Quote Originally Posted by Vendalwind View Post
Further food for thought on doton at that time. NIN mudras cooldown resets on first mudra use. So although using doton later gives an extra tick or two you are dependent on fight timer losing a raiton (800 potency). Those as much as 3 extra ticks of doton + not having to use an armor crush (also fight time dependent) grants at best (100*3 +20) potency. So its a hard call tho, but the point being if you are going to get that extra raiton it is still better to perform the early doton with the standard opener.

HOWEVER with your delayed NIN opener I think some raiton cast time was lost anyways (not 100% sure){mudra over-capping} because trick is delayed If this is the case it wouldn't alter yours as much since the raiton timer would be locked into the timing of the raid buffs regardless of when the first mudra was cast.

*side note* If you are still intentionally clipping with the pot this is a poor choice. That will always be a dps loss rather than a gain even it if aligns trick somehow exactly where you want it.
I actually thought this at the time when I began testing openers. I realized that by using Huton at 11.5 seconds pre-pull, the recast would start ticking and you could expect mudra to gain a charge around 8secs and 28secs and so on. You could still use Doton later than 7.5 seconds pre-pull though since the timing has no effect on the recast timer and you'd use Hide right after it to gain a charge for Suiton. The only thing that really matter was how close you could use it before the pull while still being able to use Suiton in time (I found 4 seconds pre-pull to be a comfortable place).

What I completely overlooked was that Hide actually gives you 2 charges of mudra, not one (which is funny since I don't recall this fact ever being mentioned by SE. There isn't even a notice that the effect has been slightly adjusted on the job page. ^^; ). This means that, regardless of when Huton and Doton are cast, the recast timer on mudras stops the moment you use Hide (since you're at max charges) and starts up again once you use mudras for Suiton. So you gain a mudra charge around 20secs and so on at that point.

Also, I might have worded it poorly, but you're never going to get the full number of ticks from Doton no matter what you do. The point of using it close to the pull is just so that you don't lose as many. Using it 3-4 seconds guarantees that you at least get six ticks, with the 7th being dependent on how fast the boss is dragged into Doton vs the server tick. The extra Aeolian edge due to later Huton cast is a possibility, but is something that's can only be figured out by playing the class a lot (I admittedly stopped after the opener). And like you said, it's only 20+ potency, which despite being a gain, is still pretty minor.

And yeah, the current NIN opener that I initially wrote is not optimal. I've made the adjustments already and will update them once I've presented my calculations in how the opener interacts with other raid buffs (and no, it no longer using the pot to intentionally clip).