FF 5.X Alternative Raid Buff Alignment and Openers

[HyoMinPark]

One problem...
I never said any of the things you just claimed...YOU are the one that said that.

SaberMaxwell said,

It's not really a thing to disagree on. Every fight in this game is scripted down to the letter, including Ultimate. Trash pulls are variable because of the tank, but beyond that? The boss will always buster at the same time, mechanics will always happen at the same time, and heals will always be needed in the same places barring avoidable damage being taken.

Read carefully the bolded part.

Then you replied with,

No they actually won't, because damage is not constant, so the Boss mob getting to that transition phase is not constant either with your timing nor your CDs. It COULD turn out that way... but it also might not.

You are incorrect here. Starting with Stormblood, boss phases/transitions occur at set times, not HP values. It doesn’t matter what your damage is: you could have Titan at 99% HP and he will still go into Titan Maximum at ~3:43 into the encounter. Every time. Without fail. Your CD timings will not change because his busters will be at the same time irregardless of Massive Landslide first or ATV mode first. He won’t randomly throw it in at a random time stamp or do a random AOE right before Crumbling Down to call for extra healing; each phase has their mechanics set in set-in-stone intervals that never change.

You also stated this in another post,

That also is not true... a boss mob can have a random choice of which of its attacks to use. It could be a tank buster, it could be a gaze attack it could be something else. Either way all of those will disrupt your timing which in turn causes you to alter your rotation to something else.

These quotes are implying that these fights aren’t scripted; because you’re saying right here that there is a likelihood that bosses (read again: BOSSES) will deviate from their set rotation, but they don’t.

There are very few fights that have an illusion of RNG mechanics (E2S final phase, E4S Phase 1), but each of these “variations” (E2S Cycles, E4S Massive Landslide/ATV) have set rotations that they still follow without fail. Mitigation and healing cooldowns are determined the minute you see the first variation you’ll get (because bosses always do A Pattern followed by B Pattern in any fight with variations like this—never the same twice in a row). DPS rotations hardly change at all: you will still burst at the same time, use your GCDs/oGCDs at the same time, etc.. These things do not change. The only things that will likely change are defensive/mitigative oGCDs (e.g., Addle, Shield Samba, Troubadour, Tactician, Mantra), but even those will always have set intervals where they will always be used (e.g., your group wants Samba for Crumbling Down, you will always use it there; no variation).

You brought up Brawler—he may have 1 out of 4 types of Attachment, but he will always use Attachment at the same intervals in a given pull (i.e., at the same time stamp). He will never repeat any of the Drill or Beam attacks after he uses them. There’s very little that one would have to change in one’s rotation outside of mitigation, which wouldn’t affect GCD rotations since tank cooldowns are all oGCDs. And these rotations are all planned regardless of this variance: if it’s Single Beam buster, tank will use X cooldown every time; if it’s Double Beam group split, healer will use Y cooldown every time.


Damage in boss fights is consistent. They AOE at the same time, tankbuster at the same time. There is very little variance, especially now because there is no such thing as phase-pushing bosses anymore. That went away over two years ago. ShB even removed Crit Autos from the bosses, so you don’t have to worry about random crits. This game is incredibly scripted in nature, and to imply that it’s not implies you have very little understanding of encounter design. At least with regards to anything recent/relevant.


Not to mention, the thread itself is about someone presenting suboptimal openers; not rotations. Openers in a fight never vary barring RNG-based classes like BRD, DNC, RDM, and AST (because of Divination). But SMNs always use the same opener in a fight; BLMs use the same opener; DRGs, NINs, SAMs, MNKs, all use the same opener; tanks all use the same opener.

[Silverquick]

1. Just turn around and continue your rotation as normal.

2. Aetherflow abilities can be spent at any time before the next Aetherflow is ready without disturbing the rotation. The 'rotation' is based around the use of non-chargeable cooldowns. You don't lose those because you had to fester the Hand instead of the boss.

1. You do realize of course you have to be facing your target for any of those attacks to go off right?

2. You just made my point for me, if they're on cooldown... you can't use them anymore. So you will have to alter your rotation around those missing GCDs. That one mechanic just forced you to use them both and out of order.

[Kabooa]

1. You do realize of course you have to be facing your target for any of those attacks to go off right?

2. You just made my point for me, if they're on cooldown... you can't use them anymore. So you will have to alter your rotation around those missing GCDs. That one mechanic just forced you to use them both and out of order.

