Catastrophe Question

The question: -When is it more favorable to use Guil over Catastrophe for the purpose of overall damage in a parse?-

Please don't respond with your opinion, I'd prefer to see parse data, math, or some form of justification beyond your word.

I am aware of the situational uses of the drain for tanking/soloing/whatever and that is not what I'm asking for information about.

I few things to consider...

1. Haste has increasing returns; the more haste you have the better catastrophe would be (I.E. Bard songs/haste)

2. Catastrophe allows for aftermath sets which yield more than just the bonus of 10% haste by allowing for the macro of pieces like Ares Cuisses.

3. Guil will do higher WS damage in situations where you are beyond the capped FSTR because STR is also a WS mod.

4. Catastrophe will lower your overall WS damage in favor of increased melee damage.

(If I'm wrong about an of those points please correct me)

Yes I know you said has maths and no opinions, but after watching apoc drks, wouldn't you just Catastrophe for aftermath of haste, then while it's on save TP and Guillotine? Then next ws Catastrophe for haste? :o just a guess.

Well there are situations in which you cant even overlap aftermaths due to ***happening. I find this common in dynamis when ***PDs or Invicibles. I would say you'd have to be in march march haste + hasso + 25.6% haste gear to pull that off.

Some math for this....

apoc 513delay/-70.6%(haste/marches/hasso/gear/aftermath)= 150delay/60= 2.5 seconds per swing. 5 swings for 100% tp(assuming 17% returned on cata)= 12.5 seconds per WS.

Aftermath at 100% is 20 seconds so even there you'd be off by 4 seconds on overlapping assuming u guilliotine every other WS.

You want to keep aftermath up full time. Even if that means doing back to back Catas.

A suitable buffed Apoc DRK should be ~60-80% haste (dependent on Hasso, the quality of your BRD and whether a DNC is present) and obviously can hit 80% every time they hit last resort with a BRD and RDM.

@ 60% you will do 5 TP swings in 17 seconds
@ 70% you will do 5 TP swings in 12 seconds
@ 80% you will do 5 TP swings in 8 seconds

(~76% haste is the requirement to reach 100TP in less that 10seconds)

Now you want to keep up the aftermath up full time so, any time you have less that 76% haste you will have to use Cata every time, but if you can get over 76% haste then you Can do Cata -> Guillotine -> Cata etc while maintaining aftermath all the time.

DA would reduce the amount of haste needed to 'fit' and Guillotine between Catas, around 70% should be enough to alternate WS. That's a rough estimate.

(There will be rounding errors in the haste maths, as I rounded to the nearest second)

So it really isnt even doable in reasonable cicumstances. I assume the bard would have to have Ghorn or something?

70% (if you inc DAs) isn't too hard.

25% - Gear
15% - Haste
20% - Double march (any BRD should be able to reach this)
10% - Hasso

= 70%

Obviously you have other options to:
Haste Samba - 10%
Last resort - 25% (but you won't get the full 25% when hasso is up)
Pimped BRD - ~1-3% (per march) (Here is your Ghorn)

So with ideal buffs you can do it, but you do need a full support team to make it work (at least a brd and rdm or whm).