Watchman: Why 3 stacks of Overload Saber before Zen?

[YourMomWasHere]

So I read here and there that you want to have three stacks of OS on your target before hitting Zen. But if you pop Zen and then Cauterize, you get six ticks of a critical burn, which will utilize all six stacks of the Zen heal. I've read the tooltips, I've tried it out in PVE and PVP, and there doesn't seem to be a difference in whether or not I get those OS procs on the target prior to Zen and Cauterize.

 

Am I doing it wrong?

[witelightnin]

As long as you use all 6 charges of your zen crit, it really doesn't matter THAT much. The whole idea is to try and keep as many DoT's rolling as possible at all times.

[JustinxDuff]

I just pop mine when I have 3 OS and cauterize on the target.

[Venjirai]

The 3 charges dot hits much harder than the cauterize dot, so getting all of those 3 hits to crit will deal a lot of damage.

[Valastia]

I normally get two stacks + cauterize, then hit Zen right as I'm hitting my next melee attack so that I get the full three stacks to tick the entire length of Zen. The auto-crit for three stacks is pretty substantial, so it's definitely worth doing it that way.

[Aaramis]

I normally get two stacks + cauterize, then hit Zen right as I'm hitting my next melee attack so that I get the full three stacks to tick the entire length of Zen. The auto-crit for three stacks is pretty substantial, so it's definitely worth doing it that way.

 

This is how I do it as well. Or I'll throw 2 stacks on, then Zen, then Cauterize (which will apply the 3rd stack at the same time). This puts the 3-stack OS DoT and Cauterize ticking at the exact same time, both for auto-crit.

 

Then force stasis, /giggle, and repeat.

 

 

To answer the OP question, however, Zen causes your DoTs to *immediately* start auto-critting and healing your group. So any DoTs currently in place will start critting on their next DoT tick.

As your hardest hitting DoTs are Cauterize and a 3-stack Overload Saber (OS), you get the most bang for your buck using Zen when those are on your target.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Aaramis

[Mal-Sharran]

So I read here and there that you want to have three stacks of OS on your target before hitting Zen. But if you pop Zen and then Cauterize, you get six ticks of a critical burn, which will utilize all six stacks of the Zen heal. I've read the tooltips, I've tried it out in PVE and PVP, and there doesn't seem to be a difference in whether or not I get those OS procs on the target prior to Zen and Cauterize.

 

Am I doing it wrong?

 

What you actually want to do is pop Zen a millisecond before you apply your final stack of OS. This is the breakdown on both dots.

 

Cauterize ticks six times over six seconds. Each tick is considerably weaker than a two or three stack of OS.

 

OS ticks three times over six seconds. A three stack of OS crits (for me) for 1298 against a strong NPC on Ilum. 1298x3=3894 damage.

 

Cauterize crits for 401, six times. 401x6=2406 damage. So as you can see, while you'd never be able to use all six charges of Zen with only OS, you want to ensure OS crits all three times if possible.

 

Both dots start ticking the instant they are applied. There is no delay. So if you wait to pop Zen until just AFTER you apply your third stack of OS, you will in fact only apply the effect to the final two ticks, not all three, therefor you are losing out on potential damage.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Mal-Sharran

[Gnotong]

hmm...I did it wrong then I usually hit the third OS then pop Zen >_<

[Lanja]

I may well be wrong (and will have to check in real time tonight), but I thought that a burn tick of cauterize and a burn tick of applied via overload were roughly the same damage. For short-hand I'll use the Torhead damage estimates which show Cauterize doing 1398 in elemental damage over 6 seconds (i.e. 233 per second), while they list Overload Saber as applying a burn of 235 (also elemental) over 6 seconds to each attack charged. Would that not mean that, so long as you're not wasting a Zen charge, it wouldn't much matter what DoT ticks it applies to?

 

On a related topic I am also curious about the wording that while OS stacks 3 times, that the burn effect only happens once per 1.5s. Is that one time per 1.5s per stack, or one time per 1.5s max regardless of how many staks are burning on a given tick. It reads more like the 2nd option, but that would argue for spreading out use of your OS charges to maximize the number of 1.5s ticks you get burn damage on. That runs counter to how I thought it works and to most of the advice I've read (which is to lay all those OS burns down with Cauterize and the Zen away).

[JediMasterSLC]

I normally get two stacks + cauterize, then hit Zen right as I'm hitting my next melee attack so that I get the full three stacks to tick the entire length of Zen. The auto-crit for three stacks is pretty substantial, so it's definitely worth doing it that way.

 

Yep. First tick of OS hits immediately after the dot is applied/refreshed. You don't have to use cauterize for your third-stack application-as long is its used within a couple seconds of popping zen youre fine.