I have remade this guide for Dawntrail, going all the way to level 100! I hope you will find it helpful! Find the link below! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VZUzyEPSBJk.htmlsi=x3RihOAhGk1zvRQh
The biggest tips that helped me: Your uptime is the most important thing for your damage. Stockpiling triplecasts and xenoglossies for raid buffs only to then lose uptime somewhere else because you don't have movement tools is going to negate the rather tiny dps increase from putting them in raid buffs. If a thundercloud proc is all you have for movement, don't be afraid to use it, even if it means refreshing your dot early, but try to see if you can't save something else for where you used it. Don't be afraid to use scathe. Yes, its never optimal, but if your choice is between nothing and scathe, scathe is definitely better. Manafont is almost guaranteed to drift outside of raid buffs unless you're really good and can optimize your rotation so that it doesn't. It's a relatively small potency gain, so just focus on using it when you can, If you find yourself in a situation where you're in astral fire, and there's just not enough time left to get off another cast, you'll want to transpose into umbral ice. Dropping enochian is the absolute last thing you want to do, and even clipping your gcd is worth doing if it means you don't drop it. and just try not to focus so much on being optimal. Black mage might be hard, but is pretty unique in that its damage is balanced assuming you're going to make mistakes and not be perfect.
This is what I've heard myself: BLM is more about consistency than bursting, so ias long as you're doing something that does damage and doesn't screw your rotation completely you will do well over the fight and don't need to worry about the bursts.
Indeed! You are both completely correct! Don't be greedy and sit on all those mobility options just because they're technically dps gains to use during raid buffs, because doing damage at all is always better than not, so using mobility cooldowns for mobility is always superior to using it for just damage! 😁
I feel like im going to be watching this video 20 times a week til i understand fully, definitely a good guide, im just a little dumb and wanting to play BLM so much >-< time for brain fog.
Remember, you don't have to learn it all at once! I highly recommend practicing the things I explain in the guide to help memorize it! I'm sure you can master black mage if you want to! 😁 Enjoy the journey!
I pretty much only play black mage in PvE content. It's my first and favorite job and mastering it is so rewarding. I feel comfortable endorsing this guide for budding black mages. Really hits on some good and relatively obscure points I had to figure out for myself over a period of months. Nice work.
Thank you so much for all the content you put out! Honestly, probably the best guides for anyone willing to get into harder content on ff14! We're absolutely lucky to have such quality content in one place. Thank you again!
Hey black mage that you found in a expert roulette yesterday and recommended this video, this auctally helps me a ton in understanding black mage thank you very much for telling mme about this
I'm a sprout. I started as a black-mage. It is rough levelling. You will die a lot even in basic duties solo. You will have to do the easy option when you die while levelling early. Over time you will become a beast...it takes forever....Everyone else will out dps you and they can move while doing damage...until they do not out dps you! Black mage is crazy damage...eventually. Sort of.
Ok, so am "new" to ff14. And I decided to start with black mage because I love big boom. But like pits video, it was a mistake however I was already in love. The issue I find is that this class has so much to work with and its not top dps, it doesn't need to be burst dps, but in a constant flow it should have been miles better then anyother job. Ok now for my comment on the video, the rotation for 1-50 is a gradual learning curve(your video helped a lot, thank you!), am just starting to learn the rotation for 60. And like wtf?! Now I have to pay attention to mechanics, procs, and now how many fire IV I can do without needing to do fire I to refresh my astral, so I can continue doing fire IV. While also using sharpcast as much possible as well as LayLines (that fucks up my count for how many fire IV I can do) its like am playing completely different from when I was 1-50. While before I was just using fire 1 and fire 3 as much as I could, now am using it as transaction astral changer ( do not let me get started with transpose method). I play this on a ps5 and fuck man this is insane for me. Like from 50-60 the game changed completely!
It does indeed change quite a lot when you get fire 4 😅 If you don't want to think too hard on it, the general flow is 3 fire 4, fire 1, 3 fire 4. Sometimes you can fit an extra one on either side, but it is usually sets of 3 😊
@@CaetsuChaijiCh hahaha then I have a proc for fire 3, should I hold it for a faster switch or just use it immediately? Then I loose my count, then I have to Move then am confused, my dps went to the drain, am below healers in midigation. Am telling you on level 50 and still doing below the other dps in the group (red mage) even when am not moving. Am I doing something wrong?! How come if am not screwing a simple level 50 rotation and not moving and still below a red mage. When does black mage become top dps?
