BLM Single Target Lvl 50 MOP regen?

[RiversideGuy]

Someone very kindly pointed me to a whole new rotation for BLM AoE, gonna take a while to make the muscle memory shine. BUT I seem to have another issue which involves doing lvl 50 content single target. I use B3 as my mana regen but it seems that needs 2 casts to do regen... is there some complex work around for this? My usual rotation is B3, T3, F3, F1 spam until low, then back to B3.

[Sunako]

You use blizzard 1 as mana regen until you have blizzard 4

[RiversideGuy]

B4 only available at 58.

[Taranok]

Which is why you cast B1, not B3, after you're in UI3. Yes, it's slightly lower DPS. It also gets you into the AF phase significantly faster.

[RiversideGuy]

Oy, my poor hotbar! Hmmm, not sure I understand, how do I get to UI3 at lvl 50?

[Pyitoechito]

Let's go through switching aspects level-by-level. Before level 35, the only optimal way to switch aspects is through Transpose. From level 35 onwards, switching aspects is optimally done by using Blizzard III (to get into Umbral Ice) and Fire III (to get into Astral Fire). Also, for AoE (Lv 35+) it's meant for black mage to use Fire II/High Fire II and Blizzard II/High Blizzard II to switch aspects, but at the start of Dawntrail there's some weird optimal thing with Transpose, but I would just stick to High Fire II and High Blizzard II because that'll probably get patched out eventually.

That's all that really needs to be known about switching between aspects. Outside of combat (or during downtime), you can Transpose into Umbral Ice and spam Umbral Soul to keep your aspect active and continue charging Polyglot stacks.

For regenerating MP, you want to cast Blizzard I during Umbral Ice until level 58 in single-target, where it gets replaced by Blizzard IV (because Blizz IV grants Umbral Heart stacks). For AoE, cast Blizzard II until Level 40 when you unlock Freeze (you'll still use Blizzard II and eventually High Blizzard II to switch into Umbral Ice). Before level 20, each ice spell (cast during Umbral Ice) will only restore 1/4 of your max mana, meaning you need to cast four Blizzards to fully restore MP. Between level 20 and level 35, each ice spell restores half your total mana (so 2 casts to fully restore). From level 35 onwards, all ice spells cast in Umbral Ice fully restore MP with a single cast.

[RiversideGuy]

Ah, good info/explanation. Going to try the rotations from the Balance Discord group... to deal with my 50 issue I'm going to prolly start using my f keys for single button... needless to say at my age and health limitations the days of savage raiding simply aren't there. 3-4 years ago I was a Heroic raider in WoW, but I'd have big difficulties doing that these days.