Black Mage CRIT vs. DET Builds - Latest Info?

[Kiara]

Hi All,

I remember reading a few threads on Black Mage "Critical vs. Determination" arguments on Reddit, but to ask everyone here:

* With so many End Game Boss Battles using Gimmicks where the Boss forces the Black Mage to move around a lot (thus interrupting a cast), doesn't that "negate" Spell Speed bonuses? If so, wouldn't Critical be more valuable?


Because in many fights the Black Mage can't just stand around and nuke nonstop, any minor Spell Speed bonuses aren't going to get net you enough vs. stacking Critical. Or does Spell Speed still trump that?

Thanks for the help!

[Zencurse]

Jury is still out, but in general endgame BLM still consider SS>=Crit at best and SS>Crit at worst. Yes the current bosses do indeed have a lot of movement based mechanics but outside of T9 most of them can be minimalized by proper positioning. I.E. sitting at the border between two possible poison piles in T7 close to the center (assuming your healers are positioned right and the renauds are positioned right as well), T8 obvi has little to no movement, if you do have to do a mechanic just use AM back to the pile. T6 is a wildcard because there is indeed a lot of RNG on that fight, however again AM goes miles and most of the time in the final phase you're standing still.

To address the second part, new math suggests Det is our best stat. However it's not by that much compared to SS and its possible due to the rationed amount of det on our gear it's not worth itemizing towards on specific slots yet. If the new math is correct, our "in a vacuum" stat priority is WD>Int>Det>SS>Crit

[Kiara]

Thanks Zencurse.

I definitely see the ideal situations in T6 - 8 w/ BLM, but given that it's not always ideal / perfect in, say, T7 (with positioning) and T6 movements, in a *less* than ideal world, then wouldn't Crit be better than SS then? Thanks.

(BTW, definitely agree about WD > INT > DET of course, just trying to see which way to lean on the final stat.)

[Zencurse]

To quote PuroStrider's math,

Int per SS increases as SS increases
Int per Det increases as Det increases
Int per Crit DECREASES as Crit increases

This is hugely important to our stat weights. So even in these situations the vacuum benefits of SS + the existing benefits of high SS outweigh the DR on crit in most situations.

HOWEVER this is all assuming the recent math done by Puro and the other BLM theorycrafters holds true...

If the math we currently follow remains true, then Crit>=SS>Det in terms of the 3 secondary stats in which case stacking crit is perfectly acceptable. Like I said the jury is still out and hopefully we'll have some answers in a few days.

[Empressia]

There's two types of DPS :

1. Alpha (big numbers, high cooldown) aka burst (heavy damage, slow attack speed) which prefers CRIT (imagine rocket launcher)
2. DPS / DPM or whatever term each MMO is using (low numbers, very low cooldown) aka sustained (normal hits, very fast attack speed, DoTs) which in FF14 prefers DET (imagine machine gun)

However, the hardcap of sps/sks atm is 10% lower GCD or max 2.25s cd instead of 2.50s cd, problem with DET/CRIT it is actually revolves around Firestarter proc RNG, so lets just say : if RNG loves u, u sure wanna CRIT for all those Fire3 bonus, but if RNG spits u in the face, u might prefer DET for ur fire1 sustained spam.
In addition to that, lets not forget about Flare, which is definitely a burst damage, even if Flare is spammable, u still wanna go CRIT for it

In conclusion, DET > CRIT if BLM rotation is Fire1, Blizzard1, Scathe spam

[Malevicton]

Hi All,
* With so many End Game Boss Battles using Gimmicks where the Boss forces the Black Mage to move around a lot (thus interrupting a cast), doesn't that "negate" Spell Speed bonuses? If so, wouldn't Critical be more valuable?

Short answer: no.
Very long answer: Say your sspd knocks the gcd to about 2.3 seconds (just to keep the number even-ish). Let's say the crit mage gcd is at 2.4 seconds. Each consecutive cast gives you a .1 second lead over the crit mage. The biggest advantage comes when you can put together enough casts to gain an extra gcd (the "free" spell). However, some boss mechanics come with a guaranteed interruption (like Nael's jumps and such). Each .1 second gained from sspd gives you a chance to get one last cast off before that guaranteed interrupt.
For example: let's say both mages cast for 9.2 seconds before a guaranteed interrupt. 9.2/2.3 = 4 casts for the sspd mage. 9.2/2.4 = 3.83 casts. The 3.83 would translate into 3 full casts, then one interrupted cast, giving the sspd mage a significant advantage. If on the other hand, the interrupt was after 9.6 seconds then both mages could cast 4 full spells and the crit mage would get more benefit. Keep in mind that I'm making up numbers to work with the examples; while the structure of this math is correct, 2.3 and 2.4 are not the exact values for the different builds.

What this boils down to is this: as a sspd mage, your advantage is at the mercy of RNG and timing. Each consecutive cast that you pull off increases your chances of getting off an extra cast, and each extra cast gives you far more dps yield than an equivalent amount of crit. If you're unlucky with timing/RNG and don't get any extra casts over the crit mage counterpart (to correlate it to the above example -- if each interruption was the 9.6 second scenario rather than 9.2) then you lose most of your sspd benefits.

Another interesting thing is that sspd scales better depending on how good you are at mitigating movement. If you aetherial manipulate at the pro-est times, manawall/ward at good times, fit scathe in where it's needed, etc. Any of these types of things that keep you casting during movement not only give you the extra .1 second, but carry over all the .1 seconds that you'd accumulated until that point. So while all blm benefit from proper movement mitigation, sspd mages get even more benefit from it than others.

All that being said, both crit and sspd are viable. Sspd has a higher theoretical ceiling, but crit will offer you more consistency.

I remember there was a reddit post by purostrider pointing out most of the same things. I'll try and find it since his examples used real data sets and actual gcd's (though i think the numbers are outdated by now with new sets).
Edit: I'm stupid, there's a link to it right on the front page of his forum post... http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ed_with_super/

[Kiara]

Thanks Maleviction.

Yah, that was one of the threads I was referring to. Thanks for the link & refresher.

I totally get where Puro's coming from (and appreciate all the math that went into his analysis). Very informative. But I feel like some others in that thread that Puro's premise is that the Spell Speed Mage gains their big advantage after the *27th Consecutive Spell Cast* (to gain the extra Spell cast vs. a Crit Mage). In general, I just don't feel like there are that many boss fights where a Black Mage can stand around and cast 27 Consecutive Spells with no interruption.

But at the same time, I totally see the math for a Crit Mage. Hoping to RNG that you get 2 Lucky Rolls of getting an Extra Critical in (Puro said it was like a 7.4% chance to get the rolls to achieve that) isn't exactly ideal either (i.e., the Crit build could definitely get NO extra Crits in that time).

In the end, does it feel like it should be a Balanced Approach? Some Spell Speed and some Critical balance for your builds (and Novus)?

Thanks.