Source
r/swtor•
FireJade

Curtain of Fire proc (Gunnery Commando rotation)

Question

While figuring out the Gunnery Commando rotation, I noticed that Curtain of Fire procs at most once every 8 seconds, which does not line up with the GCD. For example, consider the following sequence:

  • GCD 1: Grav Round (channeled, procs Curtain of Fire at the end)
  • GCD 2-3: Blazing Bolts
  • GCD 4: some instant ability
  • GCD 5: some instant ability
  • GCD 6: Grav Round (channeled)

Experiment: If I hit all of these without any pauses in between (I do not clip Blazing Bolts, of course), then the Grav Round in GCD 6 does not proc Curtain of Fire. There is ~6.2 seconds left on the cooldown of Blazing Bolts when the Grav Round completes.

However, if I pause just a hair, such that Grav Round on GCD 6 finishes with ~5.9 seconds left on the cooldown of Blazing Bolts, then Curtain of Fire does proc. That means that by delaying about 0.3 seconds over GCDs 2-6, I can get Blazing Bolts to proc one GCD sooner.

For reference, I have 865 Alacrity, or ~12.09%.

Theory: Without Alacrity, Curtain of Fire can proc every 8 seconds, and 5 GCDs is 1.5 * 5 = 7.5 seconds. Adding Alacrity should affect both of these numbers proportionally, so that should not be a factor. If you make your 5 GCDs take a little bit longer, you can proc Curtain of Fire every 8 seconds, but with non-stop abilities, you can only proc it every 6 GCDs, or every 9 seconds.

So: Does this mean I should not necessarily hit keys as fast as possible, to maximize how frequently I get Curtain of Fire to proc? Or will I lose too much DPS by doing this, since I will effectively not get as many GCDs? Normally, it seems obvious that you should not "take a break" between GCDs, but if I only have to delay a teensy amount (.3s-.5s over a period of 5 GCDs), then that seems like it might be worth it.

(Yes, "try it and see which gives you better DPS" is a viable answer. But I was hoping someone else had already thought about this and tried it.)

Posted Apr 18, 2016, 4:06 AM UTC · edited

214
NitiaProgenitor•

So I thought about this a bit and I don't have the answer you want. You can find out if you consider that delay just a % dps loss and then compare it to the benefit of more BB procs over the course of a few minutes but that's a lot of math.

I'm 90% sure that it's not beneficial delaying a GCD though. In addition it's not practical at all. Lag is a thing in SWTOR and already makes rotations weird, when you wait for the 8s window you won't be able to take advantage of the ability queue. And in real fights it would be too much for me to pause for the appropriate time.

3
FireJadeOPHarbinger•

Hmm, I think your intuition is right. Here's a small attempt at doing the math. The above can be approximated as a 5-GCD rotation over 8 seconds, or a 6-GCD rotation over 9 seconds with an extra non-BB attack. We consider 72 seconds of these rotations.

Case 1: 5-GCD rotation over 8s (1 BB, 1 GR, 2 others). Over 72 seconds, you do 9 BB, 9 GR, and 18 other attacks.

Case 2: 6-GCD rotation over 9s (1 BB, 1 GR, 3 others). Over 72 seconds, you do 8 BB, 8 GR, and 24 other attacks.

(Note that "other attacks" may include GR, but not BB.)

So is the extra BB and GR worth 6 other attacks? Probably not...? To be fair, this makes the faulty assumption that both cases are equally energy-efficient (e.g. you wouldn't have to Hammer Shot more in one case than the other), which is not the case (so case 1 is unfairly disadvantaged here).

So in the end, it's still not totally clear... But you're right that this would be extremely difficult to manage in an op regardless. Oh well. :P

3
SirUrzaThe Shadowlands•

Now I'll admit I've only played Assault Specialist and retired my commando some time ago... but it was my understand that for Gunnery, using Supercharged cell before or after Curtain of Fire greatly impacted GCDs. If you're using Supercharged in your "some instant ability" and figuring it into your numbers it's not apparent... but it sounds like you're missing a huge part of your rotation.

2
FireJadeOPHarbinger•

These tests were done without using Supercharged Cell or anything fancy. To clarify, this is was when I was trying to figure out how many GCDs would occur between Boltstorm procs, not an attempt at reducing Gunnery to a 5-GCD rotation. By "some instant ability" I mean something like Demo Round, Electro Net, HiB, or Hammer Shots -- an ability with no activation time that still takes a GCD.

2
kiwiaceofspades•

With the instant grav-round given by vortex bolt, you can essentially get it only a fraction of a second after your 6th ability, and get the CD of Curtain of Fire ticking while the GCD caused by Grav round finishes. Through the use of priming shot, you can get Curtain of Fire to proc more-or less every 8 seconds anyway, without having to worry about slowing down your button pressing and reducing your actions per minute.

