How does everyone feel about skill speed?

[Solen]

Skill/spell speed (to a slightly less extent) is perhaps the most useless skills in the game. With the way determination works, thats the only stat that beats out skill/spell for being more worthless.

[Gotcha]

Speaking of dots, what is the proper course of action to take in the following example:

You have applied a dot that is buffed with raging strike. Raging strikes has faded and the dot is approaching expiration. Your GCD comes up with 1 second left on the DOT. Is it best to delay the GCD in order to get your DOT back up or should you fire off an attack and lose 1.5 seconds of DOT uptime?

Any dot that is applied with a damage increase(like raging strikes) can not be reapplied without the same damage buff or one of more potency. You have to let it fall off before you can apply the dot without rageing strikes. The effect is the same with non-stacking buffs aswell.

[Woodberry]

Any dot that is applied with a damage increase(like raging strikes) can not be reapplied without the same damage buff or one of more potency. You have to let it fall off before you can apply the dot without rageing strikes. The effect is the same with non-stacking buffs aswell.

I understand this. I was asking if you should delay the global cooldown and wait that second to apply the dot or use a damage ability like heavy shot and lose 1.5 seconds of the dot being up.

In normal circumstances, I'd use an attack, but with bards you also lose a potential tick of damage which can proc a bloodletter, so it may be better to delay to GCD.

[EasymodeX]

It's more or less never better to delay the GCD.

You're basically saying you're considering the guaranteed loss (delay) of, say, 1.0 seconds out of a [checks class context] 2.4? GCD. That's a loss of 42% of an attack.

In order to increase the coverage of the DOT debuff by 1.4s. DOTs tick every 3, so that's a 1.4/3s = 47% chance of picking up 1 tick of 20/35/45 potency DOT. 42% of a 150 potency Heavy Shot > 47% chance of a 45 DOT tick.

This isn't a truly accurate way of assessing the change in DOT coverage, but it's "eh" in the ballpark.

[Riffy]

Ah, the art of min-max at work

[Woodberry]

In order to increase the coverage of the DOT debuff by 1.4s. DOTs tick every 3, so that's a 1.4/3s = 47% chance of picking up 1 tick of 20/35/45 potency DOT. 42% of a 150 potency Heavy Shot > 47% chance of a 45 DOT tick.

Heavy shot is potency 150. My crit chance is 14% but I will always have SS up, so 24%.

Crit chance % * 1.5 * Damage per hit + (1 - Crit chance %) * Damage per hit = Heavy shot damage

24%*1.5*150+(1-76%)*150=168

If you delay that 1 second it comes out to 67.2 damage you miss out on by delaying.

The problem I'm having is calculating the proc chance damage. You would be delaying a chance at 2 dot ticks since you would be delaying two dots. You would have a guaranteed 1 dot tick and 50% chance of the second one? Or when I think about it, only one would hit, but one would always hit?

[EasymodeX]

I typed up a reasonably extensive analysis of the costs and benefit of the "delay the HS" scenario, but I was post-capped so it was lost when I hit the back button. The extreme TLDR version is:

1. Delaying the partial HS will grant you a % chance to replace a 1-dot-tick event with a 2-dot-tick event. E.g. if you don't wait, you'll still have 1 dot up for this gap that you're trying to cover with the delay.

2. This benefit will occur twice (one for each DOT) even though you only delay once (because the delay cascades to the second DOT).

3. This isn't enough to overcome the hard cost of a 1/2.4 delay of 150 potency, and that doesn't even factor in the concept of Straighter Shot.

[pandabearcat]

I did the exact same thing as Easy, with the exact same stupid post cap limit.

Essentially, it comes down to

~40*(GCD - s) > 67.2*s

Where s is the breakpoint at which its better to switch, aka, if the DoT is going to expire in < s seconds, delay GCD to refresh, otherwise, use GCD then refresh after that.

At close to 2.5 GCD, the breakpoint is ~0.93 seconds. Which means, if you can no longer see the number on the DoT debuff, delay until it disappears entirely then refresh. Otherwise, HS or other filler instead.

At closer to 2.0 GCD (aka monks), the breakpoint is ~0.7 seconds, which means its almost never worth it to delay GCD

[Woodberry]

Thanks guys, wish I could have seen your calculations on it, but have faith in both of you that you are correct.

Edit: Went to test and with the animation delay, the buff will expire if you start your action if less than a second. So realistically you should delay is 1 second shows up and then cast and if it is 2 or more, use a different action? Sound right?

[EasymodeX]

Yes if you are able to overwrite the existing DOT re: clipping constraints. If you are unable to overwrite the existing DOT because it is buffed and you currently have none up, then don't cast it even though it will expire during the animation because the game checks applicability before the animation, not after it.