Something that I don't usually hear from guides which bothered me about the job when starting out is that you lose weaving opportunities using the fast GCD black mage build, depending on your latency. Double weaving, especially during leylines, as well as the single weave window after each phase transition have the chance to clip your next GCD if your ping is high enough. You can adapt with all the instant casts you get at lv 90 but it's a conscious adjustment you have to make compared to using leveling gear.
This is true, if your connection isn't perfect, then on high spell speeds, you might not be able to singleweave in your state switches, and double weaving can be problematic during Ley Lines as you said! In fact, if your speed is high enough, even a great connection is likely to clip in the phase transitions if they try to singleweave during ley lines! For example, with a GCD of 2.20, in leylines, you need a consistent latency of less than 35ms to singleweave in the phase transition during Ley Lines, without clipping, approximately. It is quite extreme! I tend to leave this out because it can get very subjective to the individuals situation. I opt to give the individual person recommendations if their connection is causing them issues in particular But it is a good point that it is often left out.
For some players, It helps a lot if you can practice alongside the guide 😁 but I am sure some of these things make more sense once you've tried it a bit! Although black mage is known to get hilariously complicated at max level when perfecting it! (which isn't required for most content!)
Well now you know! I can see why Fire 4 might make Fire 1 feel completely obsolete, and it almost is! Hopefully you didn't remove Fire 1 entirely from your arsenal once you learned Fire 3 😅
Many thanks for the video. Black mage is probably the next class I level so having this is awesome. I wish Scathe either got an upgrade or became an auto turret stance (basically being an auto attack while you cast so long as you have a targeted enemy and just floating otherwise. Got the idea from one of the Ys games.) It's one of the few skills I've seen actively advised against.
I'm glad you liked it! I hope you will enjoy the Black Mage Journey! It is a bit weird Scathe has got nothing all this time, but I think the problem is that anything that would make Scathe worthwhile to use would break something else. It's a bit like how Red Mage has Reprise which similarly is advised against, but sometimes you have to use it. Scathe is just an even worse version of that Hopefully maybe we get something added to Scathe in the next expansion!
I wish Scathe had the proc removed. It'd be nice if the potency was boosted to compensate, but even just removing the chance to eat Sharpcast would already make it a ton better in my book!
Man just thank you. This is the perfect guide and i love that you explain WHY we do certain things rather than just going over what buttons to press. It really helps me understand the job so i can freestyle better and recover from mistakes better, I've even shared the guide to my wife so she can finally play the job she has had her eyes on since she started in 2.2 but always thought she could never be good enough to try. Just thank you so much. Also, i have a small question, it may have been answered and i missed it but i wanted to ask about transpose lines, is it safe to use an instant cast then swift/transpose into fire3 or does the mana loss from not having a proc make it not worth it to use swift for?
I am really glad to hear that! Thank you so much! ^^ To your question: I believe that particular situation CAN come up in other transpose lines. It is a very deep subject, I believe The Balance Discord server has a really extensive guide on it in their Black Mage section if you want to dig really deep into this. However, that is to say: You CAN do Swiftcast -> Transpose -> F3, however, it will cost 4000 MP, so it will lead to a very short Astral Fire state. I don't know off the top of my head if it is a path that is actually a good idea. Usually you want to use your swiftcasts and triple casts on Fire 4 and Despair due to their longer cast times and higher damage, but there are almost always exceptions. I guess that is a very roundabout way of saying "Sometimes it is a good idea", but under most circumstances I would probably not do that line. I think it would be better to simply Fire 3 from Umbral Ice if you don't have Firestarter! ^^
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Thanks! I really only noticed its usefulness if a fight was coming to a close and I wanted to dish out a quick fire phase to pop out a last minute nuke, and what you say is along the lines of what I was thinking so I feel better about it in that case. And beyond that I love the balance but sometimes it feels like a wall of info that sometimes can be difficult for me to break down, so the more personable explanations from you and your videos are the perfect medium for me to integrate with the class before really diving into details in there.
