Quote Originally Posted by winsock View Post
I was talking about the effect of the stance change resetting the combo...
No. The fact that stance dance breaks combo is exactly why you need to do 2 full combos before switching back.

For example, let's take a RoH combo and a fast blade, for a total of 4 GCD. In ShO, you get, potency-wise : (150+200+260+150)*0.8 = 608 potency
Now, if you SwO just after the first Fast Blade, you get 150*0.8+0+200+260+100 from 2 AA in SwO = 680 potency

If you have to put back Shield Oath, you'd need about 7 GCD to still gain DPS by stance dancing, while still switching back to Shield Oath mid-combo.

If I were to argue only about the GCD vs OffGCD, I would have said that by "wasting" 2 GCD, you'd also let Goring Blade and/or Strength down wear off, thus losing either some damage or some mitigation...or both.