An actual gameplay questionFollow

I am currently 31 BLM and soon I will be getting my T3 Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder spells. Just looking at this from an efficiency standpoint, clearly the T3 spells do less dmg per mp. They also happen to have a casting time longer than the GCD. But obviously they have the benefit of providing a full stack of their respective buff and they do more damage per cast.

So my question is, what have you guys found to be more effective? Spam Fire 1 due to mp efficiency (1.52 potency/mp vs 1.33 potency/mp) or cast Fire 3 because it has seemingly higher dps (63.4 potency/sec vs. 60.5 potency/sec)?

Another thing: Fire3 has a cast time of 3.47s and a recast of 2.48. Is the recast time the cooldown for the spell or the time it takes to cast the 2nd Fire3 of a chain? Because if it's the latter it pushes Fire3 up to 88.7 potency/sec.

Just trying to nail down the mechanics of maximizing my output. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

(Also- please forgive me if this has already been discussed in another thread. I didn't see one a midst the gazillion server-fail threads so I figured I'd just ask.)

From what I've seen so far...you're a BLM! Who cares about efficiency. You've got Umbral Ice.

I think it ultimately comes down to hate management and the needs of the moment. If your tank has aggro then I say go all out.

Thanks for the reply. That's kind of what I was thinking, but my bother says on his legacy server he see's the BLM's spamming T1 Fire, which made me wonder.



Any idea about this?

yeah, most games prevent that through the caps i mentioned, since that's more obvious to a player base. if fire 1 is in fact much more efficient in actual use, expect a patch. Higher level abilities aren't supposed to be downgrades. and if the devs start to see an extremely reduced usage rate for the t3 spell they'll change something.

actually I hope it is as your brother mentioned. will be a good test case on how the dev team is going to handle balance issues. The player base hasn't experimented enough yet to really expose any screwups

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 6:35pm by sscearcev

To maximize BLM DMG output I've been taught the following things:

The basics:

Cast Fire I until your MP is low, then cast Transpose, then cast Blizzard I until your MP fills back up. Then cast Transpose and go back to Fire I.

The more advanced:

When switching back to Fire from Blizzard, cast a single Fire III, which will give you maximum Astral Fire stacks and then cast Fire I until you are out of mana again.

Put some DoT into the mix:

Starting of the battle with a single Thunder II and Aero II will put Damage over Time effects on your enemy. You only need to do this to enemies that have enough HP for this to take full effect - large enemies you will battle for awhile. During the battle watch your Thunder I icon for the special effect to go off, when you see Thunder I have a yellow outline, it is ready to be a cast for Bonus Damage.

So the basic rotation Fire I > Transpose > Blizzard I (until mana refills) followed by Transpose > Fire II > Fire I will get you through most battles. Throw in Thunder II and Aero II for boss battles:

I don't have Flare yet so I have no idea how that will get into the mix. One thing I'm sure of , understanding how Transpose works is critical to maximizing damage at lower levels.





Edited, Sep 3rd 2013 11:20am by Gnu

More efficient doesn't necessarily mean more powerful, and higher level abilities aren't necessarily supposed to completely displace lower level abilities. Unlike FFXI, this game features a much lower number of abilities per class/job. That tells me that the dev team is trying to make lower level abilities still useful and viable at higher levels.

Even in FFXI, they attempted to move in this direction with nukes. Tier 5 nukes are less efficient as far damage-per-cost, but deal damage more quickly if you look at damage-per-time. Tier 1 nukes are most efficient, but deal the least amount of damage given the amount of casting time.