4.05 patch: to 7 Fell cleaves or not 7 Fell cleaves?

[Shinkyo]

With the 4.05 change capture in the live unofficial translation "Unchained and Inner Release will no longer cost IB", we've all started to glance at a 7 Fell Cleave Zerk/IR burst.

Just in case people didn't do the math (or didn't intuitively figured out), we have the following options:
- use 125 out of 130 gauge to do 7 FC and be left with 5 gauge (effectively missing on 10 gauge = 50 potency at best): 3940 total potency (including main + S.Path)

- use the full 130 gauge to do 6 FC + upheaval + 2 onslaughts: 4090 total potency (including main + S.Path)

tldr; The no cost to IR allows us to do 2 extra Onslaughts and is better than a 7th FC. Onslaught is becoming a bit more relevant as a DPS ability.

[Dizzy_Derp]

With the 4.05 change capture in the live unofficial translation "Unchained and Inner Release will no longer cost IB", we've all started to glance at a 7 Fell Cleave Zerk/IR burst.

Just in case people didn't do the math (or didn't intuitively figured out), we have the following options:
- use 125 out of 130 gauge to do 7 FC and be left with 5 gauge (effectively missing on 10 gauge = 50 potency at best): 3940 total potency (including main + S.Path)

- use the full 130 gauge to do 6 FC + upheaval + 2 onslaughts: 4090 total potency (including main + S.Path)

tldr; The no cost to IR allows us to do 2 extra Onslaughts and is better than a 7th FC. Onslaught is becoming a bit more relevant as a DPS ability.

No The 7 is a meme. With the changes you will do your same is rotation just with an onslaught. What you will do is
Eye -100 and Zerk
Heavy with Internal Release and Upheaval -90
Fell Cleave -65 into Onslaught -55
Fell Cleave -30 into Infuriate -80
Fell Cleave -55
Maim -65
Path -85
Fell Cleave -60
Fell Cleave -35
Fell Cleave -10
Still have no fkn idea to do with that leftover 10 but that's gonna be your highest possible potency ir

[Shinkyo]

Still have no fkn idea to do with that leftover 10 but that's gonna be your highest possible potency ir

Onslaught is 15s recast time (vs 20 IR duration) so you can fit another one at the end of you zerk/IR window.
Don't know why you wouldn't take the 100 potency for 10 gauge, which is better than a FC outside IR.

[aleph_null]

To fit 7 fell cleaves you need 100 gauge before berserk, infuriate ready, and you have to do maim and path inside your berserk and inner release duration. Since berserk and inner release are both 20s duration buffs, they fit at most 9 gcds, and the first as well as the last gcds of those 9 gcds must be fell cleaves, since otherwise you'd waste gauge by using maim while having 100 gauge.

This would imply that the 9 gcds under berserk must overlap with the 9 gcds under inner release, which is impossible at low sks. If you do heavy swing > inner release > berserk > etc, inner release won't last until the 9th gcd, which is a fell cleave. On the other hand if you do heavy swing > berserk > inner release > etc, berserk won't last until your last fell cleave. To circumvent this you'd need pretty high sks.

@dizzy: you can slip in another onslaught there.

[whiskeybravo]

This would imply that the 9 gcds under berserk must overlap with the 9 gcds under inner release, which is impossible at low sks.

Pretty sure 9 gcd berserk is possible at any skill speed. By popping it at the last sec of a gcd you can squeeze in the 9th hit before it falls off. Yes 9 * 2.5 is 22.5 sec, but since your attack occurs at the beginning of the gcd you don't need the whole last 2.4ish sec. Obviously it's a tighter window with no skill speed at all, but you don't need insane levels of skill speed or anything either, just a matter of timing.

[ArianeEwah]

Pretty sure 9 gcd berserk is possible at any skill speed. By popping it at the last sec of a gcd you can squeeze in the 9th hit before it falls off. Yes 9 * 2.5 is 22.5 sec, but since your attack occurs at the beginning of the gcd you don't need the whole last 2.4ish sec. Obviously it's a tighter window with no skill speed at all, but you don't need insane levels of skill speed or anything either, just a matter of timing.

