How to create an optimal rotation on my own?

Mariusghost84

How do you guys proceed to create specific types of rotation? How do you know what the best order of skills and what skills to use to begin with? Im starting to find a lot of Joy in making builds and just finding my own way of doibg things, but as far as rotation goes im blank on my own. I recenty saw xynodes new stam dk dps video with dual vma daggers and his rotation was just plain crazy complicated in my opinion, how om earth did he and ppl like him manage to come up with these specific rotations?

Narvuntien

I look at how long each ability lasts and try to line them up so I can keep them all up. typically you still have a bit of downtime left to use a spammable or heavy attack

Runefang

Well its really just a lot of trial and error for these guys.

And now the theory crafters all know the best combination of stats, gear, skills etc that all they are doing are small tweaks based on the latest patches.

There are a whole slew of DoT skills for example that just do less damage than the best spammables so they're not even considered.

Rikkadir

Playing like a robot takes all the fun out of playing, IMO.
I have a Magicka Sorcerer based on Xynode's build, but I don't stick rigidly to his rotation. I know which skills/abilities work best against certain enemies.
Don't get too serious, have fun.
The serious players are the ones who tell you off in dungeons.

WrathOfInnos

There’s a lot more to it than I could cover here, but on the most basic level it’s about determining which skills provide the most damage per cast, then arranging them on the skill bars in such a way that you can cast them in a repeatable sequence and maximize uptime of each skill. There are many constraints on this, such as weapon skills having to be on the same bar as that weapon type, and some passives require a certain active skill to be slotted on that bar. You should prioritize the highest damage skills.

Then there are other constraints on the order you cast things. For example endless hail cannot be cast right before a bar swap if you’re using a Maelstrom Bow, it must tick once before bar swap to gain the bonus damage, meaning you have to cast 2 other skills on that bar before swapping (typically Caltrops and Poison Injection). Then there are skills that are best to use right before a bar swap, because it shortens their animation, such as the Warden Netch.

You also want to align skills in such a way that you spend most of your time (and deal most of your damage) on your front bar, since most builds will have a 5pc set on the front bar that is lost on the back bar (2 pieces replaced by vMA bow or destruction staff). This means that your back bar skills should be ones with a long duration, so they don’t have to be used often. It also means that the instant cast skills that you’ll be using often, “spammables” like Surprise Attack or Elemental Weapon, should be on your front bar. The exception to the long duration rule is hard-hitting abilities like Relentless Focus, which should be on front bar to hit harder, despite having a buff that lasts a long time (although some fire it from back bar, then swap to front before it lands on the enemy).

Another aspect you may want to consider is burst. Skills like Sorcerer’s Curse and Warden’s Shalks don’t deal damage until a few seconds after they’re cast. This makes them a great option to use at the start of a rotation, and they’ll hit at the same time as the skills you cast next.

Finally, look at morphs for options to help make your rotation easy and smooth. Like on Sorcerer in Elsweyr there is a 12 second Liquid Lightning morph or a 8 second Lightning Flood. Flood times great with Volatile Familiar (8s) and Elemental Blockade (8s). Liquid works better with Daedric Prey (6s) or Haunting Curse (12s) and Unstable Wall (6s).

Some skills simply won’t line up nicely with others, like Warden’s Swarm is 10s, while Winter’s Revenge is 12s. For these you have 3 options:
- Overcast an outlier that is longer than other skills
- Let a skill fall off for a couple seconds if it is shorter than other skills
- Go to a dynamic rotation that casts each skill as it is needed, and changes constantly (this may actually repeat like a static rotation, but could involve over 50 steps to memorize vs the 8-12 in a typical rotation).

Vajrak

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

How do you guys proceed to create specific types of rotation? How do you know what the best order of skills and what skills to use to begin with? Im starting to find a lot of Joy in making builds and just finding my own way of doibg things, but as far as rotation goes im blank on my own. I recenty saw xynodes new stam dk dps video with dual vma daggers and his rotation was just plain crazy complicated in my opinion, how om earth did he and ppl like him manage to come up with these specific rotations?

One thing that will help a lot if you don't already have is a Combat action reminder mod/timer --- so that you always see the timing on your DoT and can re-apply them properly. A bit of time, practice and experience will teach you which it is okay to overwrite slightly and which it is okay to let fall behind slightly.

If someone has an extremely complex rotation, then don't think of it so much as a rotation, it is likely more dynamic, i.e. they adjust what they need or can keep active at the moment.

