Mid Rotation Alacrity Buffs: Intended?

[Volcan]

So we all remember when Eric explained how alacrity will scale with our procs, which should prevent us from firing off abilities too quickly and thus missing a proc. However, I don't remember Eric explaining that a mid rotation alacrity buff will NOT scale with our rotation procs. Meaning that If I pop "Recharge Cells" mid rotation, buffed by the 10% alacrity in our talents, it will cripple my rotation because I will not be able to proc Mag Bolt at the correct time. With a rotation as strict as Assault, this can be quite a pain in the ***.

 

Now, to get around this we pop "recharge cells" right before we proc Mag Bolt so the internal CD on our proc will be buffed by the 10% alacrity and thus everything is just jolly. One problem--Raid Buffs.

 

I have since had to tell our Mando healer to NEVER use his 10% alacrity raid buff and to let me do it so I can pop it right when I proc, saving myself from some emergency rotation correction. Ok, fine. I can deal with that I guess... a bit annoying, but it's still under my control. But what if there are two players in the same OP that have a similar internal proc CD? One of us is going to have their rotation screwed up unless we have perfect synchronization.

 

I have to think this is an oversight. Unless I'm missing something, in which case can someone please enlighten me?

 

The most difficult part of playing Assualt for me has been dealing with the use of "Recharged Cells". I spec into the talent to give me the 10% alacrity/15 additional cell because it is one of the best talents we have. 15 more cells!? Yes please! I'd be crazy not to take that talent for a class that can eat through ammo like a fat kid eating SlimJims. But when I need to time "recharge cells" to both line up right before a Mag Bolt proc AND when my ammo is at just the right amount, it can be tricky. I've gotten pretty good at it, but it doesn't seem 'working as intended' to me.

 

Anyone else been thinking about this alacrity thing in depth as well?

 

TL: DR -- You don't get one

[TACeMossie]

So we all remember when Eric explained how alacrity will scale with our procs, which should prevent us from firing off abilities too quickly and thus missing a proc. However, I don't remember Eric explaining that a mid rotation alacrity buff will NOT scale with our rotation procs. Meaning that If I pop "Recharge Cells" mid rotation, buffed by the 10% alacrity in our talents, it will cripple my rotation because I will not be able to proc Mag Bolt at the correct time. With a rotation as strict as Assault, this can be quite a pain in the ***.

 

Now, to get around this we pop "recharge cells" right before we proc Mag Bolt so the internal CD on our proc will be buffed by the 10% alacrity and thus everything is just jolly. One problem--Raid Buffs.

 

I have since had to tell our Mando healer to NEVER use his 10% alacrity raid buff and to let me do it so I can pop it right when I proc, saving myself from some emergency rotation correction. Ok, fine. I can deal with that I guess... a bit annoying, but it's still under my control. But what if there are two players in the same OP that have a similar internal proc CD? One of us is going to have their rotation screwed up unless we have perfect synchronization.

 

I have to think this is an oversight. Unless I'm missing something, in which case can someone please enlighten me?

 

The most difficult part of playing Assualt for me has been dealing with the use of "Recharged Cells". I spec into the talent to give me the 10% alacrity/15 additional cell because it is one of the best talents we have. 15 more cells!? Yes please! I'd be crazy not to take that talent for a class that can eat through ammo like a fat kid eating SlimJims. But when I need to time "recharge cells" to both line up right before a Mag Bolt proc AND when my ammo is at just the right amount, it can be tricky. I've gotten pretty good at it, but it doesn't seem 'working as intended' to me.

 

Anyone else been thinking about this alacrity thing in depth as well?

 

TL: DR -- You don't get one

 

From the look of things, its intended for that to be another skill thing with Assault Specialist/Innovative Ordinance. Why? Because Gunnery/Arsenal has an 8 second ICD on its proc. If it weren't intended, Gunnery/Arsenal would have a 9 second lockout.

[Volcan]

From the look of things, its intended for that to be another skill thing with Assault Specialist/Innovative Ordinance. Why? Because Gunnery/Arsenal has an 8 second ICD on its proc. If it weren't intended, Gunnery/Arsenal would have a 9 second lockout.

