The theory suggests that Spell Speed and Crit Rate should be favored in order to maximize DPS fire rotations. With a sum total of 102 Crit and Spell Speed granted by a full set of Darklight gear one can conclude that Darklight favors this DPS skill rotation rather well. However, Darklight BLM set has no accuracy which may necessitate the usage of +accuracy materia on accesory melds in order to effectively land spells on highly resistant mobs or bosses.
For those of us who were neither able to obtain Darklight in 1.0, nor have enough special currency to exchange for them in 2.0, one gear set stands out amongst all others: Vanya. HQ Vanya should grant close to if not as much vitality and intelligence as darklight with the added bonus of Accuracy (5 piece set minus belt = +81 acc, HQ should be close to 100).
Due to the stat caps implemented on gear it has been confirmed that it will be ineffective to meld a Tier IV materia (even a Tier III in most cases) of a primary stat to a piece of gear. For example, NQ Vanya boots have 10 int. Darklight Boots have 13 int. Let us assume that Darklight Boots set the stat cap standard since both boots are item lvl 80. If the stat cap for int on vanya boots is 13 then attempting to meld a Tier IV intelligence materia (+7 int) will result in a loss of 4 int due to the stat cap.
This means that it is in the best interest of BLM to choose between Determination, Spell Speed and Crit Rate materia for their tripple melds and fill in 4th and 5th melds with Tier II or III primary stat materia if the cap on primary stats is not already reached on HQ gear.
As I mentioned above, this DPS skill rotation indicates that skill speed and crit rate be favored above all else. However, due to the Vanya set not having both of these stats as compared to Darklight, but having accuracy, one would need to quad meld all five pieces of Vanya with 10 Tier IV Quicktongue Materia (10x9 = 90 spell speed) and 10 Tier IV Savage Aim Materia (10x9 = 90 crit rate) to obtain comparable +spell speed and crit rate to Darklight. This means quad melded Vanya would be effectively better than Darklight having comparable int, vit, spell speed, crit rate and 80+ accuracy which Darklight is lacking.
The problem is that Quad melding gear will be no cheap task, however much easier than in 1.0 due to no longer losing the base item and previous melds upon failure. From my forum snooping I have found out that the success rate of forbidden melds on Coliseum Galerus (ilvl 47) using tier III materia to be: 30% for a 3rd materia on gloves (1st forbidden), 15% for 4th (2nd forbidden) and then 8% on 5th (3rd forbidden).
Assuming that Vanya (ilvl80) will be as hard if not harder that means that means a 1 in 3 chance for 3rd meld and a 1 in 6 chance for quad melds. In other words, the worst case scenario for a quad meld would be 2 materia (sockets) + 3 materia (2 failure on 3rd meld) + 6 materia (5 failure on 4th meld) = 11 materia per quad meld x 5 vanya pieces = 55 materia for 5 piece quad meld vanya. With a bit of luck on your side this number should probe to much lower.
That being said, not everyone will have 55+ Tier IV materia to blow on 5 pieces of gear seeing as you will likely want to double or triple meld your belt and other accessories with Tier IV (unless of course their item lvl is too low to benefit from IV). In order to avoid losing too many Tier IV materia beyond the 3rd meld it may prove to be more effective to use Tier IV's for the first three melds then Tier II or III for the remaining 4th and 5th melds.
Is spell speed really worth the trouble? I understand the notion that spell speed is key to this DPS rotation because the more Fire I spells cast the greater the odds of procing a freecast Fire III. However after having reviewed skill/spellspeed data (more can be found on bluegartrs public beta forums) the general consensus is that +10 skill/spellspeed reduces the global cooldown of skills and spells by 0.01. That means that Full Darklight (+102 spell speed) grants a sum total reduction of .10 seconds. Fire I cast time and recast time is 2.5 seconds meaning that full darklight would reduce this cast time to 2.4 seconds.
My understanding then is that a full Darklight wearing BLM can cast 25 Fire I spells in the same time it takes a Full Vanya (no spell speed materia) wearing BLM to cast 24 spells (2.5 s x 24 = 60 seconds = 2.4s x 25). This means that 100 Spell Speed will grant one extra Fire I spell per minute yet it also means that the benefit of spell speed cannot be appreciated until one minute of nuking has passed. For trash mobs that die in under one minute the benefits may never be realized but tougher mobs and boss fights lasting longer than one minute will benefit from Spell Speed.
Determination on the other hand increases spell damage rather than speed. The benefits of determination begin as soon as the first spell is cast rather than after the first minute of nuking has passed. So the question that begs to be answered is: will the increase in damage due to XX determination on 24 spells do more damage than one extra fire spell + chance to proc free cast fire III granted from 100 spell speed. I have yet to find much data inregards the effects of determination on spell damage so this question remains as of yet unanswered.
Master Matsume replied
567 weeks ago