@dansheppard221 oh of course! It was more that the balance has a detailed guide with tons of transpose lines spelled out and their value and so on, but that honestly also gets too much for me! 😂
This is a noob question but I'm a brand new blm. 😅 One thing that confuses me is why place Laylines down if you're using Triplecast or swiftcast. The cast time is instant anyway. So what does Laylines even do in this case? 🤔
A great question! Ley Lines reduces both cast time and Recast time (the GCD), and Fire 4 has a base cast time of 2.8 (and a GCD of 2.5), and Despair has a cast time of 3 (and a GCD of 2.5), so even with Ley Lines, using Triple/Swift cast will further reduce the time you spend casting them by the difference between the cast time and the GCD! Naturally, the relative benefit is going to be less, but if it allows you to fit more spells during Ley Lines (or raid buffs), ultimately it is going to be better! I hope that makes sense, Ultear!
@CaetsuChaijiCh Very helpful. Guess I focused too much on the cast time as that's the main challenge during fights. I'm gonna have to incorporate all of them in my opener next time. Although using Laylines in the opener and saving Triplecasts for movements during mechs helped me greatly to get used to the job lol 😆 Thank you Cae 😊
@@UltiLock Of course, as I advice throughout the guide: If you *need* your mobility options like triplecast, then make sure to save them! Glad I could help!
Personally I would probably be using blizzard 2, thunder 2, freeze and then move into fire, since then you can get more fire 2s and two flares even. But if the fight is short enough, you could go directly into fire 2. That is to say, I think it is up to you to decide in some respects! Try it out! 😊
Sharp cast is used weirdly early simply because it has a long duration and you can spend it early, so you run the cooldown while not in combat (so you can possibly get an extra sharp cast to use sooner) The reason ley lines is used slightly into the fight is to make sure you speed up the spells that benefit from it most. Speeding up the fire 3 you open with does not help much. Although in a casual setting where the tank pulls immediately I suppose there is an argument for using ley lines immediately then. With that said, under optimal circumstances, the reason ley lines is used a bit later is so your speed boost happens at the time other jobs would optimally use raid buffs for bonus damage. I hope some of this helps answer the question! 😅
@thenameisgibz3343 absolutely. I plan to redo all of my guides come dawntrail, some might take longer than others given I have to play the jobs of course! However you're in luck because I plan to play black mage first! 😁
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Awesome! So far I really enjoy black mage, watching Frieren inspired me to make a frieren character. I just got into ff14 a little over a week ago so I have a lot of catching up to do
Ultimately you know best what works for you, but fast mage is a lot more lenient on mistakes because the shorter cast times mean that you commit a bit less, and you sometimes can sneak in a spell you really shouldn't have been able to, both in terms of rotation, and mechanics. Slow mage still is mostly favored the more non standard black mage strategies you use, which means more advanced strategies benefit from slow mage. It is worth highlighting that overall the damage difference is reasonably small between the two styles, so playing well is a lot more impactful than using the "optimal" stat line. The stats you have seem pretty fine to me though! 😊
The reason why you'd want to use swiftcast before your second triple cast, even though it might not be an as aesthetically pleasing order, is because it puts swiftcast on cooldown sooner, allowing you to use it again sooner. If that was not what you had in mind then I might need a bit more details to be able to explain 😊
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I guess I didnt really give good detail about which rotation I meant lol. Im currently a lvl 70 black mage and I have triple cast now so im looking at the rotation you have up at the 7 and a half minute mark. I was doing sharp cast, fire 3, thunder 3, ley lines, triple cast, 3 fire 4's, swift cast, fire 4, triple cast, then flare. Yours has a slightly different order and I was wondering what the benefits of weaving the order like that is.
After being a BLM for the majority of FFXIV lifespan from ARR atw to Shafowbringers, I just started Endwalker after a hiatus of 4 years and I couldn't been any happier I found this video! Time to start learning, thank you good sir 🫡
I don't understand the question 😅 The core change to the filler rotation at 80 is the addition of despair at the end of each fire section, if that is what you mean 🤔
It never truly becomes obsolete! At level 90, it is automatically replaced by paradox for the use you will have of fire 1 for each time you enter astral fire. However fire 1 turns into paradox. Aside from that, fire 1 still serves as your best way to extend astral fire if you need to for some reason 😊 However once you learn fire 4 at level 60, fire 1 will be used a lot less, if that is what you mean 😊
You can weave ley lines between first and second F4. Why doubleweave it between 2nd and 3rd. Opener im using is longer, but it still use ley lines after 1st and amplifier after 2nd. If you can avoid doubleweaving, then you should.
