Things Getting Too Obnoxious

[Odowla]

I mean, not really "reward" attentiveness, most fights once you know them come down to counting gcds anyways, so you can fully focus on mechanics and it'll pretty much be the same thing everytime. A3s especially heavy on this, you end up clipping lead at 12s or there's no time to refresh it later after the first sluice, then you need to clip hotshot at about 18 seconds or it'll fall off at a really bad spot

I wouldn't really call them that at all, like, they're usually your highest potency attack and are pretty high on the priority lists. Do you call Heavy Thrust an attention check?

[Myon88]

I wouldn't really call them that at all, like, they're usually your highest potency attack and are pretty high on the priority lists. Do you call Heavy Thrust an attention check?

I would consider Heavy Thrust as such, but I get the feeling we're just splitting hairs on semantics here. The point is they are all investment effects of some kind which give you something to keep track of, and yes, by virtue of being as such they are very commonly your highest potency or highest priority attack.

So I think they have a place, if only because they add a marginal and acceptable level of complexity. It might be second nature to you or me to keep it up as needed, or use them at opportune times - but there are no doubt people out there right now losing DPS because buffs like this fall off and they don't notice, so it's doing its job in being an additional check you have to pass to do optimal DPS.

Hot Shot and Lead Shot's 30s duration is a pretty comfortable window too, short enough you can count GCDs to get a feel for when to refresh it, but also long enough that you can use it to count your longer cooldowns ("2 more refreshes and Wildfire is back up" kind of thing).