Once you have a combat action reminder, it gets a bit easier to keep your rotations tighter, as it allows you to focus more instead of having to keep the mental counts going for each skill. After that, for building YOUR rotation --- it's about weighing out your skills and how you need them.

Example:
I have a Sorc that I am playing with lately, Altmer with Blue Food. It's general rotation (starting from the backbar) is as follows:

Frontbar: Crystal Frags, Haunting Curse, Endless Fury, Inner Light, Bound Armaments, Storm Atronach (Ult)
Backbar: Liquid Lightning, Blockade, Power Surge, Dark Conversion, Bound Armaments, Destro Ult

100%-21%
Power Surge>LA>Dark Conversion>Blockade>LA>Liquid Lightning>>Switch>Potion>Haunting>LA>Crystal Frag>LA>Crystal Frag>LA >>Switch>> Dark Conversion>Blockade>>continue :: Reapply Power Surge as needed; Dark Conversion should have near 100% uptime as it's being used on a ~6-8s bar switch cycle.

20%-15%
Liquid Lightning>LA>Blockade>LA>>Switch>>Endless Fury>LA>Haunting>LA>Endless Fury :: Repeat as needed to maintain DoTs

<15%
Blockade>>Switch>>Endless Fury>LA>Repeat:: Re-apply Blockade and Power Surge as needed

How this rotation was developed:
The goal was to be able to maintain without needing to utilize heavy attacks or, if needed, only every 10th-12th rotation.

Front bar max magicka is slightly higher due to Inner Light, so starting from the backbar and using conversion to start my rotation can actually let me go to front bar with higher magicka than when I left from backbar.

Altmer passive gives stam back on 6s, so hitting Dark conversion per rotation can actually be done at a net gain of overall Stamina due to recovery and Altmer passive combined. To adjust for the delay in the skill, a LA is not used but instead immediately hit into Blockade to start/restart the actual DPS/DoT cycle. Lightning is cast second, so that on re-cycling, it will just be running down as Blockade goes back up.

Front bar with the higher mag and all the rest being sorc skills gives me higher spell damage on that bar, so they feed into each other, but it meant using Crystal Frags as the spammable, because there was no room left for a different spammable and Crystal Blast on proc, and even without inner light, I'd be more inclined to utilize Destructive Reach --- another DoT to keep them running smooth (and backbar, would just move power surge or conversion to front at that point), or flex it out for Magicka Harness.

Ult is saved/used on bosses at opening.

Reason for giving all of this: Crafting the rotation had to have the goal of it in mind not just "OPTIMIZE DPS", because we know what the optimized is already --- the LA/Elemental Weapon Meta, where everything else is really just slotted for passive purposes --- (and bet would see a big change to this if, instead of increasing light attacks, vMA staff blockade increased damage on class skills).

The general goal for your rotation should be set around what it is trying to accomplish, and in having flexibility to go dynamic as needed without sacrificing a lot of DPS.

DoT uptime, Resource Management, and how it fits with the mechanics of what you are doing. Dummy parses and practice is purely for muscle memory, but it is up to you to set the goal of the rotation. My Tank rotations are much tighter than my DPS rotations, because the goal is to maximize party DPS and resources. My Healer rotations are about optimizing mitigations and buffs, so that heals are negligible and can slip in a little extra DPS on some or extra buffs to improve group dps on others.

Set your goal, practice your weaving (Light or Heavy), and build around that.

And don't worry about the meta. If you are in a guild that is pursuing top scores, they'll help you learn it, or what you can do that is close to it. Your rotations should be a mix of efficiency and personal fun.

Mariusghost84

Vajrak wrote: »

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

How do you guys proceed to create specific types of rotation? How do you know what the best order of skills and what skills to use to begin with? Im starting to find a lot of Joy in making builds and just finding my own way of doibg things, but as far as rotation goes im blank on my own. I recenty saw xynodes new stam dk dps video with dual vma daggers and his rotation was just plain crazy complicated in my opinion, how om earth did he and ppl like him manage to come up with these specific rotations?

One thing that will help a lot if you don't already have is a Combat action reminder mod/timer --- so that you always see the timing on your DoT and can re-apply them properly. A bit of time, practice and experience will teach you which it is okay to overwrite slightly and which it is okay to let fall behind slightly.

If someone has an extremely complex rotation, then don't think of it so much as a rotation, it is likely more dynamic, i.e. they adjust what they need or can keep active at the moment.