"if you intend to use a tincture - a so-called burst potion, this is the time" If you WANT to use a tincture, which takes just as long as a doubleweave, you do it between the first and second F4. If you don't plan to do that, then you could do amplifier there, but overall the end result is going to be mostly the same. And I don't know why you focus so much on avoiding double weaving 😊 on a normal connection, double weaving is a complete non issue. Are you sure you arent playing on a bad connection and mistaking the game for being unresponsive? 🤔😊
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Well as i said. You cant always relly on your connection to be perfect, or you play on higher ping servers where doubleweaving is problematic. So if i can, i avoid doubleweaving. Only exception is swiftcast, convert, flare at lower levels...even tho you could reverse it if you really wanted avoid doubleweaving there(swiftcast, flare, convert, hardcast flare). Im using pot after intitial thunder, before or after tripplecast. After seems to be less "lock" prone. Its not ideal, but it covers most of opener, including first F4. If i have to press it again, because game didnt registered my command, i dont lose anything more than bit of time, at least. Its annoying feature.
@cyphi474 i dont recommend using tincture after a hardcasted spell. That is worse than a clipped gcd from doubleweaving, even more if you have a bad latency 😅
@@CaetsuChaijiCh My latency on EU is good, but it can be problem for some. Yesterday i went dungeon, it was 6:30pm my time and one guy wrote "good morning". He certainly didnt have good latency, so i felt obliged to point out alternatives. Unlike some other jobs, blm doesnt have to doubleweave. Im not saying it cant, but its better to avoid it. You are right using pot after hardcast spell is problematic. Thats why using pot after tripplecast is less error prone. If there is one QoL improvement that i would appreciate(probably everyone), then its easier pot usage. And Freeze cast time equal to B4 cast time. Its no longer needed to be over GCD length at any level.
Jeez, entirely too many to remember, maybe its just me an being a bit older....as much as I want to play this class past 70 proficiently, does not seem like its going to happen, entirely too many spells and how many you cast/when to cast....
It is quite a complex job so it definitely takes a lot to memorize all that! A lot of players view black mage as the hardest job, so if you find it difficult, that is not surprising at least 😅
too complex, free form rotation later levels. So much to remember and job drastically changes, only to be level synced for old content and forget former rotation. Just too much goodness, I guess back to basic ass SMN lmao.
Working on my advanced degree in Black Mage. At least 2 years of graduate level study required! I'm also saving this for repeat plays until I become a jedi master. Thanks. First class video explaining a complicated topic
Proc stands for programmed random occurence. In this context it's the random benefits you will get from using another skill. It's become shorthand for getting a buff that you aren't guaranteed to get. So in this case, every tick of damage Thunder does with its DOT, you will get a chance at the thundercloud buff. That's the "proc".
Indeed, as Scerttle explained, it is an effect granted by a random chance. Every tick of your thunder spells have a chance to give you thundercloud, which makes your next thunder spell free, instant, and add all of its damage over time effect as additional up front damage (while still applying the dot). As this effect is unlocked at level 28, I explain this in the level 1-50 starter guide 😊
Hmm well, that would probably be more of a general 2 minute burst sequence since those usually assume you have space to be "prepared beforehand" so to speak! I don't have one on hand in particular, and I think a lot of the time it might depend on which cooldowns become ready when, so I think the bigger benefit for you in such a situation is try to find out how to make the most of the situation on the fly? ^^' The general idea is of course to use your cooldowns, but if you have Umbral Hearts, you will probably have to use Paradox at some point during Astral Fire to push out all of the MP!
This opener has too many cast times in it! If only there was a rotation that was needlessly complicated and did around 3% less damage but had no cast times I could also settle for one that just makes a lot more use of paradox too bad nothing like that exists :^)
Indeed! I wonder where such a rotation could be found! Actually I did talk a bit about the infinite paradox rotation in this other video a while back 😁 Here is a link, although, if you are already completely acquainted with it, you of course wouldn't need it 😉 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-acBb89Th9b8.html
Fire 2 is used for area of effect until high fire 2 permanently replaces it making it inaccessible 😊 It's just that you finish the fire bursts with flare!
