When to use Flare?

[NyneAlexander]

The best advice as to why NOT to use the infinite flare rotation is you have to have a good grasp of the refresh timing of mana regen and be able to somewhat glitch the system to get a mana tick AS your flare is going off. This takes practice and skill, far more than being able to calculate when a fire II will take you below the MP minimum to cast flare.

[NoctisUmbra]

The best advice as to why NOT to use the infinite flare rotation is you have to have a good grasp of the refresh timing of mana regen and be able to somewhat glitch the system to get a mana tick AS your flare is going off. This takes practice and skill, far more than being able to calculate when a fire II will take you below the MP minimum to cast flare.

Yes, playing well takes practice and skill.

That said, as far as properly timing your first Flare to get this to work, the window of input is approximately half a second wide. This is a rather large window, and one that is quite easy to get accustomed to with a bit of practice at the dummies. Just a few minutes should be enough, provided you know more or less where the window is, which as was mentioned is roughly just under 2 seconds after your first tick of MP.

Any BLM that would like to play their job optimally is encouraged to learn this, and love it, as I said earlier. Any BLM who is satisfied doing sub-optimal DPS can carry on doing Fire IIs.

[Maero]

Apparently character limit
Fire 2 is still very useful and even so in coil
Perhaps if you use Fire 3 after your transpose it would be fine, but flare directly after transpose, nope

[Ringabell]

Any BLM that would like to play their job optimally is encouraged to learn this, and love it, as I said earlier.

After reading this I decided to test it out on dummies. I got the timing down very quickly and the timing is very forgiving. And when you get the instant mana tick on Transpose those Flares are right on top of each other.

Fire III > Flare > Transpose *Wait 2 seconds* > Flare > Flare > Transpose *Wait 2 seconds......

Basically right after the mana tick of Transpose you count: "One Mississippi, TWO" and cast Flare ON the 2 (not after). After 5 minutes I was nailing it every single time.

I used Party Finder to do some Brayflox HM Soldiery runs and I was burning mobs down obscenely fast. And when you have Convert and Swiftcast you can do Triple Flares without the use of an item:

Fire III > Flare > Transpose *Wait 2 seconds* > Flare > Flare > Convert > Swiftcast Flare > Transpose *Wait 2 seconds*....

This is my new AoE rotation. Flares all day.

[Maero]

sub-optimal dps, lol
This coming from someone who is using flare after transpose?
You do realize casting flare in UI is less dmg then if you would cast in AF? And practice on dummies, yeah not optimal at all.
And i only transpose after 3 flares, also you will want to use both Quelling and Raging Strikes in your rotation
post on reddit
Doing three Fire II at the start is better than going straight to Flare. Not by a lot, but it is overall higher DPS.
"F3>Flare is 62.4 pot/s.
F3>F2>F2>F2>Flare (so, using all MP) is 61 pot/s."
It is quite true that going straight to Flare is higher potency per second, but this doesn't take into account the duration over which you're achieving that potency per second. Both have higher potency per second over Transpose > Fire III > Fire II > Fire II > Flare, so you want to do as much damage in the opening rotation as possible. The rotation including the 3 Fire IIs last twice as long, so it does more damage overall.

[NoctisUmbra]

Yes, the first of the 2 Flares will be weaker, as it is in Umbral Ice, however the 2nd Flare is fully powered because the first one puts you into Astral Fire III.

Furthermore, due to the vast difference in potency between Fire II and Flare, and the fact that the double Flare rotation entirely skips the use of Blizzard spells or Fire III (a GCD wasted on a single target), the Double Flare rotation comes out on top - by a hefty margin.

I have tested this. Thoroughly. Being a DPS main who enjoys playing each DPS job at full capacity, I have theorycrafted/tested/researched each one of them. Not to mention that since it is actually pretty widely accepted that a properly executed double Flare rotation is superior to the typical Fire II-involved rotation, I can't help but wonder: what rock have you been casting under?

Since you claim to have tested this, I have to conclude that you tested poorly. My guess is you tested DPS on dummies and compared the double Flare rotation to your standard one, which involves the use of Fire III and a Blizzard spell. That's 2 single-target spells, and thus would register as higher DPS on the target itself, but not on the pack as a whole.

Either that, or you never actually properly tested the double Flare rotation in question yourself, and simply dismissed it assuming that the use of Flare to attain AF3 rather than Fire III was bad/silly/worse/etc.

Also...

The rotation including the 3 Fire IIs last twice as long, so it does more damage overall.

That makes absolutely no sense lol.

[Shinsaki]

Being a DPS main who enjoys playing each DPS job at full capacity, I have theorycrafted/tested/researched each one of them.

Show us the figures then. I'm sure every DPS community would like to see these.

My testing is not exclusive to dummies. That would be silly. They have their place, and provide conclusions in a certain context.

More relevant testing is content like Turn 4 of BCoB or Brayflox (Hard) speed runs.

How many times have you run these to check figures?

[NoctisUmbra]

Show us the figures then. I'm sure every DPS community would like to see these.

How many times have you run these to check figures?

You're welcome to test it yourself. At this point, enough people have voiced their use of the same Flare only AoE rotation I mentioned (save for that strategic placement of a single Fire II for Transpose timing).

You can either try it out, and realize like the rest of us that Fire II - based AoE rotations have been very much subpar AoE DPS compared to what you could have been doing, or continue to be stubborn. Your call.

[scarebearz]

You're welcome to test it yourself. At this point, enough people have voiced their use of the same Flare only AoE rotation I mentioned (save for that strategic placement of a single Fire II for Transpose timing).

You can either try it out, and realize like the rest of us that Fire II - based AoE rotations have been very much subpar AoE DPS compared to what you could have been doing, or continue to be stubborn. Your call.

Lots of people doing the same thing does not mean it's superior to methods used by the few.

[NoctisUmbra]

Lots of people doing the same thing does not mean it's superior to methods used by the few.

No, it doesn't you're right.

However, as it has been both explicitly mentioned and more implicitly suggested so far by various players (myself included), the Flare only rotation is not simply better, but significantly better than Fire II spam + Flare.

Therefore, instead of providing detailed testing data just to spoon feed the stubborn folk who wish to stay in their comfort zone, I am perfectly happy inviting them to try it out for themselves and attain enlightenment.