How is BLM?

[Tint]

The biggest part that confuses me is Fire 1. It's like, why do we stick that in when we have access to F3 & F4?

The cast time and MP cost of Fire 3 is too big. You only use it to get the 3 stack Astral Fire buff and when you have a Firestarter procc, wich removes the MP cost and cast time from Fire 3. Same for Blizzard 3, you only use it to get the 3 stack Umral Ice buff.

Fire 4 does not extend the timer of the Astral Fire buff. So you have to use Fire 1 after 3 (or at most 4) Fire 4 casts or your Astral Fire buff will run out.

[Brandedblade]

The biggest part that confuses me is Fire 1. It's like, why do we stick that in when we have access to F3 & F4?

Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 are incredibly cheap (free once you get to level 72) and fast casting, but only when you're in the opposite element phase. Casting them in the same element phase makes them slow and expensive. So the purpose of Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 is to quickly switch your stacks over when you're done with your element phase.

Tl;dr:
Fire 3: Use to switch to fire while in ice phase, or to move/deal damage with a Firestarter proc
Blizzard 3: Use to switch to ice while in fire phase.
Fire: Use to refresh your fire stacks while in fire phase.
Fire 4: Deals the most damage but doesn't refresh your fire stacks.

[LilyPendragon]

Good morning! Please explain what I am missing. Why is BLM considered easy to learn or even moderate in difficulty? It seems very hard to reach a base level of competency, considering the length of the opener alone!

https://www.akhmorning.com/jobs/blm/...eners/#openers

And the opener is something that can be memorized. I cannot imagine what happens when you have to then use a bunch of split-second decision-making for other stuff while using to tricks to squeeze out multiple Flares, unintuitive but brilliant ways to use low-level spells to take advantage of server ticks, etc.

Seems hard.

Compare that to a SMN opener and you'll see why people say it's easier to pick up. Rotationally BLM is not very complex, the complexity comes in decision making of when to use your abilities to mantain casting.

Essentially you want to fit as many Fire IV's into your Fire phase as possible, casting a Fire I when the enochian timer ticks to around 3-4 seconds, and despair when you can't cast any more Fire IV (usually at 800 MP). After that it's Blizzard 3, a sharpcast (the blizzard 3 casts quickly enough for you to weave sharpcast without clipping your GCD), then Blizz IV > Thunder IV > Fire III (I believe this is also a weave window) > Repeat Fire phase.

The complexity is positioning yourself in such a way that you can cast Leylines as close to on cooldown as possible, and stay in them as close to their entire duration as possible as Leylines is a massive damage boost. Along with other things like only casting a single Fire I in your fire phase, not refreshing Thunder IV early without a damn good reason etc...

There's a reason there's a massive discrepancy between top Black Mages and bottom black mages (I think it's actually the biggest DPS discrepancy of all classes?), and that's not because of rotational complexity, it's simply because you have to know the fight inside and out, so that you can map out all of your instacasts and leylines to maintain as much Fire IV spam as possible.

[NYCLouisGamer]

All of you should write ads for FFXIV

Now I am even more excited to try BLM! Thank you for clearing up my questions on BLM mechanics. I know there is more to learn but you definitely explained the toughest parts for me. I had no idea that only some of the Fire spells extend the astral timer.

[Daws]

BLM is maybe the most well designed caster I've ever played. It's like playing the game in hard mode, though. I love it, but it can be tiring.

SAM is also fun. Easier, and more forgiving then BLM. Personally, I've found it hard to stick with a melee for long. I tend to prefer ranged.

[Frizze]

It's like, why do we stick that in when we have access to F3 & F4?

It sounds like you got this, but ill put a little bit of the math in a reply incase anyone searches up this topic and has more questions.

So for Fire 4, the reason it cant be our only attack spell is that it doesnt refresh the astral fire buff window. If it was all we had access to, then our "burn" phase would be F4 F4 F4 F4 and then we would be at the limit of the timer and need to switch back to ice quickly to keep the Eno buff rolling(the alternative of only using 4 or 5 buffed spells every 30 seconds is much worse). We get 6 of these spells in(plus other spells) per cycle rather then 4 by using the rest of our toolkit.

The reason that Fire 3 doesnt take up the mantle of primary nuke is cost and strength. At full power Fire 3 is an approx 646 potency attack spell(base potency 240, 1.8 multiplier for astral 3, 30% boost for M&M trait, 15% boost for eno). It takes 3.5 seconds to cast, along with 4000 mana. At the same power level Fire 1 is an approx 484 potency spell(base 180 same boosts). It takes 2.5 seconds to cast, along with 1600 mana. So with F3 only your burn phase would last 7 seconds, would only be 2 spells before you couldnt continue, and would be roughly 1292 potency(or 184.6 pot per sec). With F1 only you end up with a phase that goes 15 seconds over 6 casts, and an approx potency of 2904(193.6 pps). Fire 1 also has the bonus of a 40% chance to give you a free cast of F3(no mana, no cast time - still triggers GCD though) raising the average value of an F1 cast(assuming all procs are used without being overwritten) to roughly 742 potency(so effectively a 212 pps rotation). But Fire 1 only still doesnt outpace the version Tint spelled out that included Fire 4(for comparison, Fire 4 is roughly 807 pot and the despair at the end of the cycle is roughly 1023 pot - for a burn phase with roughly 279 pps if we ignore the DoT you should have running).

[Alxyzntlct]

As another new player to this game and one that just happened to pick BLM as their starting Job, I would like to thank everyone in this thread for both the thoughtful questions and incredibly helpful replies! I've taken notes on everything mentioned as like NYCLouisGamer said, I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can do with BLM.

^_^

[zcrash970]

Thank you, Tint & Frizze! I will get over my fear and try out the BLM job this weekend. I have been secretly wanting to play it for some time!

The biggest part that confuses me is Fire 1. It's like, why do we stick that in when we have access to F3 & F4?

Adding my two cents here since I don't think anyone really said it.

BLM is extremely easy to play and a job that anyone can pick up and play for most content.

Astral Fire for damage
Umbral Ice to restore mp after fire phase.
Keep thunder dot up.
That's essentially all there is to BLM. You add enochian and the mechanics associated to it as you get passed lvl55 but it will always boil down to fire, ice, and thunder.

The reason why everyone says BLM is hard to master is because it requires planning and fight mastery to optimize. Looking at BLM at a beginner level, you think that you lack any kind of movement and will get destroyed by aoes or lose a lot of DPS to move.
But BLM actually has a lot of movement options. Procs(firestarter and thundercloud), xeno, tripcast and swiftcast which all allow instant cast spells.

The idea of BLM is too maximize damage while keeping all unnecessary movement at a minimum. It sounds easy but FFXIV raiding requires a lot of movement and you need to learn when to use your abilities to not lose dps

[Sylvain]

The reason why everyone says BLM is hard to master is because it requires planning and fight mastery to optimize. Looking at BLM at a beginner level, you think that you lack any kind of movement and will get destroyed by aoes or lose a lot of DPS to move.
But BLM actually has a lot of movement options. Procs(firestarter and thundercloud), xeno, tripcast and swiftcast which all allow instant cast spells.

So much so that I have to actively spend Xenos during ice phase otherwise I overwrite stacks. This is especially true on Diamond x(... all those wasted Xenos