FF 5.X Alternative Raid Buff Alignment and Openers

[Vendalwind]

That additionally i meant on later tricks. Which is true.

[Oxdarock]

snip

To answer you points:

1) I will not deny that the Balance makes optimal openers, however with the people I talked to (I guess it's pretty much known that it was the mentors at this point), the concept of holding raid buffs seemed alien to nearly everyone. This leads me to believe that all the openers were made under the rule of using all buffs and bursts as early as possible and that the concept of holding raid buffs and allowing each class to get more of their bigger hits in the most buffs for a longer period of time wasn't really explored.

I'll repeat it again: I do very much encourage the use of early raid buff openers in fights where doing so will gain you an extra cast or prevent you from losing one. Case in point, for E3S, I believe the GNB opener starts its Gnashing combo on the 3rd GCD, much earlier than the usual openers, simply because doing so ensures that a Gnashing combo isn't lost due to Maelstrom. This fact alone makes it stronger overall in E3S (and in a vacuum). However, while it's possible for GNB to do this and follows the rule of "using burst phases as soon as possible", you usually wouldn't in other fights because the bulk of Gnashing misses a lot of raid buffs and using it 3 GCDs earlier probably won't gain you an extra usage of a Gnashing combo overall. This is the best example of my point where "if you can get the same number of casts off whether they're used early or not, then what's wrong with lining them up in a way that every class can make the most use of them?" I even gave a list on page 5 of this thread detailing the GCDs and oGCDs this alignment aims to fit in around 15secs.

2) Again, you say it's never optimal, but you don't really give a clear reason why. As for the example you give, the classes using the 2 minute raid buffs can only hold it for so long, otherwise they'll miss out on a duration of their buffs, which is what happens to all the other classes (now including NIN) regardless of how early their buffs are used in the opener. Even for DRG, which has the earliest raid buff usages in early raid openers, because you still lose out on a duration of their buffs by the end, you have to ask if that's really considered an extra cast. Also, while this might be fine for a speed run, in which you'd reset whenever someone dies, in a regular run where clearing is the goal, as soon as someone dies, that estimated kill time goes right out the window, making the possibility of retaining casts despite delaying raid buffs even higher.

Also, aside from DRG, most of the openers I list delay raid buffs and burst phases no more than 3 GCDs, so how likely are you to lose a cast in a full uptime fight like E2S?

[Oxdarock]

You also make blatantly poor choices.

The primary issue with your nin opener for example is the pot. You insist on intentionally full clipping post suiton to get it off so our trick comes out at 15, but this causes problems because not only have you lost us half a gcd, but youve potted in such a way that the pot misses some stronger moves at the end. That pot cut costs us about 150 potency.
(Starts at .7 lasts 1.2 and cant be qued so latency adds its about 1/3rd gcd loss)
The extra bhava you 'might' get in trick gives 15 extra potency, but you lose 7.5 from not gettin aeolian in trick for sure AND you overcap raiton no matter what you do which is another loss of at least 100 potency (you overcap it by at least 2.5 seconds even after you changed it based on my last few posts)

Additionally performing the trick attack at 15 seconds forces trick to catch weaker gcds. Which is another potency loss.

Plus what everyone else is already saying. Delaying further is not optimal. It means that later rotational mess ups may cost a player more if anything.

This isnt even mentioning the doton ticks lost as well. Which btw i confirmed are effected by trick

As you said, if you get Aeo in TA it's 7.5 potency gain, but since TA is a raid buff, you then have to see how that affects other classes and if even it generates losses greater than the gain for NIN, it's a loss overall (unless you're intention is maximum NIN potency, in which case, go for it.)

As for these very particular potency losses based on clipping and over-capping by 1 GCD (I'm not even sure how this is calculated since it really depends on whether that 2.5 GCD costs you a mudra use or not), while that might be very bad in a simulator, you have to remember that Critical and Direct hits do exist. If you get a lucky crit on a high potency move, very frequent direct hits, or any combinations of these over the course of a fight, that loss in potency is very minor. And again, unless person NIN dps is the goal, you then have to look at how it affects the other classes in the party. If clipping the pot allows TA to line up better with other classes' rotation, the gain can collectively make up for that 150 potency loss (which again, I fundamentally don't understand how people can calculate that or why it would be considered a gamebreaker since I only suggest doing so once.)

