Tyger

(Going to get flamed to hell and gone on this one. :P)

I've been reading for years that you have to time your auto attacks with your CAs. I've had beeps on in ACT for a long time, but the main thing it helps me with is making sure I'm on the hitbox of whatever mob I'm fighting in raid situations where everyone is stacked on top of each other.

A few weeks ago, I finally got the AA UI mod and watched that as well as my beeps quite closely. Honestly it didn't seem to matter to either one whether I carefully timed CAs betweeen auto attacks or just spammed CAs like there was no tomorrow. I did this on the training dummy and in heroic and raid situations.

I've always understood that your CA could interrupt starting an auto and that was the reason why timing CAs was important. However, I never noticed either from the UI mod, ACT beeps or looking at the parse later in ACT that I was auto attacking any less.

Am I missing something?

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I R not as best as I can

Helspeth

get the Auto-attack bar if you need something to rely on to time your CA's....

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Rippit

The reality is these days with a base 5.3 delay, fucking up your timing with one combat are doesn't murder your dps like it did in EoF when we were swinging various 1.6-2.5ish weapons

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Hey, do I preach to you when you're laying stoned in the gutter? No.

Venser 2.0

just look at your delay, is how i determine.. well, now i just look at the group make up cause im so used to it. so, 2.4 is, ubah delay 2 ca to the auto. i usually open with an auto, then 1 ca then auto, then 2 after.. just how it goes.. butchyea watch your delay and you're golden. for the timing and knowing when your auto hits, i just watch above the mobs head, or ive gotten so used to it i dont really watch anymore and still get my autos off fine. yar

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Sadari

I have an inquisitor alt, and I do notice a decreased number of auto-attacks if I don't time my spells/CA's.

However, most CA's are so quick it won't have a huge impact on the number of auto-attacks, especially in short fights.

Some basic numbers:
- assume you have a 4 second auto-attack
- assume you're consistently 1 second late because you're spamming CA's (and remember, most CA's cast in less time)

In a 20 second fight, you've done 4 attacks instead of 5. You've also lost the damage from any procs from your melee attacks. In any fight lasting less than 20 seconds, you don't even notice.

If you bump up the CA delay (because you have long-casting spells/CA's) or decrease the delay between attacks (a 3sec sword with 100% haste resulting in a 1.5sec auto-attack), lack of timing becomes noticeable.

Sadari
80 Illusionist

Tyger

The point is I don't see any reason to time CAs. I might be missing one swing every minute, but that doesn't near make up for the CAs I'm not casting while waiting for an AA. I've done swings/minute analysis on my parse and I'm not seeing a noticeable difference.

Sadari's post got me thinking... with our quick cast times, at most you are putting a sub-second delay on your AA (.4 or .6 second). It's probably true that it makes more of a difference for other classes. I haven't had my SK long enough to get a feel for how often he should be hitting, but I'll work on that.

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Orochan

Dude, the main reason swashies time auto attacks is because Ca's can't hurricane, so yes on any multi mob fight delaying your autos will lower your DPS drastically. On single target trash who honestly gives a fuck, but delaying your auto attack on anything w/ 3mobs + is just retarded because you're missing out on a shit load of damage to cast some shitty CA.

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Orochan

Key example is YoS, yea it's a heroic zone but you get the point.

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ujina

I didn't notice any difference between ACT auto atk ding and theauto atk bar in game.
Anyway to time your auto atk you can also add the casting time and recover time, compare with the minimum delay you can have (with max haste) and see how many CA you can fit between 2 auto atk.
I personally can't cast more than 2 CA, so i usually check when auto atk hit, cast 2 CA and wait next auto atk, once you get the rythm it's fine.
The other thing i like to have is a little "ding" in ACT when i'm out of melee range, unfortunatly i reinstalled windows few days ago and i lost the command for that, and i can't remember what it was (if somebody can help me...).

Rippit

It might not be as important as it used to be but you don't parse 20k on avatars by button mashing like a retard.

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Hey, do I preach to you when you're laying stoned in the gutter? No.