1
FireJadeOPHarbinger•

I think the issue I was trying to highlight here was that 8 seconds is not a multiple of the 1.5s-GCD. Regardless of whether Grav Round is channeled or used as an instant cast, the proc will theoretically always occur on the GCD, whether at the end of the cast (if it is channeled) or the beginning (if it comes after Vortex Bolt or Tech Override). What that means is that if you do not slow down, you will proc it at 9s (6 GCDs) after the previous proc, since you cannot proc it at 7.5s (5 GCDs). If you are a tiny bit slow, that 7.5s can become 8s, allowing you to proc it a bit earlier at the cost of 1/3 of a GCD (and realistically, less than that, due to latency).

But because of the GCD -- and assuming you aren't using anything affecting alacrity, e.g. Supercharged Cell -- you simply cannot have an ability start or finish at 8 seconds, unless there is downtime. Using abilities non-stop, they will all start/end on multiples of 1.5s, e.g. 0s, 1.5s, 3s, 4.5s, 6s, 7.5s, 9s. And depending on when you use Blazing Bolts, some of these "ticks" will be mid-channel.

(Hope I don't come across as condescending when I enumerated the multiples of 1.5s -- just being explicit to make the argument clear! I don't know if you are counting a 9s-proc as "more-or-less every 8 seconds," but I like squeezing every last bit of DPS out of classes I am learning. :) )

2
kiwiaceofspades•

Yes, I understand what you were trying to say. I however, believe that you can. Consider the following opener:
Grav Round (proc at end)
Electro-net (1 GCD)
Vortex-bolt (2 GCD)
Demo Round (3GCD) Boltsstorm (4-5GCD)
Grav Round (Instant) (proc at start) (6 GCD)
This is the opener I currently use on my Mando and merc, and considering I get the proc guaranteed on that second Grav Round every time, when you take into account server lag + Instant abilities don't occur on the GCD, but a fraction of a second after, then you basically have an 8 second proc rate. You would follow this up by getting your next Curtain of Fire proc around 8.5 seconds after the second one. You would keep alternating between the 8 and 8.5 second proc rate, giving an average of 8.25, which is what I meant by "more-or-less every 8 seconds".

EDIT: formatting

1
FireJadeOPHarbinger•

Delayed replying because I wanted to wait until I had the chance to test this out before coming to a conclusion. I use something close-ish when parsing, but there is also a Supercharged Cell in my opener, which gives me the alacrity to get that second proc reliably. Without SCC, I don't always get the Curtain of Fire proc, even for the exact ordering of abilities you listed. It's very close -- sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, and it's annoying to me that I can't reliably get the proc or not with the same set of abilities.

Here's what StarParse looks like when I do/don't get the proc: http://imgur.com/a/YrI89. Hammer Shots before/after are to make sure everything shows up. In the instance where I do get the proc, the second Grav Round activates 7.327s after the initial Curtain of Fire proc. In the instance where I don't, the second Grav Round activates 6.926s after the initial Curtain of Fire proc. I'm guessing these are just differences due to latency or varying amounts of queueing, but it's not reliable -- there is a such thing as being "too fast" for the proc. :(

2
kiwiaceofspades•

While on a dummy, I can see the problem quite clearly, especially after doing my own testing and noticing I was loosing about 0.2 seconds over 5 GCDs, I do not really consider it an issue, simply because on live fights I never have such a small lose between abilities. I do agree that if the engine worked fine then this would be more of a problem however, at the moment it only affects those parsing. It is worth noting though, that those with a more stable connection will end up with a higher ability usage, and probably higher damage, but also a different rotation because of this disparity between being on the GCD vs being in the middle of it. This could also change your rotation from when parsing to a live fight as you typically get increased instability in live fights...
I think we just stumbled onto a bigger problem for those with stable connections that like to parse to practice their rotation, especially the opener for a mando/merc.

1
Viirx•

Disclaimer... I've not done the math on it.

I have however tested this on my merc and the result was a loss in total casts over the fight which resulted in a couple hundred points of dps loss. The extra 3 blazing bolts/boltstorm dont make up for loss of tracer missiles/grav round.

Given... in an actual op with movement this can get screwy with downtime for movement. I would advise making the most use of your gcds over getting the most BB off as possible.

1
FireJadeOPHarbinger•

Yes, that sounds about right. I think there's a good chance that ops mechanics will mean you sometimes have a pause in your rotation anyways, so it's not realistic (even as an rDPS) to maintain an exactly timed rotation.

1
shleefinshadowlands•

8 seconds is not evenly divisible by 1.5 true, but larger multiples of 8 are. In 24 seconds, you should proc curtain of fire 3 times and used 16 GCDs. Assuming no alacrity.

0
FireJadeOPHarbinger•

Unfortunately, multiples of 8s don't really matter for this calculation. If you second proc comes at 9s, then the earliest the third proc can occur is 17s (8s after the second proc), not 16s. In other words, the cooldown on the proc is always counted from the last proc, not the first.

2