Thread: Monk 3.0 CHAKRA UNLEASHED

Originally Posted by Yoten

Why would Snap-Snap-Demo be better? You'd be refreshing Demo only a few GCDs later, clipping so much of the DoT that its damage is heavily neutered. Putting it first at least lets it run more of its natural course.

I haven't started leveling monk to 60 yet, but if it's still valid Snap>Snap>Demo is better because Demo would be fully buffed and it also allows you to finish PB opener with Snap instead of Demo (which is a faster animation when you're trying to sneak ToD in). With the increased GL duration now (and the fact I'm not a lv60 monk) I don't know if any of that is still valid. Just sneaking in and catching up because Monk will probably be the next dps I level to 60

Originally Posted by Yoten

Why would Snap-Snap-Demo be better? You'd be refreshing Demo only a few GCDs later, clipping so much of the DoT that its damage is heavily neutered. Putting it first at least lets it run more of its natural course.

No, you'd do Snap next. And pre-HW, Demolish was 18s, so you didn't clip anything this way even with mondo skill speed. Not only that, Greased Lightning II damage buff and Blood for Blood (29.8% in combination) had a slight edge over just having it ticking from the start. In addition, timing it this way would give you the first ToD and the second Demolish with BfB, IR, and a potion provided you had a certain level of skill speed. Putting Demolish last also made the timing more forgiving, as pre-HW it would give you nearly a second more tolerance for refreshing GL. This part was important because simply having several damage buffs on ToD was superior to using ToD first, but using Snap Punch as the third PB move could leave you high and dry if slipping the extra GCD in there ended up losing your stacks--you could still make it technically, just you'd be cutting it so close that GL3 visibly fell off before refreshing (and in fact an auto-attack could and did fall in that window... not good!).

If I'm to understand what today's patch does correctly, every GL application is about .5 seconds more tolerant than Demolish was before 3.0.

Now, I'd have to do the heavy theorycrafting someday I'm not headbashing A4, but my hunch is that +43% damage is well worth waiting for, even at the price of a slight clip or whatever. And if it's not, then perhaps snap [pb] snap demo snap does the trick.

(part 1 - stupid character limit)

I'm talking about clipping it with the Boot-True-Demo sequence that follows PB wearing off. You will absolutely clip your first Demo there regardless of skill speed.

But anyway, you and whiskybravo are talking about "sneaking in" ToD and lining it up with your buffs, but you could already do that before. You also talk about the possibility of losing stacks, but with practice that isn't an issue either. There wasn't a large margin for error, sure, but it wasn't difficult. So neither of those seem like valid points unless you just want to make things easier on yourselves rather than maximize your damage.

This is what I've been using for my opener and its followup (parenthesis = OGCDs weaved in):

Demo (PB) -> Snap -> Snap -> Snap -> DK (IR) -> Twin (B4B) -> Boot (potion) -> True (Elixir) -> Demo (Steel Peak) -> Fracture (Howling) -> ToD (Chakra) -> DK -> Twin -> Snap

Nah, there's pretty much nothing in the current monk repertoire that's worth clipping Demolish that early for.

Yeah so the old opener is the best bet. Its pretty fluid I tried it out earlier. Pb-dm-sp-sp-dk-twn-tod-boot-true-dm-frac. So it pretty much boils down to is fracture w/ b4b more potency then doing a form shift and getting 1 snap punch buffed.

(part 2)

You can shuffle your OGCDs around as desired, omitting the potion for non-progression fights or shifting things up so that you have IR/B4B/pot ready before Bootshine, but that's the gist of it.

This gets you fully-buffed DoTs and Chakra for your initial burst and has no risk of dropping your buffs/stacks as long as you don't waste any time, and today's GL duration extension makes your stacks safe even if you do.

I've only been considering two changes:

1) Demo-Snap-Snap vs. Snap-Snap-Demo: As I said above, it sounds more like doing Demo last clips it badly enough to negate the GL bonus it would have, but that would require more precise testing. No-GL Demo is always better than GL2 Demo if the latter loses two tics, but if only ONE tic is clipped then GL2 Demo gets better after four tics. I'd have to see how many get clipped on average, but the global DoT-tic server timer not being in sync with our ability usage complicates that.

2) Now that Chakra has less of a delay, it may be possible to use Demo(PB)-Snap-Snap-DK-Twin-Snap. Before, this was less ideal because DK/Twin being placed one GCD earlier would cause them to just barely fall off due to Chakra's delay and you'd have to drop some other GCD skill to prevent that. If the delay reduction is enough to make this safe, the benefit is that we'd get our buffs up one GCD sooner.