1. One of the most basic entries into advanced play is maintaining uptime against gazes. You only need to be facing the enemy for 1 frame on anything that doesn't enforce a stationary animation lock, aka there is no reason to use "Deathflare early" against a Gaze attack as a summoner. The gaze doesn't change the rotation.

2. Fester isn't a GCD?

[ReiMakoto]

1. You do realize of course you have to be facing your target for any of those attacks to go off right?

2. You just made my point for me, if they're on cooldown... you can't use them anymore. So you will have to alter your rotation around those missing GCDs. That one mechanic just forced you to use them both and out of order.

You can turn around turning the gcd cooldown of an instant spell and loose absolutely nothing

If you need to kill an add, you transfer doing your rotation onto the add, its not some great mystery lol, if you need to burn an extra rescourse to not die, youve not "lost" that resource, youve just used it somewhere else.

[Oxdarock]

Thought I'd make an update on my progress with organizing my calculations on the potency of these delayed openers. It's coming along and I have a format and everything, but I've been a bit too busy to stop to work on it. ^^; I hope to make it public at least by early January, in which I’ll have four dps classes finished: NIN, RDM, DRG, and BRD. After that, I plan to update it with the rest of the classes little by little. After a bit more research into buff application delay, some openers will be adjusted slightly or have an extra note attached regarding timings.

On that note, some might have picked up on my challenge to the Balance NIN opener somewhere in this and the tank version of this thread. Well, the short answer is: I failed. Spectacularly, lol! Yeah, both the use of Doton, as well as the GCDs and oGCDs within TA, from the Balance opener provide more damage and more of a boost via TA than what I initially came up with. However, now that I know more about how the Balance NIN opener works, I was able to make adjustments and come up with a NIN opener that still fits within the raid buff timings of delayed openers while only falling short of the Balance opener by approximately 5.5 potency in a vacuum (i.e. solo on a striking dummy). So determining which opener does more damage will rely on raid buff alignment.

I will say that I did come up with an adjustment for the Balance NIN opener regarding the Huton and Doton timings. Assuming they haven't been updated and are still 11.5 secs and 7.5secs pre-pull respectively, you can actually wait till about 7-8 secs pre-pull to use Huton and 4 seconds to use Doton (3secs if you can manage it and still use Suiton in time). Here’s why:

Doton works similar to most DoTs in that damage goes out every 3secs, give or take. So if it’s used 7.5 seconds pre-pull, you’ve already lost 2 of the server based ticks (surprisingly, moves like Doton and Salted Earth hit one extra time within the first second after being used, plus the first server tick) and might possibly lose a 3rd if the boss isn’t dragged in quick enough. If used at 3-4 seconds pre-pull, you’re guaranteed at least 6 server based ticks (7 if you’re lucky), while still having enough time to use Hide (which now restores 2 charges of mudra, something I completely overlooked) and prep Suiton before the pull begins. Naturally, since the time you can use Doton pre-pull is shorter, Huton can be use a bit closer to the pull as well in order to possibly earn yourself an extra Aeolian Edge down the line before refreshing with Armor Crush.

So that’s where I am regarding organizing my calculations. Look forward to it and until then, Happy Holidays! \o/

[Vendalwind]

snip

I appreciated reading this post.

Further food for thought on doton at that time. NIN mudras cooldown resets on first mudra use. So although using doton later gives an extra tick or two you are dependent on fight timer losing a raiton (800 potency). Those as much as 3 extra ticks of doton + not having to use an armor crush (also fight time dependent) grants at best (100*3 +20) potency. So its a hard call tho, but the point being if you are going to get that extra raiton it is still better to perform the early doton with the standard opener.

HOWEVER with your delayed NIN opener I think some raiton cast time was lost anyways (not 100% sure){mudra over-capping} because trick is delayed If this is the case it wouldn't alter yours as much since the raiton timer would be locked into the timing of the raid buffs regardless of when the first mudra was cast.

*side note* If you are still intentionally clipping with the pot this is a poor choice. That will always be a dps loss rather than a gain even it if aligns trick somehow exactly where you want it.

[Oxdarock]

Further food for thought on doton at that time. NIN mudras cooldown resets on first mudra use. So although using doton later gives an extra tick or two you are dependent on fight timer losing a raiton (800 potency). Those as much as 3 extra ticks of doton + not having to use an armor crush (also fight time dependent) grants at best (100*3 +20) potency. So its a hard call tho, but the point being if you are going to get that extra raiton it is still better to perform the early doton with the standard opener.

