Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[Jijifli]

As someone unfamiliar with black mage rotations, where do you fit in the Flare? I don't see Fire 2 in the rotations above.

Before 68 it would be, once you fire 3 into astral fire, fire 2 x3-4, flare
Once you hit 68 however, you get a trait where flare no longer eats all your mana if you have umbral hearts, meaning instead of doing fire 2's, you just flare twice.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

As someone unfamiliar with black mage rotations, where do you fit in the Flare? I don't see Fire 2 in the rotations above.

I haven't seen a debate in awhile but yes. The new 'Standard' AOE rotation is just setting up for 2 (or 3 flares, if you don't care if the first one mostly just tickles) over and over. Depending on the size of the pull, F2 might still be acceptable damage but there should have at least been a flare at the end of each rotation, even for the 2.0 version.

AOE opener has 4 flares (or 3 without pots) so this is probably either a long-time returner or someone who might be muddling through with outdated reddit posts. -At least they weren't Ice Mageing. I'll take any BLM who uses fire (even incorrectly) to an Ice Mage. *shudders*

[Rasikko]

As someone unfamiliar with black mage rotations, where do you fit in the Flare? I don't see Fire 2 in the rotations above.

Fire 2 was made obsolete, Flare/Thunder II+ etc does it all much better.

[Rilifane]

As someone unfamiliar with black mage rotations, where do you fit in the Flare? I don't see Fire 2 in the rotations above.

68 and 72 both add great traits for doing sweet aoe dps.
At 68 Flare consumes 1/3 less MP if you have an Umbreal Heart and Freeze always grants one.
72 reduces MP cost to 0 if you cast fire spells in UI3 or ice spells in AF3.
Additionally at 76 you get a skill that lets you stack UI and Umbral Hearts without a target, pretty useful to get UI 3 + Hearts while on the run towards the next pull.

So at 80 in big pulls (5+ mobs) you even skip Fire 3 to switch, throw your Leylines and just go:
Sharp + Thunder 4 -> Coldflare -> Triple -> Flare -> Swift -> Flare -> Manafont -> Flare -> Pot -> Flare -> Freeze -> Thunder 4 proc -> repeat Flare spam with Fouls when possible. Preferebly early on during pull when all mobs are still alive. More targets, more numbers!
Pretty satisfying if you go with 2 Polyglot stacks, Manafont and Pot into a big pull. I don't know why people would miss out on this huge explosion party.
Though if your tank isn't quick to build aggro on all targets you may get some unwanted attention.

I was really happy when I started leveling THM and got Fire 2 so early but once the Flare rotation got smoother at 68 and 72 respectively, Fire 2 could kindly go to hell (:

[Mhaeric]

I know the dragon can be tanked on either the edge or center as I've seen it done, but my point of the story was that A's healers were asleep at the wheel, and I have a feeling some of B's and C's were. I've never seen one whole section of an alliance just go splat at that boss.

Backtrack much? You specifically said your healers were "on point" and blamed the tank for starting causing the whole situation by having the "magical" idea of standing in the middle and then only moving one square away from the center.

The tank in B magically gets this great idea to keep the bone dragon in the middle of the room. First time he goes down, the magic starts.

All of the skele mobs bumrush to him, and since he's so conveniently face-down in the middle of the arena, the damage that gets pumped out raid-wide is enough to completely wipe A. B and C nearly die, but because our healers were on point, we barely survive, and then the tank gets the idea to move the boss...by one tile. Needless to say more damage went out, nearly wiping the rest of us and making the healers that were still alive work overtime to keep both B and C alive. Group A never got a res.

[MariaArvana]

68 and 72 both add great traits for doing sweet aoe dps.
At 68 Flare consumes 1/3 less MP if you have an Umbreal Heart and Freeze always grants one.
72 reduces MP cost to 0 if you cast fire spells in UI3 or ice spells in AF3.
Additionally at 76 you get a skill that lets you stack UI and Umbral Hearts without a target, pretty useful to get UI 3 + Hearts while on the run towards the next pull.

