After seeing an absolutely inordinate amount of terrible BLM memes, general misunderstandings and confusing misplays I figured it might be a good idea to write something. My general experience in game and on this reddit is that black mage is the most poorly understood class in the game by people who don't play it. This isn't going to be a guide to savage raiding on black mage, more of a primer and how to for playing BLM is casual content, as well as having some advice for people who play alongside a black mage.
Plan your movement ahead of time, know your tools
This is very long because it's very important
Black mage is the only class in the game where 100% of the damage is on the GCD. While their oGCDs can be used to increase damage output, Ley Lines being the most famous one, none of their oGCDs deal damage directly. With the exception of casting fire 3 or Blizzard 3 to switch between fire and ice, all of their GCDs are as long, or longer than the GCD as well. This is why standing still as much as possible is so important, and your options for free movement are limited.
Black mage is very dependent on fight knowledge, and you should try to move into the safe position ahead of time.
The upside to this is that black mage has potentially the largest mobility toolkit of any class in the game:
That's a total of eight different things. The problem is that all of these things have some kind of drawback that prevents you from just simply using them.
Firestarter and Thundercloud turn their respective spells into instant casts, but are random. Firestarter is a 40% chance every time you cast fire 1, Thundercloud has a chance of activating every time a thunder DoT ticks, 10% for single target and 3% for the AoE thunder spells.
Triplecast and swiftcast will turn your next spells cast into instant casts, but both have 60s cooldowns and because all of BLMs spells are on the GCD or even longer you have few chances to weave your oGCDs.
Sharpcast can force a thundercloud or firestarter proc, but require you to cast fire 1 or a thunder spell to actually allow that to happen. It starts as a 60s cooldown, but that's reduced to 30s at level 74.
Xenoglossy requires a polyglot charge, so can be used once every 30 seconds. When you unlock xenoglossy you can hold 2 charges, so you keep 1 banked for movement.
Between the lines will teleport you back to the centre of your ley lines, but requires you to have your ley lines up.
Aetherial Manipulation rushes you over to another party member. This requires you to know where your party members are though, and more than once I've personally manipulated right into another AoE. It's a great way to kill yourself in savage. If you play on PC, here's my mouseover macro for the ability:
/macroicon "Aetherial Manipulation"
/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <mo>
Cut your black mage some slack if you're playing with them. Black mages perform best when the group are willing to play around them to reduce the amount of movement they need to do. A good example of how not to play with a black mage is something I've had to deal with in E1S. At the start of the fight, I've seen black mages forced to run across the entire arena to avoid the first jump after delta attack, causing an incredible DPS loss - either during that mechanic or when they had to bait meteors during interdimensional rift and had none of their movement tools because they'd used them all to avoid getting cut down after Eden's jump.
Use your thunder spells
Even in level 80 content I see black mages not using their thunder spells. This is understandable if you just look at the potency in the tool-tip, but Black Mage has an ability called thundercloud. Every time your thunder spells tick you have a chance of getting a thundercloud proc. A thundercloud proc makes your next cast of a thunder spell a free instant cast which adds the total DoT damage to the initial hit, as well as reapplying the DoT. You want uptime as close to 100% as possible to get as many procs as you can.
A single cast of thunder III is 390 potency in total, and a thundercloud boosted thunder III is 710 potency. Regular thunder III is your strongest ability besides fire IV, while a thundercloud boosted thunder III is even more damage than a xenoglossy if you include the full DoT duration.
Thunder IV is even more useful for AoE, dealing more damage than foul or flare when boosted by thundercloud.
Because thundercloud procs are instant casts, they also help with your movement as a black mage.
Learn your rotation inside and out
While 'know your rotation' is an extremely obvious piece of advice, Black Mage is all about not stopping for anything. If you can get your rotation into muscle memory it'll make playing the class a lot easier, and if you don't want to do that then knowing what happens when and why will make adjusting for mistakes a lot easier.
How to use your Ley Lines
Don't stand dead centre of your ley lines. Your ley lines are 6y wide, which is a lot more space than you'd think. If you stand on the edge of your ley lines, you can move to the other edge. for a very large number of mechanics.
Make sure to drop your ley lines at a time and place where they won't have something dropped on them. Most fights from dungeon bosses to savage raids have sections of the fight where you can drop your ley lines and stand in them for the whole half a minute without any issues. A lot of the time, holding your ley lines to drop them later is better than using them on cooldown.
Try your hardest to not clip your ley lines either, try to drop them after an instant cast.
Use Manaward
Sometimes you either can't or won't move out of an AoE. During the icicle drops in Titania EX I like to stand in the centre and take the hit so I can save my movement tools for later and get better uptime. Manaward is a fantastic tool for when you have to do this, and will often save your life. It's a shield worth 30% of your health bar, which is almost as good as a critlo shield.
What about Scathe?
Don't use scathe during a fight, ever. It disrupts your rotation and causes odd mana issues. You shouldn't put yourself in a situation where you need to use it.
