Why You Shouldn't Use Fracture

[SofiyaGlaston]

(In before the obligatory "LERN2MATH!" response...)

Not sure what you're implying.. But either way. Each of retorts to the OP have legitimate means. Fracture is higher damage and should be maintained.

@The OP's rotation. It isn't efficient to lose the SE combo's buffs reapplying it (you wont have maim or SE actually active during any of the 3 attacks) as BB's buffed potency/gcd is not 32%(total increased damage given by the buffs) higher than SE's unbuffed. thus you are losing out on yet more damage. The only thing in the BB>SE>BB>SE set that does not have a buff (and mind you its only 1 of the 2 missing) is the final SE during the first SE combo after a fracture. This minor loss is easily overlooked for the addition of Fracture into the rotation. If the combo is dropped, just pick it up from an SE combo and place the fracture as needed (Don't clip it. If it wont be on the target for a few seconds its fine.)

[Maelwys]

Not sure what you're implying..

Just an observed trend in responses to anyone questioning Kitru's numbers/methodology.

Nothing to worry about, honest.

[*Munches Popcorn*]

[Mishini_Dracoto]

I think the foundation for this argument has to do with TP Starvation, which I rarely suffer from in Single Target Fights. I've been tossing it out in a less-optimal situation, which now I need to rethink (BB>BB>Fr>Se>) and repeat, keeps fracture running, Keeps my Maim & SE running (except for, the Fr)

That being said, my counter argument is knowing when to use it, and not necessarily sticking to a formula for optimization.

What do the #'s really represent? TP cost doesn't matter if you aren't TP Starved.
From a DoT perspective, your maximized damage is to keep Fracture up and running, but it does mean you generate less threat.

Times to use Fracture :
When you have established threat
You have more than 25% TP Remaining (rough figure, don't TP starve yourself over it)
When the DoT is expected to provide full effect on the target. (This means do not use it right before a mob dies, or goes invulnerable.)

[Soulburn32]

The best place I found for Fracture for PLD is this:
When your finishing your RoH combo and you have a OFCD to use like Spirits or CoS or Bloodbath that you are going to use slip in Fracture to minimize the GCD loss of using Fracture.

So for example:
RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture -> Fast Blade

[Kitru]

Each of retorts to the OP have legitimate means.

Not really.

Fracture is higher damage and should be maintained.

Except that if you actually look at the damage that using Fracture actually increases your real DPS by, it's less than half of a percent. It's higher damage, but it's higher damage in a purely semantic context that's really so little that you can ignore it.

It isn't efficient to lose the SE combo's buffs reapplying it (you wont have maim or SE actually active during any of the 3 attacks) as BB's buffed potency/gcd is not 32%(total increased damage given by the buffs) higher than SE's unbuffed.

Maim lasts 30 seconds and SE lasts 15 seconds. BB>BB>SE maintains Maim at all times (and even has a 1-2 GCD overlap in case you want to use Inner Beast in there) while keeping SE for both of the BB combos. I never said that it was the damage maximized (i.e. off tank) combo. BB>BB>SE is the enmity maxed (i.e maim tank) combo. Where enmity is concerned, which is what is being maximized with this given combo, BB provides 250% more enmity than SE does. As such, when you're maximizing enmity, you have a damned good reason to maintain Maim (because Maim lasts longer and provides more) while only refreshing the SE debuff when the opportunity cost is low (i.e. immediately after refreshing Maim). On top of that, the actual DPS advantages of BB>SE over BB>BB>SE are tiny: SE>BB>Frac>SE>BB (the combo you're referring to which is the default combo for WAR I used in the comparison in my sig) manages 342.45 potency per GCD and BB>BB>SE manages 325.3, which is a whopping 5.3% improvement in total damage, which gets diluted down to a 1% advantage when you add in 2 DPS that double the tank's contribution.

Also Maim + SE provide a 33.33% increase to total damage (1.2 / .9), not 32%.

[Kitru]

What do the #'s really represent? TP cost doesn't matter if you aren't TP Starved.

Except that, unless a fight has explicit periods of downtime where you're not able to attack for an extended period, you're *going* to become TP starved. A WAR can only manage 3 minutes of constant ST rotation before running out of TP. Add in Fracture and it goes down to 2.5 minutes. Boss fights last well in excess of that. Even with the downtime provided by their immunity phases and running around, you're still going to run out of TP for anything except for Ifrit (who just has absurdly long immunity phases; you pretty much *can't* run out of TP when fighting Ifrit). In general, I hit that point on Titan around 25%, even with incredibly good DPS simply because the times when I can't attack just don't last long enough, nor are they regular enough (p5 has none, in fact).

