what am i missing about black mage rotations?

[00yiggdrasill00]

just about every rotation i find says start off with blizzard 3...why? i have full mana most times. i aslo see sharpcast places before it...but blizzard 3 has no proc so why? what am i missing? i will say im still learning but any help would be nice

[Sgt. Magnusson]

You need to cast Blizzard III to get under the effect of Umbral Ice so you can pop Enochian and then cast Blizzard IV to get the 3 Umbral Hearts.

[Moscini]

Originally posted by Lockhart:

You need to cast Blizzard III to get under the effect of Umbral Ice so you can pop Enochian and then cast Blizzard IV to get the 3 Umbral Hearts.

To elaborate on this, its to set up a maximum Astral Fire phase for your opener, to get the max possible Fire IVs out at the start of a fight

[00yiggdrasill00]

Originally posted by Haku41184:

Originally posted by Lockhart:

You need to cast Blizzard III to get under the effect of Umbral Ice so you can pop Enochian and then cast Blizzard IV to get the 3 Umbral Hearts.

To elaborate on this, its to set up a maximum Astral Fire phase for your opener, to get the max possible Fire IVs out at the start of a fight

i get it now! thanks. the umbral 3 makes for a really cheap shift to astral with fire 3 meaning that extra fire 4 can be cast.

[00yiggdrasill00]

Originally posted by Shirayuki Z:

Exactly what they said and about sharpcast it is for thunder, you are not in ice rotation only to refresh mp or bliz 4 but also to cast thunder and sharpcast will guarantee you will get a proc for it which you can use later during fire rotation.

thanks, but why cast before blizzard 3?

[Promestein]

In opener you use sharpcast on fire spell. Otherwise it depends if you need to stutter step during fire phase due to mechanics or not (i.e. situational). Ideally you want in spent on thunder but naturally your only weave window are after one of the proc, afer fast cast of f3 or b3 or if you use one of the instacast spells. (which actually should be part of your rotation and not just emergency unless it's something like delta attack in o4s).

In general opener will look like this:
Pre-Cast Blizzard 3 > clip Enochian > Thunder 3 > Blizzard 4 > Fire 3 > Triplecast > Fire 4 > LEylines + Sharpcast > Fire 4 > Potion > Fire 4 > Convert > Fire 1(procs) > Fire 4 (4 times or 3 if SS is very low) > Fire 3proc > Fire 4(2 times if you used 3 before) > Blizzard 3 > Foul and so on.

Triplecast there allows you, since casts are instant, to decrease effective cast time of f4 to gcd and give you windows for weaving.

And ley lines are placed later for trick/libra window. (You may adjust that part to coordinate with your group).

[Promestein]

Originally posted by Shirayuki Z:

No much point in using sharpcast on fire 3 spell in opener you will manage to cast all of them with high ss. Thunder 3 proc has bigger potency than Fire 3 or even than Fire 4 (not sure after this silly buff lately but still)

Fire 4 needs a lot of buff to reach thunder3proc potency. Indeed, casting 4 then 4 and using sharp for thunder nets more pps but that requires 1800+ spell speed. (Well i had 2100 before switching to Makibi so easily doable).