This is really long now. If you have any questions, or just want to call me out, feel free to ask/yell below.
submitted by /u/Sporelord1079
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
Plan your movement ahead of time, know your tools
This is very long because it's very important
Black mage is the only class in the game where 100% of the damage is on the GCD. While their oGCDs can be used to increase damage output, Ley Lines being the most famous one, none of their oGCDs deal damage directly. With the exception of casting fire 3 or Blizzard 3 to switch between fire and ice, all of their GCDs are as long, or longer than the GCD as well. This is why standing still as much as possible is so important, and your options for free movement are limited.
Black mage is very dependent on fight knowledge, and you should try to move into the safe position ahead of time.
The upside to this is that black mage has potentially the largest mobility toolkit of any class in the game:
- Firestarter
- Thundercloud
- Sharpcast
- Triplecast/Swiftcast
- Xenoglossy
- Between the Lines
- Aetherial Manipulation
That's a total of eight different things. The problem is that all of these things have some kind of drawback that prevents you from just simply using them.
Firestarter and Thundercloud turn their respective spells into instant casts, but are random. Firestarter is a 40% chance every time you cast fire 1, Thundercloud has a chance of activating every time a thunder DoT ticks, 10% for single target and 3% for the AoE thunder spells.
Triplecast and swiftcast will turn your next spells cast into instant casts, but both have 60s cooldowns and because all of BLMs spells are on the GCD or even longer you have few chances to weave your oGCDs.
Sharpcast can force a thundercloud or firestarter proc, but require you to cast fire 1 or a thunder spell to actually allow that to happen. It starts as a 60s cooldown, but that's reduced to 30s at level 74.
Xenoglossy requires a polyglot charge, so can be used once every 30 seconds. When you unlock xenoglossy you can hold 2 charges, so you keep 1 banked for movement.
Between the lines will teleport you back to the centre of your ley lines, but requires you to have your ley lines up.
Aetherial Manipulation rushes you over to another party member. This requires you to know where your party members are though, and more than once I've personally manipulated right into another AoE. It's a great way to kill yourself in savage. If you play on PC, here's my mouseover macro for the ability:
/macroicon "Aetherial Manipulation"
/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <mo>
Cut your black mage some slack if you're playing with them. Black mages perform best when the group are willing to play around them to reduce the amount of movement they need to do. A good example of how not to play with a black mage is something I've had to deal with in E1S. At the start of the fight, I've seen black mages forced to run across the entire arena to avoid the first jump after delta attack, causing an incredible DPS loss - either during that mechanic or when they had to bait meteors during interdimensional rift and had none of their movement tools because they'd used them all to avoid getting cut down after Eden's jump.
Use your thunder spells
Even in level 80 content I see black mages not using their thunder spells. This is understandable if you just look at the potency in the tool-tip, but Black Mage has an ability called thundercloud. Every time your thunder spells tick you have a chance of getting a thundercloud proc. A thundercloud proc makes your next cast of a thunder spell a free instant cast which adds the total DoT damage to the initial hit, as well as reapplying the DoT. You want uptime as close to 100% as possible to get as many procs as you can.
A single cast of thunder III is 390 potency in total, and a thundercloud boosted thunder III is 710 potency. Regular thunder III is your strongest ability besides fire IV, while a thundercloud boosted thunder III is even more damage than a xenoglossy if you include the full DoT duration.
Thunder IV is even more useful for AoE, dealing more damage than foul or flare when boosted by thundercloud.
Because thundercloud procs are instant casts, they also help with your movement as a black mage.
Learn your rotation inside and out
While 'know your rotation' is an extremely obvious piece of advice, Black Mage is all about not stopping for anything. If you can get your rotation into muscle memory it'll make playing the class a lot easier, and if you don't want to do that then knowing what happens when and why will make adjusting for mistakes a lot easier.
How to use your Ley Lines
Don't stand dead centre of your ley lines. Your ley lines are 6y wide, which is a lot more space than you'd think. If you stand on the edge of your ley lines, you can move to the other edge. for a very large number of mechanics.
Make sure to drop your ley lines at a time and place where they won't have something dropped on them. Most fights from dungeon bosses to savage raids have sections of the fight where you can drop your ley lines and stand in them for the whole half a minute without any issues. A lot of the time, holding your ley lines to drop them later is better than using them on cooldown.
Try your hardest to not clip your ley lines either, try to drop them after an instant cast.
Use Manaward
Sometimes you either can't or won't move out of an AoE. During the icicle drops in Titania EX I like to stand in the centre and take the hit so I can save my movement tools for later and get better uptime. Manaward is a fantastic tool for when you have to do this, and will often save your life. It's a shield worth 30% of your health bar, which is almost as good as a critlo shield.
What about Scathe?
Don't use scathe during a fight, ever. It disrupts your rotation and causes odd mana issues. You shouldn't put yourself in a situation where you need to use it.
This is really long now. If you have any questions, or just want to call me out, feel free to ask/yell below.
submitted by /u/Sporelord1079
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...