[Sabora_Makingai]

PLD:
-FoF opener: Fits in 2 Atones, 2 Intervenes, a Goring combo, CoS, Requiescat, and 1 HS.
-Req opener: Fits Confeti, a gore combo, an extra FB and RB, 2 intervenes, and CoS.


This makes me want to cry. FoF opener is all messed up. FoF has no effect of HS whatsoever. you shouldn't have FoF up when Req is up EVER. CoS shouldn't be used before FoF as you're just leaving potency on the table. also you can get all 3 atonements into you first FoF + 2 goring combos, a RA combo, and the last tick of FoF should be the activation of req. You first req window can contain all 4 HS with the confi finisher. After that it changes slightly to accommodate a 60s rotation. It all just hurts. This is not an alternate opener and will only cause confusion.

[Oxdarock]

PLD:
-FoF opener: Fits in 2 Atones, 2 Intervenes, a Goring combo, CoS, Requiescat, and 1 HS.
-Req opener: Fits Confeti, a gore combo, an extra FB and RB, 2 intervenes, and CoS.


This makes me want to cry. FoF opener is all messed up. FoF has no effect of HS whatsoever. you shouldn't have FoF up when Req is up EVER. CoS shouldn't be used before FoF as you're just leaving potency on the table. also you can get all 3 atonements into you first FoF + 2 goring combos, a RA combo, and the last tick of FoF should be the activation of req. You first req window can contain all 4 HS with the confi finisher. After that it changes slightly to accommodate a 60s rotation. It all just hurts. This is not an alternate opener and will only cause confusion.

I like how you have a problem with the PLD openers, even though they're pretty much the exact same as what people currently use, lol.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

snip

To reply to your points in order:

1) I don't think anyone truly believes you talked to mentors from Balance to make this doc. If you discussed it with them you could credit them for having given you insight into all of the jobs in the game for you to then use that information to create this document.

To the next point. We aren't using buffs "early" we're using them when it's optimal and where we get the most burst out of them without holding them forever, for example, you're expecting WARs to use 8th GCD IR which is just awful, especially if they don't have NIN/MNK in their group (and if they have MNK your openers would still put Brotherhood out at the 5th GCD meaning IR now misaligns for Brotherhood which is the only buff that perfectly aligns with IR, and IR is 1110 potency more than 2 Inner Chaos uses, and that's without factoring in Onslaught and Upheaval and the autos you get under it). To your point of GNB using Gnashing earlier, that kind of doesn't matter. I don't say it as like "Tank optimization doesn't matter" I mean that the things tanks do to optimize their damage doesn't affect the raid because they aren't putting out raid buffs. So PLD dropping an Atonement after their req window to ensure they go into Maelstrom with a stronger combo doesn't affect the raid at all, it's a personal optimization to mitigate lost uptime.

2) I'm actually going to do a counter question. What actual benefit does delaying the openers give? Currently going through every opener I can for the jobs I have a role for in Balance, every job using the openers in Balance hit their most important/highest damaging skills under raid buffs. Battle Lit, used on 3rd GCD, covers all of DRG's highest potency moves while also ensuring the raid gets everything they want under those windows. A lot of what I see on your list would make jobs lose potency under your suggested buffs and I'm inclined to believe that my thought is correct considering how many people have come and explained and shown proof of how they lose potency under your suggested alignment (even more so when the people telling you that your suggested alignment is a DPS loss are people that I know are mentors on Balance).

