Why You Shouldn't Use Fracture

[CurlyBruce]

I use Fracture when I'm about to hit Berserk Pacification.

Don't use it for anything else.

Pretty much this. If you have a healer who is able to remove Pacification pretty much as soon as it hits you then yeah Fracture is worthless but otherwise using it at the end of Berserk isn't too bad.

[Sapphidia]

Pretty much this. If you have a healer who is able to remove Pacification pretty much as soon as it hits you then yeah Fracture is worthless but otherwise using it at the end of Berserk isn't too bad.

Yeah, what I was sort of implying by the cooldown side is that whilst cooldowns also improve all other moves, there's a limited amount you can do. Let's say you hit Berserk and then start doing your Butcher's Block combo. This combo takes 7.5 seconds. You can fit two and a bit of this combo into a berserk at 20 seconds. -Where- you hit the Berserk matters.

If you go Heavy -> Maim -> SE -> Berserk -> BB combo 1 -> BB combo 2 -> you now have two global cooldowns before berserk wears off. If you pop Berserk in between the Maim and the SE (as SE hits hard), you have one GCD before it wears off.

That one GCD is best used on a Fracture, because you can't get the full butcher's block combo in which "beats" it on DPS. That combo only beats it if the Average of the combo beats it, ie, if you can get the final hit off.

I maintain Fracture is a DPS increase and worth hitting in this situation - at some point during the Berserk buff, when Maim is up, and ideally when Internal Release is up too. All this together is worth hitting. Any other point it's not really worth it.

[Hachiko]

Hmmm. Fracture is worth it from a DPS perspective, but not from a TP perspective or Enmity perspective. It's still a 300 potency hit for one global, which is more Dmg / global than any other skill WAR has. The contribution is diluted though because it's only a 1 global gain out of 30 seconds, or 12 globals as noted. so it's ~90 more on an average global before you consider your other buffs. But it's only about an additional 7.5 potency per global - bringing you up from an average of 210 to 217.5 - which is a relatively minor gain.

The fact that it eats your TP more quickly just means it is the first thing to drop from your rotation if you use it.

The bigger issue is the way it impacts buffs. If you look at the rotation: BB->BB->SE->FRA->BB->BB->SE->BB->FRA->BB->SE->BB->BB->FR etc. there are some problems.

The bolded BB combos don't get the Storm's Eye bonus. which means 11% less enmity from 3/10 of your highest enmity moves. So even if it's a marginal DPS gain at the cost of TP, it's less of an increase in enmity. Basically you lose 11% of a single BB every time you fracture, which is theoretically worth 1/2 of the potency of the fracture in enmity (assuming it's really a 5x enmity multiplier).

It's worth noting that it is more worth it for MNK and DRG to use fracture, because they have various other skills which synergize with it, and because fracture is still slightly better than other attacks. For example, Monks don't have any particularly high potency attacks (their highest is 180) which makes the 220 from un-traited fracture pretty decent. And since they have access to invigorate, they can use it for quite a while on everything except the longest fights with no breaks (i.e. feeding both CAD snakes every slime spawn).

[Soulburn32]

So for PLD the only time to use this is when FoF is up? Is is it different than with WAR?

[PessimiStick]

If you will be TP starved before the boss dies, the time to use it as a PLD is "never".

[Vmage]

Whether i'm on pld or war.. i think there's three times I've used fracture and had it be a benefit..

titan's heart phase (dps is the only important thing here, titan's threat is locked once the heart happens so you're not losing enmity regardless of what you do)

turn 2 ADS - tank swaps.. your job while your stacks are resetting is to do dps, fracture is the highest dps button you have whether you're a paladin or a warrior

turn 4 - there's quite a few times where even a paladin will have solid threat on multiple mobs and have time to fracture, and since turn 4 is a timed gauntlet encounter rather than one big boss to kill... dps is the thing that matter most here

you probably could use it in any encounter where you aren't TP starved + have an enmity lead (which should be always).. so I guess that could should probably be a should

I don't use it outside of titan and coil though :s

[Terabyt3]

Fracture is certainly worth it for MNK and is in my permanent rotation for MNK right alongside demolish. Since I can IR and Smash out ID, Demolish, Fracture and ToD before going into my next GL stack upkeep combo it's very effective and ups MNKs DPS in reality because of the moving around associated with melee classes.

[RapBreon]

So basically there is one situation I can see if ever being used in then.

Berserk is about to end, you're not at the final move in your combo (BB or SE), TP won't be an issue (short-fight or at the end), assuming no invuln mechanics, then you can fracture. That look about right? Circumstantial, might not be worth keeping on my bars even then.

Informative post non-the-less, ty. I don't use it to begin with, but now I can feel at ease when I remove it from my bars :P

[Kitru]

So basically there is one situation I can see if ever being used in then.

That's pretty much it (except that you don't have to have Berserk up to have it provide the relevant benefit; the comparative advantage/disadvantage remains regardless of whether you use it with Berserk active or not because the other attack would have benefited from Berserk the same amount, proportionately). Even then, in that circumstance, you're not even going to see much of an improvement out of using Fracture thanks dilution. You can safely remove it from your bar without worrying about losing out on anything really.

[Jahaudant]

You can safely remove it from your bar without worrying about losing out on anything really.

Not sure why you would give such advice. If you want to maximise your potential you should be maintaining Fracture in all single target encounters that you don't hit 0 TP in.