As a BLM player for a few years now, please dont use flare on a single target rotation at lvl 70. If you're doing the fire rotation as specified, you will have 1600 mp left over which is enough to cast f4 again, which is a potency gain of 90 when enhance flare isnt active (it wont be since you didnt do f2 to activate it) and a gain of 30 even when it is active. I understand this may be preparing you to learn to use despair in those spots later, but for things like UwU and Ucob, the rotation is still relevant (unless you also do MINE content). Casting b1 in the rotation may be preparing you for paradox later, but it is a wasted cast unless you have nothing else to cast in blizzard phase. Having at least 6400 mana when you are at lvl 70 and above ends up being a gain to never cast b4. Reason being is because b4 is reduced potency due to af buff of 80% potency increase and no potency increase in blizzard phase, and spending too long in fire phase results in a f1 cast which is reduced potency compared to f4. In the long run, it is actually more efficient to switch between fire and ice more often than it is to cast b4 at 70 and 80, 90 too if you use non standard lines.
The opener demonstrated at level 70 does not have mp for F4 when it uses flare (perhaps you read 1400 as 1600?). So the alternative isn't F4. I don't ever recommend using flare without it being instant in the guide on single target. And typically it is presented as a niche situation consistently. Your point about B4 in regards to non standard rotations is kind of not that important when this guide is a starter guide for the most part, and does not go into the deeper nuances of non standard, which you would need to make use of this information at all. Besides, at max level, the power gained by a perfect non standard rotation is approximately 2% over a standard rotation. And simply using af1 f3p standard already gives you 0.7% of those 2%. Which means that going out of your way for all that might be severely excessive while still learning the job. In regards to the uwu / ucob arguments, to my knowledge, black mage is so weak compared to summoner in this level range, that most players that run these ultimates wouldn't take the choice of bringing blm very seriously. 😊 Not that that would invalidate the suggestion to optimize black mage for level 70, but in such content, a specifically tailored opener (and potentially rotation.) for those fights might be necessary! I can also assure you I actually calculated the value of flare in the opener (as opposed to despair at level 72), because it also looks ridiculous to me. But the presence of triple cast makes it okay. Although I can imagine a significantly different opener might be able to do better without. I don't like to make massive opener changes throughout a guide in this way if I can avoid it, and if the power difference isn't massive, as the muscle memory of following a similar rotation I believe is far more valuable during your leveling experience. Besides, again for the ultimate examples, you'd probably need a specific opener tailored to each fight at the end of the day 😉
Thanks for the BLM guide. I've learned a lot about Leylines can still reduce GCD times, because when I was power leveling BLM to 90, once I got Triplecast I had no reason to use it unless it was for teleportation. It honestly sucks that Scathe and Lucid Dreaming don't really get much use in dungeons/raids, since switching between Blizzard and Fire Stance are what you do the whole time. Although I have to wonder if Scathe was buffed to permanently do double potency instead of 20% chance, and Lucid being able to bypass the regen lock Fire Stance has, would it make BLM even better. I have a question regarding the Fast BLM build. As a RDM main, is it worth going for? I know damage plays a big part in killing bosses faster, but the slow cast times be infuriating me sometimes since you have to move out of aoes a lot.
There are some extreme hyper optimization tricks with transpose lines that exist that employ lucid dreaming, although I can't really teach much on it. But that is to say some clever black mages found a way to make it mildly helpful! If scathe did more damage it might be worth using, but I think the only way to make it useful enough is if it was free 😅 or maybe if it extended your current state by a few seconds on top of that so that it could be a way to stall in a state if needed! To your question: personally I use two different gear sets for RDM and BLM due to how different their needs are. For an RDM main i would recommend going for a slow mage build, but if you really want to go fast mage, I'd recommend getting an extra crafted gear set (for example) and focus that on fast mage. It can be a bit awkward, but that is unfortunately the best I can suggest 😢
@CaetsuChaijiCh If Scathe could increase the timer of either state for a few seconds and it's exclusively free while in Fire State, that would be a really good skill to have to keep you from wasting Triplecast and Leylines for mobility.
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