Unstable convulsions

[Foofmonger]

I actually get mixed signals concerning convulsive slashing...many say its garbage, some say its good when you cancel it after one gcd to get some kind of burst (...burst on mara lol...), some say its one of the highest dps skills of mara.

Those are basically all the case.

1. It is the highest damaging skill (single target) of the Marauder in a single GCD. This is not a debatable point or opinion, just basic math. Anyone with a Marauder can easily check this (look at convulsive slashing tooltip damage, multiple it by 3, and there you go).
2. It's garbage if you don't interrupt it.
3. It's good when you cancel it after once GCD.

[wachlarz]

I actually get mixed signals concerning convulsive slashing...many say its garbage, some say its good when you cancel it after one gcd to get some kind of burst (...burst on mara lol...), some say its one of the highest dps skills of mara.

Those are basically all the case.

1. It is the highest damaging skill (single target) of the Marauder in a single GCD. This is not a debatable point or opinion, just basic math. Anyone with a Marauder can easily check this (look at convulsive slashing tooltip damage, multiple it by 3, and there you go).
2. It's garbage if you don't interrupt it.
3. It's good when you cancel it after once GCD.

U know any other good skill that U need too cancel to make dmg ?

[Foofmonger]

I actually get mixed signals concerning convulsive slashing...many say its garbage, some say its good when you cancel it after one gcd to get some kind of burst (...burst on mara lol...), some say its one of the highest dps skills of mara.

Those are basically all the case.

1. It is the highest damaging skill (single target) of the Marauder in a single GCD. This is not a debatable point or opinion, just basic math. Anyone with a Marauder can easily check this (look at convulsive slashing tooltip damage, multiple it by 3, and there you go).
2. It's garbage if you don't interrupt it.
3. It's good when you cancel it after once GCD.

U know any other good skill that U need too cancel to make dmg ?

It's been this way since 2008 buddy. I didn't design this game. The fact that 12 years later this is a mystery to so many current ROR players is the real question.

[TreefAM]

Hand of ruin for sorcs, you'd be crazy if you actually did the full channel.

[Omegus]

I actually get mixed signals concerning convulsive slashing...many say its garbage, some say its good when you cancel it after one gcd to get some kind of burst (...burst on mara lol...), some say its one of the highest dps skills of mara.

Those are basically all the case.

1. It is the highest damaging skill (single target) of the Marauder in a single GCD. This is not a debatable point or opinion, just basic math. Anyone with a Marauder can easily check this (look at convulsive slashing tooltip damage, multiple it by 3, and there you go).
2. It's garbage if you don't interrupt it.
3. It's good when you cancel it after once GCD.

U know any other good skill that U need too cancel to make dmg ?

Depends on the channelled skill and damage compared to other skills. The big benefit of channelled skills is that the first tick happens at 0 seconds giving you damage up front and high initial DPS. The longer the skill goes on for, the less of this benefit you get overall.

Assuming Convulsive Slashing does 100 damage per tick (number just an example).

1st hit: 0 seconds, 100 damage
2nd hit: 0.6 seconds, 200 damage done, 333.33 dps
3rd hit: 1.2 seconds, 300 damage done, 250 dps
1st GCD ends here
4th hit: 1.8 seconds, 400 damage done, 222.22 dps
5th hit: 2.4 seconds, 500 damage done, 208.33 dps
2nd GCD ends here
6th hit: 3 seconds, 600 damage done, 200 dps

You can cancel after the 3rd hit (the global cooldown ends at 1.5 seconds) so by interupting here you've got the most DPS and good overall damage without leaving anything on the table. Working out the exact point to cancel depends on the actual damage of the Convulsie Slashing, the damage of the follow-up attack compared to the damage lost from Convulsive Slashing, and how much auto-attack damage you lose during Convolsive Slashings (I don't believe AAs are active during channels but I might be wrong, it's been so long since I've played melee). I'm curious to know whether jumping after the 1.2 second hit to cancel the channel before the GCD would cause the AA swing timer to resume from 1.2 seconds.

Seeing as people are saying to cancel CS after one GCD I assume someone has dome the maths and worked out that a 1 GCD of 3 ticks of CS is better than anything else you could do during that 1.5 seconds.

[Foofmonger]

Yea you've nailed it. To answer your questions: AAs are not active during channels, and jumping doesn't do anything to the swing timer/reset it (it does obviously break the channel though).

