4.05 patch: to 7 Fell cleaves or not 7 Fell cleaves?

[BluexBird]

Doesn't Inner Release negate Knockback/Stun/Bind/Heavy/Drawn in effects?

It ignores knockbacks SOMETIMES. I've yet to see it work during stuns.

During Susano, it still locks you in place if you get marked for the thunderbolt. During Lakshmimi, you still get pulled in even if you use Vril. And the Delta V1 boss still knocks you around with his attack.

So it's like, it works... unless we don't want it to work, and we won't tell you when it won't work. Have fun!

To be honest I was even surprised to see it work in the last MSQ fight...

[samanator13]

So if I do my math correctly..

wouldn't the 300 Potency from Upheaval + 200 from 2 Onslaughts come out to 500?

The same potency as an extra Fell Cleave?... I assume the difference being that 500 comes out in between GCDs rather than having to squeeze in another?

[samanator13]

It ignores knockbacks SOMETIMES. I've yet to see it work during stuns.

During Susano, it still locks you in place if you get marked for the thunderbolt. During Lakshmimi, you still get pulled in even if you use Vril. And the Delta V1 boss still knocks you around with his attack.

So it's like, it works... unless we don't want it to work, and we won't tell you when it won't work. Have fun!

Y'know, they could just say "Nullifies MOST Stun, Sleep, etc." Instead of just flat out saying it like with everyother skill, but no this skill leads you to believe you could force your way through mechanics and tbh it's kind of dumb. I'm surprised nobody's made a thread on this yet.

[EusisLandale]

Y'know, they could just say "Nullifies MOST Stun, Sleep, etc." Instead of just flat out saying it like with everyother skill, but no this skill leads you to believe you could force your way through mechanics and tbh it's kind of dumb. I'm surprised nobody's made a thread on this yet.

Welcome to the life of a Paladin trying to make use of Tempered Will

[ArianeEwah]

So if I do my math correctly..

wouldn't the 300 Potency from Upheaval + 200 from 2 Onslaughts come out to 500?

The same potency as an extra Fell Cleave?... I assume the difference being that 500 comes out in between GCDs rather than having to squeeze in another?

Partially right.

To fit another FC into your rotation you actually need the skill speed value for it. Not entirely sure what value/GCD, something around 2.4s.

Furthermore you can empower Upheaval by combining it with Thrill of Battle, increasing it's potency up to 360 (considering you are at full HP, overwise it might be less).

And you mentioned yourself, you need to fit in another GCD which could be a Heavy Swing (150 additional potency).

Conclusion: Upheaval + 2 Onslaught are by far better than a Fell Cleave, and you don't stay on 5 Beast Gauge points.

[whiskeybravo]

This would imply that the 9 gcds under berserk must overlap with the 9 gcds under inner release, which is impossible at low sks.

Pretty sure 9 gcd berserk is possible at any skill speed. By popping it at the last sec of a gcd you can squeeze in the 9th hit before it falls off. Yes 9 * 2.5 is 22.5 sec, but since your attack occurs at the beginning of the gcd you don't need the whole last 2.4ish sec. Obviously it's a tighter window with no skill speed at all, but you don't need insane levels of skill speed or anything either, just a matter of timing.

[Shinkyo]

The same potency as an extra Fell Cleave?... I assume the difference being that 500 comes out in between GCDs rather than having to squeeze in another?

FC is not a straight 500 potency because you use a GCD for it. The real potency increase from FC is increase from your regular combo fillers (which are ~200 potency on average). So really the potency of FC is 300 on average.
Upheaval and onslaught being oGCD, they potency is 300 and 100 respectively.

[ArianeEwah]

Pretty sure 9 gcd berserk is possible at any skill speed. By popping it at the last sec of a gcd you can squeeze in the 9th hit before it falls off. Yes 9 * 2.5 is 22.5 sec, but since your attack occurs at the beginning of the gcd you don't need the whole last 2.4ish sec. Obviously it's a tighter window with no skill speed at all, but you don't need insane levels of skill speed or anything either, just a matter of timing.

