So I’m been analysing the new Time Dilation and how well it works with various skills, particularly the new Devastation.
First of all, I really like the new changes. TD is no longer overkill for devotion skills like Phoenix Fire and Reckless Tempest. The 100% proc chance opens up some interesting bindings. With enough CDR, you can get a nice rhythm going where TD procs once per mob pack.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect is how well TD would work with Devastation. Well consider this setup:
- Outcast’s Secret OR Terrnox’s Aether Tome (but not both)
- Time Dilation
- Eternity relic
- 25% CDR
Time Dilation would have a cooldown of 8*(1-0.25) = 6 seconds.
Devastation would have a cooldown of (15-4)*(1-0.25) = 8.25 seconds.
Of course, that 8.25 seconds could be reduced to 5.25 seconds with one proc of Time Dilation and further reduced to 4.25 seconds with one proc of Time Loop (from Eternity). That’s less than the 5 second duration of Devastation.
So you could have endless Devastations, right? Well not quite. The cooldown of Time Dilation is still 6 seconds and it can’t be reduced by Time Loop. Eventually, it becomes “out-of-sync” with Devastation and causes a “desynchronisation” event. What you could do is wait 6 seconds between Devastations to always avoid desynchronisation.
Or, what you could do is attach Time Dilation to a skill that procs at least once per second. This could be Devastation itself but I don’t recommend this. Better options would be Ill Omen, Siphon Souls, or Aether Corruption (from Seal of Corruption). This skill would be cast immediately after Devastation. So what would happen in this case is that after your first Devastation ends at the 5th second, Ill Omen (for example) would proc TD again at the 6th second. After your second Devastation ends at the 10th second, Ill Omen procs TD again at the 12th second. And so on and so forth. Since TD is bound to a skill that ticks at least once per second, you don’t have to worry about timing and it happens more or less automatically.
Now the question is when desynchronisation occurs. Intuitively, without the Eternity relic, it should occur after about 5/(6-5) = 5 Devastations. The Eternity relic however has the effect of basically delaying the onset of desynchronisation to the extent that it occurs after about 11 or so Devastations (from my testing). Afterwards there is a short delay (about 2 seconds or less, depending on Time Loop procs) before you can cast Devastation again. So that’s an uptime of 55/57 = 96.5%.
Now here’s why I went through all this math: because both the Clairvoyant and Agrivix sets have either a free helm slot or a free off-hand slot. That means both of those sets could also have near-endless Devastations. They won’t be very strong, but the key thing is that you would have a Devastation ready for every mob pack instead of every other mob pack (assuming each pack takes 5 seconds), which is good for rhythm.
Now what if you wanted near-endless Devastations, but also wanted Mirror or Blast Shield available for every Devastation? Well, that’s possible:
That’s something I whipped together just as a basis for calculations. In that build, Devastation should have an average case net cooldown of 15*(1-0.36)-3-1 = 5.6 seconds. Less if having a good CDR roll on the off-hand. TD would have a cooldown of 8*(1-0.36) = 5.12 seconds. Since the cooldown of TD is actually less than the cooldown of Devastation in this case, it would be quite comfortable and logical to bind TD to Devastation.
Mirror would have an average case net cooldown of 28*(1-0.36)-3-3-1-1 = 9.92 seconds. Blast Shield would have an average case net min-time-between-procs of 4+9*(1-0.36) = 9.76 seconds. So you can let Blast Shield proc for odd-numbered Devastations and cast Mirror for even-numbered Devastations, for example. Giant’s Blood can also proc for every Blast Shield.