RDM thoughts and tuning needed

[Rongway]

Then I suppose by extension of that logic, wouldn't the extra 3 be cancelled out by virtue of the Verfinisher ideally proccing a Ready ability, which is 3 Mana more than Jolt?

Yes, you're mostly right about that. It gets more complicated because it's possible to go into the combo with both Verfastspells Ready, in which case the extra mana and damage that those Verfastspells would do over Jolt is already accounted for by the spells cast leading up to the combo; or it might be appropriate to use the "wrong" Verfinisher even without Acceleration, in which case there's only a 20% chance to generate those extra 3 mana and 20 potency. So the expected value will be less than 3 mana and 20 potency.

2) To determine that, let's compare the potency per second of all the GCD actions we can take.
Jolt + Dualcast: 560 pot / 5s = 112 pps
Fire/Stone + Dualcast: 590 pot / 5s = 118 pps

These are really the same case. The expected values of Jolt+Verslowspell are 250 potency and 6 mana for Jolt II, 310 potency and 11 mana for the Verslowspell, and 50% of the (20 potency and 3 mana) difference for the proc.

Jolt+Verslowspell: 570 potency, 5s, +18.5 mana

[the rest of the post]

I'm not sure what we're arguing about here? I never said anything that contradicts your recommendations about which spenders to use and when. All I said was the opportunity costs of not casting should be taken into account.

[Leidiriv]

I'm not sure what we're arguing about here? I never said anything that contradicts your recommendations about which spenders to use and when. All I said was the opportunity costs of not casting should be taken into account.

I'm arguing that time spent on a melee combo can't really be compared to time that could have been spent building up to a melee combo, because the entire point of building mana is for the melee combo.