Restless Blades

[Nastynelbur 1]

Yo, first time poster. Let's talk about Restless Blades.

 

There seems to be many viable ways to manipulate your CPs (especially with Anticipation), so it's important to discuss how to keep our CDs on their CDs while also minimizing their total time on CD. This leads to a couple of questions...

 

When would it be appropriate to blow a five CP finisher, assuming a CD has fewer than ten seconds left to finish (i.e. where it may be good to use said CPs when KS has nine seconds left to finish the CD, and one second would be wasted, it would be better to save our CPs if it had, say, one second left)?

 

Another common occurrence is where AR and SB may be off CD, but KS has some time left. We know that If we use some finishers to get KS off and back on CD before we use our other two abilities, we would very quickly have another KS after AR and SB. However, we would have of course delayed AR and SB, and that is not good, generally speaking. So, at what point in KS's CD would it be better to delay AR and SB, in order to get a second quick KS?

 

CD: cooldown

CP: combo point

KS: Killing Spree

AR: Adrenaline Rush

SB: Shadow Blades

[Krushinator 49]

Restless Blades, great topic!

This mechanic is definitely beyond the basics of the Combat rogue, and taking advantage of it can be tricky.

I'm going to lay out five different situations and my thoughts on them. I unfortunately only have my experience to back me up on this, so if any mathmagicians out there want to take a crack at this topic I'd love to see what you've got.

Situation 1: KS will be ready before AD/SB, KS has between 20 and 11 seconds left.

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You want to keep your energy low, and pool as many combo points as you can. Wait as close to 11 seconds remaining as possible, hit your finisher, SS or RS one more time to dump the energy you got back from Relentless Strikes, and hit your KS. While you are biding your time waiting for 11 seconds, do not let your energy get too high. If you pool too much you will cap out quickly during your KS.

Situation 2: KS will be ready before AD/SB, KS has 10 or fewer seconds left.

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If you get into this spot it means you probably mismanaged Situation 1. Nevertheless, here you are, and you need a plan. You need to do a fast mental calculation immediately on whether or not you think you have enough combo point room to continue attacking to keep your energy low and not cap out on combo points. If you think you can last the rest of the KS cooldown without combo point capping or gathering too much energy, then try to last it out. If you don't think you can make it, cut your losses and cast your 5 point finisher immediately. The more time you wait, the more Restless Blades benefit you are losing.

Situation 3: AD/SB will be ready before KS, there are less than 10 seconds between the two cooldowns.

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I would delay AD/SB in this situation. Make sure you use your 5 point finisher with 11 or more seconds left on AD/SB, then pool combo points waiting on KS. If you are able to keep your energy low leading into KS that would be ideal.

Situation 4: AD/SB will be ready before KS, there are between between 11 and 20 seconds between the two cooldowns.

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I would still delay AD/SB. You're going to have to use a 5 point finisher to reel in that KS cooldown, but the benefit of fewer wasted RB reductions on your Killing Spree will outweigh one missed RB reduction on AD/SB along with a small CD delay. Treat the situation the same as Situation 3, just with an added 5 point finisher.

Situation 5: AD/SB will be ready before KS, there are more than 20 seconds between the two cooldowns.

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You can't stand to delay AD/SB at this point. Not only will you have to waste the RB benefit on AD/SB twice, but you could be looking at a 15+ second delay on the cooldown. It's possible to reduce that time, but you'd be entering the cooldown with low combo points and low energy, which is even worse. Properly use RB into your AD/SB cooldown and eat the difference on your KS cooldown.

What do you think?

[Nastynelbur 1]

Thanks for the reply. You actually confirmed a lot of what I have believed, but I will keep situation 5 in mind from now on during my raids. As for situation 2, it would be very nice to know where it would be worth it to waste the seconds on RB, in terms of mathematical value instead of theory.

[Krushinator 49]

I spent a bit of time trying to develop a formula that would give some guidelines on how long you can hold on on the KS cooldown at any particular energy/combo point level, and I quickly realized that it's not that easy. Rogues, especially Combat Rogues, have such a murky range of energy and combo point granting abilities that it's very hard to pinpoint a general rate of energy and combo point production over time. Even if I could wade through all of the chances to come up with an average, your experience between one situation and another with exactly the same variables could be wildly different. Maybe for 6 seconds you get no Sinister Strike crits and your Combat Potency procs less than usual. Maybe next time for 6 seconds you crit like crazy and Combat Potency floods you with energy.

 

I guess I've developed a sense of whether I'm likely to be able to ride out the remaining time from testing and seeing the result many, many times over. So, unfortunately that's all I can give you for Situation 2.