BLM's Blizzard 4 needs a potency buff

[Fang0r]

For a while now, there has been a blm rotation going around that skips blizzard 4 and fire 1, opting to do 4 fire 4's and a despair rather than 6 fire 4's and a despair. This is apparently slightly stronger and is clearly an unintended rotation.

By blm rule of thumb, casting fire 1 is worth it if you can get another fire 4 and can still use despair. Then, the suggested proposal is to bring blizzard 4's potency per second in line with fire 1's.

Fire 1 has 324 potency under astral fire 3 and a cast time of 2.5s. This is a pps of 129.6.

Blizzard 4 has a cast time of 2.8s. Multiplying that with the above pps gives us 362.88 potency. For a round number and to make the intended rotation indeed the optimal one, we'll raise that to 370 potency. Note, blizzard 4's current potency is 300.

Thus, I propose a 70 potency buff to blizzard 4 from 300 to 370 so that the developers' intended rotation is appropriately effective. In the long run, this is around a 0.8% increase to blm's dps which is significant but not so significant as to be game-breaking.

[Eloah]

Why exactly is this needed? Blizzard 4 isn't meant to be "spammed" , its just used to get Umbral Hearts and that's it. But if you already have the hearts, you can skip Blizzard 4 entirely. What benefit does increasing the potency have?

[Rongway]

Why exactly is this needed? Blizzard 4 isn't meant to be "spammed" , its just used to get Umbral Hearts and that's it. But if you already have the hearts, you can skip Blizzard 4 entirely. What benefit does increasing the potency have?

OP is not suggesting it should be spammable. OP is referring to this:


The intended use of Blizzard IV is to generate three Umbral Hearts in order to buy a Fire and two more Fire IVs. However, these three extra fire spells do not make up for the time spent casting Blizzard IV in the first place. OP suggests an increase to Blizzard IV potency in order to make it worth casting as is intended.

OP's math is slightly off, though. In order for Blizzard IV to be worth using at all, the rotation that uses Blizzard IV would have to deal an additional 90 potency, more than the OP suggests.

irrational buffs to blm

No. BLM is already top dps by a nice margin. Next.

Snarky. The maths are easily reasoned. See above. As for its effect on BLM's maximal damage output, such an increase in potency would have a negligible effect--it would increase the P/s of the intended BLM rotation to just 0.0083 P/s over the short rotation, which is a gain of 1,000~1850 potency per fight (1.5% increase to DPS) for someone who is currently using the intended rotation, but only a gain of 3~5 potency per fight (a 0.0000476% increase to DPS) for someone who is currently using the short rotation.

[Karshan]

OP is not suggesting it should be spammable. OP is referring to this:


The intended use of Blizzard IV is to generate three Umbral Hearts in order to buy a Fire and two more Fire IVs. However, these three extra fire spells do not make up for the time spent casting Blizzard IV in the first place. OP suggests an increase to Blizzard IV potency in order to make it worth casting as is intended.

OP's math is slightly off, though. In order for Blizzard IV to be worth using at all, the rotation that uses Blizzard IV would have to deal an additional 90 potency, more than the OP suggests.





Snarky. The maths are easily reasoned. See above. As for its effect on BLM's maximal damage output, such an increase in potency would have a negligible effect--it would increase the P/s of the intended BLM rotation to just 0.0083 P/s over the short rotation, which is a gain of 1,000~1850 potency per fight (1.5% increase to DPS) for someone who is currently using the intended rotation, but only a gain of 3~5 potency per fight (a 0.0000476% increase to DPS) for someone who is currently using the short rotation.

I'm a "false beginner" BLM ; I'm confused in the second rotation as to what spells to use during ice phase to be sure you had the 2 mana ticks then ? When Xeno isn't active I mean, and if you casted thunder III again at that time wouldn't it be clipping the DOT quite largely ?

[Caduagm]

irrational buffs to blm

No. BLM is already top dps by a nice margin. Next.

[Kabooa]

Speaking personally, I think every job could use this sort of approach where a less-flexible/higher demand variant leads to higher performance, with the guideline rotation being "Good enough".

Using this specific example - The "Good enough" 3/1/3 we have as standard and the 4/1, which if I remember right from reading into this a couple months ago, was a more high risk approach where any gains were easily lost.

This may have changed since then, as I was primarily interested in it due to speculation we made in black mage threads before the expansion released about the possibility of a F1-less rotation, and not to actually do it.

On the other hand, having multiple, equal powered variant rotations goes to the "right tool, right job" angle of design, and that's not bad either so.

I guess I don't think it's necessary, but wouldn't say no to it?

[Hasrat]

Per rongway's maths, it might seem like a potency increase would still retain that flexibility, with such a negligible difference between the rotations. Which might even be more in line with the idea of having those variants, by trying to match up potencies as closely as possible. Kinda sounds like an exciting idea, to effectively have 2 rotations available.

[Starkbeaumont]

Ice mage, go

[Rongway]

I'm a "false beginner" BLM ; I'm confused in the second rotation as to what spells to use during ice phase to be sure you had the 2 mana ticks then ? When Xeno isn't active I mean, and if you casted thunder III again at that time wouldn't it be clipping the DOT quite largely ?

You have 1s after Blizzard III, 2.5s casting Thunder, and 1.5s casting Fire III, so short of 5s total when accounting for spell speed. You need t>3.0s and t≤6.0s to get a second tick, so there's an okay probability that you'll get the two ticks. However, in the event that you only get the one tick, it's still just barely a potency gain over the intended rotation if you do an ultrashort rotation for that one time only.

[Rongway]

You have 1s after Blizzard III, 2.5s casting Thunder, and 1.5s casting Fire III, so short of 5s total when accounting for spell speed. You need t>3.0s and t≤6.0s to get a second tick, so there's an okay probability that you'll get the two ticks. However, in the event that you only get the one tick, it's still just barely a potency gain over the intended rotation if you do an ultrashort rotation for that one time only.

In that case, Blizzard IV would only be short about 40p, and OP's suggestion of 70p might be better than my suggestion of 90p after all, to account for the short rotation not being able to guarantee 4x FireIV on every rotation.