So at 80 in big pulls (5+ mobs) you even skip Fire 3 to switch, throw your Leylines and just go:
Sharp + Thunder 4 -> Coldflare -> Triple -> Flare -> Swift -> Flare -> Manafont -> Flare -> Pot -> Flare -> Freeze -> Thunder 4 proc -> repeat Flare spam with Fouls when possible. Preferebly early on during pull when all mobs are still alive. More targets, more numbers!
Pretty satisfying if you go with 2 Polyglot stacks, Manafont and Pot into a big pull. I don't know why people would miss out on this huge explosion party.
Though if your tank isn't quick to build aggro on all targets you may get some unwanted attention.

I was really happy when I started leveling THM and got Fire 2 so early but once the Flare rotation got smoother at 68 and 72 respectively, Fire 2 could kindly go to hell (:

One nitpick: you still use Fire 3 to change, since a coldflare will still eat all your Umbral Heart stacks along with 2/3rds of your mana even in Ice and deliver a weak flare, leaving you with only one AF flare before you'd go to manafont/Ether. (Flare ignores the Aspect Mastery trait at 72)

freeze -> T4 -> F3 -> flare spam -> repeat. Weave in Sharpcast + T4, Leylines, and Fouls as necessary.

[LyraMaru]

BLM seems to be the hardest class for new players. Maybe cause there is no 1-2-3 rotation. Or the mana ping-pong looks weired for them. Please if you want to play with others who are not your friends but random peoples, try to optimize yourself. For everybody that has questions and don't know where to find the answers: ask ingame or go to the balance discord :-)

Here's the invite link https://discord.gg/thebalanceffxiv

[Aosha]

68 and 72 both add great traits for doing sweet aoe dps.
At 68 Flare consumes 1/3 less MP if you have an Umbreal Heart and Freeze always grants one.
72 reduces MP cost to 0 if you cast fire spells in UI3 or ice spells in AF3.
Additionally at 76 you get a skill that lets you stack UI and Umbral Hearts without a target, pretty useful to get UI 3 + Hearts while on the run towards the next pull.

So at 80 in big pulls (5+ mobs) you even skip Fire 3 to switch, throw your Leylines and just go:
Sharp + Thunder 4 -> Coldflare -> Triple -> Flare -> Swift -> Flare -> Manafont -> Flare -> Pot -> Flare -> Freeze -> Thunder 4 proc -> repeat Flare spam with Fouls when possible. Preferebly early on during pull when all mobs are still alive. More targets, more numbers!
Pretty satisfying if you go with 2 Polyglot stacks, Manafont and Pot into a big pull. I don't know why people would miss out on this huge explosion party.
Though if your tank isn't quick to build aggro on all targets you may get some unwanted attention.

I was really happy when I started leveling THM and got Fire 2 so early but once the Flare rotation got smoother at 68 and 72 respectively, Fire 2 could kindly go to hell (:

No coldFlare, use FireIII instead. The trait still doesn't affect Flare. That'll just eat all your Umbral Hearts and 2/3 of your MP with no AF boost. When getting that trait my first thought also was "oh, can I now use Flare to swap stances in AoE?" One test and three lost Umbral Hearts later I know it doesn't work like that.

[Frizze]

No coldFlare, use FireIII instead. The trait still doesn't affect Flare. That'll just eat all your Umbral Hearts and 2/3 of your MP with no AF boost. When getting that trait my first thought also was "oh, can I now use Flare to swap stances in AoE?" One test and three lost Umbral Hearts later I know it doesn't work like that.

The math people seem to have come to the conclusion that with 5 or more targets the "Coldflare" version is slightly more damage. It feels wrong to me, but i dont argue with the math people. They have math.

[Rilifane]

The math people seem to have come to the conclusion that with 5 or more targets the "Coldflare" version is slightly more damage. It feels wrong to me, but i dont argue with the math people. They have math.

Exactly.
It feels weird for me too but if it melts mobs faster, I prefer it over a "feels better". And escpecially in 10+ mob pulls, which aren't unusual escpecially in Akademia, it's definitely better. For small pulls, sure. Fire 3 first. But not for large pulls.
Accidentally added one Flare too much. I know Aspect Mastery doesn't affect Flare but it affects Freeze so you don't need Transpose or wait for a server tick, making it much smoother overall.