What is Carve and Spit for?

[Calib0s]

Doesn't matter what it restores. Getting the full damage requires a DA, and not using the DA on carve is going to give you another drain or unleash or 2. Since we're talking about a mana limited situation after blood price has expired, you'll get more damage off of extra drains/unleashes.

It absolutely does matter how much it restores. Using CAS for MP specifically WON'T give you the mana do another drain. It will get you a single unleashed, but you would need 5+ targets for it to overcome using DA + CAS.

You're also ignoring the opportunity cost in using those GCDs vs using them for a different attack.
1. Abyssal Drain is 972 MP and does 120 potency per target in damage.
2. Dark Arts is 1768 MP and adds 350 potency to Carve and Spit.
3. Carve and Spit, without Dark Arts, Does 100 potency in damage and restores 884 mana.

Let's assume that you're fighting against 3 enemies. You currently have enough mana to cast a single Abyssal Drain and still maintain Darkside, so you have 1500 MP or so. You use Carve and Spit and it gives you enough mana for a second Abyssal Drain. So you do the following:
1. You use Carve and Spit (oGCD) and do 100 potency of damage as well as gaining 884 mana.
2. You use Abyssal Drain for 120 potency per target, so 360. (1st GCD).
3. You use Abyssal Drain for 120 potency per target again, another 360 (2nd GCD).
Total: 820 potency over 5 seconds.


Same scenario with three enemies. You instead decide to go for a syphon strike to get enough mana to Dark Arts your Carve and Spit and forgo AoE entirely.
1. You use Hard Slash: 150 potency. (1st GCD)
2. You use Syphon Strike: 250 potency and + 884 mana. (2nd GCD)
3. You use DA + Carve and spit: 450 potency (Off GCD).
Total: 850 potency over 5 seconds.

So not only do you come out ahead by 30 potency, you're ALSO ahead by 176 MP.

It takes 4+ targets for Abyssal Drain to pull ahead and make using Carve and Spit for MP worthwhile. This is not a situation that comes up often in the raiding environment.

But sure, it does happen occasionally:
1. Some waves of Turn 4.
2. Turn 5 if you gather all the snakes up and kill them together.
3. For a short period of time in turn 12 before the first Bennu dies after they've resurrected, assuming you tank them all in the same spot.
4. Shiva adds in Phase 1.
5. Alexander Floor 2 on some waves.

These are the only situations in relevant content where you might use Carve and Spit for MP. Five out of 30 raid encounters + EX primals. Some of these situations don't even come up any more (You won't get 4+ Bennu unless something is seriously wrong, snakes in T5 will likely die before you have all 5 together no matter what).

I don't know exact #s but unmend is like 1/3 or 1/4 the cost of DA? For carve you're spending 1.5 DA casts worth of mana for 350 potency. For that amount of mana, you could instead be doing something like 4-6? unmend casts at 120 potency. That's worth maybe 3 dark passengers? So if for some reason you're out of TP and don't have access to Goad or TP song (pug?) then this should be your best option.

Once again, you're ignoring the opportunity cost here. This isn't a gain over waiting for your TP to restore so you can do your single target combo. TP is regenerated every 3 seconds, so Unmend would have to do more than 190 potency in order to overcome this [226 (average potency per GCD from a Delirium combo) - 36 (The amount of average combo potency lost by waiting an additional .5 seconds per attack)]. You can also be gaining MP from Siphon Strike during this time. Even if you went for multiple rotations like this and delayed Carve and Spit in order to have enough mana to use DA on it, you would come out ahead over using it to restore MP and spam Unmend / Unleashed.