[Guide] Black Mage - Because, heavy deeps, that's why.

[haroldsaxon]

Hmm I request some opinions...

I am a i110 BLM. Should I use my poetics for the sexy i120 pants or instead buy the i120 gloves and 120 bracelet to add roughly 40 more accuracy to my build (boosts my Novum build to 475 or if I ever win a lot on high allagan head, then 500 base with Novus). The pants only add 15 or so more accuracy.

The Pants for BLM are shit. The HA ones are better.

The Gloves are pretty bad too.

The headpiece is decent, the chestpiece is ok although you'll need the Dread one for accuracy eventually. The Boots are good. The earrings are good. The neckpiece is good. I probably won't bother getting anything outside of those.

[Toth]

The Pants for BLM are shit. The HA ones are better.

The Gloves are pretty bad too.

The headpiece is decent, the chestpiece is ok although you'll need the Dread one for accuracy eventually. The Boots are good. The earrings are good. The neckpiece is good. I probably won't bother getting anything outside of those.

Interesting analysis but wouldn't that put a big dent in accuracy, especially if you want to hit the cap and use Novus/ nexus?

[haroldsaxon]

Interesting analysis but wouldn't that put a big dent in accuracy, especially if you want to hit the cap and use Novus/ nexus?

I use Spellspeed Acc on my Nexus. You should be prioritising spellspeed on your gear, and dropping either det (first choice) or crit (second choice) to get accuracy where possible. And when you get past T11, you'll have the weapon and hopefully the chestpiece.

Dropping spellspeed for accuracy is a really bad choice. Plus, you can also get crafted pieces if you need the accuracy in the meantime, they'll be better than the i120 left hand side stuff when melded (apart from the chestpiece) and sometimes comparable to the i130 stuff

[Yukari]

Really? Why dropping det over crit?

[haroldsaxon]

Really? Why dropping det over crit?

Stat weights have been revised for 2.4 Int/WD values. Before, Det was better point for point, but that only applied to i90 crafted and Novus. Now, Crit is weighted higher (but not as high as spellspeed).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...r=true&gid=124

[Shinryu]

Stat weights have been revised for 2.4 Int/WD values. Before, Det was better point for point, but that only applied to i90 crafted and Novus. Now, Crit is weighted higher (but not as high as spellspeed).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...r=true&gid=124

Det is still weighted higher. If you take his currently listed BiS set and stick its stats into his calculator, you'll get the exact weights as on the front page... Except Det and Crit are switched.

[Deadgye]

Weights are silly.

[haroldsaxon]

Det is still weighted higher. If you take his currently listed BiS set and stick its stats into his calculator, you'll get the exact weights as on the front page... Except Det and Crit are switched.

Good spot.

That said, Crit is still rated better on most pieces (apart from nexus) because you get more of it.

[Shaano]

Do we have more of an idea of where casting drops are from? Would like to plan out what to get before 'bis', going to be at 1800 points next week.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Do we have more of an idea of where casting drops are from? Would like to plan out what to get before 'bis', going to be at 1800 points next week.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1400818628

10: Head Neck Ring
11: Body Feet
12: Hands Ear Wrist
13: ???
Unknown: Legs (so probably 13)

[Narol]

Continuing my T6 ranting: Healers who'd rather die to Blighted than stop casting for two fucking seconds because ZOMG THE TANK'S AT 90% THIS MUST BE FIXED IMMEDIATELY or whatever.

[Crizto]

Anyone able to provide some DPS numbers they have been doing on T10 - 12/13? Or what they consider to be "good" for like i110 - i115? Doesn't really matter if you are still progressing or not.

[Neon_Sea]

So running 600+ SS with food, I was finding that sometimes t1->ice would still not reach the ticks, so I tried something out that seems to work wonders. I melded 9 piety on my cast pants and eat ponze cake for almost 260 piety. What this does is allow me to t3 after bliz III, normally that would still not be good because of early ticks and what not but Im finding at such a high SS build that I still have to cast bliz 1 after t3.

