Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

[Starkbeaumont]

Either way, I Leg Sweep as part of my rotation all the time. If I need it for an AE I don't do it, I trust other dragoons to play with similar discretion.

Hope you don't use it on Ifrit.

[Subucnimorning]

Hope you don't use it on Ifrit.

That goes for anyone really. However, if the boss doesn't require a stun to be used any off gcd stun that does damage obviously is a good dps gain. No reason not to be using it in a situation like that

[Ghoste]

dps at 400 str: 74.74
dps at 410 str: 76.29 (offset 10, increase 2.0739%. increase per point .20739%)
dps at 420 str: 77.84 (offset 20, increase 4.1477%. increase per point .20739%)
dps at 440 str: 80.93 (offset 40, increase 8.2820%. increase per point .20705%)
dps at 500 str: 90.21 (offset 100, increase 20.6984%. increase per point .20698%)

Forgot to mention - so based on these numbers, if DRGs go full STR with their attribute points, we can gain at most a 6.4% increase in DPS (because we only get 31 attribute points at 50)?

[xyaie]

Forgot to mention - so based on these numbers, if DRGs go full STR with their attribute points, we can gain at most a 6.4% increase in DPS (because we only get 31 attribute points at 50)?

from those numbers: that sounds about right. it is -not- a huge deal (given it is rather nice, no reason to go in anything but str/vit, i went full str myself)

[Kalam]

So I'm all for min/max'n my character in whatever mmo I'm playing. I just got Dragoon unlocked yesterday, and I greatly appreciate this write up. I have to admit that the amount of button bloat is intimidating lol. I noticed someone else on page 2 listed some macros to help, can macros be used to alleviate the amount of abilities we have to keep up with reliably? I haven't looked into ARR's macro system so I don't know much about it.

[Ayvar]

So I'm all for min/max'n my character in whatever mmo I'm playing. I just got Dragoon unlocked yesterday, and I greatly appreciate this write up. I have to admit that the amount of button bloat is intimidating lol. I noticed someone else on page 2 listed some macros to help, can macros be used to alleviate the amount of abilities we have to keep up with reliably? I haven't looked into ARR's macro system so I don't know much about it.

Sadly if you want to be amazing you cannot retreat to macros to help you out. There are several reasons for this. Someone posted some potential macros earlier in the thread, which is a fine way to go if you want, however it limits you to only using the off-GCD abilities whenever you use specific attacks. For example, if you macro'd Jump along with Disembowel, you would attempt to cast it every time you use Disembowel, but what if the cooldown comes off before it is time to use Disembowel? It could be 20s before you use it again and you'd be wasting Jump uptime. In addition, what if you happened to use Disembowel as AE was about to drop at your feet, if you Jumped right then you'd die.


You cannot macro your combos the same way Pugilists can because even if you are on Vorpal Thrust in your rotation, the ability to use True Thrust isn't blocked and so if your macro was something like:

/ac True Thrust
/ac Vorpal Thrust
/ac Full Thrust

you'd just cast True Thrust over and over, this works differently for classes like Pugilists whose abilities switch off during their combos because they require a specific stance. In addition, you cannot macro multiple off-GCD abilities to the same key (e.g. Power Surge and Jump) because you cant cast more than one off-GCD ability per interval without sacrificing dps. Dragoon abilities are way too situation dependent to macro. Sometimes you want to use IR over BFB because some AE is about to hit, sometimes you want to save Leg Sweep to stun or avoid stun resists, etc etc. I'll edit this in a few (after Garuda) with a picture of my hotbars and how I have my keyboard setup to monitor my abilities if this helps people out.

EDIT: Here are my hotbars, M means mouse key, so in my case M3 is the middle mouse button.

http://imgur.com/iSywWZ5

This keeps your main combos (TT-VT-FT and ID-Dis-CT) near your WASD movement keys, your emergency moves (stuns, avoidance) on your mouse buttons for quick clicking, groups your cooldowns together so at a glance you can see what is coming up, your medium-use abilities on the easier to press Shift+ keys, and the less used abilities on the harder to press Ctrl+ keys. I also find it helps to keep abilities related to each other close together so your fingers don't have to do much thinking. All your AE is on 5 and Shift+5, PS+Jump are right beside each other so you can see if PS is coming up soon so you dont use your Jump, and BFB and IR are beside each other so you can easily see which ones you've used.

[Huynh]

The number crunching master Seyon is here too? I remember you helping out a lot in that one Tera thread

[xyaie]

lol, i was nowhere near the master. I'm just not afraid of numbers and decent with excel. but yeah, on that game i was seyon on the forums and xyaie in game, now im xyaie on the forums and seyon in game :P

WTB mang and cels!

[Kalam]

Much appreciated! I guess I need to do some finger stretches and suck it up, dragoon is a awesome class so its worth doing right.

I would also love different options to view dots, cd timers, and my debuffs on mobs. I know I remember reading Yoshi state he would allow hud addons at some point, hopefully those will be able to be incorporated In the future.

[Brynmor]

I've tested some notable things relating to our abilities and this seems like as good a place as any to post my results.

DoTs in FF14:ARR are 'snapshot' style, meaning they use the stats and buffs you had when you applied them for the duration of the DoT. So if you apply Phlebotomize with Heavy Thrust and Blood for Blood up the DoT will tick at +40% damage for the duration even if the Heavy Thrust and Blood for Blood buffs fall off before the DoT has run its course.

This may be common knowledge, but DoTs can crit. So include Internal Release along with the slew of CDs you pop before applying DoTs.

You cannot overwrite a DoT with a weaker version of itself. Clipping DoTs is bad practice anyway, but if you apply a DoT with CDs popped then try to reapply it once those buffs have faded but the initial DoT is still up you will get a "DoT has no effect" message.

The Disembowel debuff does not apply to DoTs, only the upfront damage portion of the abilities that apply DoTs.