PLD changes

[Rongway]

I'm not sure if I have wack skillspeed or something, but the rotation doesn't loop at a smooth 60s still right? Not looked up an opener, I tried Fast, Riot, FOF, Goring, Req, Conf, BladeX3, Royal, HS, Atonex3 then looping. But when FOF came back up at 60s, I was at Fast Blade as my next step, meaning that I'd have to drop Atones at some point, or fill with unbuffed Holy Spirits? Did SE seriously not bother to do adjustments to make the rotation intuitively loop when they had the chance?

I'm fine with most of the PLD changes on their own but this is the one thing that really bothers me about them when you put it all together. With 0 skill speed, there are 24 GCDs in a 60s interval. The 60s burst Goring Blade > Confiteor > Blade > Blader > Bladest is 5 GCDs and the filler combo Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Authority > Holy + 3xAtonement is 7 GCDs. So one burst segment and three filler combos is 26 GCDs. As Argyle points out above, that means one of the following will happen:

• Your burst will drift out of party alignment
• Your burst will start at a different point in your combo each minute
• You will drop two Atonements
• You will drop a whole combo and replace it with five Holy Spirits

Dropping two Atonements somewhere means overall one of the three filler combos will have an average potency of (200p + 280p +380p + 450p + 380p) / 5 GCD = 338 p/GCD. This is lower than the 350 base (unbuffed) Holy Spirit potency, which means dropping a whole combo and replacing it with five Holy Spirits should do more damage than just dropping two Atonements. However, I don't think the MP refresh can support this. In one minute you'd be need 4000 MP for Confiteor combo, 2000 for the two combo Holy Spirits, and 5000 for the five weak Holy Spirits -- 11,000 MP per minute. It's only possible to regain 4000 MP from natural refresh, 2000 from the two Riot Blades, 1000 from two Expiacions, and 2400 from six Atonements -- 10,400 MP. So you would only be able to do this every other minute.

All of that of course is just to make the rotation feel good inside a 60s or 120s cycle. If you can stand a 180s cycle, you can just add a single weak Holy every three minutes, wich pushes Royal Authority back just far enough that you can have a Royal Authority and two Mighty Holy Spirits in one FoF window.

Of the four options I looked at

1. Start your burst every minute no matter where it falls in your combo. Delay Holy Spirit if you can fit it into the burst without losing a Divine Might.
2. Every three minutes, insert a single weak Holy Spirit.
3. Every minute, drop two Atonements.
4. Every two minutes, drop two Atonements and replace one whole melee combo with five weak Holy Spirits

the difference between the best and worst was only about 0.3%, which would be the difference between doing 7,500 dps and 7,475 dps, so do whichever one is most comfortable, I guess?

I probably broke math though. Feel free to check my work and let me know if you find any glaring errors. Spreadsheet here.

Running potency/s is bolded for each rotation at the end of the 6, 9, and 12 minute FoF windows. Didn't include Expiation and Circle of Scorn, because you're just going to fit those into the FoF window regardless of which rotation you wanted to use. I did not confirm that option D is practical given MP refresh rates; I just wanted to present the hypothetical. Whether non-Confiteor actions in the FoF window come before or after Confiteor combo will depend on how your burst lines up with the party's. I didn't consider any other possible action sequences for the opening because I was just interested in the rotation loops. The weak Holy Spirit in (B) rotation can be used as early as right after the previous FoF window; it is shown on the sheet at the latest point that it can be cast.

Based on these preliminary calculations -- on which I could easily have made an error somewhere, and which assume 0 Skill speed so even if it's all right on paper they won't be perfect in practice -- I'm probably going to see how I do with option (B) (cast a single weak Holy Spirit every three minutes).