Designing a Burglar Skill Rotation

[Merowin]

This is meant as advice for level 65 burglars on how to execute as many attacks as fast as possible, but the general principle should be applicable to any melee class.

To understand how the combat system works find an enemy about your level, hit it with Subtle Stab and immediately after Cunning Attack, two normal burglar melee attacks. Notice the Subtle Stab and Cunning Attack icons on your quickslot bar. As you hit Subtle Stab a green border will appear around the Subtle Stab icon, this will quickly disappear again and about one second later the green border will appear around the Cunning Attack icon, where it will stay a little longer. The amount of time the green border stays around a skill is called the animation time, since it roughly corresponds to the time it takes to play the attack animation. You will already have noticed that the animation time of Subtle Stab is really fast, whereas the animation time of Cunning Attack is somewhat slower. The time it takes for the green border to appear around Cunning Attack after it has disappeared around Subtle Stab is called the post-animation delay of Subtle Stab. The post-animation delay of Subtle Stab is rather long. To find the post-animation delay of Cunning Attack, use Cunning Attack first and follow up with Subtle Stab. You will find that the post-animation delay of Cunning Attack is shorter than that of Subtle Stab.

The animation times and post-animation delays of your skills are important because, although normal melee skills will not execute until after the post-animation delay of the previous skill, fast melee skills will execute during this time. To test this, start auto-attacking an enemy and wait for your critical response chain to open up, then attack with Subtle Stab and immediately after Burglar’s Advantage. Did you notice how Burglar Advantage executed immediately after Subtle Stab ignoring the post-animation delay? You can tell which skills are normal melee skills and which are fast melee skills by hovering your cursor over the icon of the skill and reading the tooltip. To find the post-animation delay of Burglar’s Advantage, start auto-attacking an enemy and wait for your critical response chain to open up. Once Burglar’s Advantage becomes available use it and follow up immediately with Subtle Stab. As you will notice, Burglar’s Advantage has no post-animation delay. However, it’s important to understand that although Burglar’s Advantage will execute during the post-animation delay of another skill, the delay is still there in the background. Try the following: Auto-attack an enemy and wait for your critical response chain to open up. As soon as Burglar’s Advantage becomes available attack with Subtle Stab and immediately follow-up with Burglar’s Advantage and Cunning Attack. You will notice that even though Burglar’s Advantage executed immediately after Subtle Stab, Cunning Attack still had to wait for the post-animation delay of Subtle Stab before executing.

Now it’s time to put what you know to use. The general idea is to follow up attacks with long post-animation delays with fast melee skills. Below you will find a table with most of the attacks available to a burglar. The numbers are snatched off my burglar; your numbers may be different. I'm sorry about the formating, but I haven't been able to make it look any better as a forum post.

NORMAL MELEE ATTACKS
Name Damage Power D/P Cooldown Ani/Post
Subtle Stab 214 40 5.3 3 0.3/1.7
Provoke 196 30 6.5 5 1.0/1.0
Cunning Attack* 168/348 66 2.6/5.3 5 1.0/1.0
Surprise Strike# 210 66 3.2 10 1.0/1.0
Exposed Throat 280 94 3.0 10 1.0/0.0
Flashing Blades 490 40 12.3 10 3.0/0.0
Quite a Snag 329 94 3.5 15 2.0/0.0
Lucky Strike 250 94 2.7 5 min ???
Feint Attack 310 94 3.3 5 min ???

FAST MELEE ATTACKS
Burglar’s Advantage# 241 88 2.7 5 0.3/0.0
Double-edged Strike 308 66 4.7 5 2.0/0.0
Counter Defence§ 168 41 4.1 5 1.0/1.0
Disable§ 168 41 4.1 5 1.0/1.0

IMMEDIATE SKILLS
Addle - 78 - 5 1.0/0.0

OTHER
Reveal Weakness - 47 - 5 2.0/0.0

*Without/with bleed
#Extra bonus when behind target
§Reduced power cost in Mischief Mode

A quick glance at the table reveals that we have four fast melee attacks. Burglar’s Advantage has a very fast animation and is therefore best paired with a short post-animation delay. Double-edged Strike has a very long animation time and is therefore best paired with the very long post-animation delay of Subtle Stab. The two tricks Counter Defence and Disable have moderate animation times and post-animation delays and are therefore best paired with other fast melee skills to take advantage of the post-animation delay. Let’s have a look at the following rotation:

- Provoke (normal)
- Counter Defence (fast)
- Burglar’s Advantage (fast)

- Subtle Stab (normal)
- Double-edged Strike (fast)

- Exposed Throat (normal)

Here, we use Counter Defence to take advantage of the delay from Provoke and Burglar’s Advantage to take advantage of the delay from Counter Defence. This fills out most of the delay time, and now is a good time for the Subtle Stab Double-edged Strike combo. We would not want to leave out the fellowship maneuver opener Exposed Throat, and, since it has no post-animation delay, it fits nicely at the end of our rotation. To be able to use Exposed Throat you will need the legendary trait Exposed Throat.