The basics of this entire argument are that Fracture *does* provide a DPS increase, given unlimited resources and time, but it's so small as to be only a semantic increase. As soon as you factor in the substantially higher cost, it ends up being an explicit *decrease* in damage dealt over the long term because it forces you into empty GCDs earlier. To make up for the fact that you're going to have these lost GCDs, using Fracture would need to provide an 8+% increase in total damage output but it barely manages any at all.

Fracture is only useful when TP isn't a concern (which means that the fight has to last less than 2.5 minutes) and it will be allowed to tick the entire duration (assuming you have to establish a threat cushion first via BB>SE>Frac, this means that the fight has to last at least 47.5 seconds). It's got a sweet spot where it has a marginal reason to exist (marginal because it doesn't actually increase DPS by that much), but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't actually do enough to justify keeping around for the tiny portion of fights that land in that sweet spot (hell, when I'm soloing, stuff dies before 30 seconds comes up so it's not even useful for that).

[PessimiStick]

The best place I found for Fracture for PLD is this:
When your finishing your RoH combo and you have a OFCD to use like Spirits or CoS or Bloodbath that you are going to use slip in Fracture to minimize the GCD loss of using Fracture.

So for example:
RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture -> Fast Blade

What is this nonsense? OGCDs have absolutely no bearing on this whatsoever. Use them as soon as they are off cooldown, no matter what else you're doing. Fracture has no bearing on that, and they have no interaction with Fracture.

[Sebastien]

The reason for this is pretty simple: Fracture is pretty expensive for a single target attacks given the damage it deals. It cost 80 TP, which is a net loss of 30 TP/GCD; at 300 potency per use, that's 10 potency per net TP cost. The BB combo (150 + 200 + 280; 70 + 60 + 60) is 15.75 (630 / (70 + 60 + 60 - 50 * 3)). On top of this, the value of that higher potency per GCD is diluted *very* heavily by the fact that, in order for it to actually provide that massive potency benefit, it can only be used once every 12 GCDs.

I don't follow your math. Fracture costs 80 TP per GCD, not 30. It requires one GCD to use. So if you want to look at dmg per TP, you should be dividing by 80. I get 7.75. (btw does your 300 potency include the 100 potency upfront damage, in addition to the dot? Does it account for the extended duration? I can't find any source to confirm that number.) If, on the other hand, you want to know the DPET (or damage per effective time, or per GCD in this case), you would divide by 1. 300 / 1 = 300.

Compare that with your three-step combo. The dmg per TP is 3.32. The dmg per GCD is 210.

As you can see, Fracture does VASTLY more damage per TP and significantly more damage per GCD.

However, as you pointed out, is has no bonus enmity. If we looked at enmity per TP or enmity per GCD, it probably falls way behind. Therefore you have a tradeoff between your personal DPS and your personal threat generation. Paladin's face the same choice when deciding whether or not to hit shield swipe. It increases our DPS but lowers our TPS. It also slows our TP consumption, just like Fracture would. As far as I can tell, the two abilities have an almost identical place in our respective rotations.

The ability isn't broken and shouldn't be ignored. It's situational, and in cases where you find yourself with a healthy threat margin, you can use it to increase your DPS. You can also use it to throttle your TP consumption (or more accurately lower your TP-cost-per-damage).

[Kitru]

When your finishing your RoH combo and you have a OFCD to use like Spirits or CoS or Bloodbath that you are going to use slip in Fracture to minimize the GCD loss of using Fracture.

That makes absolutely no sense. SW and CoS should be used on CD because they're explicit DPS increases. If you're *not* using them, you're hurting yourself. Justifying Fracture by saying that using your off-GCDs, which should be used *anyways*, makes absolutely no sense. Furthermore, for PLD, you really don't want to use Fracture because, if you're maintaining it, it's making up a larger portion of your total rotation thanks to the shorter duration (Halone>Halone>Frac) while also having drastically reduced damage (220 with all ticks compared to 300 for WAR).

For a PLD, Fracture would increase net TP consumption from 13.33 ((20+10+10) / 3) to 17.5 ((20 +10 + 10 + 30) / 4) while only increasing pre-buff potency per GCD from 336.66 ((150 + 200 + 260) / 3 + 83.33 + 25 + 25) to 339.04 ((150 * 2 + 200 * 2 + 260 * 2 + 220) / 7 + 83.33 + 25 + 25). You're increasing TP consumption by 31% to increase damage by .71%. Once again, a marginal increase to DPS that only really exists as a semantic truth rather than a practical one that comes at a *massive* resource cost. It's another case where Fracture is worthless outside of the sweet spot and, even within the sweet spot, provides so little that there's no real difference between using it and not.

[Soulburn32]

lots of math that i don't care about

i never said I wasn't using them when they were not off cooldown thanks for making assumptions.

The best use of OGCD is between GCD skills. I simply stated the sweet spot for me was if an OGCD was ready when using RoH as it has the longest animation and you can use OFGD skills to clip that animation.

For instance RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture
IS Faster Than
RoH -> Fracture