Companion skills with a duration - how do cooldowns work?

wkrick

This seems like a simple question, but it's proving incredibly difficult to google the answer...

When a companion casts a skill that has a duration, does the cooldown start as soon as casting is finished, or does the cooldown start after the duration ends?

tsaescishoeshiner

All other cooldowns in sets and skills (EDIT: that I can think of) are after the cast is finished or the effect procs/starts. I assume this is true for companion skills because otherwise I wouldn't see them using skills that have 8-second durations and 12-second cooldowns nearly as often. And if it did, Augmented would be a bit of a nerf. As it is, I think you can use Quickened to get really high uptime on some of the buffs/heals/DoTs.

Necrotech_Master

cooldown starts as soon as they cast it

which can be a problem if you give them too much cooldown reduction because then they will be overcasting buffs/dots (such as the telvanni efficiency set)

Hasenpfote

You can use Telvanni for fun builds, but most time, companions dont act as dps, but you can create a crazy healing machine until a worldboss creates a damaging area under your companions feet and your companion things, he has the greatest time of his live until HP drops to zero while still inside the damaging area

Zodiarkslayer

A lot of companion skills also have a cast time! That means the time that they are locked in animation. Cooldown starts just after cast time/ animation is finished.

Companions check their abilities once every gcd with simple if/else programming. They check every skill for availability in sequence and then perform the first skill that is a available. If no skill is available, they will light attack.

Dagoth_Rac

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

A lot of companion skills also have a cast time! That means the time that they are locked in animation. Cooldown starts just after cast time/ animation is finished.

Companions check their abilities once every gcd with simple if/else programming. They check every skill for availability in sequence and then perform the first skill that is a available. If no skill is available, they will light attack.

So if you had a skill with a 1 second cooldown in first slot, they would cast that every gcd and ignore all other skills on bar? (Hypothetical. I don't think you can get cooldown that low. Just trying to understand logic.)

TybaltKaine

Hypothetically, yes.

I tend to arrange my companion skills in order that I want them fired, based on cooldown.

So for my Ember Tank, I start her off with Bashing Bulwark (instant, 16 sec cooldown), then Entomb (0.4 seconds, 16 sec cooldown), Hurricane Visage (0.4 secs, 12 sec CD), Thunderous Strike (Instant, only when enemy is below 25% HP, 16 sec CD) and finally Vanish (0.4, only when Companion HP drops to under 50%, 36 sec CD)

This ensures that she will fight the way I want her to, up close and personal, while I fight from distance. Thunderous and Vanish have conditions, which is why I put them last, though I suppose you could put the first to really push the priority.

She starts every fight with Bashing Bulwark and her second skill is a tossup between Entomb or Visage, either of which is fine with me, though Visage gets more procs because of its shorter CD. I have Entomb first because I want it prioritized.

wkrick

TybaltKaine wrote: »

I tend to arrange my companion skills in order that I want them fired, based on cooldown.

Does that really make any difference in practice?

Isn't the firing order essentially a circular queue where it wraps around to the beginning after each pass from left to right...

1 2 3 4 5 -> (start over)
1 2 3 4 5 -> (start over)
1 2 3 4 5 -> (start over)
1 2 3 4 5 -> (start over)
1 2 3 4 5 -> (start over)
...

I could see arranging them in order of CAST TIME from shortest (first) to longest (last) so that the initial burst of skills is fired off as quick as possible. But beyond that first activation, the firing order is ultimately constrained by the cast time + cooldown on each skill. Except maybe in edge cases where you've got multiple skills that line up with the exact same cast time (or no cast time) and cooldown (or no cooldown due to quickened/haste/telvanni). Then I guess the order could matter.

Or maybe I'm not understanding how the skill rotation works.

Does it go from left to right and start over at the beginning each time after it fires off a skill...

1 (fire) -> (start over)
1 (on cooldown, skip), 2 (fire) -> (start over)
1 (on cooldown, skip), 2 (on cooldown, skip), 3 (fire) -> (start over)
1 (on cooldown, skip), 2 (on cooldown, skip), 3 (on cooldown, skip), 4 (fire) -> (start over)
1 (on cooldown, skip), 2 (on cooldown, skip), 3 (on cooldown, skip), 4 (on cooldown, skip), 5 (fire) -> (start over)

etc...

