AST cross-skills and Aero

Just asking for opinions here. Astros get their crosskills from WHM and BLM. Ofcourse, Swiftcast, ClericStance Protect and Stoneskin are mandatory.

For the last cross-skill, what do you guys use ?

Up until now i've been using Aero. However, after getting pissed off by the amount of misses i get from that skill on A3S, i've started to doubt of its effectiveness.

With 200 effective potency over its full duration, it's just as good as Malefic II for a little less mana and takes a GCD during which we can't really do anything (aside from moving). My WHM cohealer uses this GCD for Liquid Aura on boss pull, but as AST, i feel like wasting my time. So... for you, is it worth using or not, and what would you take instead ?

(I know, Combust I takes a GCD too and deals less damage for the same mana cost, but... it never misses !)

Well ... It's Aero or Surecast, at that point. Not really sure you'd get much mileage out of Surecast, though.

Kind of one of those six of one, half-a-dozen of another, kind of situations.

I'm using Aero myself. Never had much use for Surecast so far.

I don't feel the need for surecast either, but the real question was : If you're using Aero, why ? What good does it do for your dps rotation ? Am I missing something ?

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Originally Posted by Elth

I don't feel the need for surecast either, but the real question was : If you're using Aero, why ? What good does it do for your dps rotation ? Am I missing something ?

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It's a cheap spell that has 200 potency. It's a basically Malefic II with a lower cost but the trade off is its a DoT.

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Originally Posted by Rox_Unlimited

It's a cheap spell that has 200 potency. It's a basically Malefic II with a lower cost but the trade off is its a DoT.

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Which is basically what I said in my first post. But considering the fact that most Savage encounters are made of short phases of burst between downtimes (causing a probability to waste SOME of the DoT's potency), is it worth using at all, just to cast a Malefic 2 overtime for 200 less mana every 18s ?

Whether you use it or not, it really doesn't matter. You're overthinking it.

If you didn't use aero, you would just use Malefic II in that GCD (which can also miss and is the same overall potency). So it truly just plain doesn't matter. If you like aero use it, if you don't remove it and leave that CC slot blank. No one will notice either way.

I actually use surecast, just because my main job ultimately is healing, and surecast helps with that in some situations, while aero does not.

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Originally Posted by Elth

Which is basically what I said in my first post. But considering the fact that most Savage encounters are made of short phases of burst between downtimes (causing a probability to waste SOME of the DoT's potency), is it worth using at all, just to cast a Malefic 2 overtime for 200 less mana every 18s ?

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It last 18 seconds, so as long as the boss isn't leaving every 18 seconds you should be fine using it.

I use Aero and it find it pretty useful sometimes.
Same potency as Malefic II, but you can cast it while moving, and it costs half less than Malefic II.
I mean if i had a chance of getting E4E, i would throw Aero right away, but since i have to choose this or a surecast... and i never found surecast useful anyway

I use Aero, if I recall Malefic doesn't have potency when applied...thus it doesn't apply Heavy in pvp. Aero however, does have potency and I can use it on all those people on their fancy mounts :P

Aero also lets you weave off gcd stuff like card actions. Doesn't make or break anything but it's there.

I actually decided to get rid of stoneskin and replace it with surecast. Sometimes in a4 or a2 an add gets loose and being interrupted is annoying. Plus stoneskin just sits on my hotbar only getting used right before boss battles. I find comfort knowing that I can pop lightspeed and surecast and be sure I won't get interrupted raising someone.