BLM needs a rework because of new content difficulty

[Realfoxy]

Excog manafont would probably want to be paired with an AF refresh on Flare Star. I'm not sure why it would drift, though, since you'd be able to press the button as soon as it lights up without wasting its effect unless the boss goes untargetable for spans that probably drift everyone else's cooldowns, also.

That said, I don't think Manafont cooldown drift is a problem in the first place. Like, if Manafont's cooldown dropped to 80 or 60, that would be a significant buff, but it would still drift because it's never going to line up perfectly with the end of every single astral cycle and will never be worth cutting an astral cycle short to press immediately. Precisely because it's not a burst ability, it doesn't have to be something that you press immediately at fight start and then every other time that Searing Light or whatever pops up on your buff list. It could just get used as convenient, and improve your overall damage to the extent that it's used and you have the opportunity to discharge the resources it generates for you.

Each use of Manafont lets you cut out a weak B3 and B4 from your rotation. Say that you're at base spell speed and after your normal fire phase you use manafont, that means you'll do 3xF4 PD 3xF4 Desp FS F3P which is 5684 potency (excluding eno) over 28.6 seconds (account for 0.1s caster tax). Say you didn't use manafont, you'd instead use the B3+B4 into standard fire line and then do 6386 potency over 36.2 seconds.

So if you do manafont, you get 36.2 - 28.6 = 7.6 seconds (missing fast F3, B3, and B4 + caster tax) to do cast your normal spells. PPS of the standard line is 176.41 pps, times 7.6 seconds, equals 1340.716 potency. Then 5684 + 1341 - 6386 = 639 potency before eno. So it's more than an entire Despair cast.

I'm not going run down the other comparisons, but DPS wise, Manafont is worth more than TWO uses of Triplecast COMBINED.

Like I said before, you can close your eyes, bleed off all the damage, and play super safe, but given that BLM is a job whose ONLY contribution to the raid is damage and Addle, you should be doing enough DPS to justify your existence.

I don't want SE to be balancing this job around its standard rotation, when the standard rotation is full of all this jank that normal players have to deal with.