The cost of fracture is TOO DAMN HIGH!

[Nabian]

Would it be worth it if you take the crit rate bonus that 5 stacks of Wrath give you? I usually try throwing it on just before Berserk or Unchained expire if I don't have a combo ready. A buffed 300 total potency attack seems worth it in those situations.

Two things about DOTS.

1) DOTS in this game snapshot, therefore if you have berserk and unchained up when you apply the DOT even if the buffs fall off, the dot will still tick for the increased potency.

2) DOTS can crit (for those of you who don't believe this take a look at bards. One of their cooldowns is based off of dot crits).

Based on these two bits of information its always better (if you can manage it) to apply fracture when your cooldowns are up. Also Internal Release + Wrath Stacks can increase the probability that you will get a crit but they don't increase the damage directly.

[Acala]

As PLD, I use it when I know it will not hurt my TP. (if I have more than 350 TP I will fit facture in my rotation.) most of the late game Boss have some type of down time between phase. (from Main Tank PoV)

As a PLD you should be shield swiping... well period... but especially if you are going to use fracture to maintain TP.

[Nabian]

I'm not as familiar with Paladin, but isn't Shield Swipe a net tp gain when used?

[Kitru]

Pretty much this. I generally only use Fracture as one of my last moves from Unchained/Berserk/Internal Release.

You shouldn't be. The last move in an UBIR combo should always be Inner Beast (Unchained and Berserk should be staggered so as to not waste GCD), and, if you're going to use Fracture, it needs to be early on (the first attack with both Unchained and Berserk) so that you don't clip the SE from Inner Beast.

The optimal Fracture UBIR is this:

(start with 4 Wrath and prepped combo for Maim)>Maim(Unchained)>SE(Berserk)>Fracture(Internal Release)>BB combo>SE combo>Inner Beast

Everything but the finisher on the second SE will have the SE debuff applied, which gives you a damage output that looks like this:

Maim> 190 potency +
SE> 280 * 1.33 = 372.4 potency +
Fracture> BB combo>HS>Maim> (300 + 150 + 200 + 280 + 150 + 190) * 1.33 * 1.4 = 2364.74 +
SE> 280 * 1.33 * 1.4 * .9 = 469.22 +
Inner Beast> 400 * 1.4 = 560
= 3965.36 * 1.2 / .9 = 5275.17 potency

My standard UBIR is this:

(start with 4 Wrath)HS(Unchained)>SS(Berserk)>BB(Internal Release)>SE combo>BB combo>Inner Beast

Everything will have the SE debuff applied which gives you this:

HS: 150 +
SS: 200 * 1.33 = 266 +
BB>SE combo>BB combo: (280 + 150 + 190 + 270 + 150 + 200 + 280) * 1.33 * 1.40 = 2830.24 +
Inner Beast: 400 * 1.4 = 560 +
= 3806.24 * 1.2 / .9 = 5074.99 potency

The use of Fracture in this *specific* case (which happens to be the only one where it actually ends up being a DPS increase), gives you an extra 200.18 potency (all buffs factored in; that's the equivalent of an extra Heavy Swing w/ Maim and SE debuff) and only because it's cramming in a bit of extra base potency into the larger buffed time frame. Furthermore, this only happens once every 2 minutes thanks to it requiring Unchained and Berserk, which is a damned fine reason to take Fracture off of your bar completely: it's only useful as an extra 200 normal enmity potency on a delay (so it's not useful for burst damage) once every 120 seconds.

To explain why Fracture shouldn't be used, in any other situation, consider this: the best basic rotation is SE>BB, which has exactly 100% uptime for SE (e.g. no overlap in the SE debuff). Any time you use Fracture, you're cleaving off the debuff from one of the other combo finishers (Fracture breaks combos and, as such, you always have to start fresh after it). As such, you're getting a 300 potency attack but removing the 11% bonus from either a 280 or 270 potency attack, which is either an 11 potency loss (280 / .9 = 311.11) or breaking exactly even (270 / .9 = 300). You're actually losing slightly more than that because you're slowing down your next Inner Beast by 1 GCD as well, but that's harder to directly calculate.

If you're trying to maximize damage, the only attack you should use other than SE>BB (for any case that is *not* the predescribed UBIR attack string) is Inner Beast, because it's effectively a 400 potency attack (300 / .75), so, at worst, you're gaining 89 potency from the loss of SE uptime.

The problem with Fracture isn't the cost (it's actually pretty efficient given that it's 300 potency for 80 TP, which is 3.75 pot/TP; BB combo is the closest competitor at 630 for 190 TP, which is 3.315 pot/TP; it's "expensive" in that it increases your consumption per GCD, which, in any situation where you could feasibly run out of TP, ends up being a DPS loss thanks to buff/debuff uptime). The problem is the damage itself being too low coupled with the fact that it is a GCD that doesn't contribute to your Wrath to some extent.

Honestly, if the devs want to encourage WAR to use Fracture, if they don't want to just increase the damage, they should give it some chance of providing Wrath stacks on each tick (it's 10 ticks, so a 10% chance per tick would basically make it, over time, a single GCD for a single Wrath stack; this is more efficient compared to the other Wrath generator combos which are 3 GCDs for 2 stacks). That way, even if it decreases your damage by reducing debuff uptime (it might actually end up being a minute increase to damage via increase Wrath stack generation), at least it increases your mitigation by giving you faster Inner Beasts.

[Kitru]

I'm not as familiar with Paladin, but isn't Shield Swipe a net tp gain when used?