[ZyrinMisharuji]

But to answer your point, and this is mostly my feelings on it, for openers: The earlier you can do them without screwing people out of DPS means that you can push all of your damage out before you have to deal with mechanics. For something like DRG which has the most animation locks of any job, if it delays its buffs then tries to fit everything under those same buffs it may end up ani locking itself during a mechanic and get hit by something (for e2s do you know how feels bad it would be to use High Jump or something and get snapshotted by the adds and get damage down plus a vuln? Just because you were pressured to press them later than what is optimal so you could catch them under buffs, not worth it man). Again, that's just how I feel about it. The earlier you get through your burst, the more you can focus on mechanics. Additionally, the earlier you can use your buffs later in the fight. Your suggestion requires people to not only clear fights, but to also be completely BiS and have a set group that will never change so your kill times are more or less always the same, which just isn't true for people without a static and even people with a static, most people that care about rotational optimization and numbers will try to kill bosses faster and faster every time they do them, so your delayed alignment potentially loses uses far moreso than using them as Balance suggests, which is the earliest possible without screwing everyone else out of DPS.

[Oxdarock]

To reply to your points in order:

1) I don't think anyone truly believes you talked to mentors from Balance to make this doc. If you discussed it with them you could credit them for having given you insight into all of the jobs in the game for you to then use that information to create this document.

To the next point. We aren't using buffs "early" we're using them when it's optimal and where we get the most burst out of them without holding them forever, for example, you're expecting WARs to use 8th GCD IR which is just awful, especially if they don't have NIN/MNK in their group (and if they have MNK your openers would still put Brotherhood out at the 5th GCD meaning IR now misaligns for Brotherhood which is the only buff that perfectly aligns with IR, and IR is 1110 potency more than 2 Inner Chaos uses, and that's without factoring in Onslaught and Upheaval and the autos you get under it). To your point of GNB using Gnashing earlier, that kind of doesn't matter. I don't say it as like "Tank optimization doesn't matter" I mean that the things tanks do to optimize their damage doesn't affect the raid because they aren't putting out raid buffs. So PLD dropping an Atonement after their req window to ensure they go into Maelstrom with a stronger combo doesn't affect the raid at all, it's a personal optimization to mitigate lost uptime.

2) I'm actually going to do a counter question. What actual benefit does delaying the openers give? Currently going through every opener I can for the jobs I have a role for in Balance, every job using the openers in Balance hit their most important/highest damaging skills under raid buffs. Battle Lit, used on 3rd GCD, covers all of DRG's highest potency moves while also ensuring the raid gets everything they want under those windows. A lot of what I see on your list would make jobs lose potency under your suggested buffs and I'm inclined to believe that my thought is correct considering how many people have come and explained and shown proof of how they lose potency under your suggested alignment (even more so when the people telling you that your suggested alignment is a DPS loss are people that I know are mentors on Balance).

To reply to your points in order:

1) I did talk to mentors, but several didn't want me name dropping them and being associated with this list's creation, so I kept it ambiguous and just mentioned my appreciation that they took the time to talk to me, and for the guides and simulators they made.

2) Let’s talk about your example of WAR and MNK (and NIN). For starters, I'm surprised you said that both MNK openers were bad, even though one is the exact same Anatman opener as before and the PB opener the Balance has up has BH come out 1 GCD later, so you're really admitting that even those openers have holes. Now, keep in mind that when you calculate the timestamp for weaponskills vs spells, the attack goes out quicker for the former than the latter. As a basic example using a cast/recast of 2.5 seconds, when calculating when the attacks go out for weaponskills vs spells, the former will hit at 0 and 2.5secs while the latter will hit at 2.5 and 5secs.

