Black Mage Sanctuary - A Guide to DPS

[FunkyBunch]

The whole thing is roughly 27 seconds from B4 to B4 before SS. Not sure if you can keep the 25s Eno that I used.

Not possible with my 768 SS at least.

Not to mention that taking my SS into account on the best "normal" use scenario puts it into 146.5 PPS.

That's weird because I only have 648 SS and my GCD is 2.38 seconds.
T1+B4+F3(0.952)+TC (2.38)+TC(2.38)+F4(2.856)+F1(2.38)+FTC(2.38)+F4(2.856)+F4(2.856)+B3(0.952)+B4(2.856)+B1(2.38)=22.32 seconds from B4 to B4.

[Waliel]

That's weird because I only have 648 SS and my GCD is 2.38 seconds.
T1+B4+F3(0.952)+TC (2.38)+TC(2.38)+F4(2.856)+F1(2.38)+FTC(2.38)+F4(2.856)+F4(2.856)+B3(0.952)+B4(2.856)+B1(2.38)=22.32 seconds from B4 to B4.

going from UI3 to AF3 and vice versa with tier 3 spells doesn't shorten your GCD, only your cast time. I have 2 seconds remaining on Eno when I start B4 cast with my SS.

E: Tested with 644 SS and I couldn't even keep AF3 up. 768 is really close to dropping it.

[FunkyBunch]

going from UI3 to AF3 and vice versa with tier 3 spells doesn't shorten your GCD, only your cast time. I have 2 seconds remaining on Eno when I start B4 cast with my SS.

E: Tested with 644 SS and I couldn't even keep AF3 up. 768 is really close to dropping it.

I'll try it again tonight. I don't remember having to wait after casting B3 to B4 or T1 but we'll see.
Very interesting though. Thank you for your efforts. Maybe I'm just going nuts.

[Waliel]

Now I was able to upkeep AF3 with 644 SS. What the hell did I do differently yesterday ?_?

[Hontaro]

People say clip Thundercloud at 12s, but if you used a Thundercloud before, wouldn't it be already possible to clip at 15s?
24s -15s / 3 = 3-4 ticks. Thundercloud deals 390 Potency + 40 Potency/tick, at 3 ticks it's a total of 510 Potency for 1 GCD + movement, as opposed to 504 Potency (280*1.8) from F4 with a 3s cast.

[Sleigh]

People say clip Thundercloud at 12s, but if you used a Thundercloud before, wouldn't it be already possible to clip at 15s?
24s -15s / 3 = 3-4 ticks. Thundercloud deals 390 Potency + 40 Potency/tick, at 3 ticks it's a total of 510 Potency for 1 GCD + movement, as opposed to 504 Potency (280*1.8) from F4 with a 3s cast.

Nope.

TC is a DoT. It carries with it the burden of any DoT, it cannot be judged based solely on its current PPS/DPS capabilities due to the nature of DoTs vs filler. Filler carries with it the current DoT ticks.

If you clip at 15s, you just either made your last T1 worth very little, or your current TC worth less than F4 + current DoT ticks available, whatever makes you sleep better at night.

- At F4's 504 potency with 5 ticks left, that's 704 potency at 3s, or 234.66 PPS if you want to talk about theoretical PPS with cast time involved.
- 15s clipped with TC is 390 with 3 additional ticks gained (which will probably get clipped in the next UI so it's weakening the current TC or the next T1, however you want to look at it, but let's ignore this fact), or 510 potency at 2.5s. It is 204 theoretical PPS.

At 12s they're roughly even in pure PPS, if you ignore the fact it will certainly nerf your next UI phase by using TC at 12s here. At 9s or lower, it's wisest to not throw away a TC at any point for a F4 (IE if you have to choose between a TC or F4 and one of them is going in the garbage, you do your TC and B3 early), though that doesn't mean use it ASAP, try to let it count down as well as possible before letting it rip.

Luckily the extreme (99.99%) majority of cases where you have a TC proc available, you can use it at 12s or below without any debate, or otherwise used in UI anyway. You'd have to get an immediate TC proc off of an Umbral Ice TC/T3 to even consider this discussion.

[Garotte14]

Sleigh is right. Yes, purely looking at PPS for each spell, a TC with only 1 tick is 172 PPS vs Fire IV being 168 PPS. But you have to take into consideration the PPS of the whole rotation, not just the one spell. Clipping plays a huge factor in this. And we're not just talking about clipping the previous T1 or TC, but the current TC that will get clipped when you go into UI and need a filler. If you don't use a T1 and use blizzard instead as your filler, then you'll get the full potency of TC, but then you'll be in your next rotation and you'll end up looking at roughly 15s without thunder ticking at all. Unless you get another TC, but you can't count on that

[valsemiel]

So, question to all the BLMs here. I found a parse on FFLogs of a BLM doing 1586 DPS on A4S which I've been told is extremely, extremely high and not likely to be achieved without a dedicated cheese party. From what I'm able to see, the composition is pretty normal: 1 BRD, MNK, NIN and the guy even got quarantined (lol). Initially, I suspected he might've Flared the adds + Straf + Legs during a coordinated feed but it was never casted once. Then I imagined he abused the aether stack mechanic from the Jagd Dolls where exploding your teammates adds like 300 DPS to your numbers in ACT, but again the max stacks received was 3. Is BLM naturally this dominant or is this run an anomaly? Just trying to wrap my head around all this as a melee main where BLM now tops us on every turn ;_;

[MagiusNecros]

If the guy had the best gear ever it's very possible he was somehow able to get that rare but amazing stationary turret setup where you can go ham and then the BLM's DPS ratio just skyrockets. But to do that in a raid and A4S at that....

O_o

[Sleigh]

The only special thing I'm seeing is 18 TCs. Foe's amount was lower than normal according to fflogs, regular crit rate, no DRG for Litany, he got a Quarantine; I don't want to sound rotten here but I'm going to err on the side of a bugged fflogs, as has happened before multiple times.

Just don't see why he would destroy the rest of fflogs (#2 has BRD BRD, #3 has an AST feeding him, and I doubt he outplayed those two by 5-10%), it looks regular to me.

Or who knows, it could be legit.

Edit: looks like a nearly 2.0 base GCD. He's firing spells off left and right and doing a F1 F4 F4 F4 F4 rotation without Leylines. I guess this guy got the ultimate SS set from Diadem, lucky him. Seems like it's legit then, would love to see such gear that allowed him literally 15% more attacks than other players.