Once you have a combat action reminder, it gets a bit easier to keep your rotations tighter, as it allows you to focus more instead of having to keep the mental counts going for each skill. After that, for building YOUR rotation --- it's about weighing out your skills and how you need them.

Example:
I have a Sorc that I am playing with lately, Altmer with Blue Food. It's general rotation (starting from the backbar) is as follows:

Frontbar: Crystal Frags, Haunting Curse, Endless Fury, Inner Light, Bound Armaments, Storm Atronach (Ult)
Backbar: Liquid Lightning, Blockade, Power Surge, Dark Conversion, Bound Armaments, Destro Ult

100%-21%
Power Surge>LA>Dark Conversion>Blockade>LA>Liquid Lightning>>Switch>Potion>Haunting>LA>Crystal Frag>LA>Crystal Frag>LA >>Switch>> Dark Conversion>Blockade>>continue :: Reapply Power Surge as needed; Dark Conversion should have near 100% uptime as it's being used on a ~6-8s bar switch cycle.

20%-15%
Liquid Lightning>LA>Blockade>LA>>Switch>>Endless Fury>LA>Haunting>LA>Endless Fury :: Repeat as needed to maintain DoTs

<15%
Blockade>>Switch>>Endless Fury>LA>Repeat:: Re-apply Blockade and Power Surge as needed

How this rotation was developed:
The goal was to be able to maintain without needing to utilize heavy attacks or, if needed, only every 10th-12th rotation.

Front bar max magicka is slightly higher due to Inner Light, so starting from the backbar and using conversion to start my rotation can actually let me go to front bar with higher magicka than when I left from backbar.

Altmer passive gives stam back on 6s, so hitting Dark conversion per rotation can actually be done at a net gain of overall Stamina due to recovery and Altmer passive combined. To adjust for the delay in the skill, a LA is not used but instead immediately hit into Blockade to start/restart the actual DPS/DoT cycle. Lightning is cast second, so that on re-cycling, it will just be running down as Blockade goes back up.

Front bar with the higher mag and all the rest being sorc skills gives me higher spell damage on that bar, so they feed into each other, but it meant using Crystal Frags as the spammable, because there was no room left for a different spammable and Crystal Blast on proc, and even without inner light, I'd be more inclined to utilize Destructive Reach --- another DoT to keep them running smooth (and backbar, would just move power surge or conversion to front at that point), or flex it out for Magicka Harness.

Ult is saved/used on bosses at opening.

Reason for giving all of this: Crafting the rotation had to have the goal of it in mind not just "OPTIMIZE DPS", because we know what the optimized is already --- the LA/Elemental Weapon Meta, where everything else is really just slotted for passive purposes --- (and bet would see a big change to this if, instead of increasing light attacks, vMA staff blockade increased damage on class skills).

The general goal for your rotation should be set around what it is trying to accomplish, and in having flexibility to go dynamic as needed without sacrificing a lot of DPS.

DoT uptime, Resource Management, and how it fits with the mechanics of what you are doing. Dummy parses and practice is purely for muscle memory, but it is up to you to set the goal of the rotation. My Tank rotations are much tighter than my DPS rotations, because the goal is to maximize party DPS and resources. My Healer rotations are about optimizing mitigations and buffs, so that heals are negligible and can slip in a little extra DPS on some or extra buffs to improve group dps on others.

Set your goal, practice your weaving (Light or Heavy), and build around that.

And don't worry about the meta. If you are in a guild that is pursuing top scores, they'll help you learn it, or what you can do that is close to it. Your rotations should be a mix of efficiency and personal fun.

Amazing post. I Will dig dreper deeper into it tomorrow. Appriciate the time you took to explain this man!

Vajrak

If you want/need extra help, feel free to ask, here on the board, in pm's, or even in game (PC-NA, @Vajrak)

Iskiab

It’s actually pretty easy:

Step 1:
Setup skills to get the maximum amount of buffs possible

Step 2:
Find out the damage per ability cast of each ability and only use the highest ones

Step 3:
Cast the buffs first, then prioritize the highest damaging ones and work down the list

If they line up nicely you have a static rotation, if they don’t you have a dynamic rotation

The only tricky part is testing and seeing how abilities function. Like sometimes it could be best to clip a dot because you can get a dot tick - new dot in less then a second. You also need to test it thoroughly to make sure everything works like the tooltip says.

