4pc T16 and black arrow question

[Stolenname 0]

so i have been going back and forth over this in my head and i cant determine which is best. should I interrupt an ES chain to reapply black arrow or just keep spamming ES? i have talked to a couple people about this and their opinions are divided. obviously if spamming ES only delays the application of BA by let say 1 global its worth it to wait. however, when we can be spamming ES for 10+ seconds that is a lot of BA down time. 

[Kattii 40]

Typically I keep hitting explosive shot since it'our biggest source of dps. If I am focus capped and the target will be alive for the full

duration I may throw out a black arrow but I usually just wait.

[Brya 3]

It comes down to these variables:

 

- Will the target be up for another 20 seconds?

- Do you have the focus required to throw out a black arrow in the middle of the lock and load?

- Are you refreshing the black arrow (B/c Assurance of Consequence)? Its important to know that black arrow will roll over to 22 seconds if you refresh before it fades.

- Has the Internal cooldown on lock and load finished?

- Not factoring in focus, a single black arrow (on average) will do more damage than a single explosive shot if it gets to complete.

- The Tier 16 4-set Doesn't consume the charge from lock and load when explosive shot is fired. This means when the 12 second LnL buff fades so do the remaining charges.

- LnL can refresh itself during the last 2 second of the LnL buff

 

Ideally you want to have 100% uptime on black arrow or as close to 100% as possible. Because of Lock and loads internal cooldown of 10 seconds, with full uptime of BA you take out player error for not getting LnL procs. You will not want to overlap them though unless it is below two seconds left on black arrow (ideally it should be during the last second factoring in travel time). If you're in the middle of a long spamfest of ES you should easily have the focus to cast black arrow just from passive haste, which would make the dmg/focus value irrelevant. Because of this, I would break the Es spamming to get another Black Arrow out to refresh only during the last second of the Dot falling off(if the BA can complete is cycle).

 

In the end keeping BA having a full uptime is hedging your bets on an Rng mechanic.You are basically making sure that you aren't relying on rng alone for your dps. My last point is that because of how the 4set works with LnL, You can only get a maximum of 12 explosives in a row with favored Rng. Wouldnt it be better to have the dot on so that you could maybe get another lock and load right after that and keep on spamming it?

[Stolenname 0]

Brya, thats pretty much was I was thinking. In addition you do have the chance of having another LnL proc off the BA. I have had that happen to me before and with the exception of tossing out the BA I had almost 20s of spamming ES. 

[Brya 3]

I could swear i mentioned that point, I may need to reword it after my raid tonight. 

 

And yea surv is kinda stupid with that rng factor sometimes.>.>'

[Stolenname 0]

yea you did. i just restated it for anyone else who may read the topic. 

 

and i agree that the RNG is stupid. its the difference between 900k at the beginning of a fight to 1.2m during the same period. 

[Aliensanta 1]

From what I've read it's a moot point in terms of dps gained by lucking out w/ that 12th explosive shot if you hit the jackpot.  But the RNG isn't that terrible.  It does mess with the simcraft numbers if you get lucky over the course of the fight but since bosses don't really die in the opening attack even if you do get lucky, opening dps numbers aren't really important.  I have recount set to overall dps until the fight is over so I wouldn't know how much we spike up to but I'm happy with our current sustained dps.