Help with Pre-lvl 50 rotation for BLM

[MrGrey]

Hey there. I'm here to ask about the rotation of a BLM that has yet to reach lvl 50. I write this because during my time as a black mage there has been very little need for the AoE skills that (according to people in other forums) make up the bread and butter of their whole thing.

Up until now I've just been using the standard Thunder > Fire > Until low MP then Transpose > Blizzard until MP up. Rinse repeat. And the occasional sleep when it feels appropriate.

Now I'm lvl36 and I haven't really felt the need to change it. It works fine in dungeons and nobody calls it out. And whenever I try to use AoE (usually starting out with Fire 3 and then switching to Fire 2 until Mp out) it does rather minute damage compared to the standard fire damage. Concentrating on a single enemy to get them out of the game as fast as possible seems to be more effective.

All other rotation suggestions I find are for lvl50. Is there a better rotation for my current level? Any advice would be appreciated.

[Viuiji]

Hey there MrGrey,

BLM is absolutely my favourite job to play! I am sure there will be plenty of answers to this. I find I am always learning something about BLM well after 50 Easy to play, hard to master.

With your opening (at lvl36) I would change it up a little to: Thunder II > Fire III (this gets you into Astral III) > Raging Strikes (if you have it) > Fire till low > Transpose (after lv38, remove transpose and replace with Bliz III) > Thunder I > (possible Bliz I for MP tick) > repeat from Fire III

* obviously use procs as they come up
* don't forget to grab cross class as well. Raging Strikes from Archer is a must. Will be used in your rotation here and will be very useful at 50.

AOE certainly isn't useless in low level, but does seem to do little. Depending on your party it may be better to use sleep and go one at a time. Wait for tank to grab aggro and you can also throw a Thunder I before sleep so dot still occurs. Issue with sleep can be party members targeting all mobs making sleep pointless at times. If tank is marking then definitely use sleep. This should also enable healer to DPS, if they are comfortable doing so, as there is less healing stress. I honestly haven't spent much time in low level dungeons recently though, so someone else may be better for advice here.

[Cynfael]

General notes about pre-50 BLM:

- AoE rotation when you have 3+ mobs. Once you have Fire III, open with it to immediately gain max AF stacks, then commence the Fire IIs.

- Spend only as much time in UI as you need to gain your MP back. I mention this because many BLMs sit and spam Freeze in UI as if it were a DPS spell (it's really not).

- When you have Blizzard 3, use it to return to UI; when you have Fire III, use it enter AF. When you have both, Transpose is only to recover from Flare, change stance if stuck in AF with nothing to attack, or to use a Firestarter proc in UI if you didn't fireweave it before transitioning from AF.

[MrGrey]

Thank you very much, both of you. This has been very informative and I'll start practicing this on dummies as soon as possible. It does alleviate my concern, as it seems I haven't been playing it completely wrong (which is something that I do worry about), but the improved rotation should help both myself and those running the dungeon with me.