Rather learn the class on my own instead of skirt chasing for the best meta opener. Hotbar setup is indeed more important to me as a controller player. I'd rather build gauge to cap, do back to back Shroud and then force a 3rd shroud under AC + Harvest.
Over 45 seconds you will be doing 10,000-11,000 potency easily. Looking at their kit they have no real damage buff either outside of DD and reaching the 10% increased damage Det threshold for permanent 20% damage buff. The 3% AC buff is not much IMO.
In around the same timeframe for BLM which is about 18 casts of Fire 4 if conditions are perfect they can reach around 9,000 to 10,000 potency as well.
LB3 I think is 9000 potency upfront?
3 shrouds one after another is going to be quite beefy with I assume 6-8 seconds of downtime after each Shroud. In which you can throw out Harvest Moon, recharge and reapply Shadow and go into your next Shroud. Can probably throw down your damage shield as you charge up to stand in fire and not care and enjoy that regen. And I think it'll flow well because Soulsow charge time is 5 seconds and the shield is 5 seconds as well. EZ. 4 Shroud attacks is 6 seconds, Communion is 2.5s, 5 seconds of GCDs of HM/SoD along with 5 seconds of HM recharge. So 18.44 seconds which leads into your next Shroud since Shroud recast time is 15 seconds.
I think players can spend Shroud in whatever way they want and just use Arcane Circle when they see raid buffs go up or when they want another Shroud. It's looking like a lot of fun IMO.