Yes. Shield Swipe costs 40 TP to use and natural regeneration is 50 TP/GCD (60 TP per tick and ticks occur every 3 seconds; 60 / 3 * 2.5 = 50) so it's a net gain of 10 TP. The problem with Shield Swipe, of course, is that it requires you to block first (which means it's worthless on magic heavy fights since you can't block magic), has a very limited time frame of use (you get something like 6 seconds), and isn't high enmity (so you have to wait until you've already been wailing on a target for a while).

If you want to maximize your damage as a PLD, you should be using Shield Swipe anyways since it *is* a minute increase to raw pot/GCD (it's 210 per GCD while RoH is 203.33). It's just hard to model because you have to block.

[Remn]

As a PLD you should be shield swiping... well period... but especially if you are going to use fracture to maintain TP.

I use both Shield swipe and Facture (if I have TP) also I am NOT use facture to maintain TP. Facture will burn your TP, not for Maintain Purpose.
I use Swipe when it up and doing Facture for every 3rd or 4th RoH rotation. (provide that I have enough hate on the mob)

my way of thinking is if I know I will have a down time during the boss fight, then I will fit facture into my rotation and get my TP to around 200-400 (depend on fight) before the down time. By the time the fight resume most of my TP would regen back.

easy example would be T8, by the time Brain jak start, my TP usually around 150 (with Facture and Swipe in my rotation.) after I got Brain jak, I will have 10 sec for TP regen. (usually give me 500-600 TP back)

it mostly come down to knowing the fight and manage the correct amount of TP. (for me I try to maintain my TP around 400.)

[KingOfAbyss]

So fun to put Fracture on a last Boss and because of it and other DoTs.. you saved the day when your party has wiped and things turned ugly.

It's not part of my 'rotations', but I will use it whenever I feel like it without compromizing the rest and making sure I have aggro.

Perhaps with lvl cap and new skills, if only it will be cross-classed, we could trade it, but between Raise that you can't use and Skull Sunder.. for PLD, it's in my arsenal.

[Giantbane]

To explain why Fracture shouldn't be used, in any other situation, consider this: the best basic rotation is SE>BB, which has exactly 100% uptime for SE (e.g. no overlap in the SE debuff). Any time you use Fracture, you're cleaving off the debuff from one of the other combo finishers (Fracture breaks combos and, as such, you always have to start fresh after it). As such, you're getting a 300 potency attack but removing the 11% bonus from either a 280 or 270 potency attack, which is either an 11 potency loss (280 / .9 = 311.11) or breaking exactly even (270 / .9 = 300). You're actually losing slightly more than that because you're slowing down your next Inner Beast by 1 GCD as well, but that's harder to directly calculate.

That's not quite right.

SE>BB combo is the following:

150+190+270+150+200+280 = 1240 / .9 = 1377.78 / 6 attacks = 229.63 pot/GCD

For fracture you've stated that the dot portion does not benefit from SE. I'm not so sure about this, as my own (simple and short) tests have been inconclusive. It probably requires more testing to be certain.

Anyhow, with fracture it's Frac>SE>BB, where SE and the Dot does not benefit from the SE buff. So:

100+150+190+150+200+280 = 1070 / 0.9 = 1188.89 + 270 + 200 = 1658.89 / 7 attacks = 236.98 pot/GCD.

So it's still a slight DPS increase if you stop there. But this does not include loss of the buff on auto-attacks, so it's probably still a wash in terms of actual DPS gain.

It gets a little more complicated while tanking. Inner Beast usage means you're going to miss SE buffing itself anyway. Now fracture means the loss of the SE buff on the much weaker Heavy Swing. But, again, you're losing buffed auto-attacks for that period, and, as you've stated, you're delaying the powerful Inner Beast for damage and mitigation, so it's not quite as clear cut either. And if you're doing SP>SE>BB, then fracture usage means more down time on the SP buff for a minimal DPS gain at best, which is not ideal.

Either way, if you have a PLD hitting the same target, it's just going to be a DPS loss. The loss of the buffed PLD's DPS during that window where SE is down (tanking or not) is probably going to outweigh whatever increase in DPS that fracture gives you. Moreso when Ninja is added (assuming it is also slashing and does not get an SE debuff of its own).

The problem with Fracture isn't the cost (it's actually pretty efficient given that it's 300 potency for 80 TP, which is 3.75 pot/TP; BB combo is the closest competitor at 630 for 190 TP, which is 3.315 pot/TP; it's "expensive" in that it increases your consumption per GCD, which, in any situation where you could feasibly run out of TP, ends up being a DPS loss thanks to buff/debuff uptime).

The notion of it being expensive is exactly that it increases your consumption per GCD. Flat consumption comparisons are meaningless because it ignores your TP restoration rate. With a 50TP/GCD restoration rate, it puts the real cost of Fracture at 30 TP. For our any combo, we're spending 20 for Heavy Swing and 10 the next two steps in the combo, 40 TP over 3 GCD or 13.33 TP per GCD. Even when comparing our weakest combo, Storm's Path at 150+190+250=590 damage, we're talking 590 for 40TP or 14.75 pot per TP vs. 300 for 30TP or 10 pot per TP. That's not particularly good. It's terrible when you consider the unimproved ability available to other classes.

The other problem is that tanks don't have access to Invigorate, so expensive TP costs like Fracture are more keenly felt. The idea behind dropping it to 60 is that it changes the ability so that it slows our rate of TP expenditure for both PLD and WAR which would help out ever so slightly in longer fights with little down time.

Although, you're right, even at 60TP per use, it's still only of marginal benefit in its current form. It needs to be stronger in some way if it's intended to be a useful ability. It would be nice if whatever additional benefit was added to Fracture extended in some way to its base form, such that it was of more benefit as a cross class ability.

[Camate]

Greetings,

As of right now we do not have any plans to change the TP cost of Fracture.

[Azure_dragon-]

<insert meme here>.