Why You Shouldn't Use Fracture

[Kitru]

I have to wonder... is it useful at any point in the class? Is it like WoW's old school (pre-Cata) Rend? Something you get as a lowbie before they give you a real skill?

The only time its useful is in *extreme* edge cases that almost have to be designed to make it effective and, even then, the improvement is so minute you'd likely never notice. It's only going to be legitimately useful for 2 levels, from 28 to 30, when you've got Enhanced Fracture (so the duration is 30 seconds and the potency per GCD it provides is 300) but before you've got Butcher's Block (which turns the HS>SS combo from less efficient than Frac to way *more* efficient than Frac).

The only possible way I could see for Frac to be useful would be for some kind of proc trait on the DoT damage be applied, likely something that restores TP or allows recharges Mercy Stroke and allows you to use it without the target being below 20%. They could change either Enhanced Fracture or Enhanced Mercy Stroke and, interestingly enough, it would actually make the both of them useful if the proc chance is high enough (20% proc chance at 6 ticks would boost Fracture's effective potency per GCD to 460, which is enough to make it cost effective).

I actually kind of like that idea. Change Enhanced Fracture to the 20% chance per tick to reset and allow Mercy Stroke and Enhanced Mercy Stroke to provide 5-10% of max hp on a hit regardless and you've just made the both of them actually have a place in the grand scheme of WAR.

[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).

[Viridiana]

Correct me if I'm wrong fracture is even worse than in your proposed case because the damage over time cannot crit, so it's even less damage per TP.

I don't know where people get the idea that damage over time in this game can't crit. They definitely can.

[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

[Duelle]

I have to wonder...is it useful at any point in the class? Is it like WoW's old school (pre-Cata) Rend? Something you get as a lowbie before they give you a real skill?

Maybe what it needs is what happened to Rend in WoW after Cata. It became something you could apply, that had a built in threat component, and other skills renewed it. You could have its timer reset anytime you re-applied "Storm's Path".

The thing about Rend is that pre-Cata Rend had a mechanic tied where you could not use certain abilities unless Rend was up. You couldn't use WoW's version of Overpower (attack that could otherwise only be used if your last attack was dodged or parried), and even if you could it was on a 6-second internal cooldown. It also had a +damage taken mechanic by speccing into Blood Frenzy which increased the raid's damage by 4%.

WAR currently lacks the type of abilities that would work with the above design. I guess making other abilities renew the duration of Fracture would also work, as it would require the WAR to find an optimal rotation for maximizing Fracture uptime while still keeping their DPS/Threat where it needs to be.

[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.