I still disagree with the idea of remaining songless for several seconds, and with sitting on EA at that time. I don’t think it’s optimal play for the job, as I’ve explained regarding Repertoire, procs, and the Soul Gauge.
Sidewinder should more or less be used within raid buffs of any kind—the easiest to align it with is TA simply because they share a cooldown duration, which I believe is the default that the standard opener uses. I know that this was the case in SB, and that BRDs have always advocated to fit Sidewinder into TA for that extra boost on it.
PP is an oGCD, so it’s usage is relatively free in terms of where you can place it. Just make sure you don’t clip your next GCD while using it. It’s very basic: most of the time, you use it at 3 stacks; when the song is about to end, blow your remaining stacks with in the last couple of seconds. The biggest caveat is the “if EA is coming up concurrent with the next DoT tick”, and even that is something I am learning as a BRD main since before PP was even a thing!
With regards to the bolded part, you aren’t accounting for the fact that you’re supposed to fit in a Standard Finish into your TF/Devilment window as well, which takes 5 seconds to perform. You also aren’t accounting for having to prioritize Saber Dance if you have an abundance of Esprit, which is very possible during a TF window in any party that is competent.
With Saber being 600 potency versus the 350 potency of Fountainfall and the 300 potency of Reverse Cascade/Bloodshower (standard usage of Rising Windmill usually has it outside of Devilment, but inside TF—but it’s 250 potency for reference), you prioritize it first if you are going to risk overcapping on Esprit otherwise (and it’s used at 80 gauge regardless in most instances—I think the only reason you would delay it is if one of your Flourished procs is going to fall off otherwise). It’s not uncommon to have to Saber Dance before you fit in your SF into your burst, as it’s very easy to go from half Esprit to full within that 5-second time frame; and overcapping on Esprit means overcapping on resources. Which means lost damage. There are even instances where you have to delay SF for a Saber Dance.
So I don’t think you can just say that the procs only take 8~10s to use and that it won’t be a big deal when there are multiple factors that may cause you to prioritize other GCDs over them during your bursts.
Keep in mind that some fights don’t have downtime like E3S does (E2S, for example), so your delayed Flourish—which can be from 1 GCD to 2 GCDs if you get procs off of both Cascade and Fountain in your proposed openers—will persist throughout the encounter due to having no opportunity to try and “fix” it. I don’t think the natural Drift of our dances is enough to rectify this issue fully.
If you are forced to delay it again further down in your rotation due to lucky procs, this hurts you even more. You never delay TF to try and realign Flourish, as that hurts buff alignment; which, in turn, hurts the raid. So you have to consistently deal with it being misaligned by those 1 or 2 GCDs. At most, I think that you can delay TF if there are mechanics happening that might prevent multiple party members from receiving the buff; but these are situations where you work with your group so that you collectively hold buffs for a few seconds—and no more than that, from my understanding of it all. And this is in fights with 100% uptime and no downtime/phase transitions/bosses jumping and flailing about doing stuff.
I don’t know much about MNK because I don’t main melee jobs, but I haven’t heard anything about actively using TK (save for niche scenarios where you’ll for sure lose GL, but I think it’s so easy to manage now that that’s no longer a huge issue) now that they’ve changed PB back to 120s. I know that it had far more versatility with the 60s PB.
I checked the pinned openers in the Balance, and didn’t see it being used anywhere. I’m assuming that these openers are the most optimal openers with regards to basic buff alignments (given the nature of the theorycrafters in there and all the work they do), so I guess I’m not sure why you’re wanting to use it or design a rotation/opener around it that may not even be optimal.
I can understand it wanting to have viability, and maybe that’s where this all ultimately stems from; but if using it comes at the sacrifice of damage/sacrificing optimization, I don’t think its worth it. I don’t think it’s a skill entire openers and raid buff alignment should be changed to cater towards, either. But this is just my opinion.
I’m not trying to be rude or mean in any way, but some of the things I have read and your reasonings just seem illogical based on what I’ve studied about the jobs I main. I don’t claim to be any sort of expert—I still say that I am constantly learning and optimizing—but I think I have a fair grasp on the concepts around BRD/DNC either way.
I don’t know if you saw what I said above about the healers, but I think you should brush up on job mechanics for all roles before further theorycrafting, as you mistakenly advocated for a 1m 45s pre-pull for AST on the pretense of fishing for Seals and a pre-pull card. But since you cannot obtain Seals outside of combat, so this is entirely unnecessary (and pre-pulls like this is why the developers made Seals combat only—after all, they really hated the 60s pre-pull for HW WAR with Infuriate; and they changed Hide to reset Mudras in SB because NINs were asking for 20s or more pre-pulls for Huton). There’s still much I think you could stand to learn.