Quote Originally Posted by Jonnycbad View Post
I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?
If we're talking more or fewer Mirage Dives sooner, then I suppose that's correct. I'm thinking this is irrelevant in the scheme of what Mirage Dives do for Life of the Dragon; the 30 second periodicity on Jump/Spineshatter clustering means you will often be letting something or other stew for a bit, usually sitting around waiting for BfB.

I get that there is a huge feel-bad factor in watching Jumps keep getting later and later as they get delayed by GCDs twice as often. This has been a problem since ARR, but at least we used to be able to hit a point where you just Spineshatter before Jump is ready. In light of Mirage Dives, the dynamic may have changed, particularly in realistic timeframes; I will need to see it in simulation. But for now I choose to err on the side of what was more obviously beneficial in the past ("the past is vast"). Please forgive my knee-jerk reaction, I should remember such things may turn out to be in error due to unaccounted factors. I will not deny that this makes the first LotD feel a bit less roughshod, and that may be the only LotD you can count on in some fights.

Quote Originally Posted by Thandronen View Post
Can someone point out the numbers on how detrimental it may or may not be to go with SSD first over Jump in the rotation?
The difference is more philosophical than anything. We're talking about roughly 8% or less of our total damage here, so only a major difference to this dynamic wouldn't be hidden by other factors.

If it is a few seconds till the end of a fight and you have two cooldowns, you pick the one that does the most damage in itself for the most DPS; few would argue against that. The theory behind Jump > SSD where Jump has both the greater damage and the shorter cooldown (so we don't have to consider a shift in priorities), is that it would be worth pushing SSD back >2 seconds to gain every 1 second something would delay Jump: ((250*1.3+200)/30)/((200*1.3+200)/60)=2.283. This "expected value", a simple means of abstracting the worth of each without regards to whether you can expect to get that value ("expected utility"). It relies on a fairly safe and reasonable--but not absolute--assumption that there is a probability of that scenario.

But here's something else to consider: openers can and should be adapted to fights where necessary. There are certainly no Opener Police coming to arrest you for doing it wrong, and in the past it was sometimes beneficial to plan out gap closers.

In fact, you could make some serious theoretical boo-boos and come out very high percentile on FFLogs if you (for example) have better uptime than anyone else. I strongly believe there are such living aberrations playing the game (in truth I have some particular players in mind). And I'm thinking, kinda like some people can live on <5 hours of sleep every day, these people cannot be the model for most others to imitate, no matter how nice and open and honest they may be about what they do; it just works for them and life isn't fair. Likewise, a heavily rational player like my forum-posting persona should not necessarily be the model for such an experiential player to copy. Most people will fall somewhere in between, including myself when I do play.