Cooldowns and saves

A save is a button you hold for a moment you can see coming. In these runs they go out later than most guides suggest, and with far more variation.

Press Obsidian Scales on the tank, not on yourself

Obsidian Scales reduces your damage taken by 30% for 12 seconds on a 1.5 minute cooldown. Lifecinders changes what it is: with that talent it also lands on your target, or on a nearby injured ally, at half value. That makes it an external for most of the people reading this page rather than a personal defensive. Lifecinders is in 90% of recorded builds overall, 78% at +10 to +14 and 100% at +18 and up. The higher the key, the more certainly it is an external.

0 abilities are genuine saves

Here is what each one did inside the 30 seconds before a damage spike. The timing is measured one ramp at a time, where a ramp is a single damage spike in a single run, and the figure is the earliest press of that ability before that spike.

Read each row on its own. These are not steps, and you cannot press them down the column: every row is timed against a different set of pulls, so putting them in order would invent a sequence nobody used. Casts counts every press. Ramps counts how many spikes it turned up for, which is lower because pressing something twice before one spike still only counts once. The middle half is the range the middle 50% of those presses fell in.

Obsidian Scales

Renewing Blaze is a passive in 12.1 that adds a heal over 8 seconds equal to the damage Obsidian Scales prevented, so it is not a button of its own. Lifecinders shares the whole thing with your target or one nearby injured ally at 50% value. Target the tank before you press it, and do not press it early just because it is up, because with Lifecinders you are spending an external somebody else may need.

Tip the Scales

It makes your next empowered spell cast instantly at its maximum empower level. Instant, 2 minute cooldown. Maximum is rank III unless you have Font of Magic, which 9% of recorded builds take, and then it is rank IV.

Point it at Dream Breath. That is reasoning rather than measurement: the logs do not record which empowered spell followed each Tip the Scales. The reasoning is that Dream Breath's total healing does not change with empower rank, so what you buy is the 2.5 second cast time rather than a bigger heal. Icy Veins takes the other view and says Tip the Scales gains most of its value through Chronowarden.

Time Dilation: put it on the tank and press it late

Time Dilation defers 50% of the damage a target takes over an 8 second window, on a 1 minute cooldown. It does not remove the damage, it spreads it out, so the moment you press it is the whole decision. Eight seconds is short.

Put it on the player the spike is aimed at. The logs do not record who it was aimed at, so nothing here can confirm that for you. What it does say is that most autoattack damage lands on the tank.

Zephyr is for area damage only

Zephyr cuts area-of-effect damage by 20% for 8 seconds on you and your 4 nearest allies within 20 yards, adds 30% movement speed, and lifts all of you into the air. Three things follow from that. It does nothing for the tank's melee intake. Your party has to be stacked. And the lift is a real cost in the middle of a mechanic you were standing still for.

The closest thing the logs record to an area-damage flag is the biggest non-melee source in each spike window, which in Kings' Rest names Arc Lightning on The Council of Tribes, Serpentine Gust on The Golden Serpent, Forked Lightning on Guard Captain Atu and Shadow Barrage on Shadow of Zul. Those are the shapes to hold it for.

Rewind answers damage you have already taken

Rewind reverses 30% of the damage the party took in the last 5 seconds, on a 4 minute cooldown. A 5 second lookback means it can only ever answer a hit that already landed, so press it in the 5 seconds after the party eats something. There is nothing to plan into a setup here.

Temporal Barrier is not a save

Temporal Barrier is Chronowarden's version of Temporal Anomaly: the same 7.5% of base mana, the same 1.5 second cast, the same 15 second cooldown, an absorb that applies Echo at 30% effectiveness to your target and up to 4 allies within 40 yards. Applying Echo is the ramp, so it is a ramp button.

Rescue

Stasis: you store it far more often than you release it

Stasis duplicates your next 3 helpful spells and stores them. The 30 second reactivation clock starts when the third spell goes in, not when you cast Stasis, so you can hold a part-filled bank indefinitely.

Be careful with that gap. The window is only the 30 seconds before a spike, so a release that lands 45 seconds later, or on a pull that never spiked, is not counted at all. The gap is suggestive. It is not proof that charges go to waste.

Decide what the release is for before you fill the third slot. That press starts a 30 second clock.