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

[haroldsaxon]

Meant to reply to this yesterday but got caught up in work. As miqo sun, I have to allocate like 2 or 3 pie to be at 251 with sch in PT. I haven't looked back since doing it.

I was thinking more last night about using fire at 800 mp and I think it could truly go either way. If you went through with fire that's another 800ish+ dmg and a potential FS proc but would drop your mp pool to 162, then blizz3 costs 79 in af3 iirc. You'll be standing there doing nothing until your first mp tick so I guess it's just kinda random. If you got the tick instantly it would definitely be an increase as you did an extra spell and didn't have to wait to throw up a thunder and continue with regular rotation, if you have to sit there the entire 4 second period I'd call it a loss because if you were to go straight into UI3 you would already have casted Fire3 and a Fire1. So it's kinda your call. If you're feeling lucky or if you know you're going to have to dodge somethin in a bit I'd do it

Don't allocate points in Piety. Intelligence is worth far more, and you can just use thunder 1 instead of thunder 2.

[Neon_Sea]

Yeah I guess I am just a gambling man when it comes to my BLM, what is the macro for thun II-->thun I? I could actually use that.

[Yukari]

Yeah I guess I am just a gambling man when it comes to my BLM, what is the macro for thun II-->thun I? I could actually use that.

/ac "Thunder II" <t>
/ac "Thunder" <t>

I believe? It's just queueing up the spells so if you can cast thunder2, it will, if it can't, it'll fire off thunder.

[Neon_Sea]

Oh yeah duh, just have to mash it I guess. Thanks.

[Niiro]

It can help to put multiple lines of Thunder II above the Thunder, if you hit the macro at just the wrong time it can attempt to cast Thunder II but fail because the GCD isn't up but in the split second between failing the Thunder II and attempting the Thunder the GCD will be up and the Thunder will cast.

ie. You can end up casting Thunder even tho you have the MP for Thunder II.

[Neon_Sea]

Ha yeah actually that just happened to me, I was mashing it during Bliz animation and got thun I when I had the mana for II, good idea. But it works well!

[Yukari]

It can help to put multiple lines of Thunder II above the Thunder, if you hit the macro at just the wrong time it can attempt to cast Thunder II but fail because the GCD isn't up but in the split second between failing the Thunder II and attempting the Thunder the GCD will be up and the Thunder will cast.

ie. You can end up casting Thunder even tho you have the MP for Thunder II.

Good idea. I should do that with mine.

[Alym]

I have a few questions about the whole "5 Fires" thing.

As a Sunseeker Miqo'te, I allocated a few points into PIE to be able to cast 5 Fires with a SCH in the party way back when. I have always HATED this because my rotation and DPS being variable based on whether a SCH is in the party just rubs me the wrong way. It leaves too much to chance for my liking and has messed me up more than a few times. Maybe I'm just terrible, but I really hate a rotation change based on a SCH showing up (fingers crossed!). This applies to the AOE rotation also with casting a Fire II after Convert. I started missing it so often even with a SCH (I usually run with a real life WHM friend for dungeons) that I've stopped casting it altogether.

I would love to stop chasing the stupid "5 Fires" shit. Can I just go full INT and stick to a 4 Fire rotation? Or can I do a 5 Fire rotation with no points in PIE if I use Thunder I? Would this be dramatically lower DPS? I would test this myself, but I'm currently low on seals for The Keeper's Hymn.

[StUfF]

I have a few questions about the whole "5 Fires" thing.

As a Sunseeker Miqo'te, I allocated a few points into PIE to be able to cast 5 Fires with a SCH in the party way back when. I have always HATED this because my rotation and DPS being variable based on whether a SCH is in the party just rubs me the wrong way. It leaves too much to chance for my liking and has messed me up more than a few times. Maybe I'm just terrible, but I really hate a rotation change based on a SCH showing up (fingers crossed!). This applies to the AOE rotation also with casting a Fire II after Convert. I started missing it so often even with a SCH (I usually run with a real life WHM friend for dungeons) that I've stopped casting it altogether.

I would love to stop chasing the stupid "5 Fires" shit. Can I just go full INT and stick to a 4 Fire rotation? Or can I do a 5 Fire rotation with no points in PIE if I use Thunder I? Would this be dramatically lower DPS? I would test this myself, but I'm currently low on seals for The Keeper's Hymn.