Another thing that can happen is two abilities need to be cast at the same time, in which case it can be best to recast one early for better uptime. Spamables are just filler, the hardest hitting things are always dots and ground effects. Cast time abilities are tricky too because you have to factor in missed light attacks.

In general, everything’s about opportunity cost.

russelmmendoza

My rotation, not perfect, I hope its good enough for vet pledges.
https://youtu.be/FrT6tVSU9PE
Thank you very to "at writs end" and guildmaster @Malhood for the target dummy.

Vajrak

russelmmendoza wrote: »

My rotation, not perfect, I hope its good enough for vet pledges.
https://youtu.be/FrT6tVSU9PE
Thank you very to "at writs end" and guildmaster @Malhood for the target dummy.

As I advise others, use a dummy for practicing to get your rotation smooth -- then go out and fight world bosses or solo some dungeons (Spindlecluth, Volenfell, VoM) to practice in a less forgiving situation. Having your rotation trained in is good --- having your response to red/controls/etc trained in is even better.

You're fine for Vet Pledges, but if you are asking what you can do to improve your setup --- Change your weapons (Transmute) to Nirnhoned Mainhand, Sharpened Offhand. You want your enchants to be the damage as needed, so the disease main and offhand a stam absorb or oblivion damage.

On your infused bow backbar, put your weapon damage enchant. Endless hail will keep up the enchant and raise your overall weapon damage that way, to full effect also instead of the half effect you are getting on the dagger.

Change 1 of your jewelry pieces to Bloodthirsty (the gold ones of course). With the infused backbar weapon enchant, nirnhoned main hand and sharpened offhand, your weapon damage and penetration will both be higher than you currently have, and you'll get a large % bonus during execute phase.

As far as the actual rotation goes, consider putting Endless Hail as the last skill before bar switching, so that you can animation cancel it with the switch --- the damage will land at the same time, and you'll squeeze in an extra hit on the front bar rotation.

The only other thing you may want to consider, though it is a bit of a grind, is losing Re-Arming Trap for Channeled Acceleration --- the 36s duration for the 1.3s cast time becomes worthwhile in more mobile fights, and it doesn't tag your stamina so is utilizing a resource that shouldn't be bothersome to keep up. Even just 300 Magicka Recovery over 36 seconds will give you more than enough back to cast it every 36 seconds.

After those changes, try blue food instead of Dubious, your sustain should be high enough to last through the fight with it going by the video.

Rikkadir

Great video, Russel.
Some interesting and informative posts in this thread. Thanks.
But I haven't got a clue what you're all on about. I just hold R2. lol We're not all on PC.

russelmmendoza

Vajrak wrote: »

russelmmendoza wrote: »

My rotation, not perfect, I hope its good enough for vet pledges.
https://youtu.be/FrT6tVSU9PE
Thank you very to "at writs end" and guildmaster @Malhood for the target dummy.

As I advise others, use a dummy for practicing to get your rotation smooth -- then go out and fight world bosses or solo some dungeons (Spindlecluth, Volenfell, VoM) to practice in a less forgiving situation. Having your rotation trained in is good --- having your response to red/controls/etc trained in is even better.

You're fine for Vet Pledges, but if you are asking what you can do to improve your setup --- Change your weapons (Transmute) to Nirnhoned Mainhand, Sharpened Offhand. You want your enchants to be the damage as needed, so the disease main and offhand a stam absorb or oblivion damage.

On your infused bow backbar, put your weapon damage enchant. Endless hail will keep up the enchant and raise your overall weapon damage that way, to full effect also instead of the half effect you are getting on the dagger.

Change 1 of your jewelry pieces to Bloodthirsty (the gold ones of course). With the infused backbar weapon enchant, nirnhoned main hand and sharpened offhand, your weapon damage and penetration will both be higher than you currently have, and you'll get a large % bonus during execute phase.

As far as the actual rotation goes, consider putting Endless Hail as the last skill before bar switching, so that you can animation cancel it with the switch --- the damage will land at the same time, and you'll squeeze in an extra hit on the front bar rotation.

The only other thing you may want to consider, though it is a bit of a grind, is losing Re-Arming Trap for Channeled Acceleration --- the 36s duration for the 1.3s cast time becomes worthwhile in more mobile fights, and it doesn't tag your stamina so is utilizing a resource that shouldn't be bothersome to keep up. Even just 300 Magicka Recovery over 36 seconds will give you more than enough back to cast it every 36 seconds.

