Openers

Openers should put abilities on cooldown, fit strong spells within buff windows, and minimize clipping. All openers assume there is a pull countdown and the boss is pulled at zero. If your group pulls earlier, adjust them as necessary. Use the highest tier Potion of Intelligence available.

With all openers being very close in estimated output over the course of the entire encounter, it is instead recommended to choose your opener based on your current spell speed, with consideration towards potential fight-specific requirements.

Fire III Opener

The standard opener for BLM. Note that this opener is tentative, and is likely to change at least slightly depending on exact application timing for raid buffs. This opener has a rough bare minimum GCD (recast) of 2.45s, though most people will likely want some more Spell Speed than this for consistency in execution. If running a slower set and/or otherwise having issues with Astral Fire timing out, consider double weaving Ley Lines with the INT pot usage in the opener.

The initial Fire III cast should start around 4 seconds prepull (to land at the same time the boss is pulled). The second Fire IV is hardcasted with the expectation of raid buffs landing just before the cast goes off.

Additional notes:

• Despite missing out on a second Flare Star usage by starting in Astral Fire, it is still generally a gain to do so rather than have to cast relatively weak Blizzard IV then Fire III in Umbral Ice III. Having a slower start with an Umbral Ice opener will likely also result in pushing some stronger spells out of buffs.
• Using Flare for the extra Astral Soul stacks to enable an additional Flare Star in the opener before the Manafont is not worthwhile. Even if the Flare is instant-cast, it is too weak of a spell to justify using it for single-target to use over Despair, particularly when considering the lost potency from Flare is during raid buffs and the extra Flare Star usage occurs after buffs expire.