With this sort of arrangement, skills with lower cooldowns placed to the left on the bar will get more opportunities to fire off.

Another thing that I guess could be important is how you stagger the cooldowns. The companions will light attack when no skills are able to be activated. This builds their ultimate, which could be desirable for companions with useful ultimates like Ember.

I'd love to really understand how this is actually implemented. I think it could be useful to write a "companion simulator" where you slot skills and run it in a loop to see the theoretical average uptime and downtime of various skill permutations.

Necrotech_Master

companions skills work on priority

skill 1 is first priority and skill 5 is last priority

so if skill 1 is off cooldown and meets conditions (ally is under 75% hp, enemy under 25% hp, etc) then it fires that, continuing to each skill

it does this check every GCD, as soon as skill 1 is ready to fire again, that is what is prioritized

so using a set like telvanni efficiency and short cooldown skills on 1-3, they will almost never use skills 4 and 5

wkrick

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

so using a set like telvanni efficiency and short cooldown skills on 1-3, they will almost never use skills 4 and 5

In that scenario, it would probably make sense to fill the first two slots with skills that have the longest cooldowns like Crimson Font. They will fire whenever they're available, but since they're mostly on cooldown, they will just get skipped over and the remaining skills will still get fired off just as if they were first in the list.

Necrotech_Master

wkrick wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

so using a set like telvanni efficiency and short cooldown skills on 1-3, they will almost never use skills 4 and 5

In that scenario, it would probably make sense to fill the first two slots with skills that have the longest cooldowns like Crimson Font. They will fire whenever they're available, but since they're mostly on cooldown, they will just get skipped over and the remaining skills will still get fired off just as if they were first in the list.

correct

so in that example if you were super heavy with cooldown reduction, crimson font would get as low as about 15-20 sec cooldown (its a base of like 38-42 sec, i dont remember exactly, telvanni is 50% reduction by itself brining it to about 19-21 sec, and if you were full quickened armor you would reduce it by about another ~20%, which would give a long cooldown/long duration skill like crimson font 100% uptime)

it would also make the undaunted ranged taunt more useable too so any companion could have a ranged taunt with 1h/shield and not just azander lol

wkrick

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

it would also make the undaunted ranged taunt more useable too so any companion could have a ranged taunt with 1h/shield and not just azander lol

All companions can use Provoke if they have a 1H + Shield equipped. Or did you mean WITHOUT a 1H/shield.

Destructive Blast is a taunt when they have a Frost staff equipped, but I don't know if it's a "soft" taunt or a "hard" taunt or if the distinction even exists for companions.

Here's the full list of companion taunts that I'm aware of...

• 1H and Shield skill line - Provoke (with 1H and Shield equipped)
• Destruction Staff skill line - Destructive Blast (with a Frost staff equipped)
• Undaunted skill line - Savage Instinct
• Quill Knight skill line - Scathing Rune (Azandar only)

Necrotech_Master

wkrick wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

it would also make the undaunted ranged taunt more useable too so any companion could have a ranged taunt with 1h/shield and not just azander lol

All companions can use Provoke if they have a 1H + Shield equipped. Or did you mean WITHOUT a 1H/shield.

Destructive Blast is a taunt when they have a Frost staff equipped, but I don't know if it's a "soft" taunt or a "hard" taunt or if the distinction even exists for companions.

Here's the full list of companion taunts that I'm aware of...

• 1H and Shield skill line - Provoke (with 1H and Shield equipped)
• Destruction Staff skill line - Destructive Blast (with a Frost staff equipped)
• Undaunted skill line - Savage Instinct
• Quill Knight skill line - Scathing Rune (Azandar only)

thats all the taunts, im saying you can use the undaunted skill line taunt (savage instinct) with 1h/shield if you build quickened + telvanni efficiency

the undaunted taunt otherwise is practically worthless because 15 sec taunt on a 36 sec cooldown skill is not functional, they cant maintain 100% uptime on taunt without telvanni efficiency