Dance or not to Dance?

[HyoMinPark]

You should be using Standard Step on cooldown. Clipping a buff that will have 100% uptime anyways is not that huge of a deal. Losing 1,000 potency every minute from only using ST every 60 seconds is a big deal. Based on all the conversations I've been seeing amongst the DNC number crunchers, holding it is a larger loss than using it on CD and missing the GCDs you could have had during it. Its potency is scaled enough to make up for the time taken to prep it.

Think about it: you lose 1,000 potency every time you don't use it. Over the course of a fight, that will begin to add up very quickly. Aside from Quadruple Technical Finish, Double Standard Finish is our hardest hitting skill. There's no reason not to use ST on cooldown outside of a few niche scenarios (e.g., dungeon boss/trash pack is about to die and you'll want it up for the next pack, intermission /add phase is coming up and you'll want it for that).

The dances are 1 second a piece—with Standard Step being a GCD, at most you will lose 3~4 seconds during prepping it, which is not even 2 GCDs. Most of our weaponskills are not scaled high enough to add up to more than 1,000; meaning that you are losing potency by not putting Standard Step back on CD the minute it pops up.