Quote Originally Posted by Oxdarock View Post
I just curious as to why people believe these are terribly subpar, especially in a situation that gives you the same number of casts whether you use raid buffs as soon as possible or delay them a bit.
I will reiterate my previous post:

1) The current openers listed on Balance are already optimized to push out maximum DPS under raid buffs. The mathematicians on Balance 100% consulted mentors for every job and bounced back and forth when building their openers so that not only does their own job do as much DPS as possible within that window, but also other jobs can push out maximum DPS under their windows using the buffs your job provides (unless you're a tank/SAM/BLM/WHM)

2) Delaying buff windows at the beginning of a fight is never optimal. The ONLY way I could see it being that way is if the boss became untargetable after like 3 GCDs which will never happen (I hope). Delaying buff windows is something you do at later stages of the fight to optimize your kill time and that optimization also depends on how quickly you can kill the boss. In my last post I used Voidwalker as an example and went with a 9:17 or so kill time and in a situation like that you'd delay the 2 minute buffs at the 8 minute mark to align with the 3 minute windows at the 9 minute mark so everyone is ending the fight on maximum buffs to push their DPS just a little further. Other examples become in a fight like Eden Prime where the 3 minute windows come up during add phase, so you'd hold those buffs for when Eden comes back and everyone just does a re-opener. tl;dr never, ever, ever, ever, ever delay openers it is not and will never be optimal.