Early Vs Delay Openers

[Oxdarock]

Looking at the document, I take it that the goal is to get a net gain by readjusting every class's opener so every possible buff lines up together with every class's strongest bursts? I'm just curious how this would work if not all the buffs are present for the particular party or how it affects damage down the line since these adjustments would affect everyone's rotations post the opener. Would they realign again naturally later in the fight? Will it still be a net gain with the adjustments needed between then? Would this slowly lose damage the longer the fight goes on? How short would a fight need to be for this to be a net gain if that's the case?

Obviously, this would require a lot of coordination too since everyone would actually lose damage if all the buffs didn't line up as planned, yeah? So in pugs, it's safe to assume that the more generally optimal early opener is better either way? Just curious of these things since they do of course matter. I think it's an interesting concept either way, adjusting a team's openings to better line up with buffs; I'm just curious how it all loops back to retain this synchronization of buffs and bursts and how it pans out depending on the team makeup.

Yes, that’s exactly the goal of this document, to get a net gain by lining buffs with every classes' strongest burst. It uses an extreme example of having the most percentage based raid buffs in the party, but if buffs are missing, then naturally the gain is less, though this is true for early openers as well. The most noticeable change to the rotation with delayed openers is that certain oGCDs come off cooldown 1-3 GCDs later than their earlier counterparts. Other than that, there’s no particularly drastic change in the rotation, which means everything should keep this alignment so long as nothing needs to be held, with everything lining up again at the 6 minute mark.

As for net gain in relation to fight duration, it should continue to increase so long as nothing is held and the rotation is continued like normal. However, it becomes a loss if that 1-3 GCD delay causes one to miss a portion of their burst window, or a particularly hard hitting GCD/oGCD that they’d normally be able to fit in using an earlier opener mid-fight due to mechanics, phase shifting, and sometimes add phases or dps checks (not the end of the fight since the boss dying sooner is typically a good thing). No amount of raid buffs can make up for an extra cast. The most well-known example of this is the GNB opener for E3S, in which they go into their burst window even sooner than in the early version, all so that they don’t miss a portion of a burst later on due to Maelstrom.

As for what openers to use in a pug scenario, I’d agree that using the early openers would be best in terms of keeping everything optimal with no coordination. The early openers have been around long enough to be considered standard, so there’s a good chance that other people will be using them. The only openers where the version you use is mostly irrelevant are PLD, BLM, and SAM, all of whom don’t particularly care about team comp and do their own thing. I will say that while the delayed SAM opener does more damage due to being ahead two GCDs, I’m not 100% sure if it’s an overall gain due to things like filler combos and/or ad hoc style play. However, the BLM delayed opener is a gain in most scenarios as the combination of F1 and F3 does more damage than a sixth F4 while still fitting in the same time frame, with Swiftcast timing being the main difference. MNK’s also in a similar situation since Anatman shenanigans make that opener inconsistent while the TK opener can still fit pretty well into most other classes’ rotations, even with the delayed BH timing.