Question about Fracture

So I'm still learning how to play a tank properly, and was wondering about the Fracture skill. In general when I pull, I start with Tomahawk on one mob, run into the group and hit Overpower a couple of times and usually mix in a Flash. I then tab through each mob and hit it with Fracture, then focus on one mob using my combo.

In most other dungeon runs where I haven't been tanking, I rarely see a Warrior using Fracture and I was just wondering if this was a useless skill and something I should be avoiding or not?

Taken from this reddit post, Fracture is a Gain for WARs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._wrath_stacks/

Average potency of Eye+BB every combo with just slashing is:
(150+190+270+150+200+280) * 1.1 / 6= 227.33
Throw in a Cleave every 8.5th GCD and you get
(227.33 * 7.5 + 550) / 8.5 = 265.29
The potency you gain per GCD dedicated to building and using Cleaves, presuming you end every encounter with a Fell Cleave that results in 0% overkill:
265.29 - 227.33 = 37.96 potency gained over raw Eye/BB per GCD that is either an Eye/BB combo or a Cleave
Potency gained per Fracture over Eye/BB is 310 - 227.33 = 82.67 per GCD dedicated to it.
Every 8.5 Fractures you use pushes five stacks out of your rotation, so it nets you the gain from using Fracture minus the loss from building and spending stacks on each relevant GCD: (82.67 - 37.96) * 8.5 = 380.04 more potency gained by using Fractures.
Note: these calculations don't include Crit, which is a notable omission because the average non-Cleave ability will gain just over 3% potency from average stack distribution if you gear for Crit, whereas each Cleave will gain about 6% due to always benefitting from five stacks. This minutely shrinks the Fracture potency gain, but doesn't even come close to affecting the conclusion that Fracture is a DPS gain.

Despite all the math, I generally avoid fracture in short fights. I'd say if a fight is 3 mins or less, you should really only be applying it under the effect of some kind of buff (berserk / unchained). Other than that, it doesn't boost your dps by a whole lot. Longer fights where there are no stops, and you have full uptime for a prolonged period of time, fracture will start to give gains overall.

Something else to keep in mind, is if a boss or monster becomes un-targetable, it is immune to all dmg, and that goes for dots as well, so don't waste a GCD on fracture if something is going to jump, it won't do you any good.

Fracture at best is about a 1.15% gain in deliverance if you don't factor in cd usage to gain stacks. It also severly impacts the tp sustain of a warrior when using it as frequently as possible, so use of it is really more situational than the math in the second post would seem to imply.

Thanks for the info everyone!

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

Fracture at best is about a 1.15% gain in deliverance if you don't factor in cd usage to gain stacks. It also severly impacts the tp sustain of a warrior when using it as frequently as possible, so use of it is really more situational than the math in the second post would seem to imply.

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It's not really that situational. If it won't make you run out of TP (which is the case 99% of the time when it comes to bosses since mechanics will usually give you a break in TP) and it ticks for almost it's full duration, then use it. Even if it's only a small increase, it's still an increase. To not use it is laziness, it's free damage.

If it's a small pull (2 or 3 mobs), then I find it helps a lot regardless of the length of fight. It's probably DPS loss but helps keep aggro up.

In this case, chances are the DPS switched from AoE spells to ST spells. This is fine if they all target the same mob, but sometimes they don't and I don't want to keep wasting TP on overpower for 2 mobs. So... I'll put fracture up on the second target to keep a healthy amount of aggro on it before the first mob dies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Praesul

It's not really that situational. If it won't make you run out of TP (which is the case 99% of the time when it comes to bosses since mechanics will usually give you a break in TP) and it ticks for almost it's full duration, then use it. Even if it's only a small increase, it's still an increase. To not use it is laziness, it's free damage.

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It's a virtual 0 gain if you use it in the 3/6 gcds (depending on where you are in your rotation_ following a double fell cleave because you either have to swap your bb combo for an extra se combo or you you have to let se buff drop for 1 gcd, and if ever it prevents you from getting an extra fell cleave by pushing back the rotational gcds it's going to be a very large loss, so yes it's very situational. If you look at the top 10 wars for any given end game instance you'll see the very few of them use it even close to every 30 seconds, in fact most only use it 3-5 times over a 10 minute encounter.

The simple truth of the matter is that most warriors (90% of raid tier at least) will see greater gains from tightening up their cd usage, practicing spamming face-target or better managing their stacks. A single extra auto-attack is worth the gains from 3 or 4 fractures, a single extra fc is worth the gains of 4 or 5 fractures.

In short, I'd say if you can use it without letting anything fall off or messing up your combos, use it. Even if you use it optimally, you get like a 5% gain in dps at best, but you can lose dps easily if you use it the wrong way. The best time to use it is in Defiance when Unchained is active since you don't gain anything from your finishers as they ignore the damage reduction anyways, but still make sure you don't use it mid combo since it will mess it up.

It's extremely important to note that you will want to have 3 Fell Cleaves and 1 Fracture every Berserk period whenever possible. This is normally for boss fights. Still very dependent on the fights themselves. Priority order: Fell Cleaves > Fracture if you can't afford that last GCD in Berserk for Fracture, use 3rd Fell Cleave instead.

Rotating Fracture in each mob is questionable. If you are talking about mobs tanking, Overpower is usually better as there is usually at least 3 mobs to hit, rarely 2 mobs. Off the math, 120pot x3 is better since it's instant and more damage, also enables you to hold aggro better if you are struggling at it.

Flash is something you don't really use except for a few situations: 1. You are on the 5sec pacification. 2. You want a full 360 degree aggro rather than a cone AOE. Antitower mobs after 2nd boss for example spawn themselves in extreme left and right, Overpower won't reach them unless if you position yourself properly, which I normally flash twice to grab all 4 mobs quickly and do massive pulls. 3. You have no more TP and you need to aggro.