sch must have ***fast cast, packet delay is longer than the sc closer's casttime should be

Quick magic is amazing for magic bursting. As is stands, with capped fast cast I can sometimes get my T6, T5 and T2 into a triple burst off SCH Skillchain. If quick magic procs, it's a guaranteed triple burst. If it procs on the T6 I get to burst it twice. It's free damage, not sure how that is bad, especially if you are the only BLM. And even if you aren't, and it triggers a resist- a free 20k damage is still 20k more than you were gonna do as long as it didn't stomp a higher tier nuke.

I think the whole resist thing can get overplayed. Sometimes we take a 3rd BLM to Neak and we just steamroll it right through the partial resists. It dies so fast who gives a ***about resists. If you are proccing resists as two black mages you just need to work on your timing.

Edit: just to clarify, I have 0 quick magic in my death sets. It's only amazing when bursting elemental spells.

There is misinformation in your post. You're going to get hit with reductions if you have more than 1 person nuking. There's no way around it, timing or otherwise. The only exception to this is when you're using Death and only have 2 BLM casting. You can space them out enough so that you don't affect each other much and can still cap damage. That's not to say timing can't optimize your damage even in a group, but you are still going to get hit with the reduction if you're casting around the same time as another player.

Also Quick Cast is badass for Death. The recast is large, not having to wait for it is valuable.

While I agree that there is no way around reductions with 2x BLM, iirc we are generally able to get off our T6's without incurring the reduction by staggering them properly. The T5's are what they are. I guess I could have been clearer with my wording in my comment, but it still represents my experience.

As far as Death recast goes, when using Alacrity and being hasted the recast isn't that bad. The idea of missing 130k damage because Death insta-casts (I generally cast first as the SCH is closing) isn't worth having Death be ready immediately again when I will be out of phase with the other BLM. I suppose I could make a set that has quick magic for when I am the only BLM, but it seems like overkill since we only do that on stuff where we're going to win easily regardless.

Edit for clarity: The 130k is a guess. I can generally do 20-22% of Neak's HP bar depending on buffs/temps. So w/e that amount is. But the idea is that it won't be anywhere near that if I insta-cast and miss the burst early.

I guess it all comes down to personal preference. But we tend to basically agree on most points. Quick magic is good. You can minimize resists by timing things correctly.

With alacrity, Death is fast enough that you can start casting after Helix has already been casted and still have enough time to MB Aspir III at the end of the window. Quick Cast is especially useful for Death because as soon as you've run out of strats, you have to wait a full minute on recast.

I don't believe you regarding T6. When fighting Maju, we had to allow liberal timing for our Deaths to all hit 100k. We could maybe get 3 capped Deaths off per burst but at the cost of Aspir. This also required waiting a second after the initial burst because the skillchain closing nuke (and perhaps the skillchain itself) triggers the reduction mechanism. You're right about being out of phase being somewhat of a detriment in some circumstances. Quickcast procs are not universally helpful but they shouldn't ever hurt you and there's no justification for not using Quick Cast on Death. It's not a matter of personal preference.

Also I'm curious where you're getting that 130k figure from. You can't do more than 100k in a single nuke.

[quote="Fenrir.Snaps"Also I'm curious where you're getting that 130k figure from. You can't do more than 100k in a single nuke.[/quote]

Sorry, but this is misinformation. The log won't show more than 100k (-1), but if you watch the HP bar of the mob, two BLM can both show 100k on the log and do a diff. % of the mobs life. This is because you can exceed the 100k mark on the damage done by the spell, you just won't know by exactly how much unless you can calculate the initial HP of the mob. For example, I do 20-22% on my cast and the other BLM does 18-20%. Yet we both show 99k in the log.

As far as your other comments I'm not going to get into a pissing match with you. Perhaps you are right. But perhaps not. I'm not positive tbh, but I know we work really hard on our timing for these fights and I sometimes miss early because we try to use the ENTIRE window to its fullest. The fact that you didn't know a Death cast could do more than 100k makes me somewhat skeptical of your critique on what my ls mages are capable of.

99,999 is most certainly the damage cap for everything but Barrage and Sange.

It's actually been tested and proven that damage caps off at 99,999. I don't have a link on hand but I believe Byrth did it if he sees this and wants to confirm. Death theoretically does >100,000 which is why you can cast immediately after someone else and still pull off 60,000-70,000 instead of the expected ~35,000. The damage gets capped off at 99,999 post calculation though.

This is a fair point and I'll take it into consideration with my group. We are paranoid about Death resists b/c it can cause timeouts for us on Maju so I try to go right at the beginning of the window so the 2nd BLM has time for Aspir. Hence I am paranoid of insta-cast Death missing early. Maybe I can hold for an extra half sec and let go of that fear. Have to chat about it with the others and see.

Just so we are clear here, I'm not trying to say that I know everything there is to know about BLM. Far from it. I'm just sharing what I and my ls do during fights and the success we've had as a result. But I am open to new information and the possibility that there are more efficient ways to do things. Thanks for the suggestions from everyone who commented.

Are you sure you are seeing 2% more dmg on your cast isn't because someone else is nuking? Afaik 99k is dmg cap.

You are losing me here. How is it possible that 100k =22% and 20% simultaneously?

