Arrow Barrage / Endless Hail casting is unstable

Paha_Vaatturi

Hi all,

I've been trying to get the Arrow Barrage to work correctly in my rotation, but something is off. I am running 2H battle axe front bar, bow back bar. As of hardware, I am using Playstation 4 Pro and typical Dualshock 4 v2. I've been trying both of these orders:

{{ imagine prev rotation here}}, [LA-Stone Giant] -> [LA-SWAP-Arrow Barrage] ->
{{ imagine prev rotation here}}, [LA-Stone Giant-SWAP] -> [LA-Arrow Barrage] ->

LA means light attack there. Neither seems to work correctly. Timings are roughly so that one ability cycle fits into 1 second (1000 ms) which is the Global Cooldown (GDC). This 1000ms cycle includes the light attack, the ability - and the bar swap when needed.

I am a console player so I can't use any light attack helper to get the specific times, but by using the means that I have an access to (videos, second clock and similar), I'm fairly sure that my precision is good. I'm usually hitting around 950-1050ms timing. All other skills work just fine with this timing. Noxious breath is there. Trap is there. Stone giant stacks work just fine. Advancing Yokeda gets numbers up. The rotation seems smooth and fast.

But what about Arrow Barrage? What happens annoyingly often is that I can see the light attack animation (whether I do it on my 2H or bow), I can see the Arrow Barrage shooting into the sky, but... it never lands. It feels that I need to use around 1.3-1.4 seconds to cast endless hail before moving forward (to LA-PoisonInjection) or it might break. Doing rotation where I jump from 1.0 second GDC to 1.3 second GDC and back is reeaaaally challenging to manage. Also, that affects my rotation so that I can fit only 9 abilities to my 10-seconds rotation instead of full 10 abilities. This means I spammable less, which makes me a sad panda.

Has anyone any input on this? Fixes? Group therapy? Is Zenimax interested in checking this on PTS?

SodanTok

Cant say its all your issue and I am assuming you do have enabled the autocasting of Aoe abilties but some of what you are noticing is just usual behavior of aimed aoe attacks. They all slow rotation, because button press doesnt cast them instantly like other abilities, button press just causes the aiming stage which will then automatically (if enabled) results in casting skill after short but noticeable time.

MudcrabAttack

The extra pause happens between the light attack and endless hail. Leave that one light attack out of the rotation and all the skills, including endless hail, will continue their 1 second GCD. 1 light attack taken out of each rotation before endless hail might only represent 1% of your DPS, but the 300ms of time added when you include the light attack could remove 3% of your DPS.

Nightblades and now Sorcs need light attacks, but they just have to deal with the loss to DPS one way or another.

thadjarvis

@Paha_Vaatturi
Many PvE stamina players have used a tested alternative method like the following:

LA-skill-LA-SWAP
Hail/Barrage-LA-Skill-SWAP

It minimizes the time on backbar and deals somewhat with the wonkiness of Hail/Barrage

In your case instead of
LA-Stone Giant-SWAP-LA-Barrage

you may find the following helps:
LA-Stone Giant-LA-SWAP-Barrage-LA-skill-SWAP

MashmalloMan

You want max uptime on front bar, don't bother with Swapping then LA -> Skill. LA with your front bar weapon first -> Swap -> Endless Hail. Much easier for some reason and you get 1 extra chance to cause bleed from your axe.

Edit: already said above me.

MashmalloMan

Paha_Vaatturi wrote: »

But what about Arrow Barrage? What happens annoyingly often is that I can see the light attack animation (whether I do it on my 2H or bow), I can see the Arrow Barrage shooting into the sky, but... it never lands. It feels that I need to use around 1.3-1.4 seconds to cast endless hail before moving forward (to LA-PoisonInjection) or it might break. Doing rotation where I jump from 1.0 second GDC to 1.3 second GDC and back is reeaaaally challenging to manage. Also, that affects my rotation so that I can fit only 9 abilities to my 10-seconds rotation instead of full 10 abilities. This means I spammable less, which makes me a sad panda.

Also, I wouldn't say LA -> Skill fits within 1 second. Even the best players that can LA every single skill in a 4m+ parse, will have about .85-.9 LA a second, meaning, the LA -> Skill is actually about 1.1s because of animations and human error. You would need to be a robot to get exactly 1 second for every LA -> Skill.

So if your rotation is based on Arrow Barrage, odds are you can only fit 9 abilities anyway before Arrow Barrage is juuuuust about to end. 10 abilities should give you like 0.2-0.7s of downtime after it ends which is normal because you don't want to cast to early.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

If you are truly doing it at 1.0 sec intervals, you are probably a little fast. As stated earlier, I have never seen a long parse with 1 LA per sec. I have seen higher than the .85-9 mentioned above. But about .94-.95 is where I think you will top out.

To sort of answer the question, with gound AOEs like Hail, you should light attack, then swap, then cast the skill. If you swap then light attack, decent chance that either the LA wont fire, or you ground AOE will seem to stutter when you cast it. You just need to mess with the timing. It can be a bit wonky at first compared to a normal weave timing.

MellowMagic

Settings - gameplay- autocast AOE- change from automatic to "ON"

Paha_Vaatturi

All options mentioned above have been tested now. Two of those were mentioned in the post:

1) Doing LA before bar swapping, then ability
2) Swapping first, then LA + Ability
3) Skipping that LA completely

And yes, quick cast ground abilities is on. Otherwise I'd be complaining about a completely different thing.

I suppose I have have to accept the slightly strange behaviour with Arrow Barrage. I don't get the same problem with my MagPlar with other ground AoE's, so... I'll just adjust.

Yesterday, I was hitting 74k on the trials dummy. Seems that GDC on PS4 is around 1040-1060ms based on my calculations (about 63 frames on a 60fps video). Anything below that seems to risk breaking the light attack. As of Arrow Barrage/Endless hail, I have no solutions. I'll just learn to adjust and try to cope with 74k DPS. The ability is annoying, but I suppose I don't have any options for AoE that would hit as hard.

Paha_Vaatturi

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

If you swap then light attack, decent chance that either the LA wont fire, or you ground AOE will seem to stutter when you cast it. You just need to mess with the timing. It can be a bit wonky at first compared to a normal weave timing.

Sadly, it seems that you are correct. The timing needs special care on that ability.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Paha_Vaatturi wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

If you swap then light attack, decent chance that either the LA wont fire, or you ground AOE will seem to stutter when you cast it. You just need to mess with the timing. It can be a bit wonky at first compared to a normal weave timing.

Sadly, it seems that you are correct. The timing needs special care on that ability.

Yeah, it just seems to be slightly off compared to a normal weave. I honestly just sat their and practiced it for a few hours one night, now I don't think about it. Just like practicing a piece of music, break your rotation into pieces and practice them separately if you really want it to be second nature.