Card potencies (class specific)

[FunkyBunch]

A GCD is a GCD?
While two fire IIs take 6 seconds to cast (not taking into acount SS), a Thunder plus a TC proc only takes 5. And even then you're ignoring the possibility of another TC proc'ing for another 745.5 potency which is highly likely to happen with 2 mobs having Thunder (this is particularly fun to do when a known tank is still moving forward pulling mobs so you can keep moving with him and casting TC procs instead of scathes). I find 100 potency on an AoE pull is worth sacrificing for a chance of having a higher DPS, but that's just me.

Also you're not really losing any flares. You should always end the AoE pull with a Flare regardless of your MP so you'd only realistically lose a Flare if you delayed the rotation for around 10 or more seconds. And Fire II is only really a filler used until transpose comes off CD. You can easily swap a Fire II for a TC proc and still gain DPS (on 3 targets) while not delaying your rotation.

Okay, I have now calculated it out. And there are three caveats to the data:
It assumes the PIE buff, and you get 4 (including sharp cast, which is around one more than statistically likely) TC procs over 63 seconds (without the PIE buff you literally cannot still cast the optimal F2s in the opener as you only have 85 MP left over with it) and it assumes you don't swiftcast->convert->flare.
It gets you 11402 potency over 63 seconds vs 10876 over 63 seconds. (these are some tough bloody mobs! but I needed rotations that balanced out).
These numbers were corrected for server side MP ticks. (EG-all portions where there was zero MP the time was rounded to the NEXT 3 second multiple).

Technically you appear correct, in that it's slightly better (potency wise) to use TC with 3 and only 3 mobs. IF you get 4 TC procs.
With that rotation though, you do lose out on 1 F3, 2 F2s and one Flare. So while strictly a minor potency increase, you lose out on 7 crit chances by having five extra single target spells. So I'm not sure the potency difference will actually make a DPS difference. Further, adding single target spells like TC will only serve to make it more likely one mob dies early even with proper target rotation which would again decrease potency.

To me it seems just like a way to make it seem busier with no real net benefit and rather large potential downside (losing an AoE target early) since there's no real group of 3 mobs that will take 63 seconds to kill.