Quote Originally Posted by Pyroclastic View Post
I don't think this is the solution, as that would result in us spamming Fire 4 forever instead of finding the most optimal balance between Fire 1 and Fire 4 for your situation. It just needs to be less clunky and less punishing, imo.
This is the closest post to correct in this thread in my opinion.

But the problem isn't just "clunky and punishing"

1) Super clunky. The amount of times you lose a full Fire/Blizzard IV just because you lost one of the stacks at the last possible moment is aggravating. And because of the enochian window, you really can't afford to lose 2 whole seconds over a 30 second period. That's a huge reliance on turreting.

2) Ridiculously punishing. A lot of people don't realize that black mages CANNOT do their 2.0 rotation any more. There isn't enough mana for 5 fires. They have to go down to 4. The difference between 4 and 5 fires is about the difference between 1 fire IV's and 5 fires in terms of DPS. This means that you lose about 25% of your DPS simply from a rotation standpoint if you drop stacks which is excessively easy to happen. What did monks lose with greased lightning being dropped in 2.0?

3) The enochian window means you can't really waste time using Thunder procs. You cannot afford to lose an extra GCD. This means many black mages are forgoing their DoT- so if they move or the boss jumps they're doing zero DPS.

Some Black Mages think stuff like "letting Fire IV proc firestarter" or "Having Fire IV renew astral fire" or "I want to be Godzilla overpowered" is the solution. Really, just make the class less punishing and clunky. As it is right now, it's harder than Summoner, does less damage than Summoner (except in certain fights, where they're about even), much more punishing than summoner and the nature of a 'mistake' is such that you can lose your stacks when you have done NOTHING wrong.