"Circular breathing" and how it can help you

I've called this method a LOT of things. On a speeder, I called it the "fullburn", the optimum way of using ALL your guns flawlessly. In terms of aiming your guns, I called it the "prefire", the act of aiming .2-.3 seconds before your GCD goes down. I don't main a reaper myself, but I do use it and have a t5 rare and t4 epic ducttape, and I DO have a method to pre-stack heals when I know I'm heading into combat. And I'm sure fixers and guardians alsso have their own ways in which they rapidly use up healing capabilities, or use defensives. I think it's time to bring all these individual techniques into one seamless whole.

"Circular breathing". That's the name I decided on, because to me, it's the closest real-life equivalent. What is it? Well, it's this. Anyway, now that you know the real-life equivalent... How can it help you? GCD in BB is already 2.5s, it doesn't really leave room for a "continuous technique"... Or does it?

I know that this message will be read by all types of players, so I'll be general here. You folks KNOW that, even though GCDs are 2.5s, most top-class "close" battles are decided by MILLISECOND MARGINS, right? That moment where the fixer's/speeder's bolt arrived .1 second early/late, or a shooter's excannon got to its mark .2 second too late, or a guardian's/enforcer's shield engaged .1 second too late, or a speeder's nitro engaged when said speeder was a burning wreck... Am I making sense?
I think you've all seen it. Battles decided by a thin margin, in a game where 2.5s is the GCD. Weird, innit?

1. GUNS. LOTS OF GUNS (And some bolts )
NOTE: This section is for all ship classes.

Here's something to think about:

If you're NOT one of these people, you can stop looking at this thread. But if you are among the majority that BELONGS to this class of people, you're wasting time. Time loss that is AVOIDABLE. Because there is another way!

Using the system I call prefire, a part of circular breathing, you can easily shave off upto .3s of your reaction time. This, of course, will also apply to fixers' and speeders' bolts. If you're a shooter main that only plays shooter, I have nothing else for you.

2. FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY (Maybe not on the Bay tho )
Note: This section is for all classes with evasion and shielding equips.

Now, how will circular breathing help you if you are in any class except for a shooter, other than tightening your attack window to a sharp 2.5s? Well...


There's multiple reasons for this...

Spoiler: Geek stuff

Your brain itself takes about 60ms to register that the weapon is cooled down, IF YOU'RE PAYING REALLY CLOSE ATTENTION. Then there's the matter of ping that, even with the best off compensation, will add a 40ms lag or something close to it. I'm no scientist, but there IS a noticeable difference, let's assume that it's .1s of deviation.

Here's the crazy part. When your GCD meter for your nitro still has a hair's breadth of cooldown left to go, you can press it and expect to dodge pinpoint attacks! There's a similar measure for walls and shields too! Also, OB activation can also throw off non-lead shots. Same thing applies to ALL the reticle-less items.

Spoiler: More geek stuff

And the guns as well, but with guns, there's an unavoidable lag anyway, so they end up being about 2.6 seconds of GCD either way.

Think about it this way, gun users have to figure out the target's heading, speed and maneuvering. The margin of error is about .1 seconds for all but the BEST of them. By that, I mean uber pro shooters.

3. EVERYTHING ELSE

Well, there's also the "blind" attacks where you use mortar-type weapons like nades to "prefire" in preparation for when the opponent comes out of cover, and projectile weapons like blast cannons to do pretty much the same thing, but the jury's out on whether to call that particular technique "circular breathing" or just "fancy leading"



Overall, this was a rather short strategy article by me, but I hope that the contents did not disappoint. Anti out!