BLM Rotation?

[RiversideGuy]

In doing some research I came across akhmorning.com... they seem pretty reasonable. As I am past 40, they suggest a very different rotation than what I started with, including B3 and F3 and T3. BUT if I am scaled down for whatever reason, do these not work at all (as they may have been learned past the level I was scaled down to) OR do they just do an appropriately scaled down amount of damage/MP regen?

[Brightamethyst]

You don't keep higher level spells an abilities when you sync down. The ideal rotation looks VERY different depending on what level you're synced to.

You have to understand that pretty much every guide out there talks about rotations in terms of high tier play at endgame. The ideal level 80 rotation means nothing at level 40 when you don't have most of the spells in question.

[Rongway]

Fire III is a little awkwardly timed in its introduction.

The thing that affects the fire stance damage buff and the ice stance MP refresh isn't which spell you cast but how many stacks (floating balls) you have.

Umbral Ice I: Fire spells are 0.9x potency. Refresh 3200 MP per tick.
Umbral Ice II: Fire spells are 0.8x potency. Refresh 4700 MP per tick.
Umbral Ice II: Fire spells are 0.7x potency. Refresh 6200 MP per tick. Fire spells cast twice as fast. After Lv72, Fire spells cost 0 MP.

Astral Fire I: Fire spells are 1.4x potency and double cost. Ice spells 0.9x potency.
Astral Fire II: Fire spells are 1.6x potency and double cost. Ice spells 0.8x potency.
Astral Fire III: Fire spells are 1.8x potency and double cost. Ice spells 0.7x potency. Ice spells cast twice as fast. After Lv72, Ice spells cost 0 MP.

Fire I and Blizzard I build stacks one at a time. Fire III and Blizzard III immediately put you at max stacks. However, when you first learn Fire III, you only have a 2 stack max. So even though you learn Fire III at Lv35, it's not worth using until Lv40 because it takes so long to cast that you might as well just Transpose and cast Fire I.

Once you hit Lv40, you can stack 3 balls and your Fire and Ice spells get a 50% haste buff under three stacks of the opposite element. Then Fire III and Blizzard III are the best way to switch elements in single target.

When syncked down, you won't have access to any actions that are too high for the sync level. As far as how damage scales, you can always compare potencies to each other without worrying about damage scaling. A spell that does 200 potency is twice as powerful as a spell that does 100 potency whether you're Lv1 or Lv80. Just remember to take into account the potency adjustments from Astral Fire / Umbral Ice, which take effect without changing the potencies on the tooltips.

All of this makes BLM one of the most complicated jobs in terms of how its rotation changes at various levels. Rather than having one or two big evolution moments like other jobs, it has like ten different milestones where the rotation needs to be adjusted.

[RiversideGuy]

Rats <lol>. At least I asked the right question. Sounds like I need swappable hot bars... can you put the same spell on 2 different bars? Funny, out in the world w/o lvl sync, B3, T1, F3, F1 blew stuff down like no tomorrow. Is there some form of chart listing the spells and the first lvl they are good at?

Oh wait, the key binds kinda screws up that idea... unless I can out the same key binds on different hot bars...

[Rongway]

You can put each action on as many bars as you want.

The game does an especially bad job of teaching BLM compared to the other jobs, due mostly to a lack of documentation or in-game indication of the exact effects of Umbral Ice and Astral Fire. Every other job explains their potency adjustments in tooltips--for example, as combo potencies or positional potencies--but BLM's spells don't do that so new people don't have any recourse but to ask.

In general, you don't have to worry about another case like Fire III. You can use new spells as you get them. It may not always be optimal to start using them immediately, but the difference between an optimized rotation for the current level and a rotation that includes a new spell is less important than getting used to using the new spell correctly, so don't worry too much about it.

[RiversideGuy]

THINK I have settled on 2 sets... duty roulette seems to want to send me to stuff that syncs me down to 19, where my good stuff won't work. So I have a bar with F-Trans-B-T followed by the 2 AOEs F2-B2. Second bar has my "post 30" set. The problem is that that each bar has different keybindsl The ideal is if the primary bar would keep it's keybinds but not necessarily it's actions! Or at least have that as a user set option. So when I do my suty roulette, I swap a bunch of buttons, then swap back after those are done. Is there some more clever way that I have not seen?

[Rongway]

Give this a shot:

/mlock
/hotbar copy current 1 share 1
/hotbar copy current 7 current 1
/hotbar copy share 1 current 7
/hotbar copy current 2 share 1
/hotbar copy current 8 current 2
/hotbar copy share 1 current 8
/hotbar copy current 3 share 1
/hotbar copy current 9 current 3
/hotbar copy share 1 current 9

Set up your first set of bars on bars 1 through 3.
Activate the macro.
Set up your second set of bars on bars 1 through 3.

The macro now swaps you between the two sets of bars. This will work for any job. It requires bars 1,2,3 to be not shared, and bars 7,8,9 to be Shared.

[RiversideGuy]

Actually, I discovered that the "primary" bar KEEPS the 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc. keybinds, so I just rotate the bars to keep said keybinds and put the buttons in roughly equivalent positions.

One current concern is that I do seem to get a lot of 30-38 dungeons in my duty roulette. Pretty much sidelines B3. For AOE I can use Freeze, BUT I thought to use B2 to regain MP... BUT I may be crazy, but it seems to NOT hit my MP bar much at all. It's odd because the graphic effect seems to center around me rather than mobs at range I have targeted. MIght it not be better to ditch B2 entirely and put a Manafont in there (I style my bars with a series of ST, space then a series of AOE).

I tell ya, it WAS nice to finally hit a 45 FATE (did it because I could use my whole current toolkit) where I had all my tools avaiable!

[Rongway]

One current concern is that I do seem to get a lot of 30-38 dungeons in my duty roulette. Pretty much sidelines B3. For AOE I can use Freeze, BUT I thought to use B2 to regain MP... BUT I may be crazy, but it seems to NOT hit my MP bar much at all. It's odd because the graphic effect seems to center around me rather than mobs at range I have targeted. MIght it not be better to ditch B2 entirely and put a Manafont in there (I style my bars with a series of ST, space then a series of AOE).

Freeze is superior to Blizzard II in every way. Blizzard II is a point blank AoE (centered on you) and you are probably not standing in the middle of a pack of mobs that will also be using their own AoEs. Freeze instantly puts you at max stacks and does more damage than Blizzard II. You can completely ignore Blizzard II at any level that Freeze is available.

Your MP refresh rate is based on how many stacks of Umbral Ice you have (see UI/AF breakdown several posts previous). You only get stacks if your spell hits something, and a spell that generates a single stack will just set you to 0 stacks if you have any stacks of the opposite element, so switch elements with a Tier III spell (Fire III / Blizzard III / Freeze) before using a lower spell.