Why You Shouldn't Use Fracture

[Kitru]

What do the #'s really represent? TP cost doesn't matter if you aren't TP Starved.

Except that, unless a fight has explicit periods of downtime where you're not able to attack for an extended period, you're *going* to become TP starved. A WAR can only manage 3 minutes of constant ST rotation before running out of TP. Add in Fracture and it goes down to 2.5 minutes. Boss fights last well in excess of that. Even with the downtime provided by their immunity phases and running around, you're still going to run out of TP for anything except for Ifrit (who just has absurdly long immunity phases; you pretty much *can't* run out of TP when fighting Ifrit). In general, I hit that point on Titan around 25%, even with incredibly good DPS simply because the times when I can't attack just don't last long enough, nor are they regular enough (p5 has none, in fact).

The basics of this entire argument are that Fracture *does* provide a DPS increase, given unlimited resources and time, but it's so small as to be only a semantic increase. As soon as you factor in the substantially higher cost, it ends up being an explicit *decrease* in damage dealt over the long term because it forces you into empty GCDs earlier. To make up for the fact that you're going to have these lost GCDs, using Fracture would need to provide an 8+% increase in total damage output but it barely manages any at all.

Fracture is only useful when TP isn't a concern (which means that the fight has to last less than 2.5 minutes) and it will be allowed to tick the entire duration (assuming you have to establish a threat cushion first via BB>SE>Frac, this means that the fight has to last at least 47.5 seconds). It's got a sweet spot where it has a marginal reason to exist (marginal because it doesn't actually increase DPS by that much), but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't actually do enough to justify keeping around for the tiny portion of fights that land in that sweet spot (hell, when I'm soloing, stuff dies before 30 seconds comes up so it's not even useful for that).

[Soulburn32]

The best place I found for Fracture for PLD is this:
When your finishing your RoH combo and you have a OFCD to use like Spirits or CoS or Bloodbath that you are going to use slip in Fracture to minimize the GCD loss of using Fracture.

So for example:
RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture -> Fast Blade

[PessimiStick]

The best place I found for Fracture for PLD is this:
When your finishing your RoH combo and you have a OFCD to use like Spirits or CoS or Bloodbath that you are going to use slip in Fracture to minimize the GCD loss of using Fracture.

So for example:
RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture -> Fast Blade

What is this nonsense? OGCDs have absolutely no bearing on this whatsoever. Use them as soon as they are off cooldown, no matter what else you're doing. Fracture has no bearing on that, and they have no interaction with Fracture.

[Kitru]

When your finishing your RoH combo and you have a OFCD to use like Spirits or CoS or Bloodbath that you are going to use slip in Fracture to minimize the GCD loss of using Fracture.

That makes absolutely no sense. SW and CoS should be used on CD because they're explicit DPS increases. If you're *not* using them, you're hurting yourself. Justifying Fracture by saying that using your off-GCDs, which should be used *anyways*, makes absolutely no sense. Furthermore, for PLD, you really don't want to use Fracture because, if you're maintaining it, it's making up a larger portion of your total rotation thanks to the shorter duration (Halone>Halone>Frac) while also having drastically reduced damage (220 with all ticks compared to 300 for WAR).

For a PLD, Fracture would increase net TP consumption from 13.33 ((20+10+10) / 3) to 17.5 ((20 +10 + 10 + 30) / 4) while only increasing pre-buff potency per GCD from 336.66 ((150 + 200 + 260) / 3 + 83.33 + 25 + 25) to 339.04 ((150 * 2 + 200 * 2 + 260 * 2 + 220) / 7 + 83.33 + 25 + 25). You're increasing TP consumption by 31% to increase damage by .71%. Once again, a marginal increase to DPS that only really exists as a semantic truth rather than a practical one that comes at a *massive* resource cost. It's another case where Fracture is worthless outside of the sweet spot and, even within the sweet spot, provides so little that there's no real difference between using it and not.

[Soulburn32]

lots of math that i don't care about

i never said I wasn't using them when they were not off cooldown thanks for making assumptions.

The best use of OGCD is between GCD skills. I simply stated the sweet spot for me was if an OGCD was ready when using RoH as it has the longest animation and you can use OFGD skills to clip that animation.

For instance RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture
IS Faster Than
RoH -> Fracture

[Kitru]

i never said I wasn't using them when they were not off cooldown thanks for making assumptions.

