Serpent Sting during Bestial Wrath + 4pc

[mediic]

How do you handle Serpent Sting during Bestial Wrath with the 4pc?
Usually it will expire with 1-2 seconds remaining on BW. I'm never quite sure whether I should cobra shot as some point during the BW to keep it up, reapply SrS manually during BW to keep it up, or wait till BW is over to reapply it since the focus cost is so low now.

Couldn't find anything with search and using the expression editor on worldoflogs it seems everyone handles BW completely differently.
If possible give your reasoning behind your choice. Thanks.

[danightryder]

I use cobra shot to refresh it right after a kill command so I can still kill command on CD

[Megabloks]

Basically think about it like this. You either use the global on cobra shot, which does damage and refreshes srs, versus casting srs, which does no damage and just refreshes it.

The damage from cobra shot, compared to the reapplication of srs makes it worth it to use cobra, even if at focus cap.

[eschatological]

Except reapplying SrS manually puts it at 15s, and a CoS extends it by 6s. You'd need 2 1/2 CoS to equal that one SrS cast, to get the SrS where it needs to be, and that's 4 globals or so you could spend on something else. If you're going to be casting those in the course of the next few seconds anyways, then do it. But I reapply SrS between my two opening BWs (as an example) because I don't need to cast CoS for 25ish whole seconds then.

If I'm going into BW with high focus (IE, I'm going to come out of it with middling focus and might spend a few seconds spamming more AS and another KC), then yeah, I might refresh in the middle of BW with SrS which will cost like 7 focus in BW. If I'll be low (below 40 for my next KC) I'll probably toss in a CoS in the middle of my BW.

[Tehterokkar]

Basically think about it like this. You either use the global on cobra shot, which does damage and refreshes srs, versus casting srs, which does no damage and just refreshes it.

The damage from cobra shot, compared to the reapplication of srs makes it worth it to use cobra, even if at focus cap.

Except that Cobra takes ~1.8 sec to cast without Haste CDs and it only adds 6 seconds to SrS, so to get full duration you need 3 Cobra Shots or 4-5 GCDs wasted vs. 15 focus and 1 GCD.

[Rullis]

Except reapplying SrS manually puts it at 15s, and a CoS extends it by 6s. You'd need 2 1/2 CoS to equal that one SrS cast, to get the SrS where it needs to be, and that's 4 globals or so you could spend on something else. If you're going to be casting those in the course of the next few seconds anyways, then do it. But I reapply SrS between my two opening BWs (as an example) because I don't need to cast CoS for 25ish whole seconds then.

If I'm going into BW with high focus (IE, I'm going to come out of it with middling focus and might spend a few seconds spamming more AS and another KC), then yeah, I might refresh in the middle of BW with SrS which will cost like 7 focus in BW. If I'll be low (below 40 for my next KC) I'll probably toss in a CoS in the middle of my BW.

This is exactly what I do aswell. I've read lately that everyone says "It's worth to cast Cobra shot anyway" - I just don't see it, really.

[Windthorn]

Another way to do it is to cast during your opener SrS/KC/Glaives etc...., just before your second KC comes around cast CoS then, normally you get around 15-16 second that way and go into your BW opener with SrS on a decent amount of time.

[Nemesis003]

Except reapplying SrS manually puts it at 15s, and a CoS extends it by 6s. You'd need 2 1/2 CoS to equal that one SrS cast, to get the SrS where it needs to be, and that's 4 globals or so you could spend on something else. If you're going to be casting those in the course of the next few seconds anyways, then do it. But I reapply SrS between my two opening BWs (as an example) because I don't need to cast CoS for 25ish whole seconds then.

If I'm going into BW with high focus (IE, I'm going to come out of it with middling focus and might spend a few seconds spamming more AS and another KC), then yeah, I might refresh in the middle of BW with SrS which will cost like 7 focus in BW. If I'll be low (below 40 for my next KC) I'll probably toss in a CoS in the middle of my BW.

i do it this way as well.

I have seen people do it the other way i think its a DPS loss. Regardless of how you try to explain it Arcane shot is more damage then cobra for a GCD (granted under RF and BL cobra is 1 GCD) so if you need 2.5 GCDs (assuming full speed and in reality you can;t use half a GCD so its 3 GCDs) its still less damage then 2 arcane shots and re applying SrS.


Remember the rule of BW, never cast cobra shot during BW, nothing has changed about that, its even reinfoced now that SrS cost less focus then it did before.

[Disfunctionz]

From the theorycrafting i've done, it is situational.

Haste is an important factor as it increases the value of cobra.
Lets take a look at a non hasted point of view for myself:
My arcane hits for 31784 in 1 sec vs my CoS hitting for 20406 in 1.9 sec.
so if i manually cast Srs then cast arcane I would refresh Srs and do 31784 dmg in 2 secs.
If I cast CoS I would refresh Srs and do 20406 in about 2 secs.
In this basic non hasted example you can see that manually refreshing is the clear winner.

Yes you can argue that CoS only refreshes for 6 secs, but if you do it wisely and you can get another CoS by the time it falls off(witch is not as hard as you might think)
then that argument is void.

Another factor is focus management.
with the 4piece it can be difficult to have enough focus to fully spam globals your whole BW.
In this situation, it would be best to refresh Srs with CoS because you get more focus for your BW and a refresh at the same time.
losing 2 secs in the middle of your BW(and refreshing Srs at the same time) is better then losing 2+ secs at the end because of lack of focus.


Now lets talk about hasted CoS.
Ultimately if you have a CoS cast time of about 1.3secs it becomes about equal to manually refreshing Srs and then using an arcane shot(as far as refreshing Srs goes)
CoS does 20406 and refreshes SrS in 1.3 sec
manually cast Srs and Arcane doing 31784 in 2 secs
As you can see CoS does about 2/3 the dmg of arcane in about 2/3 the time.
So i have to come to the conclusion that with a CoS cast time of below 1.3 it is better to use CoS to refresh.


Ultimately,
If your CoS cast time is lower then 1.3sec then use it to refresh SrS(remember to use it wisely in a way that you will cobra again to refresh before it falls off)
If you need focus, then it should be wiser to use CoS to refresh also.
Otherwise manually refreshing should be the winner.

Personally what I do is,
Use cobra to refresh if cast time is at or lower then about 1.3sec or I need focus.
Otherwise manually refresh.

In the end the BM 4 piece isn't as attractive in practice as it is in theory because of this problem, but its still good.
You have to deal with SS falling off and not having enough focus for full spam BW.
In the end if you look at it like losing a global or two to manage these two problems during the your BW,
It's still a 14-15 sec BW vs 10.

[gulder]

The BM 4 set is more of a pain in the ass than a 'hey, this is cool!'

[WeaselHunter]

The BM 4 set is more of a pain in the ass than a 'hey, this is cool!'

haha, what?!?!

[eschatological]

It's a pain in the ass in managing SrS and needing a higher focus going into it to not be focus starved coming out of it. But it's definitely a damage boost.