[haroldsaxon]

Anyone able to provide some DPS numbers they have been doing on T10 - 12/13? Or what they consider to be "good" for like i110 - i115? Doesn't really matter if you are still progressing or not.

T10, last number I can remember is 460 with my i115 Nexus.
T11, 440
T12 with i120, 450

Only cleared 12 once, 11 twice. Hopefully with more practice I can get a lot better, I don't feel like i've optimised any of them completely yet.

[haroldsaxon]

So running 600+ SS with food, I was finding that sometimes t1->ice would still not reach the ticks, so I tried something out that seems to work wonders. I melded 9 piety on my cast pants and eat ponze cake for almost 260 piety. What this does is allow me to t3 after bliz III, normally that would still not be good because of early ticks and what not but Im finding at such a high SS build that I still have to cast bliz 1 after t3.

Thunder 3 is a massive DPS loss. The only time you'll ever not get full mana after a T1+B1 combo in ice phase is if you have seleen buff AND you get a quick mana tick. Just wait half a second and start casting F3.

By doing what you are doing, not only are you losing a lot of potency in your rotation at that spellspeed, but you are also missing out on likely 3 spellspeed, 5 det and a wasted materia slot on your pants (either 9 crit or 6 det, or 9 spellspeed if you don't have any spellspeed melded).

[Neon_Sea]

Yeah i melded the SS already and wasn't going to bother melding past that but I just threw them on there for kicks. I didn't notice a dps loss when testing it vs the normal rotation so if there is one it's probably on paper and not a practical difference, only difference I noticed was that you could get early ticks that favored t1 and with t3 I seemed to get more procs and basically have thun up 100% of the time.

[haroldsaxon]

Yeah i melded the SS already and wasn't going to bother melding past that but I just threw them on there for kicks. I didn't notice a dps loss when testing it vs the normal rotation so if there is one it's probably on paper and not a practical difference, only difference I noticed was that you could get early ticks that favored t1 and with t3 I seemed to get more procs and basically have thun up 100% of the time.

If you are running that high spellspeed, the only time you don't have thunder up is if you get lots of firestarter procs and not thundercloud procs, which doesn't happen a lot of the time. You don't get any more thunder procs by using Thunder 3.

Check with a potency parse using ACT if you want to see.

[Neon_Sea]

I lose thunder if I get 1 firestarter proc, meaning that on my 5th fire I have no thun and during bliz III and during the Thunder cast as well. Therefore having thunder up longer = more proc chance, my thunder over all damage on a 3 minute parse tends to go from 1%(t1) to 7%(very high cloud procs 6% being the damage III's did) with the thunder I variant. My overall damage with thunder III variant is 8% - 15%(high proc rate). You speak very absolute about things that you have not actually tested.

[haroldsaxon]

I've not tested them? Why do you make that assumption?

I have tested various rotations on dummies and in fights, and running Thunder 1 is more DPS than running Thunder 2, and running Thunder 2 is more DPS than Thunder 3.

Purostrider has also tested this.

Feel free to post a significant number parses, because it just sounds like you had a lucky run on a 3 minute parse, which if you get multiple procs, is bound to give you a higher amount of damage from Thunder.

[Neon_Sea]

I gave you the range of damage, over 20+ parses of 3 minutes each. Meaning that 1% of my total damage was the lowest and 7 was the highest. You said thunder is always up, it is not. You said the potency in ACT would be the same, it is not. You say that it does not give better chances for a thunder proc when that is obviously not the case. Seriously I am not claiming nor have I ever that using thunder 3 is superior I was just messing around with something. The damage is basically the same and both have some benifits and drawbacks. With 600 spell speed and 280+ piety I was able to do some experiments and interesting things thats all. I don't need to post data, you need to go test yourself because you obviously have not.

Edit: to clarify, the reason I was trying this was because after respecing +30 piety putting me at ~300 the 6 fire rotation worked fine. Problem was it was still doing 10 dps less(only a couple parses) that a normal 5 fire rotation. So maybe if I could sacrifice the crit on my nexus to max piety/ss instead of sacrificing 30int there would be an actual dps gain...idk and it would be a pain to try