And yes, 3 ticks of CS > all other Mara abilities in terms of damage, but 2 ticks of CS < a lot of abilities. For reference, my tooltip damage on CS is 380 (so 720 for 2, and 1140 for 3) , and on Guillotene (the next highest for me) 818.

[Omegus]

Yea you've nailed it. To answer your questions: AAs are not active during channels, and jumping doesn't do anything to the swing timer/reset it (it does obviously break the channel though).

And yes, 3 ticks of CS > all other Mara abilities in terms of damage, but 2 ticks of CS < a lot of abilities. For reference, my tooltip damage on CS is 380 (so 720 for 2, and 1140 for 3) , and on Guillotene (the next highest for me) 818.

My thought was that if it broke the channel at 1.2 seconds then the AA swing timer would start up again from 1.2 seconds. Doesn't mean it would trigger a hit instantly, only that it would start counting towards the next AA hit earlier.

Example: when CS is used (timeline = 0 seconds) the next AA swing is due in 0.5 seconds time. While CS is active the AA swing timer is paused.

If CS is cancelled by jumping at 1.2 seconds (immediately when the 3rd hit triggers), the next AA swing would then happen at 1.7 seconds if there is no extra hidden delay.
If CS is cancelled by interupting with another ability at 1.5 seconds (GCD), the next AA swing would then happen at 2.0 seconds if there is no extra hidden delay.

If there's no extra delay then a micro-optimization of Mara damage would be to jump-cancel CS on the third hit and then activate the next ability while in the air. You still max out your ability damage with GCDs but you get more AA damage too.

Assuming assuming assuming assuming etc. This isn't tested, hence the question

[Foofmonger]

My thought was that if it broke the channel at 1.2 seconds then the AA swing timer would start up again from 1.2 seconds. Doesn't mean it would trigger a hit instantly, only that it would start counting towards the next AA hit earlier.

Example: when CS is used (timeline = 0 seconds) the next AA swing is due in 0.5 seconds time. While CS is active the AA swing timer is paused.

If CS is cancelled by jumping at 1.2 seconds (immediately when the 3rd hit triggers), the next AA swing would then happen at 1.7 seconds if there is no extra hidden delay.
If CS is cancelled by interupting with another ability at 1.5 seconds (GCD), the next AA swing would then happen at 2.0 seconds if there is no extra hidden delay.

If there's no extra delay then a micro-optimization of Mara damage would be to jump-cancel CS on the third hit and then activate the next ability while in the air. You still max out your ability damage with GCDs but you get more AA damage too.

Assuming assuming assuming assuming etc. This isn't tested, hence the question

Alright so here's how it works, just re-tested.

Convulsive Slashing lets the auto attack timer go down as normal when you use the ability (assuming you don't hit it when you are at 0). When the swing timer hits "AA time", it doesn't fire due to the CS channel being active, what happens is that the auto gets "queued" for when you break CS, regardless of when (or how) you break it.

So it doesn't pause the AA swing timer persay, it just doesn't let those AAs fire off from that last swing timer (the AAs sit ready to fire). So theoretically, the jump cancel is a sound idea with the way it works, and would net you the autos .2 of a second earlier if you time it right (and you use the CS late in your auto cycle in the first place, my swing timer with as much AA haste as I can get is 1.9 seconds, so assuming I use CS at the proper time initially, the jump cancel wouldn't matter because the AA still wouldn't be queued).

[Omegus]

Thank you for testing . That's not how I expected it to work!!

edit: in a perfect world this could be used to spike opponents instead. Get an AA swing (queued up) along with the 3rd tick from channel cancelled into something like Guillotine for 3 hits in 0.2-0.3 seconds. Might be better on something like a Black Orc using the channel to queue up a big slow AA tick into Shut Yer Mouth to get 3 big hits all going on the same timestamp.

[Foofmonger]

Thank you for testing . That's not how I expected it to work!!

edit: in a perfect world this could be used to spike opponents instead. Get an AA swing (queued up) along with the 3rd tick from channel cancelled into something like Guillotine for 3 hits in 0.2-0.3 seconds. Might be better on something like a Black Orc using the channel to queue up a big slow AA tick into Shut Yer Mouth to get 3 big hits all going on the same timestamp.

That's how we tend to use it normally.