After those changes, try blue food instead of Dubious, your sustain should be high enough to last through the fight with it going by the video.

Tyvm sir.

I will try your suggestions and hope for improvement, really want to hit 40k dps.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

As far as the actual rotation goes, consider putting Endless Hail as the last skill before bar switching, so that you can animation cancel it with the switch --- the damage will land at the same time, and you'll squeeze in an extra hit on the front bar rotation.

you definitely want endless hail to be one of the first skill you cast on your bow bar, simply becuase if you have a vMA bow, if you swap off the bar before the skill starts to damage a mob, you do not get the extra damage from the bows set. now this is not really a problem if they do not have that bow but it is best to get into practice of doing that way till they do. something like endless - caltrops - poison injection (which you, @russelmmendoza, need to use instead of the venom arrow morph you have in that video) will do.

Mariusghost84

Vajrak wrote: »

russelmmendoza wrote: »

My rotation, not perfect, I hope its good enough for vet pledges.
https://youtu.be/FrT6tVSU9PE
Thank you very to "at writs end" and guildmaster @Malhood for the target dummy.

As I advise others, use a dummy for practicing to get your rotation smooth -- then go out and fight world bosses or solo some dungeons (Spindlecluth, Volenfell, VoM) to practice in a less forgiving situation. Having your rotation trained in is good --- having your response to red/controls/etc trained in is even better.

You're fine for Vet Pledges, but if you are asking what you can do to improve your setup --- Change your weapons (Transmute) to Nirnhoned Mainhand, Sharpened Offhand. You want your enchants to be the damage as needed, so the disease main and offhand a stam absorb or oblivion damage.

On your infused bow backbar, put your weapon damage enchant. Endless hail will keep up the enchant and raise your overall weapon damage that way, to full effect also instead of the half effect you are getting on the dagger.

Change 1 of your jewelry pieces to Bloodthirsty (the gold ones of course). With the infused backbar weapon enchant, nirnhoned main hand and sharpened offhand, your weapon damage and penetration will both be higher than you currently have, and you'll get a large % bonus during execute phase.

As far as the actual rotation goes, consider putting Endless Hail as the last skill before bar switching, so that you can animation cancel it with the switch --- the damage will land at the same time, and you'll squeeze in an extra hit on the front bar rotation.

The only other thing you may want to consider, though it is a bit of a grind, is losing Re-Arming Trap for Channeled Acceleration --- the 36s duration for the 1.3s cast time becomes worthwhile in more mobile fights, and it doesn't tag your stamina so is utilizing a resource that shouldn't be bothersome to keep up. Even just 300 Magicka Recovery over 36 seconds will give you more than enough back to cast it every 36 seconds.

After those changes, try blue food instead of Dubious, your sustain should be high enough to last through the fight with it going by the video.

These are some outstanding tips, my setup is pretty much exaclty as you described. As for putting Endless Hail as last skill before switching bar , thats the oppsite of what ive heard others say. Something about 2 tics, before it can reach full potential? Did you pershaps mean razor caltrops as last skill? Great tip regarding losing rearming trap as i dont really like that skill! I will check out the alternative you suggested

Liofa

Give priority to highest damage per cast abilities, such as Endless Hail or Elemental Blockade. If a DoT does more damage per cast than a spammable, use that DoT instead of spammable. Your rotation may differ depending on the class and percentage of the health of the enemy. For example, Killer's Blade does more damage than Relentless Focus so Nightblades don't use it during execute. Same thing with Radiant Oppression. Here is my StamDK rotation for next patch:

Buff up with Flames of Oblivion x3 to get the Molten Whip stacks.

Endless Hail > LA > Rearming Trap > Bar Swap > LA > Noxious Breath (or FoO if it's down) > LA > Bar Swap > Razor Caltrops > LA > Poison Injection > Bar Swap > LA > Venomous Claw > LA > Rending Slashes

After this point I just LA > Noxious Breath until Endless Hail is over. Of course I refresh FoO if it goes down. Then I do LA > Bar Swap > Endless Hail and continue my rotation.

Important thing to know is that Endless Hail takes 2 seconds for its first tick to deal damage so its actual duration is around 12 seconds. Most of my DoTs having 10 seconds duration makes the whole rotation very easy because it's not really worth it to have a dynamic rotation since the DPS difference is very small for the difficulty increase.

