Pictomancer PvP Guide for FFXIV

A new PvP job introduced with Dawntrail, Pictomancer is a caster job capable of inflicting extremely heavy AoE damage onto the enemy team, with minor, time-gated crowd control included in its kit, as well as some support capabilities. While the 7.1 patch brought few changes to Pictomancer, it introduced one of its most important mechanics: Quick Sketch, allowing it to streamline its damage rotation.

This document will mainly focus on the new Crystalline Conflict mode, so while portions of it may apply to other PvP game modes, it is intended to apply to Crystalline Conflict.

Strengths

• Versatile abilities kit for both offensive and defensive play
• Good survivability and sustain through its defensive kit
• Limit Break helps make your entire team more durable and increase damage
• Good buffs for self and good debuffs on enemies

Weaknesses

• Predictable burst damage due to visable Motifs
• Burst Damage is locked behind Muses

4.

Skill Selection

Recuperate Standard-issue Elixir Guard Purify Sprint

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.1.

Recuperate

Recuperate – This is your most important healing ability. MP in PVP is only used for this ability. With a max of 10,000 MP, recup will consume 2,500 and heals you for 15,000 HP. The amount of healing received can be increased and reduced by healing up or down status effects, such as Summon Seraph to increase or Biolysis to decrease. You gain 500 MP per 3 seconds passively, something to keep in mind!

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.2.

Standard-issue Elixir

Standard-issue Elixir – This is your second-most important healing ability. Elixir allows you to gain back all your HP and MP, resetting yourself for the next fight! The listed cast time is 4.5 seconds, which means the cast is actually snapshotted as complete after 4 seconds, after which you can move and opponents can no longer cancel your Elixir. You'll see moments where you get hit, and the position will still finish.

When not under pressure, make sure to top up your resources for the next fight. As with the animations counted in the death timer, you will be out for 20~ seconds instead vs a 4 second Elixir!

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.3.

Guard

Guard – Grants 90% damage reduction and immunity to most crowd-control debuffs for up to 5 seconds. Using another action cancels this guard early. Damage over Time effects that have been applied before Guard will always tick for the full amount and wont be negated with Guard!

Per Patch 7.1, there have been multiple abilities added that work against Guarded targets. Where Shield Smite and Chain Stratagem half the defensive bonus of Guard (90% → 45%), there are also abilities that simply ignore guard when dealing damage; Drill, Assassinate, Enchanted Riposte, Disesteem, Wreath of Fire, Serpent's Tail and Chaotic Spring

Damage per ability is now tight to animations, compared to pre-7.1 where the damage would register when pressed. This means Guard is more reactive than it has been before, but it's also possible now to start ability animations that will hit the moment your Guard ends. Beware of your surroundings and what the enemy is doing!

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.4.

Purify

Purify – Cleanses all common crowd-control debuffs and provides a 3-second immunity to further crowd control, draw in and knockback effects. Use this to prevent yourself from getting CC-chained to death.

With the amount of crowd-control abilities, try not to be trigger-happy when using Purify. Taking a stun with no follow up from the enemy team, doesn't bring you in danger! If you have no defensives ready against a crowd-control heavy enemy team, it's recommended to play defensively before making another engage.

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.5.

Sprint

Sprint – Toggle for increased movement speed. This is a GCD and using any other action cancels the buff, so be smart in using it. Sage is a fragile job, as it has the lowest HP out of any job. If you are using off-global abilities repeatedly while running away or chasing, you should try to late-weave them if you can afford to, to avoid canceling too much of the Sprint duration.

Pictomancer is a caster job that strongly benefits from having a sturdy frontline to support. Its gameplay is designed around two main sources of damage: Motifs (Pom, Wing, Claw and Fang) and Portraits (Mog and Madeen), as well as a basic 1-2-3 combo that comes in two flavors (cast and instant) and heavy-hitting finishers (Holy in White or Comet in Black) depending on whether you're in or out of Subtractive Palette. Combined with its survivability, Pictomancer is a true all-rounded caster.

Pictomancer's primary combo (or your 1-2-3 if you will) is the RGB combo comprised of Fire in Red, Aero in Green, and Water in Blue. These are all instant cast, meaning you can move while using them. All of the RGB combo actions share a button with Fire in Red. Using Subtractive Palette will change your RGB combo to CYM (Cyan-Yellow-Magenta), slightly increasing each step's damage by 2,000, but requiring a 1.44s cast time to get off.

When you want to chase someone, being chased or want to quickly stop someone from using a , you can remove your Subtractive Palette buff to go back into insta casting. This way you can move freely, deal damage from a considerable ranged and potentially stopping enemies from resetting their Health and Mana.

Holy in White is also in PvP as a standard GCD, with two charges; using this on a target will heal the Pictomancer for 8,000 per charge, making it a valuable survival tool.

Using Subtractive Palette will change Holy in White turns into Comet in Black, increasing your damage by 4,000 potency over Holy, dealing AoE damage on and around the target.

Because it takes 2 seconds for the animation of Comet to hit the target, you can already pre-cast it into Guard once the timer drops from 2 to 1, meaning they will take the full damage once their buff expires and giving them less time to Recuperate.

An interesting note on Holy in White and Comet in Black is that the animation snapshots way before the actual damage calculation happens, so you may use either before using a Muse and the damage for it will appear after the Muse's damage. Use this knowledge to boost your damage or healing!

