FFXIV P8SP2 BLM PoV - [Kindred] World 4th Kill

Log: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/1Lnqg8...

World 4th overall and World first streaming group to clear.

I had the unexpected and incredibly rewarding opportunity to whip out Black Mage for world prog. After wiping to door boss enrage for 2.5 hours running RDM we reinstanced and I rageswapped to BLM. We then proceeded to destroy the DPS check in two pulls.

But it's one thing to swap to BLM after having seen the entire fight and knowing which mechanics to plan your rotation around. It's another to go into a fight not knowing where your rotation or cooldowns are going to land you relative to the mechanics going on. This fight was the first time I world progged a fight on BLM, and after clearing it I do not intend it to be the last.

While a (near) full uptime fight like door boss demands proper mechanical execution and resource management, a fight like phase 2 with a lot of downtime instead puts an emphasis on rotational creativity. I say this because, especially on whatever strange SpS tier you land in from crafted gear, you will likely not be able to strictly do the standard rotation and have your Fire phases perfectly end with the start of downtime. Thus, in order to keep your damage optimal during what uptime you do have, you will have to get creative with how you shift around your rotation. Maybe you do a few short Transpose lines instead of a standard line? Maybe you do a different opener? Maybe you intentionally skip F4s so you can end a phase on despair + xeno? A huge draw for me to being BLM main was the sheer amount of creativity and self-expression you can display with this class, and it's fights like this that really allow the BLM to shine and feel empowered.

The rotational decisions I made in the clear were planned to a point. Sometimes a strange mana tick will force me to use another filler or force me to do a shorter Fire phase, which can affect my timeline later in the phase. So while moments like the opener and reopeners were fairly static, there is still a great deal in improvisation going on with my rotation. You will also notice several moments where I don't make very sound decisions in my rotation (mostly towards the end of the fight), and it's mostly me attempting to reduce my mental load from my rotation and focusing on the fight mechanics. The overall theme of the decisions I made was "safety and reliability", and while this pull is far from optimal it did feel pretty comfy.

All in all this fight was a blast to prog, partially because of fight design and partially because I got to whip out my favorite class in prog. I hope I get this opportunity again in the future, but it's a mystery as to what Square will do with caster balance and how tight they want these DPS checks to be.

TLDR blm diff