And I never said that you weren't either. I said that the justification you were using is flawed *because* you're already using those abilities.

The best use of OGCD is between GCD skills. I simply stated the sweet spot for me was if an OGCD was ready when using RoH as it has the longest animation and you can use OFGD skills to clip that animation.

For instance RoH -> Spirits -> Fracture
IS Faster Than
RoH -> Fracture

Except that it's not. The animation of Halone still finishes shortly before the refresh rate comes up. The limiting factor on using on-GCD abilities isn't animation: it's the GCD itself. Using off-GCD abilities doesn't magically shorten the GCD.

Your sweet spot exists solely within your mind. In reality, it doesn't exist and, in fact, comes with the explicit DPS loss due to increased resource consumption that I referred you to before.

[Sebastien]

The reason for this is pretty simple: Fracture is pretty expensive for a single target attacks given the damage it deals. It cost 80 TP, which is a net loss of 30 TP/GCD; at 300 potency per use, that's 10 potency per net TP cost. The BB combo (150 + 200 + 280; 70 + 60 + 60) is 15.75 (630 / (70 + 60 + 60 - 50 * 3)). On top of this, the value of that higher potency per GCD is diluted *very* heavily by the fact that, in order for it to actually provide that massive potency benefit, it can only be used once every 12 GCDs.

I don't follow your math. Fracture costs 80 TP per GCD, not 30. It requires one GCD to use. So if you want to look at dmg per TP, you should be dividing by 80. I get 7.75. (btw does your 300 potency include the 100 potency upfront damage, in addition to the dot? Does it account for the extended duration? I can't find any source to confirm that number.) If, on the other hand, you want to know the DPET (or damage per effective time, or per GCD in this case), you would divide by 1. 300 / 1 = 300.

Compare that with your three-step combo. The dmg per TP is 3.32. The dmg per GCD is 210.

As you can see, Fracture does VASTLY more damage per TP and significantly more damage per GCD.

However, as you pointed out, is has no bonus enmity. If we looked at enmity per TP or enmity per GCD, it probably falls way behind. Therefore you have a tradeoff between your personal DPS and your personal threat generation. Paladin's face the same choice when deciding whether or not to hit shield swipe. It increases our DPS but lowers our TPS. It also slows our TP consumption, just like Fracture would. As far as I can tell, the two abilities have an almost identical place in our respective rotations.

The ability isn't broken and shouldn't be ignored. It's situational, and in cases where you find yourself with a healthy threat margin, you can use it to increase your DPS. You can also use it to throttle your TP consumption (or more accurately lower your TP-cost-per-damage).

[Kitru]

I don't follow your math. Fracture costs 80 TP per GCD, not 30.

You're ignoring the 50 TP regained with every GCD. I specifically said *net* TP loss and the net TP loss for Fracture is 30 (80 -50). You have to look at resource consumption as it compares to resource regeneration. Looking at cost in a vacuum means nothing. It's for this exact same reason that Overpower stops looking as amazing as many people seem to think it is and Flash looks a lot *better*: Overpower has a net loss of 80 TP per GCD whereas Flash provides a net *gain* of 50 TP per GCD. Ignoring TP regeneration is going to skew your results massively.

(btw does your 300 potency include the 100 potency upfront damage, in addition to the dot? Does it account for the extended duration? I can't find any source to confirm that number.)

Yes. The initial hit goes for 100 potency while the DoT ticks 10 times (once every 3 seconds) for 20 potency, for a total of 300.

The ability isn't broken and shouldn't be ignored.

I'm not saying it's broken. I'm saying it's not useful. The damage that it provides does not make up for the dramatically increased cost. TP cost should not be measured as a deviation from 0 but as a deviation from resource regeneration.

[CurlyBruce]

You're ignoring the 50 TP regained with every GCD.

Just a quick correction, I'm pretty sure you regain 60 TP per GCD while in combat. Still doesn't invalidate your point though.

[Kitru]

Just a quick correction, I'm pretty sure you regain 60 TP per GCD while in combat. Still doesn't invalidate your point though.

It's 60 TP every 3 seconds (the same server time that DoT damage is applied). Since the GCD is 2.5 seconds, the TP gained per GCD is 50 (60 * 3 * 2.5.