Now, let's look at the theoretical timestamp for WARs GCDs, and to disprove your comment about me implying that groups should always be BiS gear for the openers I’ve proposed to work (which I'll talk about later), we'll use a GCD of 2.42 secs (I'll make mention of the oGCDs, but won't give timestamps for them). The way people currently use the WAR opener, the theoretical time stamp looks like this:

Toma (0secs) -> Infuriate -> HS (2.42secs) -> Maim (4.84secs) -> SE (7.26secs) -> IC (9.68secs) -> Infuriate -> IC (12.1secs) -> IR -> FC (14.52secs) -> Upheaveal -> FC (16.94secs) -> Onslaught -> FC (19.36secs) -> FC (21.78secs) -> FC - (24.2secs) -> HS (26.62secs) -> Maim (29.04secs) -> SE (31.46secs)

So an 8sec TA is actually pretty good with this opener, since it'll catch 2 ICs and 4 FCs under IRl. However, it's not so good for MNK. Let's look at MNK's GCD rotation using an Anatman opener that doesn't clip and cost you a full GCD (keep in mind that the first ST has about a 1 sec animation lock and it takes about half a sec or so for BH to be applied). For this, I'm going to use my own GCD of 2.44 (no GL), 2.32 (GL1), and 2.2 (GL2. I’m not suggesting that other people use the same gear as I do though, as substat calculation is behind what I can accurately calculate with simple math). I’ll also be stopping at the first Boot, since the point I’m trying to make is when BH comes out (an also when GL3’s GCD is applied). So, here’s how it looks:

ST (0secs) -> Demo (1sec) -> Anatman (3.42secs) -> DK (5.74secs) -> Twin (8.06secs) -> RoF -> Demo (10.14) -> FC -> BH (This is done so that BH extends to the second Demo) -> Boot (13-ish secs give or take due to BH clip)

So BH takes between about 13 secs to come out if Anatman doesn’t cause you to lose a GCD and about 15 secs if it does, so it still works for the raid alignment I’ve presented more or less. As you can see, it’s only either hitting the FCs in IR and HS or four FCs, a HS, and a Maim.

Now let's looks at what the GCD line-up looks like for a 10th GCD IR opener:

Toma (0secs) -> Infuriate -> HS (2.42secs) -> Maim (4.84secs) -> SE (7.26secs) -> HS (9.68secs) -> Maim (12.1secs) -> SP (14.52secs) -> IC (16.94secs) -> Infuriate -> IC (19.36secs) -> IR ->FC (21.78secs) -> Upheaval -> FC - (24.2secs) -> Onslaught -> FC (26.62secs) -> FC (29.04secs) -> FC (31.46secs)

So if BH comes out at around 13secs, it’ll catch SP, both ICs, and 3 FCs in IR and if it comes out around 15secs, it’ll catch both ICs and 4 FCs. So even in the worse case scenario, BH still catches stronger GCDs in a 10th GCD IR window than an 7th (or 6th) GCD window.

Now, let’s see what the damage looks like when you account for raid buffs. We’ll compare a 7th GCD IR with TA around 8secs and BH around 13secs to a 10th GCD IR window with both TA and BH coming out around 15secs. We’ll use a crit multiplier of 50% (1.5) and use a direct crit multiplier of 75%. Keep in mind the way multipliers are calculated: SE + TA = 1.15, SE + BH = 1.16, and SE + TA + BH = 1.21.

7th GCD IR (TA: 8secs, BH: 13ish secs)
Toma (140) + HS (200) + Maim (300) + SE (380) + IC (1849.2) + IC (1949.2) + FC (1250.8) + FC (1250.8) + FC (1250.8) + FC (1250.8) + FC + (1197.7) + HS (232) -> Maim (330) + SE (418) = 11899.3 potency

10th GCD IR (TA: 15secs, BH: 15ish secs)

Toma (140) + HS (200) + Maim (300) + SE (380) + HS (220) + Maim (330) + SP (418) + FC (1950.4) + FC (1950.4) + FC (1250.8) + FC + (1250.8) + FC (1250.8) -> FC (1250.8) + FC (1250.8) + FC (1138.7 = 12030.7 potency

Now again, if using 7th (or 6th) GCD IR gains you an extra use/keeps you from losing a use of IR overall, then go with that. However, if it doesn’t, then when you compare the openers plus raid buffs, using a 10th GCD IR puts you ahead by about 131.4 based on the GCDs alone.

Since this reply is already crazy long, I’ll address the point about DRG in another reply.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

Snip

First of all, at no point in my post did I say the MNK opener was bad. I said your WAR opener is bad, especially when they have a MNK/NIN in their comp.