At this point, we need to consider skill cooldowns. It makes no sense to use a fast rotation only to have to wait for your skills to come off cooldown. The cooldown of a skill starts to count down after the animation of that skill has finished. We therefore have to add the animation time of a skill to the cooldown to find out how often a skill may be used. In our little rotation we are limited by Double-edged strike, which may only be used every 7 seconds, and Exposed Throat, which may only be used every 11 seconds. We can solve the Exposed Throat problem by using another skill instead every second rotation. This leaves Double-edged Strike. Using Exposed Throat our rotation is about 6.3 seconds long. Try it out on an enemy. You’ll find that during the second rotation you will have to wait a bit for Double-edged Strike to execute. Still, this is not a bad rotation. Try to replace Provoke with Subtle Stab and Disable, which will match the rotation time better with the cooldown of Double-edged Strike.

- Subtle Stab (normal)
- Disable (fast)
- Counter Defence (fast)
- Burglar’s Advantage (fast)

- Subtle Stab (normal)
- Double-edged Strike (fast)

- Exposed Throat (normal)

This rotation doesn’t have the functionality of Provoke, but will do slightly more damage. To change the trick on the enemy simply change the order of Disable and Counter Defence.

You may also ask: What do I do if Burglar’s Advantage hasn’t opened up? The easiest would be to skip Burglar’s Advantage and Double-edged Strike for that rotation, but if your melee critical hit chance is capped at 15 % this should only happen for the first rotation.

As mentioned above you will only be able to execute Exposed Throat every second rotation. One possible attack to use when Exposed Throat is on cooldown is Flashing Blades. To be able to use Flashing Blades you will need the legendary trait Flashing Blades. Find a signature enemy and try running the rotation a few times. You will immediately notice that Flashing Blades has an extremely long animation, but no post-animation delay. Enter Addle. Addle is an immediate skill. When used any animation in progress will finish immediately, and Addle will execute. To test this, use Reveal Weakness on an enemy and immediately after attack with Cunning Attack. You will notice that Reveal Weakness has a very slow animation and no post-animation delay. Now try it again, but this time use Addle immediately after Reveal Weakness and follow up with Cunning Attack. You will notice that Addle forces the animation of Reveal Weakness to finish and allows Cunning Attack to execute sooner. However, Addle will not affect the post-animation delay of the skill it interrupted. Try the same with Subtle Stab instead of Reveal Weakness. Subtle Stab has a very fast animation and a very slow post-animation delay, and you will find that using Addle after Subtle Stab will not make Cunning Attack execute any sooner. Let us put this to use; find a signature enemy and try the following rotation:

- Subtle Stab (normal)
- Disable (fast)
- Counter Defence (fast)
- Burglar’s Advantage (fast)

- Subtle Stab (normal)
- Double-edged Strike (fast)

- Exposed Throat (normal)
or
- Flashing Blades (normal)
- Addle (immediate)

You will notice that you’re now able to execute Flashing Blade in just one second (the animation time of Addle). To be able to use Addle this way you will need the Addle Cooldown legacy on your bag. The drawback of using Addle in this way is the power consumption of Addle.

The rotations in the above examples are the rotations I am currently experimenting with on my burglar and will likely have to be adjusted to suit your needs. Still, I hope that the examples gave you an idea about how skill rotations can be put together.

[Dracujin]

You forgot to use Lucky Strike!

[Merowin]

You mean I forgot to build your rotation for you?

Lucky/Gambler's Strike is on a 15 s cooldown. If you keep the above rotations, that means you can use it every third rotation. I would probably use it in the position of Exposed Throat. You could do something like Gambler's Strike for the first rotation, Exposed Throat for the second rotation and Cunning Attack or Flashing Blades for the third rotation. The dot from Cunning Attack will now have about 22 seconds to tick before it is re-applied, which will give you the full benefit of the dot.

You could also increase the length of the rotation to where you are able to use Gambler's Strike every second rotation. If the animation of Gambler's Strike is 2 seconds long, you would need an 8.5 second long rotation.