If you have crafted gear you can always put a piety gem in one of your slots.
Thunder I is 100~ mana lower than Thunder II so yes as long as you aren't removing 10+ piety you should still be able to do a 5 Fire rotation.
ThunderI is one tick less than ThunderII and a lower cast time - this means more often you will need to add a BlizzI filler to make sure you get 2 UI3 ticks and you "lose" one Thunder tick per rotation (unless you get a Thunder Proc).

I think 4Fire vs 5Fire was calculated to be roughly a 3.8% DPS drop - honestly you are probably better off having stats in PIE to have maximum damage in content where DPS matters, and either doing 4Fire or ThunderI when you don't have a SCH.

[lilbubbles]

As a dunesfolk, I carry around cheap ethers cause when I don't have a sch in party I have to do convert -> fire 2 -> ether(1 gil cost) -> flare

[Yukari]

As a dunesfolk, I carry around cheap ethers cause when I don't have a sch in party I have to do convert -> fire 2 -> ether(1 gil cost) -> flare

You don't carry around Mega-ethers to just do convert -> flare -> megaether -> another flare?

[lilbubbles]

If I feel like spending more than 1 gil on the pt, sure.

[raginbull]

I was wondering if you guys had any advice on doing Titan EX as BLM? Such as, rotation, when to cast and when to wait, etc. I've been in a few training groups, but seem to be struggling with it a bit. Also, what's the exact moment when you are supposed to LB?

[lilbubbles]

You have to lb quickly, as soon as the tank has adds under control. If you don't get it off before rocks fall, you're going to get hit by mechanics any other time.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Can pop Manawall + Manaward and LB almost anytime; Wall eats the possible Landslide and Ward will let you almost for sure not die to just 1 bomb. I haven't done caster LB much in this fight but I usually pop it right after they start moving (towards tank hopefully).

Though if you Meteor when Landslide is coming out everyone else will probably hate you. So this basically just applies to Starstorm. Meteor timing idk.

[Dammerung]

BLM needs something to lower their burst threat. Maybe First Fireball hit is lower but the rest is applied as dot over 3 seconds!

Hi, quelling strikes?

Edit: oops responded to a guy spamming posts up, my failure.

[OWS_Tonx]

You didn't read the OF fail thread? Apparently you're doing DPS wrong if you have to pop quelling.

As far as titan, I rarely go in there as BLM because it's a bitch compared to other jobs. Abuse manawall as the landslide will hit you for 0 and no knockback so you can cast through it, if you're LBing the 2nd adds you can pretty much do it asap if you have lb3 as it covers the entire arena, LB2 I would wait maybe 1 second before sending it off unless your OT is retardly slow on the pickup. Pop manawall and manaward like Seravi said in case you did take too long to send it off, and make sure you're on top of where one of the bombs will spawn so you're not catching a double. For timing casts, outside of double plumes whenever you dodge something don't run back immediately as you can pull another cast from there since nothing is going to be used in that 2seconds that you'll have to run from. Get a feel for the fight to the point you can predict mechanics and know when to sit on FS procs and such so you can hit it as you run from WotL and landslides. I might have missed something but that's pretty much the jist of it.

[Raldo]

Any tips for doing BLM in Leviathan? Trying to get my hands on a BLM staff, but I noticed I was lower on the hate list than the SMN today (so he was doing more damage than me w/o even his pet; granted he had an i100 weapon where I only had i90). Transpose after he jumps if you're in Astral Fire, obviously. Do you try to time a flare right before he jumps? Do you use Swiftcast for that, for Thunder 3 right after he re-appears, or something else?

Did the SMN out-do me because his DoTs tick even while Levi is doing jumps and/or because he can keep them up on Levi during spumes? Does BLM just suck in this fight?

[Shaano]

Fights where there is periods of down time, you will get shit on by smn.

[StUfF]

Any tips for doing BLM in Leviathan? Trying to get my hands on a BLM staff, but I noticed I was lower on the hate list than the SMN today (so he was doing more damage than me w/o even his pet; granted he had an i100 weapon where I only had i90). Transpose after he jumps if you're in Astral Fire, obviously. Do you try to time a flare right before he jumps? Do you use Swiftcast for that, for Thunder 3 right after he re-appears, or something else?

Did the SMN out-do me because his DoTs tick even while Levi is doing jumps and/or because he can keep them up on Levi during spumes? Does BLM just suck in this fight?

It's not that BLM suck, it's just that this fight is almost tailored for SMN, lots of downtime where DoTs keep running, lots of multi target potential where mobs are not in close proximity, SMN should just crush every other job in this fight, like how BLM crush T4, melee Titan etc.
There's not much you can do to increase your dps in this fight other than ask tanks to pull adds under the head so you can aoe/flare them.