Timming auto attacks and CA's

[Deaudlus]

From reading a few posts in this forum I have gathered that a decent amount of our DPS comes from auto attacking and that if you spam CA's you basicly dont' get that auto attack damage.  Seems to make sense but I have a couple of questions.1. Are you susposed to just rotate back and fourth between CA's and auto attacks.  Basicly Hit a CA, wait for a auto attack, Hit a CA and rinse wash and repeat?2. Does weapon speed matter?  If I have a 1.6 speed weapon am I still going to be able to get a CA In between the same as if using a 2.0?  Seems like I should if the CA is less then a 1-1.5 sec casts.3.  I was trying rotating between CA's and AA's last night but I was a bit confused.  As soon as the mob was pulled I would shanghai and then follow up with my 4 debuffs right away to get them on th mob.  Then I would start rotating between a CA and a AA but it seemed like I would rarely get a chance to make it through more then 50 percent of my CA's before the mob went down.  Since my CA's are higher damage then my AA's arent I losing damage by not really using all of them?Thanks for any advice you can give!<div></div>

[Siru]

<DIV>I am confused by this too, I seem to parse higher going all out and queuing 1 CA after another (I still get my Autoattack hits in between them, is this different from anyone else?)  My reasoning is the faster  I use them the faster they refresh... Also on short fights I have a set order that works best for me... I hit all my 10 second cooldowns first, followed by my 30 second cooldowns, then my 20 second flanking attack (I hate losing the possibility of avast ye procs.)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But I am not an expert, I'm a pretty big newbie... I try though!</DIV>

[Dakkon_10]

<DIV>Autoattacks queue, so I see no reason to pause after casting a CA.</DIV>

[Deaudlus]

Well, I dont think its so much pausing AFTER you cast a CA as it is not Q'ing CA's because you loose a auto attack in between.  I guess my question should have been "Is it bad to Q CA's."?<div></div>

[Dakkon_10]

<DIV>No. You do not lose autoattack hits from queuing ca's.</DIV>

[Mion da Peon]

<P>The real reason people pause after auto attacking is because they are using hard hitting low delay weapons.  Hasted these weapons have delays of like 1.4 seconds.  Because CAs take 1 second to cast an autoattack is not waiting to activate after the CA.  When constantly spamming CAs the weapon delay is pushed back to 2 seconds because the autoattack won't activate untill after second CA.  With a hasted delay of 1.0 or less you really don't miss out on that much melee from spamming CAs because an attack goes off every time.</P>

[Cocytus]

<P>I actually pause for about half a second between every CA - Simply because my experience has been, and continues to be...If I queue and spam CA's, I get less auto attack hits.</P> <P>edit -</P> <P> </P> <P>Note: My weapon is a [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]ty velium rapier with a 1.3 delay D:</P><p>Message Edited by Cocytus on <span class=date_text>12-27-2006</span> <span class=time_text>02:36 PM</span>

[CB3]

<P>You can spam cas and never loose an autoattack if your hasted weapon delay is really close to 1.0, 2.0, etc.  Use /weaponstats to check your hasted delay.  Youll have to use it while your fighting because of bravado being a proc though but it will show you your actual delay.  The closer you get your weapon to X.0 second delay the less likely you are to delay an autoattack.  Youll need a 2.0 or higher delay once you hit 70 and get a haste item plus ad3 or master bravado or youll be wasting your haste because youll have lower than 1.0 delay.  2.0 base delay is ideal since its a perfect delay with 100% haste which sucks because just about every 1 hander out there is 1.6 delay thats attainable outside of raids.</P> <P>ps. /comforts leithe <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P>

[Shackleton1]

<DIV>Well, you shouldn't hesitate to queue CAs. Even though it appears as though you use the CAs one after another, you don't, and it will automatically squeeze in an autoattack between the queued CAs. You can test this yourself. Use a longer CA and queue a longer CA after it and you will see the autoattack occur in the middle quite clearly. It will have been delayed until after the first CA has been cast, but it <EM>will </EM>occur before the second CA is cast.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Take the rest of this info with a pinch of salt. I don't have any verification for this as there don't seem to be many posts about it. But as far as I can make out, when you're spamming attacks what you have is you cast a CA (which takes usually 0.5 seconds) and then you have recovery time (I think 0.5 seconds) during which you cannot cast at all.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, if you write out a combat with chain casting CAs at 0.5 second delays, what you find is that your autoattacks quickly get locked into a pattern, and this pattern gives you a kind of delay.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As far as I can work out, delays get translated as follows when chaining CAs. First number is your delay (after haste etc.), second number is the delay that will actually occur.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>0.5 = 0.5<BR>0.6 = 1.0</DIV> <DIV>0.7 = 1.0<BR>0.8 = 1.0<BR>0.9 = 1.0<BR>1.0 = 1.0<BR>1.1 = 1.2<BR>1.2 = 1.33<BR>1.3 = 1.5<BR>1.4 = 1.5<BR>1.5 = 1.5<BR>1.6 = 2.0<BR>1.7 = 2.0<BR>1.8 = 2.0<BR>1.9 = 2.0<BR>2.0 = 2.0</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As you can see, multiples of 0.5 are great. 1.6 is bad. But all the ones from 1.0 to 1.5 are pretty good (because they manage to fit quite a good pattern in between the CA casts). If you have a 1.6 delay weapon and some haste, it's not so bad (unless you have so much haste that you're getting down to, say, 0.6).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Like I said, take all that with a pinch of salt.</DIV>