You gotta take the activation time of your zerk and IR into your account. Roughly 0.86s per ability, so ~1.7s for both zerk and IR. Even with 2.4s GCD the time window would be pretty tight.
In 3.x if you had a GCD of 2.42s it was "perfect" for "3 FC+Fracture finisher", yet I heard many WARs complain that they weren't able to fit in Fracture due to server lag or difficulty on console control.
Just a lil skip/clipping can cause your rotation to fail. 7 FCs is risky, leaves you with 5 BG points and is overall weaker than 6FC+Upheaval+2 Onslaughts (+1 possible HSwing).

[whiskeybravo]

You gotta take the activation time of your zerk and IR into your account. .

Yea, my bad. For some reason I was just thinking about berserk. Double weaving does make it more complicated. Most of the fights have so much movement it's tough just getting the 8 gcds anyways.

I was also kind of stuck on the 9 gcd window since I was doing some maths to find the best action to activate berserk after (Dervy did this with B4B on dragoon a while back) and found that if you are able to hit 9 gcds the potency is the same regardless of where you start. Whereas if only 8 gcd the best place is after a heavy swing. This was only combos though (like, assuming slash+eye, SP+SP+BB+SE rotation), I haven't got started with adding in FCs and such with that particular table.

So, during non-ir windows you should still definitely be trying to hit 9 gcds under berserk.

[BluexBird]

Pretty sure 9 gcd berserk is possible at any skill speed. By popping it at the last sec of a gcd you can squeeze in the 9th hit before it falls off. Yes 9 * 2.5 is 22.5 sec, but since your attack occurs at the beginning of the gcd you don't need the whole last 2.4ish sec. Obviously it's a tighter window with no skill speed at all, but you don't need insane levels of skill speed or anything either, just a matter of timing.

This works in theory, but not in practice. In practice, there are two factors that will influence your abilities, one being lag, and the other being GCD clipping. The lag issue isn't really a problem in most cases, and the GCD clipping can be worked around.

I won't talk about the required skill speed, since that varies depending on your level. However, if your delay is higher than 2.41 seconds, you will have trouble fitting in 9 abilities into your Berserk window. It's possible, but you will have to time things JUST right.

Back when we had Internal Release, you were able to do Heavy Swing -> Internal Release + Berserk -> Fell Cleave without clipping into our Fell Cleave cast. This took practice, however, and was pretty risky. It was much safer to just use Internal Release after Butcher's Block and then just have to use Berserk after the Heavy Swing. However, at a 2.41 recast, things would get so bad that you had to wait half a second before using Berserk, because if you popped it immediately after Heavy Swing, it would run out before you were able to get your Fracture in.

This was even worse when you were trying the Unchained opener into two Fell Cleaves with Fracture in the middle, because you had to swap into Deliverance. If you did it right, you'd be able to finish with a Maim right before pacification. If you did it wrong, you wouldn't land your Maim and had to start back at Heavy Swing since the combo window would run out.

This gets a lot easier when you're able to push below 2.40 recast times. At 2.38, you can pretty much get away with anything. Luckily, the windows right now are such that you are able to get off all your Fell Cleaves and still have some time left (despite it not mattering much).

Here's the opener I conjured up this morning when I was trying Savage:

HS (Infuriate) -> Maim (Thrill) -> Eye
HS -> Maim -> (Inner Release+Berserk) -> Path (Upheaval+Onslaught)
HS -> Maim -> FC
Path -> FCx3 (Onslaught)

I didn't check my recast time but it was to the point where I had to use Berserk and Inner Release together or Berserk would run out before I got Onslaught in. Still, that's just 8 skills and there room for 1 more even though it'll just end up being a Heavy Swing if you're fast enough. Maybe delaying Upheaval until after Maim would help...

[Dizzy_Derp]

@dizzy: you can slip in another onslaught there.

Oh yeah well that kinda obvious now that you say It -_- my math skillz are whak.

[Ekimmak]

Two onslaughts and an upheaval sound good to sneak in.