Fire IV or Fire III ?

[Venur]

Hi guys, I'm struggling with my DPS as a lvl 70 BM. In group I kinda always end dead last exept if the healer don't try to deal damage. No mather the class, Tank, healers, bard, dancers etc, they all destroy me.

Single target or AoE I just seems to be bad, so I'm posting what I usualy do and I am ready to hear if I do anything wrong.

On single target I keep litning DoT running then I use fire III only to get 3 stacks and spam Fire IV till I must toss a fire III to keep fire stacks running.

When OOM I cast a single Blizz III and Blizz IV and use Transpose to switch back to umbral Fire.


I use Swiftcats and Sharpcast to get 3 umbral fire stack quickly when available.

I aligne Tripple cast with layline and use these charge on Fire IV.

I know it is not that important while leveling and nobody ever said a thing about my damage but I'm trying to improve for personal reason.

[VictorSpoils]

Use Fire III instead of Transpose to switch back to umbral. Also, if you're not at max MP after Blizzard III+IV, throw in a Blizzard I/Thunder.

[Kansene]

Use Fire III instead of Transpose to switch back to umbral. Also, if you're not at max MP after Blizzard III+IV, throw in a Blizzard I/Thunder.

This, pretty much. Also, use Fire I instead of III to refresh the duration of your fire phase, it costs way less and neither of them hit hard, so go with the cheaper one.

Fire I will also turn into paradox later, so it's good to get used to pushing it.

Transpose is mainly used to keep enochian going between fights, or if you somehow royally screwed yourself over with mp somehow.

[JacobNewblood]

Here ya go Fellow BLM, A good starting resource for whatcha needa do!

[Ransu]

Ya, only use transpose to get back into ice during downtime and what not to get mana back, but honestly I wouldn't worry too much about your rotation right now. BLM is so weird before level 80 because its design is basically the "old" BLM until you get all the newer talents/skills post 80 where the rotation begins to shift pretty heavily (sort of...its complicated lol). A lot of jobs are like that unfortunately because they remove old stuff for the new stuff to keep bloat down which constantly makes jobs backloaded and feel awkward at the lower levels.

Honestly, just roll with it for now. Do your three FireIV's, throw out fire 1 to keep enochian up and repeat until you need to go back into ice for MP. I wouldn't worry too much about being optimal till you reach cap. When you hit level 90 you can practice your rotation on the SSS dummies (stone,sky,sea). Its a great way to practice your opener/rotation. If you mess up the opener just leave and re-enter and bam all your CD's are reset.

[Keichi]

You could, aside of your rotation, even look, if the position of your skill optimal for you.

I hit a hard wall at lvl 75, where i wasnt able to play any caster, because i had some skills on bad positions (by every caster^^). That leaded to some missplay (and it was hard for me to keep track of all cd).

[Darkstride]

The major thing that you're crippling yourself with is Transpose. Fire III already does the work of swapping to Astral Fire III while also dealing damage (tooltip reads "Additional Effect: Grants Astral Fire III and removes Umbral Ice).

[Renathras]

Here ya go Fellow BLM, A good starting resource for whatcha needa do!

Huh.

When you put it that way, it ALMOST sounds easy.

Almost.

.

Yeah, like they said, B3 and F3 can be used to swap elements since they give a full 3 stacks where Transpose only gives you 1. And as someone said, you can use F1 to refresh Astral Fire at a lower MP cost than Fire 3, and this F1 you can replace with a F3 if you get a Firestarter proc around that time since it will refresh your stacks for you.

...then you get Paradox.

[Picker]

Keep transpose on your hotbar, there’s some minor optimizations you can make at lvl 90 to increase your dps slightly

[AnotherPerson]

Assuming you're following the BLM rotation posted above and still cannot do high DPS and your gear is fine, then the trick to doing big DPS on Black Mage is to follow the ABC rule - Always be Casting. The rotation itself is meant to be simplistic and flexible enough so you can adjust it based on the encounter to reduce the DPS loss when you can't execute it flawlessly, and this is what makes Black Mage interesting to play -- it uses more brain power in knowing a fight rather than following a complex rotation. Doing more damage than a healer doesn't require much more complex rotation than being able to mostly hit that Fire IV button while avoiding AoEs without breaking a lot of casts.

The most simplest way to think about it is this: If you aren't casting, that means you have lost a GCD to not being able to use Fire IV at some point in your rotation. Not being able to cast multiple times mean you eventually lost multiple GCDs worth of Fire IV damage, which can result in a huge potency loss overtime.

If you need to move, you need to have planned it in advance with Triple Cast/Swift Cast/Sharpcasted Thunder/Fire proc or take advantage of Aetherial Manipulation/Between the Lines to its fullest so you can continue casting without interruption. Basically every healer and caster in Shadowbringers who follow the ABC rule try to do this while slidecasting (they move right before a cast finishes so the spell goes off and they get to move slightly) to help position themselves the best, but ABC rule can be applied to any and all jobs in general. It's just that for ranged DPS and melee jobs, their "cast times" are instant, but they press their combo skills consistently to not break GCD. It gets slightly easier for BLM with Xenoglossy by Lv 80 acting as a secondary instant cast skill for more flexible movement, but can be trickier at lower levels since you have less visual mobility-free skills in the rotation. BLM has a lot more burst mobility, so you have to take advantage of that as much as possible.

My advice to you is to focus less on always getting the perfect rotation, but instead focus on being able to do near perfect rotation without losing a cast and without dropping Enochian (Timer). That way, you will always be able to do comparable damage to DPS and should be able to do more than healers on the regular. After that, you can slowly work your way towards optimizing your mobility and reduce excessive movement to get closer to the ideal rotation 100% of the time.