One thing I want to get time to investigate more fully with the tank simulator is timing on big cooldowns like guardian of ancient kings, etc.
As a player, I definitely find myself saving my 5-minute CD for a situation where I really need it or am in trouble. Because of this I often only get one use per fight, so my legendary that lowers its CD is largely worthless.
But I wonder if that’s really the best way to play… the simulator can get a lot more trials and figure out in the long run, what’s the better way to survive? I’d have to verify this in more detail, but so far I have found that being more liberal with cooldowns results in lower death chance. Or put another way, being proactive is way better than being reactive.
It sort of makes sense… even though it seems silly to use my 5-min CD when I’m at full health, as long as it prevents a lot of damage, that is reducing the probability of getting into a dangerous situation. I think that “saving” cooldowns would only be optimal if the fight is largely non-threatening except for one or two very specific events.
Anyway – something that I’d definitely like to research more when I get some time. In the short term, I’m going to try to retrain myself in-game and see how it works out.
I can see that - it would be interesting to research different rotations on it. Maybe a good use of the Global Network
I think either way, the important question there is, when you say “as long as it prevents a lot of damage”, what counts as “a lot of damage”. That’s essentially my issue with how FB is being used right now. Soaking the first Slam on Krosus with it is soaking a lot less damage than soaking one when I have 5 stacks of the DoT. Soaking the first Annihilate on Spellblade soaks a lot less damage than soaking one while dealing with the Adds’ AoE effects.
And all of this is relative based on the length of the cooldown involved. A 5 minute cooldown, you get at most twice a fight, so it may be better to use it earlier so you can ensure a second use, since it’s likely that 2 uses will result in more prevention than 1 use, even if it’s optimal. But for a shorter cooldown, like 3 minutes, it may be worth holding your first use a bit into the fight, since it probably won’t buy you a extra use to use it prematurely.
Well, if you use FB early, you can stay near max brew charges for the entire time it is up, since you won’t really need ISB. And then start using them more after it drops. Then later on in the fight you’ll be able to use FB again, possibly when you are at low brew charges. I think that is what is happening in the simulator, more or less.
The first FB use is somewhat sub-optimal, but, it essentially lets you get more overall brew coverage.
But at this point, especially with T19, it’s pretty trivial to keep 100% ISB uptime on any fight. You get so much CDR on your brews from Blackout Combo and the 4pc, and since that also resets Black Ox Brew, which gives you another 3 uses. It’s more important for long-term survivability, in my experience, to get the CDR on Black Ox rolling quickly, than to get your CDR on Fortifying Brew started.
The general opener is 3xISB, BOB, 2xISB, which gives you nearly a minute of ISB buffered in off the top of the fight. Assuming you can keep up your rotation, and you don’t have awful haste, you should never drop ISB at any point, making FB more of a “I will die if I don’t soak more than just the ISB soak” instead of a necessary part of keeping Active Mitigation up.
Some of this is likely to change with T20, but even so…
