FF 5.X Alternative Raid Buff Alignment and Openers

[HyoMinPark]

Admittedly, there are probably discrepancies in the timings, but this is the general goal. So again, if the number of casts is the same regardless of using buffs early or not, what makes the goal of a delayed alignment so subpar?

Because you never, under any circumstances, delay your buffs in your opening burst. There is no inherent reason to sit on damage for the first 15 seconds of the fight, and there has never been a scenario where players hold their bursts for 15 seconds. The sooner you get bursts out, the sooner your burst will come up to be used again. Buff alignment gets manipulated during a fight—be it in the middle or the end—not at the beginning.



You are still incorrect with DNC—again not counting for the fact that you’ve delayed Flourish in both of your proposed openers by a significant amount of seconds, thereby wasting your Technical Finish burst window on unnecessary, random proc chances because you want to Cascade > Fountain immediately after your opening Standard Finish as opposed to setting up Technical Finish immediately (which, in and of itself, reduces any sort of delays on your major damage dealing skills during your only burst window because you won’t have random Reverse Cascade/Fountainfall procs that you don’t want to overwrite). The optimal opener includes all Flourished procs, all Saber Dance procs, and the Standard Finish within the TF time frame without pushing any of them outside of the buff window in the opener. Your openers, by comparison will likely push your Flourished procs out of the burst window, meaning lost damage because they will not be buffed by Technical Finish’s +5% straight damage. I’ve already explained this to you—you do understand the concept of losing damage, yes? By losing damage, that makes your proposed openers subpar. An optimal opener wouldn’t result in unnecessary losses of damage, or of important skills falling outside of your major burst window.

Here is the optimal DNC opener for you to see what it looks like:
Pre-pull Standard Step (-15 seconds) > Pot (-2 seconds) > Standard Finish (pull) > begin Technical Step > Technical Finish > Flourish > Rising Windmill (pushes stronger procs into other burst windows, such as Trick Attack) > FD3 weave > priority based off of Saber Dance > Standard Finish > Fountainfall/Bloodshower > Reverse Cascade, and using feather procs as they appear.

You do not delay Technical Finish for a Cascade > Fountain combo. The removal of the 1-2 combo means the removal of Reverse Cascade/Fountainfall proc chances, which removes the unnecessary Flourish delay during TF, which ensures that all of your burst (including all Flourished procs) fall within the 20 second window of Technical Finish.

The only deviation from this opener is if you have Dance Partner’d a DRG, in which you weave in Devilment BEFORE you start Technical Finish because it compliments the DRG’s burst better. This is the only deviation, as NIN no longer calls for it since the changes. You do not, however, change when and where Techincal Finish is used. It is only delayed when mechanics call for it (such as the party being too spread out during certain phases: you wait until everyone’s gathered to deploy it), or if you are aiming for a kill time in which you end the fight with a burst window (like E4S: kill times at ~12:30 call for use of Technical at 12 mins so that the party ends the fight while bursting, thereby gaining a higher parse).


By the way, this disclaimer is misleading:

Again, I’d like to stress that by no means does this list claim that all the openers listed here are optimal for every encounter.

These openers are not optimal for any encounter, as you do not delay raid buffs in your opener. Your guide can easily mislead, which is probably why so many people are against it. I’m against it for that reason, and because it is more a push of your personal agenda regarding the viability of Tornado Kick usage. I’m sorry—your resolve to prove TK is viable can be argued as admirable—but you should never change the way jobs function or burst to fit in and optimize a single skill like Tornado Kick.