Now, to address your misunderstandings about the buff alignment - With the current WAR optimal opener (with comfy levels of SkS which they recommend which puts WAR at 2.38 recast, not 2.42, they hit their 1st IC at ~9.52 seconds into a pull. This puts it under the effects of TA. It's 2nd IC comes out at ~11.9 and they begin their IR window at ~14.28 and finish that window at ~24.28. With TA going out ~8 seconds this means it ends at ~23 seconds. Brotherhood out at 13 seconds means it ends at ~27 seconds. So, taking this into account WAR with the optimal Balance opener hits both ICs under TA along with all except its final FC under IR under Trick (might be able to be fit depending on how late into the GCD Trick is, latency, etc but I digress) and fits Heavy Swing under BH.

Now to show some math.
{Note: I am not looking at any potency before the buff window because this is a thread about buff alignment and if it's worth to hold}

Balance - 920(2) x 1.1(SE) x 1.05(TA) = 2125.2 + (590x5 + 450 + 100)1.1 x 1.05 x 1.05(BH) = 6369.83 + 200(HS) x 1.1 x 1.05(BH) = 6600.83

Yours - 920(2) x 1.1 x 1.05 x 1.05 = 2231.46 + (590x5 + 450 + 100)1.1 x 1.05 x 1.05 = 6476.09
{I went with a perfect scenario for both where both get all 5 cleaves under buffs just to kinda show the best they could be within these conditions. Also for yours since you showed TA and BH as 15ish seconds, that's the timing I went with. Even if BH comes out closer to 13 it becomes even more of a DPS loss for you as you would guarantee a loss of FC under BH and FC at 590 potency is way more worth inside the window than SP at 380 potency.)

Your suggested opener loses people 124 - 191 potency under just BH and TA. This is because in your opener, assuming TA and BH go out at 15 seconds as you say, you don't have any GCDs buffed after IR ends. This means that the Balance way gives you 1 extra GCD under BH than your method which pushes it 100 potency ahead even though your method is ahead by ~106 within the buff window by the time IR hits. Both methods get the same potency within the IR window, so your method is still ~106 ahead. The end of the window occurs and you have nothing else buffed by BH, but Balance method has HS buffed by BH which gains it ~231 potency. This puts it ~125 potency ahead of your method.

Again, I do not care about the GCDs before or after the buff windows end as they are not affected by the buff windows. I sincerely hope this proves to you that your method is flawed and results in DPS loses for everyone involved. On top of that, it pushes the buff windows further back which gets perpetuated whenever downtime occurs and you're forced to hold buffs until afterwards which pushes them further back and risks losing uses. Once again: Delaying windows is an end-of-fight optimization, not a beginning-of-fight optimization. Also to the point of everyone needing to be BiS - Your method does require everyone to be in augmented tome and raid gear. If people try to prog using these suggestions they will 100% lose uses of buffs throughout the fight and for their reclears until they are BiS and even when they're BiS they risk losing uses because some people may just have a really top tier day where they don't mess up their rotation a single time or they get super lucky and direct crit everything in their opener and jump 5k DPS higher than their norm, etc, etc. The earlier you use buffs, the less likely you are to lose uses in a fight and also it affords you wiggle room to optimize buff alignment towards the end of a fight when you want to kill the boss under buff windows to pad DPS numbers a bit.

[Mansion]

I'm not a theorycraft whiz kid, I trust the Balance for that quite well. But what my normie eyes did notice is that some (maybe all but I'm not sure) encounters have "mechanics downtime" that fit perfectly with the CD reset of most buffs.
Like in O10S and its goddamn dives, yet it allowed a big burst during the Arcane Bulwark thingy where there isn't much to do (tanking, healing and mechanics wise) because most CDs would reset at that time. I kind of remember that on Chaos too.

So my point is that if you delay buffs in openers, you might hit a buff CD reset in the middle of a mechanic that's not so burst friendly. That's why "the sooner the better" is a good practice I think.