconds to re-position. But it's unreliable as an actual method because it's too easy to miss the mp tick with other in game mechanics going on.

[Urielparadox]

You should be using hq mega/hq x-pot of int with that instead of x ether for higher damage(multi target scenario at least).