Energy Pooling

[Barfskin]

Ahoy all fellow druids!

Ive been a eager follower of theese sites for a while now, and seeing I registrated just a few moments ago
is abit shameful

So, Ive been poking around abit after people's thoughts on energy pooling for pve.
What I cant wrap my head around is what advantages this gives. Usually Ive been spending energy as soon as its up, but have noticed here and there they say pooling energy to 85 before each shred is wise. But why?

Whatever thoughts you may have on the matter of energy pooling would be greatly apreciated.

Also, happy easter everyone!

[Frozzenfire]

im guessing it has something to do with doc maybe?

so its more easy to get the 4-5 combo points before the PS proc runs out so you can get the heal of with 4-5 combo to get a rake/rip buffed with doc.

thats 1 reason as i see it, but im sure theres other people here on the TFD that knows better

[Barfskin]

Well that makes sense. Havent thought of that since I personally use HOTW atm to learn the ropes sort to speak.

[aggixx]

What Frozzenfire said pretty much. As DoC, once you consume your PS proc, if there's not anything imminent that needs to be done (refreshing bleeds, refreshing SR) you can wait a bit, this way you can start the next "CP cycle" with a pretty full energy bar so that you can make sure you can use your PS at 4 or more CP again.

As HotW it doesn't really serve a significant purpose.

[Karlzone]

Energy pooling does serve a purpose even with HotW or NV.

Say rip has a lot of uptime remaining and you don't need to worry about it just yet.
Savage roar is falling off in 4 sec.
You have 5 combopoints.
Thrash is on the target.

What do you do?
Obviously you pool energy, and reapply savage roar just before it either falls off or you get close to energycap.

You lost NOTHING at all by doing this.
You just gained 4 sec of savage roar uptime. (I am aware of the 3 sec refresh period of savage roar, it was a theoretical situation to illustrate my point ).

This can further be applied to much else. For example trinket procs.
Nothing has procced.
You need combo points but know you will be having some free gcd's.

What do you do?
In order to theoretically gain the most dps you ought to wait and see if you get a trinket proc while not wasting any resources or uptimes. If you are lucky enough to gain a proc you begin spamming your combopoint generator at that point.

[Barfskin]

Thanks for your cents on the subject folks.

Ive taken your advice and tried it out Karlzone, and it really does seem like you are spot on. But then again, it takes some getting used to for someone
who's only recently started playing kitty again. Hopefully Ill get things sorted ^^

[aggixx]

I guess I just don't think of pooling at 5 CP as pooling. It's always been a rule to me that you (at least the vast majority of the time) don't want to use a CP generator at 5 CP, and naturally that leads to pooling.

Aside from that, I stand by what I said: Pooling serves almost no purpose as HotW.

[Karlzone]

If you don't see pooling energy at 5cp as pooling then yes, pooling with HotW and NV becomes very limited. Then again, even with DoC do not pool outside of being at 5 (most of the time) cp and getting ready to do a finisher.

However, pooling outside of 5cp still serves a purpose although a miniscule one. You need some burst soon? Pool energy (this is a very common and effective technice for pvp. Doesn't really happen a lot in PvE.)
You need to switch target soon. Pool energy to get your bleeds on it quickly (happens a lot more often. Horridon for example)

[mekell]

This is really just extending on what others have said already, but because energy is regenerated with time, it actually can be thought of as a measure of time and not a resource per say. As long as you are not capped on energy or the mob is about to die, then any energy you gain during this time (where you are not at 0 energy, and not a the cap) is the effectively the same amount of dps. This does not take into account omen of clarity procs you might get from using said energy as this would effectively give you the equivilant amount of energy as the attack you use in terms of dps.

That said, consuming energy as soon as you gain it loses you nothing in a perfect play environment where you never let any dots or buffs fall off. What pooling does afford you is the time to adjust for mistakes and changes that happen while you are dpsing because "perfect" play never happens.

[Referee]

In addition to the advantages mentioned, pooling increases the benefit of any temporary buffs or modifiers. If you start the duration of a trinket proc with near full energy you will be able to dish out more spells in its duration, increasing your damage significantly. This is especially true if you have very short duration trinkets since you have less time to regenerate energy before the buff falls off.