Are you sure you are seeing 2% more dmg on your cast isn't because someone else is nuking? Afaik 99k is dmg cap.[/quote]

The only way it could be is if the SCH skillchain is doing the 2%, but it seems unlikely as he is not Master or uber geared. Geo doesn't nuke and PLD isn't even hitting the mob. But, I suppose the SC could be doing the 2%. This goes against everything I've heard up to this point so forgive me if I am shocked at hearing this.

Those are most likely observational errors. At most you'd get a difference of one percent because of rounding errors. You could also have noctohelix ticking it down past the threshold of an extra one percent among other dots applied

The only Dot is the helix which almost certainly hasn't tocked yet (based on how we cast). You're telling me that SCH SC is doing over 10k damage?

I'm getting 10k based on 2% of 500k, which I'm getting because you are arguing that both BLM's are doing 20% of HP bar with Death which would give Neak 500k HP. I'm willing to consider your point but it has to agree with the math you are proposing. I've honestly not watched closely, but I don't see our SCH doing 10k on the SC before a helix tock.

Edit: I will tell you guys this much- I am not a closed-minded *** so I will try to nail down my numbers more tightly on our next round of Neaks. I will make sure we do same temps each time and jot all the numbers down. In the meantime, I'd be happy if someone could link Byrth's testing that shows how Death damage is capped at 100k.

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/126954-Magic-Burst-Bonus?p=6573834&viewfull=1#post6573834

I think more testing is needed.

Parse a fight from start to finish on a mob you know the HP of. Add up all damage throughout the fight and see if its less than that of the mob. Do it without any dots.

If the parsed dmg is significantly less than the mob's hp, you might be on to something.

Choose something with a lot of HP that you can get a few 99,999's off on.

Byrth actually says this:

"I know that we used to do more than 99,999 damage in Abyssea, and I thought someone confirmed it was still the case after they implemented the damage display cap. Perhaps they did nerf this later."

Someone else did the test on Matamata using spells not called Death. While this is certainly am interesting result to see, it doesn't prove your assertion that Death caps at 100k (-1). That would require a test with Death. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't see how one proves the other. Suggests? Possibly. But I don't see it as being proof.

Do we know the HP of any of the high tier mobs? My ls is small (6-8 ppl online at any time) so the highest stuff we are doing on our own currently is Neak and Maju.

The easiest way to test is Sarasok. I can land 99,999 without magic bursts, so surely a magic bursted death will do a larger %

Why not just do 1 nuke with soldiers and 1 without? The nuke with soldiers would do 150k or more and the difference would be huge enough to notice a difference.

Did you guys even read the linked post? It wasn't Byrth that did the testing.

Fwahm

"Just retested. On Volatile Matamata after the 7th TP move, Aero I and Blizzard V both took off 28% when they did 99,999.

99,999 is the cap."

There doesn't need to be any additional testing unless you think a magic burst can exceed this cap.

My post was in response to someone above who said it was Byrth's testing. Also, it's not proof at all. That's like saying that because cherry wood sinks when thrown in water all wood will sink when thrown in water. It's a fallacy.

My post was in response to someone above who said it was Byrth's testing. Also, it's not proof at all. That's like saying that because cherry wood sinks when thrown in water all wood will sink when thrown in water. It's a fallacy.[/quote]

I wasn't addressing you with that remark. Also your comments about fallacy are ironic. I'm asserting that Death caps at 100k because the evidence we have suggests that damage caps at 100k per hit and that Death behaves like any other form of damage. That's logical deduction. You're suggesting my assertion is false because it hasn't been proven true. That's a logical fallacy.

Damage caps at 100k on a mob with a damage multiplier gimmick correct? Or am I misunderstanding the test? Was there a test done on a mob where you couldn't get the damage to be multiplied by 128x? I'm not saying you guys are wrong, I'm just saying that what you've provided isn't actually proof of your claim.

Maju with 7 ppl tonight. 1,035,000 hp according to BG wiki.
900k x1.15.
Blm opening death burst did 15% of hp bar.

.15 x 1,035,000 = 155,250. This is not even close to 100k.

This is with no soldier's drink. Gambit/Rayke up. Standard Geo bubbles with no Bolster. Blaze of Glory active. SCH is at less than 1200 JP's so his spells/helix don't do ***.

This is just what we see. Over and over and over. I think Death breaks cap.

Another way to look at it is that if the burst is only 100k, then Maju only has 667k hp with 7 ppl. That clearly isn't correct.

Instead of telling me I'm wrong, go test it.

Was kind of curious about this so googled some videos on maju just to see what I could find.

This video is a 6 person party. At around 4:50, someone does a Death MB for 71k which takes it from 66% to 54%. so 71k / .12 = ~600k. 600k * 1.15 is relatively close to your 667k number so it's more than likely that 900k number on the wiki is just wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mls1jxy2tw

Slight tangent to the current line of discussion - about how long does it take for the spike damage reduction to fully decay?

Considering Neak only has roughly 400k hp with 5 people, Maju having over 1m hp with 7 sounds.... pretty insane.

People forget Death is also a DoT and it can, if timed right Proc its DoT effect right after it hits. I see it all the time on Helix that land for 15% of an Nm's Hp even though it only hit damage wise for 7~8%. Some of the data may not test it enough to give it a real pool of data to see. A 1 time video or even a small sample size will not give you the true data you want. try it on an NM you can spam see how many times cap death takes off XX% vs times it takes off more. If you always take off the same % @ max damage then i'm sorry for this run on post. If you notice what I have, a variable "Tic" of DoT adding to the total amount you just did then you have a reason.

Where are you getting that number for Neak?