Here is how my skill bar looks like:

Venomous Claw / Rending Slashes / Noxious Breath / Flames Of Oblivion / Molten Whip / Flawless Dawnbreaker

Endless Hail / Rearming Trap / Razor Caltrops / Poison Injection / Flex (Vigour or any Fighter's Guild skill) / Standart of Might

This rotation lets me keep Molten Whip passive with highest possible uptime without having to double slot it. Your best option though (for highest DPS) is removing Vigour from back bar so you can use Whirling Blades during execute and Flames Of Oblivion on back bar as Whirling Blades will do more damage than Noxious Breath. In survival heavy fights, you can move FoO to back bar and use Deadly Cloak on front bar.

Again, most important thing is giving priority to skills that deal the most damage in one cast.

Vajrak

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

As far as the actual rotation goes, consider putting Endless Hail as the last skill before bar switching, so that you can animation cancel it with the switch --- the damage will land at the same time, and you'll squeeze in an extra hit on the front bar rotation.

you definitely want endless hail to be one of the first skill you cast on your bow bar, simply becuase if you have a vMA bow, if you swap off the bar before the skill starts to damage a mob, you do not get the extra damage from the bows set. now this is not really a problem if they do not have that bow but it is best to get into practice of doing that way till they do. something like endless - caltrops - poison injection (which you, @russelmmendoza, need to use instead of the venom arrow morph you have in that video) will do.

True on the vMA bow, as far as I know - I didn't give the consideration in terms of vMA, and generally don't, as many people don't have them and while it is required for absolute top dps, it isn't for very high dps -- if you don't have the vMA, losing that extra cast on the front bar hurts more than waiting for the extra ticks.

Good catch on the morph, it really should be poison injection, not venom arrow.

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

Vajrak wrote: »

russelmmendoza wrote: »

My rotation, not perfect, I hope its good enough for vet pledges.
https://youtu.be/FrT6tVSU9PE
Thank you very to "at writs end" and guildmaster @Malhood for the target dummy.

As I advise others, use a dummy for practicing to get your rotation smooth -- then go out and fight world bosses or solo some dungeons (Spindlecluth, Volenfell, VoM) to practice in a less forgiving situation. Having your rotation trained in is good --- having your response to red/controls/etc trained in is even better.

You're fine for Vet Pledges, but if you are asking what you can do to improve your setup --- Change your weapons (Transmute) to Nirnhoned Mainhand, Sharpened Offhand. You want your enchants to be the damage as needed, so the disease main and offhand a stam absorb or oblivion damage.

On your infused bow backbar, put your weapon damage enchant. Endless hail will keep up the enchant and raise your overall weapon damage that way, to full effect also instead of the half effect you are getting on the dagger.

Change 1 of your jewelry pieces to Bloodthirsty (the gold ones of course). With the infused backbar weapon enchant, nirnhoned main hand and sharpened offhand, your weapon damage and penetration will both be higher than you currently have, and you'll get a large % bonus during execute phase.

As far as the actual rotation goes, consider putting Endless Hail as the last skill before bar switching, so that you can animation cancel it with the switch --- the damage will land at the same time, and you'll squeeze in an extra hit on the front bar rotation.

The only other thing you may want to consider, though it is a bit of a grind, is losing Re-Arming Trap for Channeled Acceleration --- the 36s duration for the 1.3s cast time becomes worthwhile in more mobile fights, and it doesn't tag your stamina so is utilizing a resource that shouldn't be bothersome to keep up. Even just 300 Magicka Recovery over 36 seconds will give you more than enough back to cast it every 36 seconds.

After those changes, try blue food instead of Dubious, your sustain should be high enough to last through the fight with it going by the video.

These are some outstanding tips, my setup is pretty much exaclty as you described. As for putting Endless Hail as last skill before switching bar , thats the oppsite of what ive heard others say. Something about 2 tics, before it can reach full potential? Did you pershaps mean razor caltrops as last skill? Great tip regarding losing rearming trap as i dont really like that skill! I will check out the alternative you suggested

For me, I do endless hail as my last as I have 0 desire to farm for a vMA anything, the pigeon hole for absolute top just doesn't interest me on any thing that I play, but you can do the same with caltrops also; the idea is just to have your bar switch/last skill not be something that is eating time before next application --- on a magplar, my backbar last skill is blockade, as if I time it right I can get blockade>blazing spear>la>sweeps in so that they all hit at around the same time.