I was actually curious about this when I was pushing a bit over the weekend, so I checked it out to see what would be optimal.
There’s two options: you can either activate Mirror Images once every 7 seconds (that’s their duration) regardless of where you are in the CoE cycle. Most of the time they should be active during fire cycle, sometimes they won’t be. It will average out over time.
The other option is to stagger it with your CoE rotation. You can do that by activating them every 8 seconds instead of every 7 seconds so you are always activating them at the same spot in the CoE cycle. Just make sure it’s long enough before fire that you have Deathwish active by the time fire hits, but not so far before fire that they expire before fire ends. So basically about halfway through cold (and again halfway through lightning) should work.
The downside of the latter approach is you have a bit of downtime with your images. So now the question is whether it’s worth taking a bit of downtime to guarantee they are active for all of fire. Or if you’re better off just having them active all the time (note: this requires at least 53.33% CDR, but that’s pretty trivial to hit with standard setups) knowing that sometimes you’ll have to recast during fire and waste part of your fire cycle.
If you activate Mirror Images every 7 seconds right when they expire, it takes 7 full CoE cycles to repeat the rotation.
We’ll start with a baseline of 1 DPS, multiplied by 4.25 when Deathwish activates, and multiplied by 3 when CoE activates.
Rotation when activating every 7 seconds
Time |
Cycle |
Mirror Images |
Damage |
1 |
arcane |
activate |
1 |
2 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
3 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
4 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
5 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
6 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
7 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
8 |
cold |
activate |
1 |
9 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
10 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
11 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
12 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
13 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
14 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
15 |
lightning |
activate |
1 |
16 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
17 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
18 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
19 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
20 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
21 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
22 |
cold |
activate |
1 |
23 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
24 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
25 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
26 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
27 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
28 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
29 |
lightning |
activate |
1 |
30 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
31 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
32 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
33 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
34 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
35 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
36 |
arcane |
activate |
1 |
37 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
38 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
39 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
40 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
41 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
42 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
43 |
fire |
activate |
3 |
44 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
45 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
46 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
47 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
48 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
49 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
50 |
arcane |
activate |
1 |
51 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
52 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
53 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
54 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
55 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
56 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
57 |
fire |
activate |
3 |
58 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
59 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
60 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
61 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
62 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
63 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
64 |
lightning |
activate |
1 |
65 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
66 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
67 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
68 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
69 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
70 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
71 |
cold |
activate |
1 |
72 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
73 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
74 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
75 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
76 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
77 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
78 |
lightning |
activate |
1 |
79 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
80 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
81 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
82 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
83 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
84 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
85 |
cold |
activate |
1 |
86 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
87 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
88 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
89 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
90 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
91 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
92 |
fire |
activate |
3 |
93 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
94 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
95 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
96 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
97 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
98 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
99 |
arcane |
activate |
1 |
100 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
101 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
102 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
103 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
104 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
105 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
106 |
fire |
activate |
3 |
107 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
108 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
109 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
110 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
111 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
112 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
Total damage over 7 full CoE cycles: 636
Okay, now consider only activating mirror images twice per CoE rotation, once halfway through cold and once halfway through lightning.
Rotation when syncing image activation to CoE cycle
Time |
Cycle |
Mirror Images |
Damage |
1 |
cold |
activate |
1 |
2 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
3 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
4 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
5 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
6 |
fire |
|
12.75 |
7 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
8 |
lightning |
(expired) |
0 |
9 |
lightning |
activate |
1 |
10 |
lightning |
|
4.25 |
11 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
12 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
13 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
14 |
arcane |
|
4.25 |
15 |
cold |
|
4.25 |
16 |
cold |
(expired) |
0 |
Total damage per cycle: 87
Total damage over 7 cycles: 87*7 = 609
So as it turns out, the extra downtime added from syncing your cycles can actually be a damage loss compared to just activating mirror images every 7 seconds and letting it average out over your CoE cycles.
Of course, this example I sketched out is assuming you never reposition or get knocked back or CC’d or otherwise break channel. In reality, you’ll break channel more frequently than just to activate mirror images. In a real rift situation, this probably shifts the balance a bit towards syncing to your CoE cycle, because in reality you don’t do DPS 100% of the time, and in that type of situation you want to try and make sure your DPS windows line up with your CoE windows. I’m pretty sure that will end up favouring a situation where you have a bit of downtime on your images to make sure you have them up with Deathwish active during your fire cycle.
But I guess the point of this is that the difference between the two options is going to be fairly small. So it shouldn’t matter too much if you just activate your images when they expire vs. if you try and sync up to your CoE cycle. There may be some optimization to be had for high level gameplay, but for casual and mid-level play I really don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference either way. Just do what works for you.