HOWEVER with your delayed NIN opener I think some raiton cast time was lost anyways (not 100% sure){mudra over-capping} because trick is delayed If this is the case it wouldn't alter yours as much since the raiton timer would be locked into the timing of the raid buffs regardless of when the first mudra was cast.

*side note* If you are still intentionally clipping with the pot this is a poor choice. That will always be a dps loss rather than a gain even it if aligns trick somehow exactly where you want it.

I actually thought this at the time when I began testing openers. I realized that by using Huton at 11.5 seconds pre-pull, the recast would start ticking and you could expect mudra to gain a charge around 8secs and 28secs and so on. You could still use Doton later than 7.5 seconds pre-pull though since the timing has no effect on the recast timer and you'd use Hide right after it to gain a charge for Suiton. The only thing that really matter was how close you could use it before the pull while still being able to use Suiton in time (I found 4 seconds pre-pull to be a comfortable place).

What I completely overlooked was that Hide actually gives you 2 charges of mudra, not one (which is funny since I don't recall this fact ever being mentioned by SE. There isn't even a notice that the effect has been slightly adjusted on the job page. ^^; ). This means that, regardless of when Huton and Doton are cast, the recast timer on mudras stops the moment you use Hide (since you're at max charges) and starts up again once you use mudras for Suiton. So you gain a mudra charge around 20secs and so on at that point.

Also, I might have worded it poorly, but you're never going to get the full number of ticks from Doton no matter what you do. The point of using it close to the pull is just so that you don't lose as many. Using it 3-4 seconds guarantees that you at least get six ticks, with the 7th being dependent on how fast the boss is dragged into Doton vs the server tick. The extra Aeolian edge due to later Huton cast is a possibility, but is something that's can only be figured out by playing the class a lot (I admittedly stopped after the opener). And like you said, it's only 20+ potency, which despite being a gain, is still pretty minor.

And yeah, the current NIN opener that I initially wrote is not optimal. I've made the adjustments already and will update them once I've presented my calculations in how the opener interacts with other raid buffs (and no, it no longer using the pot to intentionally clip).

[Oxdarock]

An update on the progress of the calculations doc I'm in the process of making. I was actually able to get the tables for the NIN, RDM, DRG, and BRD comparisons finished, so I might be able to make it public either later today or tomorrow. I just need to update a couple of the openers a bit and organize the doc a bit (plus proofreading and blah, blah).

The results were... not what I was expecting and has definitely humbled me a bit. So far among the four DPS, using the timings I came up with to keep some form of consistency, NIN and DRG favor the early raid buffs while RDM and BRD favor the delayed one. In terms of potency using GCDs and oGCDs, there was an 80 potency difference with NIN, a 129.7 potency difference with DRG, and a 136.7 potency difference with RDM. And then there's BRD, which was a 494.8 potency difference (not counting RA and PP procs, both of which are probability based). So a bit of mixed results so far.

Definitely a bit disheartened by the NIN and DRG results. It's possible that auto attack damage might close the gap, but that's a bit beyond what I'm capable of calculating and at most it'd probably make them about even. There's also a bit of inconsistency with the number of GCDs that fit within Pot and buffs windows with the timings I used due to delays in buff application. All in all, without a team to test these on in game for accurate timings in buff duration or access to ACT myself (I've used FFlogs to figure out the delays), I've pretty much reached the limit of what I can math out.

Anyway, that's where I'm at progress wise right now. On a side note, are the timings for HJ and SSD in the Balance DRG opener still the same (HJ after Chaos and SSD after WT)? I don't have access to the Balance Discord, so I have no idea. From what I figured out though, it seems like switching them would be a gain since the earliest percentage based buff that comes out is Technical Finish around 7secs and HJ is currently used before that. Plus, double weaving MD and GsK would allow the former to catch a slightly stronger buff of Embolden. Just thought I'd toss out that bit of info.

EDIT: Whoops! Made a mistake with the DRG opener. I put in DFD in the Early opener table twice. ^^; So it looks like the delayed opener actually favors DRG as well with a 494 potency difference. Well, that's a nice confidence booster, lol!

[Serude]

I just gotta say thx for the entertainment from this thread. You guys ripping apart the op stuff here is epic.

[SleepyNeko]

snip, just talking about pushing phases

Yeah Hades EX really messes with rotations from all the skip-able phases.