Card potencies (class specific)

[StouterTaru]

if your reasoning for it being a dps loss is that it messes with your fire 3 back into astral fire and you only get 1 mp tick

Re-read, that is not the reason it's not a dps increase, that's the annoyance that goes with the lack of dps increase.

Your whole fire phase is sped up

And that time you gain casting faster Fire spells goes into waiting for the first MP tick after Flare > Transpose. The rotation is 15 seconds, with or without arrow.

[Aryn_Lastrov]

The rotation is 15 seconds, with or without arrow.

I do not comprehend this one bit at all. I don't have the cast times on me, but let's say fire 3 is 3.5secs, fire 2 3 secs, Flare is 4secs and transpose 0.5. For argument's sake I'll just reduce reduce the cast times by half a second while under arrow to demonstrate the dps increase.

Fire 3 > Fire 2 x2 > Flare > Transpose is 3.5 + 2(3) + 4 + 0.5 = 14secs

Let's pretend your rotation does 10,000 damage. This means your dps is 10,000/14 =714

Now with arrow cast times, it becomes 3.5 (as fire 3 in ice does not change as you need 2 ticks) + 2(2.5) +3.5 + 0.5 = 12.5 secs

10,000/12.5 = 800dps

Obviously, you need to wait for you first mp tick before casting fire 3. The time that you save in astral fire may result in you getting an early mp tick. Other times you may get the same mp tick and the dps gain isn't as big, but you're dps will become higher quicker, then settle back down to the same (worst case scenario with a single aoe rotation). With a 30secs let lines or arrow, you are bound to get the early mp tick and see a dps increase

Edit: I understand what you're saying now, that the time you save in fire is spent waiting on that mp tick. But with ley lines + arrow and/or a swiftcasted Flare I would assume that you'd get an early mp tick. Its also likely that the mobs will die around your Flare, and since arrow has sped up that part of the rotation, your Flare has come out early and your dps will be higher because of it. It's not a great card for aoe, but it is almost always a dps increase

[Aryn_Lastrov]

Arrow guarantees that you will only get one tick

No it doesn't.

Just wait a fraction of a second before casting fire 3. It is the only part of the rotation which does not benefit from arrow.

[FunkyBunch]

Edit: I understand what you're saying now, that the time you save in fire is spent waiting on that mp tick. But with ley lines + arrow and/or a swiftcasted Flare I would assume that you'd get an early mp tick. Its also likely that the mobs will die around your Flare, and since arrow has sped up that part of the rotation, your Flare has come out early and your dps will be higher because of it. It's not a great card for aoe, but it is almost always a dps increase

You still kinda misunderstand.
Not only are you waiting on the MP tick, you can't just cast right away as soon as you get the tick to cast F3 as the cast time is now 2.77 seconds with arrow.

Also, your 10% increase is 1.72 seconds based on my SS on a GCD of 2.2 seconds.
Which makes the rotation go from 14.52 seconds to 12.8 seconds. Making the rotation take exactly the same amount of time (15 seconds).
But potentially screwing up your rotation cast causing you to go into AF early. You don't want to build bad habits by waiting to cast things.

No it doesn't.

Just wait a fraction of a second before casting fire 3. It is the only part of the rotation which does not benefit from arrow.

Do you really want to screw up a rotation because you waited 0.22 seconds instead of 0.23 seconds? Or if you delay yourself by 0.5 seconds and the buff falls off you miss an MP tick because your rotation now takes you in-between MP ticks causing you to go into AF 3 seconds later?

While it may in theory work sometimes on paper, in reality you're just inviting an error for what is most likely a DPS loss.

[StouterTaru]

Edit: I understand what you're saying now, that the time you save in fire is spent waiting on that mp tick. But with ley lines + arrow and/or a swiftcasted Flare I would assume that you'd get an early mp tick.

That early tick will only happen after the first transpose, if at all. That might put your casting 3 seconds ahead of where you would otherwise be for the rest of the encounter, or it leaves it in the exact same spot. Swiftcast will be used any time it's off CD for Flare, and when it's used it makes arrow less likely to give that fast MP tick (Swiftcast > Flare > Transpose takes the same time to do with or without arrow, Hardcast Flare > Transpose does not).

If the pack of mobs is melting quickly, it means the BLM isn't the only one cranking out high AoE damage. At the extreme of this, you won't get back into your AoE rotation after your first transpose. So the extra damage you end up doing is a Freeze, Blizzard II, or Scathe cast. Arrow would be better used on the DRG/MNK/MCH/BRD/WAR/DRK/just about anyone but SMN, Royal Roaded, or saved until the boss fight.

If the pack of mobs is going slowly, it's because your BLM is doing low dps, or is doing 75% of your damage. If the BLM sucks, give it to the other dps. If the other dps and tank suck, give it to the tank, because that BLM will be ripping hate and 1 spell interruption lowers dps by more than that 3 seconds that Arrow might have given.