
Originally Posted by
Jonnycbad
Should I save legsweep and Jumps for Disembowel? Like if I just killed a mob and I'm running to the next, and Jump and Leg are the only oGCD ready, should I use them as soon as I can, or wait for ID>Dis first for the 10%?
In terms of potency / time, the break-even point for whether to use a skill before or after a buff is the buff's effect times the cooldown.
Example: Leg Sweep immediately is the same potency / time as Leg Sweep with Disembowel but 2 seconds later. Unless Disembowel is the first available GCD or there are other buffs to activate, use Leg Sweep immediately after your next GCD.
Jump needs 3 seconds for Disembowel to pay off. So, it's more or less the same deal as Leg Sweep, but with the added caveat that you should continue into Chaos Thrust to get the benefit of Disembowel without halting GCDs, and even then you're cutting it really close to 3 seconds if you are latency-free. However! Power Surge is a bigger thing to be waiting on.
Spineshatter Dive and Dragonfire Dive need 6 seconds and 12 seconds respectively, so waiting for Disembowel is better potency than using it before.
Exercise 1: Will holding out for Heavy Thrust pay off?
If you don't have a combo to finish, sure. It's only one GCD, and the acceptable amount of time to hold for 15% is longer than for 10%, after which you can revert to the 10% calculations above, provided there is no IR or BfB to pop. Technically, losing Heavy Thrust is a bit worse than losing Blood of the Dragon in a general sense. In a practical sense, it rarely ever comes down to one or the other for more than a few seconds.
Exercise 2: Will Blood of the Dragon pay off?
ahahahahahaha this is above my pay grade
In practical terms, though:
- Whoever uses a skill the most times usually wins. Fights don't usually give you enough time for small potency gains to be noticeable over getting more uses.
- Whoever uses a skill that causes their own death usually loses.
- Whoever saves a gap closer for a good reason has diminished ~1.8% [Spineshatter] or ~1.1% [Dragonfire] of theoretical dummy DPS to save the >92% that has to be done up close. Uptime is the strongest buff in the game, period. (And lots of boss rotations sync up with cooldown timers anyway.)