Black Mage

[EllieShadeflare]

Anyone know the optimal blm set up this patch? Is it direct hit over crit or crit over direct hit? Any bis?

Actually, as far as I can tell, the priority for Black Mage is Crit>Spell Speed>Direct Hit>Determination.

Most classes want Direct Hit to grant them a pretty solid and reliable extra boost of damage, but Black Mage already has the damage necessary, through sheer potency and ability to spam said potency. What they want is Crit, because not only does it raise the chances of getting a crit (which when paired with a Scholar, Dragoon, Bard and/or an Astrologian with Spear, gets kinda ridiculous) but it also increases the power of the crit. This is also part of the reason why Samurai wants it as well.

Also, due to Black Mage having slower casts than Summoner and Red Mage... and also having a much higher reliance on Thunder, whether as a DoT, or its power as a burst.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/13JKR is the set I was suggested for Black Mage*, to maximize its damage and therefore your contribution (since BLM is a pure DPS). To summarize its stats,

Direct Hit: 1239. Crit: 1758. Determination: 785. Spell Speed: 1687*

*Note: This was made before the existence of the Ultimate Bahamut Weapons, but the rule is to put an extra SpS on it. Because you want your Fire IVs to not exceed 2.6s. Any slower it becomes more and more difficult to cast more than your allotted 3x per Fire cast, and may make the 4+4 Fire IV opener impossible.

[Sylvain]

What's the difference between no spell speed materia and full ss on the cast time of fire IV? It doesn't seem the reduce our casting speed that much

[Shiroe]

can not believe crtit> before direct hit... and especially NOT before ss.., unless you overreach ss and you dont get foul in time...

a general (big) ss boost would be nice for blm to "fast fix" its damage issue atm, also making blm a tick more mobile with fast casts,... but ofc foul would need an adjustment (like 25 sec instead of 30), so it would be up again by the time were back in ice with a big ss boost..

[Lelila38]

Crit was nerfed, you need insane amounts to get anything from it, even if you go full crit you can't get even close.
Blm gears Ss > Dh > Det > Crit
Effectively you meld mainly Ss and Dh, one slot you can put up det.
At least it was this way at the start of 4.0, please correct me if they changed it since then and made crit useful again.

[Nemekh]

Crit was nerfed, you need insane amounts to get anything from it, even if you go full crit you can't get even close.
Blm gears Ss > Dh > Det > Crit
Effectively you meld mainly Ss and Dh, one slot you can put up det.
At least it was this way at the start of 4.0, please correct me if they changed it since then and made crit useful again.

Crit has never not been useful in 4.x. All they did in Stormblood was reduce the Crit Damage multiplier from 1.450 to 1.400 most likely because of how it interacts with Direct Hit and stopping it from spiraling too far out of control. The Crit Rate% function and how the Crit Damage multiplier scales has not changed at all.

[Lelila38]

Crit has never not been useful in 4.x. All they did in Stormblood was reduce the Crit Damage multiplier from 1.450 to 1.400 most likely because of how it interacts with Direct Hit and stopping it from spiraling too far out of control. The Crit Rate% function and how the Crit Damage multiplier scales has not changed at all.

I have read multiple threads where people did the maths saying you need close to 3k crit to get any benefit, aka more than a 1% increase. Can you show me numbers for what you claim?

Edit: found some of the links, are those numbers not accurate anymore?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tats_compared/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...o_stat_values/

[Remedi]

Dunno about all of this, but from the DRG thread it's shown that if you gear up with genji gear crit weights kinda skyrockets over direct hit, it might just be the case for BLM

[Nemekh]

I wouldn't use any of omono's threads as a source reference, however, as one of the people that worked on all the substat formulae and spent all the hours parsing Direct Hit to begin with, many of my replies should be in both of those - especially as one is Gouka's thread. (my reddit handle is also Nemekh)

My source spreadsheet with substat formulae as we know them is here.

As for worth of substats and what to use when - that gets tricky to answer because of tier math (substats are step functions because they are integer math based). You can't just do relative point increases because not all steps are equal in point total. So what we end up doing is working towards what calculates the highest expected damage potential.

[Lelila38]

Nice work on that.
My main stat as a Blm will still be Ss, at around 1920 there's a reduction of gcd, which I'm sitting at. After that I went for Dh > Crit. Just the general consensus seems to be that Dh is better in 4.x.
The clunky Umbral Hearts get more fluent with additional Ss too.

[EllieShadeflare]

Nice work on that.
My main stat as a Blm will still be Ss, at around 1920 there's a reduction of gcd, which I'm sitting at. After that I went for Dh > Crit. Just the general consensus seems to be that Dh is better in 4.x.

Spell Speed is indeed important, since again, you don't want your cast to be longer than 2.6, but we'll probably see more spell speed in later patches as our gear levels go higher. There comes a point where over-focusing on Spell Speed will actually turn into a DPS loss in our current state, so keep that in mind.

However, while a good majority of classes do want Direct Hit over Crit (most notably, the other two casters who also clash heavily to Black Mage regarding both spell speed and BiS), there are a few classes that absolutely NEED crit. Monk is one of them, due to them getting Chakras on crit. Samurai needs it to beef up the potency of their heaviest hitters. Scholars need their juicy Critlos. Bards need it to proc vital mechanics. Black Mage can only be helped by crit because they can make much greater use out of the 1.4 modifier, and it really doesn't take much Direct Hit to get the goods.