You gotta take the activation time of your zerk and IR into your account. Roughly 0.86s per ability, so ~1.7s for both zerk and IR. Even with 2.4s GCD the time window would be pretty tight.
In 3.x if you had a GCD of 2.42s it was "perfect" for "3 FC+Fracture finisher", yet I heard many WARs complain that they weren't able to fit in Fracture due to server lag or difficulty on console control.
Just a lil skip/clipping can cause your rotation to fail. 7 FCs is risky, leaves you with 5 BG points and is overall weaker than 6FC+Upheaval+2 Onslaughts (+1 possible HSwing).

[whiskeybravo]

You gotta take the activation time of your zerk and IR into your account. .

Yea, my bad. For some reason I was just thinking about berserk. Double weaving does make it more complicated. Most of the fights have so much movement it's tough just getting the 8 gcds anyways.

I was also kind of stuck on the 9 gcd window since I was doing some maths to find the best action to activate berserk after (Dervy did this with B4B on dragoon a while back) and found that if you are able to hit 9 gcds the potency is the same regardless of where you start. Whereas if only 8 gcd the best place is after a heavy swing. This was only combos though (like, assuming slash+eye, SP+SP+BB+SE rotation), I haven't got started with adding in FCs and such with that particular table.

So, during non-ir windows you should still definitely be trying to hit 9 gcds under berserk.

[BluexBird]

Pretty sure 9 gcd berserk is possible at any skill speed. By popping it at the last sec of a gcd you can squeeze in the 9th hit before it falls off. Yes 9 * 2.5 is 22.5 sec, but since your attack occurs at the beginning of the gcd you don't need the whole last 2.4ish sec. Obviously it's a tighter window with no skill speed at all, but you don't need insane levels of skill speed or anything either, just a matter of timing.

This works in theory, but not in practice. In practice, there are two factors that will influence your abilities, one being lag, and the other being GCD clipping. The lag issue isn't really a problem in most cases, and the GCD clipping can be worked around.

I won't talk about the required skill speed, since that varies depending on your level. However, if your delay is higher than 2.41 seconds, you will have trouble fitting in 9 abilities into your Berserk window. It's possible, but you will have to time things JUST right.

Back when we had Internal Release, you were able to do Heavy Swing -> Internal Release + Berserk -> Fell Cleave without clipping into our Fell Cleave cast. This took practice, however, and was pretty risky. It was much safer to just use Internal Release after Butcher's Block and then just have to use Berserk after the Heavy Swing. However, at a 2.41 recast, things would get so bad that you had to wait half a second before using Berserk, because if you popped it immediately after Heavy Swing, it would run out before you were able to get your Fracture in.

This was even worse when you were trying the Unchained opener into two Fell Cleaves with Fracture in the middle, because you had to swap into Deliverance. If you did it right, you'd be able to finish with a Maim right before pacification. If you did it wrong, you wouldn't land your Maim and had to start back at Heavy Swing since the combo window would run out.

This gets a lot easier when you're able to push below 2.40 recast times. At 2.38, you can pretty much get away with anything. Luckily, the windows right now are such that you are able to get off all your Fell Cleaves and still have some time left (despite it not mattering much).

Here's the opener I conjured up this morning when I was trying Savage:

HS (Infuriate) -> Maim (Thrill) -> Eye
HS -> Maim -> (Inner Release+Berserk) -> Path (Upheaval+Onslaught)
HS -> Maim -> FC
Path -> FCx3 (Onslaught)

I didn't check my recast time but it was to the point where I had to use Berserk and Inner Release together or Berserk would run out before I got Onslaught in. Still, that's just 8 skills and there room for 1 more even though it'll just end up being a Heavy Swing if you're fast enough. Maybe delaying Upheaval until after Maim would help...