The Leveling Problem explained.

[DPZ2]

No , you are correct, the Black Mage job is very unintuitive and badly explained in the game. Also the gameplay style changes completly while leveling.

first you must switch from fire to ice via Transpose, then you get Fire 3 but cant actually use it unless you get a freecast, but the freecast proccs at the very end of a fire cast so you have 0.5 seconds to react and use it

To be clear here, the freecast for Fire 3 because of the Firestarter trait gained at level 42 has a 30 second countdown, not 0.5 seconds. One can also anticipate it a bit, since the tiny icon appears before the action icon lights up.

I totally agree that Black Mage feels pretty decent at higher levels, and it does require readjustment once you hit level 50, and again when you hit level 60. Moving from ARR into HW was definitely a relearning experience.

I'd have been quite happy if icy-veins had started FFXIV leveling information back in 2015, but ... at least it's much better now. No thanks to youtube videos, unfortunately.

[Arohk]

To be clear here, the freecast for Fire 3 because of the Firestarter trait gained at level 42 has a 30 second countdown, not 0.5 seconds.

No, you misunderstood, you can get the freecast when Fire is >0.5seconds from finishing the cast, and you now WANT to use Fire 3 and not cast another fire to not waste any proccs because the freecast does not stack like fleeting Raiju from ninja which you can stack 3 charges.

so when youa re lucky with proccs you do Fire > Fire 3 > Fire > Fire 3 > Fire....