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

[PewPewz]

Depends on how your parser adds it up

If its over the entire fight, you can't do 290 as blm.

If its the snapshots of when levi is targetable you can.

Actually you can do that as BLM for Levi Ex over the entire fight.

I usually average 270-300 on Levi, but my personal best that I remember is 322. (ACT with default settings) No bards in the party, so could have been a fair bit higher if the party had 1/2 bards.

[haroldsaxon]

I'm personally going Spellspeed/Crit. But i'm not going to rush it.

[megumino2]

Actually you can do that as BLM for Levi Ex over the entire fight.

I usually average 270-300 on Levi, but my personal best that I remember is 322. (ACT with default settings) No bards in the party, so could have been a fair bit higher if the party had 1/2 bards.

I'd believe it if you have around ilv.100
One more thing with Leviathan: when he uses body slam, instead of using scathe and slide down with everyone, use aethereal manipulation on the MT and instantly avoid the pull-down and start thunder/firing

I think the highest parse I got with Levi using ilv.90 gear was 235

[PewPewz]

I'd believe it if you have around ilv.100
One more thing with Leviathan: when he uses body slam, instead of using scathe and slide down with everyone, use aethereal manipulation on the MT and instantly avoid the pull-down and start thunder/firing

I think the highest parse I got with Levi using ilv.90 gear was 235

You can believe or not, I'm really not bothered.

It was towards the end of May, so I guess I was ilvl 96/97

Did a test using items that gave me an average ilvl of 80, did 256 dps. So I don't honestly think that average ilvl means all that much for BLM anyway.

I do not think you would want a macro that uses both manaward and manawall in your guide. Those 2 spells are both insanely useful on their own.

Agreed, that would be a really bad macro to use imo.

Only time I could see it being used it on T8 when you have Allagan Field, but it's easy enough to press both anyway.

[Dammerung]

Levi is shit for measuring dps because the higher your total raid dps is, the higher it can get because you skip all but the forced dives.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Probably not a novel discovery or anything but I don't play BLM that much so.

I've been using this macro for Flare loop timing:

/wait 1
/ac "Flare" <t>

I hit this just a hair after the UI1 MP tick (445 spell speed, 2.40 GCD, 3.84 Flare cast time). But I found that I could also use this for hitting F3 out of Flare -> Transpose:

Flare
Transpose
wait for UI1 tick, hit Flare macro
interrupt, immediately hit F3

Always seemed to work for me, ends up in AF3 with the last UI1 MP tick, almost full MP. Not big but might help anyone who needs timing help.

Poverty i90 gear for reference:

Spoiler: show

[Landsoul]

Just got my BLM to 50, but I have a question regarding firestarter.
Is it worth to cancel Fire for a Firestarter proc to cast Fire3 because your next fire could possibly trigger another Firestarter proc potentially wasting 1 firestarter proc?

[Seravi Edalborez]

It's annoying but don't delay or cancel.

[Deadgye]

It's annoying but don't delay or cancel.

Do you think it's worth it to delay for half a second before going into blizz3? I find myself doing this since you can spam the fire3 button without worrying about casting time shenanigans since you don't have enough mp to start a cast.

[Kaisha]

No clue if it's the most efficient, but I queue Bliz3, if FS shows, try to cancel the Bliz3. If it doesn't cancel out, save it to get back into Astral when I'm done my usual stuff in Umbral.

[EDIT] And now I feel dumb for never having considered to transpose before the FS.

[Radec]

I've had best success with going right into blizz3 after last fire, if I get a firestarter on it, continue with normal ice phase and transpose back into AF1 at full MP and hit the firestarter then.

[Seravi Edalborez]

I've had best success with going right into blizz3 after last fire, if I get a firestarter on it, continue with normal ice phase and transpose back into AF1 at full MP and hit the firestarter then.

This. Slight makeup (imo, at least) is that you will generally always be able to do Thunder 2 right away after the next B3, regardless of race choice.

Aside: Getting that mental timing for when to Transpose ASAP and still get that last UI tick is agonizing. I jump the gun quite a bit.

[Deadgye]

Transposing to AF1 is an interesting way to handle it. I hate how useless using a firestarter proc in umbral feels lol. Fire 3 while in umbral is only a what, 1.5s cast? All I do when I have the firestart proc in umbral is end up waiting for a second for the final tic before casting, effectively making it useless 80% of the time.

I'll definitely start transposing for that when it slips past me anyway. (I'm only waiting half a second or less trying to get that proc off before blizz3, so sometimes it appears after I decided to cast already.)

[Indomitable Will]

Agreed, that would be a really bad macro to use imo.

Only time I could see it being used it on T8 when you have Allagan Field, but it's easy enough to press both anyway.

I use it and never have an issue with using 1 or the other when I don't want to honestly, but I only use it for crap that doesn't matter anyway, anything where using them individually is essentially a requirement, I just split them and put 1 where the macro is, and the other where I have sleep on the main bar.

[HitomeOfBismarck]

I've had best success with going right into blizz3 after last fire, if I get a firestarter on it, continue with normal ice phase and transpose back into AF1 at full MP and hit the firestarter then.

Hi Radec!! Long time, no see. Miss you guys.

I would agree but sometimes find myself spamming the fire 3 button for a few seconds right before going into blizz 3. Pretty sure transposing the fire 3 is a DPS gain compared to the former.

[haroldsaxon]

2.3 Changes (Preliminary):

Thaumaturge
Fire
Potency has been increased from 150 to 170.

Blizzard
Potency has been increased from 150 to 170.

Fire III
Potency has been increased from 220 to 240.

Blizzard III
Potency has been increased from 220 to 240.

Black Mage

Apocatastasis
The effect has been changed to reduce a party member's magic vulnerability by 20%.
Recast time has been increased from 120 to 180 seconds.

Manawall
Effect duration has been reduced from 60 to 20 seconds.

[Redwolfx]

Anyone know calculations for 20 additional dmg potency

[Shenrien]

Anyone know calculations for 20 additional dmg potency

Well lets try exemple

Potency 210 with 500 STR and wepon dmg 75

The DMG would be

about 421.81

With same stats but with 235 potency

would be 472.03

From the patch notes thread.

[Taim Meich]

Damage is in direct proportion of potency, i.e., a 200 potency skill will do twice as much damage as a 100 potency skill.

That said, and considering a normal single target BLM rotation (Thunder 2 -> Fire 3 -> Fire 1 x5 -> Blizzard 3)*n, using procs normally, the DPS boost is about 10%. That's a pretty big boost.

[Virtuosus]

How do you guys think this will effect secondary stats (det/crit/SS)? I don't really know how the calculations work out, but will higher overall potency benefit more from determination in the long run?

Edit: BLM isn't really my main, so I'm not really sure of the current priority of its secondaries. I've heard/read many mixed things on det/crit/SS for BLM. Perhaps someone can clear it up for me.