Black Mage

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Black Mage job guide.

[LadyVader27 0]

So once you reach lvl 73, you dont use lucid dreaming, addle, or scathe? Also, when would be the most optimal time to use triple cast and swift cast? First time playing ff14 and I'm trying to understand the point of weaving in the ley lines and swift cast like I have been seeing on some explanations. I was told an opener would be sharp cast, fire 3, thunder 3, triple cast, fire 4, ley lines, 2 fire 4's, swift cast, fire 4, triple cast, despair, manafont, despair. Is   this accurate? then what about when I'm on cool downs? Is it just fire 3, then fire 4's, and try to end on despair?

[TsutsumiTsumi 0]

On 11/2/2023 at 11:07 PM, LadyVader27 said:

So once you reach lvl 73, you dont use lucid dreaming, addle, or scathe? Also, when would be the most optimal time to use triple cast and swift cast? First time playing ff14 and I'm trying to understand the point of weaving in the ley lines and swift cast like I have been seeing on some explanations. I was told an opener would be sharp cast, fire 3, thunder 3, triple cast, fire 4, ley lines, 2 fire 4's, swift cast, fire 4, triple cast, despair, manafont, despair. Is   this accurate? then what about when I'm on cool downs? Is it just fire 3, then fire 4's, and try to end on despair?

Lucid dreaming is only used for niche optimisation on Black Mage, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Scathe is only ever really used if the enemy is about to die or become untargettable in less than a GCD and you have absolutely no other option, but it's always a last resort. Addle is used for reducing incoming raid damage and can be key to surviving when you tackle high level content, so it's good to get into the habit of using it on raidwides. While Addle is more effective on magic damage, it still reduces physical damage as well so if you're unsure it's always good to try and throw it out to help the group. Ideally you want to weave in Addle when you use it, but I'll go into more depth about that later in the post.

 

You want to ideally be using swift and triple cast on spells that are longer than your base GCD, primarily your Fire 4s and Despair. Ideally they'll also be used to cover movement for mechanics too. If you need to move for a mechanic but one of your instants will go on a shorter cast like Fire 1 that's still worth it though, as keeping your rotation uptime is much better than trying to play strictly optimally with Swiftcast and Triplecast.

 

 Weaving is very important as using your oGCDs has a delay where you can't use your GCD spells such as Fire 4, which if you keep using without weaving will lead to a gap between your GCDs and cause you to miss out on casts over the fight. By making sure that you're only using oGCDs in instant cast windows, such as Firestarter or Thundercloud procs, or after spells that are faster than your GCD, such as your fast Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 when switching between Astral Fire and Umbral Ice, you'll place this delay entirely in that window where you can't use your next GCD anyway, meaning there will be no delay. This will become easier after you hit level 80 when you get your second polyglot spender, Xenoglossy, which is instant cast, as well as Foul becoming instant cast for AoE. 

 

With a pull timer, an F3 opener similar to that is pretty fine, although you can fit an extra Fire 4 in after your Manafont but before the second Despair so you don't waste the extra MP. A B3 opener (B3 T3 B4 F3 into a standard AF cycle ending with Manafont -> F4 -> Despair) is quite viable as well and a bit easier in random duty finder content where you're not going to get the liberty of a pull timer.

 

Your basic Astral Fire rotation will be to do 3x Fire 4, Fire 1 and then another 3x Fire 4s ending in Despair. It's important that you use the Fire 1 because your Astral Fire doesn't refresh when you use Fire 4, and if you don't use it you'll need to either cut your rotation early or you'll end up dropping your Astral Fire which is a massive drop in DPS.