Outside of its basic combo and Holy/Comet, the Pictomancer "rotation" is determined by two buttons: your Motifs and your Muses. Your Motifs (Pom, Wing, Claw, Maw) "prep" your Muses for use, and some of your Muses unlock a Portrait. You can sit on a Muse indefinitely, but cannot move on to the next one until you use the first one. You can however sit on Portraits while moving from one Muse to the next.

Muses follow this rotation:

1. Pom Muse: Applying a buff that increases your damage dealt and self healing by 20%
2. Winged Muse: Speeding up your casts, recasts, and movement speed by 25%
3. Clawed Muse: Applying a debuff that increases their damage taken by 10% and reduces their healing potency by 20%
4. Fanged Muse: Applying a 4,000 potency DoT for 12 seconds

Winged Muse unlocks Mog of the Ages, a 12,000 potency line AoE. Enemies hit by this will have a 3 second Silence debuff applied.

Fanged Muse unlocks Retribution of the Madeen, a 12,000 potency line AoE. Enemies hit by this will be Stunned for 3 seconds. An ability that works just like this is the White Mage's Afflatus Purgation. Being a LB-like ability, you can blast through a lot of enemies at the same time, while your damage is boosted by your motifs!

You can save up Mog of Ages for the Clawed Muse damage increase, as these abilities will not vanish until they are overwritten. Meaning you can hold Mog of Ages, use Clawed Muse, use a Smudge for an instant Fanged Muse, followed again by a Retribution of The Madeen, dealing damage to almost 45,000 potency damage over 8 seconds, while applying crowd controls and DoTs!

Pictomancer's Limit Break is Advent of Chocobastion. The Chocobastion is an extremely powerful defensive tool, but it does not come without its disadvantages. Let's go over the three things the Pictomancer gets access to after using their LB:

The Chocobastion: This is the 8 yalm circle around the caster. Entering it applies the Chocobastion buff to allied players for 15 seconds, reducing damage taken by 25% and increasing the potency of heals by 25% as long as they stand in it.

The knock-back: Being within that 8 yalm range as the Fat Chocobo drops will knock back any enemy 15 yalms.

Star Prism: After using LB, the Chocobastion button will change to Star Prism. this button will damage enemies for 16,000 potency, heal allies within a 30 yalm range for 16,000 potency as well, and increase their damage by 10% for 15 seconds. If you hold this till you are in the ChocoBastion will do an AoE heal of 20,000 potency instead!

The biggest disadvantage the Chocobastion has is the fact that the caster is animation locked for almost 2.5 seconds while casting it, which makes it very easy to die while casting. Being smart about where you place it, and applying mitigations before casting it, are strongly advised.

Pictomancer is in general a mobile and sustainable class to bring into your games. It gives you and your team shields, free movement dashes and a lot of sustaining abilities provided within its kit.

Smudge is a powerful mobility and damage tool. Pressing it will move you 15y in the direction you're facing, and give you 5 seconds of Sprint. It will also apply a buff called Quick Sketch, rendering your next Muse instant.

Since Smudge doesnt require a target to dash too, you are able to dash freely around the map. There are instances where you could even 'wall clip', where you aim on a corner of a wall and once you are dashing towards it, skipping a part of the required movement to get to you position. Try this out yourself on a 90 degree corner, and see how you will zoom through when aimed correctly!

Tempera Coat applies a 12,000 potency barrier on the Pictomancer for 10 seconds. You can choose to press it a second time to change to Tempera Grassa, "splitting" your shield on to your allies and yourself, giving everyone a 6,000 potency barrier instead.

It's worth noting that even if you've been hit while Tempera Coat is up, if the shield is not fully consumed by the damage you've taken, you can still press Grassa, renewing your shield and spreading it out around you.

The interesting thing about the Pictomancer rotation is that while it's heavily structured by Muse order, the fact that you can sit on Portraits, stock up Comet/Holy charges, and use Smudge to expedite your next Muse, means you can dish out outstanding high damage combos within a short span of time!

When aiming for a burst window, you want to try to be in the following amplifier windows; Pom Muse self-buff, the Clawed Muse debuff or the Star Prism party buff).

Let's check out two possible combos, a simple one and a more complex one.

1. Comet in Black
2. Pom Muse
3. Smudge → Wing Motif
4. Winged Muse
5. Mog of the Ages
6. Comet in Black

This rotation all fits within your Pom self-buff and should amount to around 62,000 damage over 8 seconds, forcing the enemy team to quickly burn through MP and mitigations to survive as each of these abilities hit for around 10,000 potency or more.

the following combo requires a bit more setup. This one will line up two of our buff amplifiers to exploit for our damage output, and two for our healing output.

1. Fanged Muse
2. Smudge → Pom Motif
3. Advent of Chocobastion
4. Pom Muse
5. Star Prism
6. Comet in Black
7. Retribution of the Madeen
8. Comet in Black

This absolutely massive combo is more difficult to pull off due to the need to hold Madeen while cycling back to Pom, and getting Chocobastion down safely. However, the damage buffs from both Pom and Star Prism make for overwhelming damage.

Excluding the setup damage from Fanged Muse and getting the Pom Motif, once you pull up your ChocoBastion, you can a healing and defense increase. Followed by Pom Muse, we increase this healing by another 20% while boosting our damage aswell. Star Prism will heal our team for 24,000 potency while dealing huge AoE damage and granting us another 10% damage increase.

From here on, we use Comet in Black followed by Madeen, to have the burst damage as close to another as possible, followed by another Comet to top it off. From the Pom Muse to the last Comet, we are dealing up to 76,000 AoE damage!