 

So what you're telling me is our rotations are meant to be interrupted by means out of our control. I can control my 'recharge cells', that's fine. I can't control when another mando pops his raid buff forcing 10% alacrity on me if there are two assault dps mandos for example. I suppose neither one of us can use it to prevent either of our roations from being intrrupted -- but that seems silly

[TACeMossie]

So what you're telling me is our rotations are meant to be interrupted by means out of our control. I can control my 'recharge cells', that's fine. I can't control when another mando pops his raid buff forcing 10% alacrity on me if there are two assault dps mandos for example. I suppose neither one of us can use it to prevent either of our roations from being intrrupted -- but that seems silly

 

Eh, when you're pulling 5k dps while everyone else is at 4.5k dps, a simple auto-attack extra every 5 minutes can't hurt now can it?

[Volcan]

Eh, when you're pulling 5k dps while everyone else is at 4.5k dps, a simple auto-attack extra every 5 minutes can't hurt now can it?

 

That's a solution. If it's called out before used, if not, then it takes a rotation block to correct. I don't know man, it just seems a bit broken or short-sighted to me. I'd really like to hear from a DEV via Eric or someone on this. I definitely get what you're saying about Gunnery's 8 second ICD, but I'm still not convinced they took into account raid buffs if that's the case.

 

Everything about this spec fits perfectly except this. I'm absolutely in love with this spec now; I've never enjoyed playing a trooper class as much as 3.0 Assault DPS. As you said, the single target DPS is godly, but it comes at the cost of being less flexible than some other DPS specs. I would really like to see this alacrity thing cleaned up a bit. It creates a bit of sloppiness to the spec that is otherwise seamless.

[venomlash]

I'm trying to wrap my head around the new-and-improved Alacrity, and from the discussions I've seen on the Combat Sentinel I was under the impression that Alacrity caused CD timers to tick faster too. (I.E. if there's 30s left on Mortar Volley and you have 10% Alacrity, it'll actually come off cooldown after 27s.)

From the looks of this discussion that's not the case; cooldown is only shortened by the Alacrity AT THE TIME that the cooldown STARTS and completely ignores changes in alacrity during the course of the cooldown. Of course, we're talking about ICDs on procs, not ability CDs, but those should be handled the same way.

 

Has anyone done serious testing on this? Use Mortar Volley on a dummy, pop an Efficacy adrenal, watch the cooldown timer. If cooldowns do not, in fact, adjust for alacrity on the fly, they just threw a wrench into Assault again. Still not as bad as the Alacrity situation was for the spec pre-3.0, though.

[Gyronamics]

ICD and other CD do not respect changes in alacrity.

 

Their timer is set according to alacrity levels at the time they went on cooldown. This is why having a commando pop raid alacrity buff at the start when everyone puts their best stuff on CD is very powerful.

 

Yes it has been proved and yes it screws assault rotations.

Edited December 14, 2014 by Gyronamics

[venomlash]

Thanks for the information, Gyronamics.

Well, they could make the Alacrity stat useful, but they couldn't make the Alacrity system not bad. I'm cool with this encouraging us to clump our big offensive cooldowns under high-alacrity phases, but it really just mucks up tightly-regimented specs' rotations with the constant changing of effective Alacrity.

 

I maintain that it's not as annoying as Assault pre-3.0, where having any Alacrity actually hurt rather than helped.

[Volcan]

We have already established that alacrity changes mid rotation screw things up, but the question still stands--is this intended, and if so, should it be changed? Personally I'd like to see it changed. I'd like to see ICDs take into account dynamic alacrity. I don't think it is necessary to keep static ICDs, especially when the ability is tied to other mechanics like ammo regeneration/ heat ventilation. That's my take anyway.

[RookB]

I was working with the simulator and noticed it kept missing an IPA proc and subsequent Mag Shot. This happened when it applied vent heat which reminded me of this post you made. It was basically doing the exact same thing you explained. I can rework the code to only use vent heat right before Mag Shot but, this doesn't solve the issue you raised about the in-game factor with the raid buffs.

 

I think the easiest solution would be for the developers to change the cooldown on IPA/IA proc from 7.5 to 6.5 seconds. If your IPA/IA proc refreshes to 6.5 seconds and someone hits Celerity, your 5 GCD's would be 6.75 seconds so IPA/IA will be ready to proc again.

6.5 is long enough to not allow a 4 GCD block yet short enough to compensate for a raid buff applied after you reset your IPA/IA.