Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

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Originally Posted by Ayvar

snip

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Can you please post a screenshot of your hotbar.
Thank you

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Originally Posted by Ratm3000

Can you please post a screenshot of your hotbar.
Thank you

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It's actually on page 3 of the thread, I've added a quick note about that to the guide. Here it is again for those who missed it:

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Originally Posted by Ayvar

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.

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Originally Posted by Silvermink

Man, this could manage to be more complicated than my enhancement shaman. That was priority-based at the time I left WoW.

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I mained Enhancement for several years and while Dragoon is best approached with a priority system as well (as most well designed DPS classes are) it is quite a different playstyle. Enhancement used many abilities with (for the most part) varying CDs that would often come off of CD at the same time resulting in having to make a correct spilt decision with high priority procs thrown into the mix to muddy things up even more.

Noticeably, Dragoon has no procs and, ironically when compared to how you'd expect a Lancer or Dragoon to play based on leveling, is a lot of maintaining buffs, debuffs and DoTs. Ayvar's OP is a good example of how your abilities fit together and what should be prioritized but the long list of abilities stringed together is more intimidating on paper than in practice.

That said, if you're still early into Lancer/Dragoon and you were expecting something like a Tera-style Berserker melee heavy-hitter you may want to reconsider the class you're playing.

(boo 1,000 character limit)

I feel like cranking out some DPS calculator spreadsheets for this stuff, may have to look at it later.

How do DoTs apply? Is it the potency every second? So 10 seconds of 20 potency is 200 damage (Ignoring mods etc)?

Also, has anyone tested if Disembowel is actually doing anything? I haven't personally tested it, but my thought was if a mob has 0 resistance to Piercing can it actually go lower, will you actually be receiving a boost from it in that case?

It's something to test I guess later.

dots tick every 3 seconds for the listed potency. so 20 potency 12 seconds ticks 4 times for 20, so 80 total.

disembowel seems to always be a "enemy takes 10% more damage". not positive that does not change for certain mobs.

Does anyone think its worth upgrading to the Darkflight gear prior to AF2 or just stick it out with AF gear till then?

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Originally Posted by xyaie

dots tick every 3 seconds for the listed potency. so 20 potency 12 seconds ticks 4 times for 20, so 80 total.

disembowel seems to always be a "enemy takes 10% more damage". not positive that does not change for certain mobs.

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Ahh, so dots tick the same as they did on FFXI. It's due to how XI worked that I questioned disembowel as Tomahawk on XI reduced resistance by some value I can't remember, but on creatures that had no resistance then it did nothing.

I guess until we know the stats of every mob its safe to say its 10% more damage.

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Originally Posted by Ihm

I feel like cranking out some DPS calculator spreadsheets for this stuff, may have to look at it later.

How do DoTs apply? Is it the potency every second? So 10 seconds of 20 potency is 200 damage (Ignoring mods etc)?

Also, has anyone tested if Disembowel is actually doing anything? I haven't personally tested it, but my thought was if a mob has 0 resistance to Piercing can it actually go lower, will you actually be receiving a boost from it in that case?

It's something to test I guess later.

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I added a bunch of information on DoTs and Disembowel yesterday. It's in the post directly after the rotation guide.

Phlebotomize has a piercing-adjusted total potency of 307 (170*1.1+20*18/3). This results in a DPS (assuming 2.5s GCDs) of 123 and damage per TP of 3.4.

The Thrust combo has an adjusted total potency of 715 (650*1.1). This is a DPS of 95 over the full combo, and DPT of 3.8.

Oh, Phleb is less TP-efficient than I thought it would be, but that's a lot more DPS. So in any TP-constrained situation you'd want to drop it for Thrust combos.

Fracture has a pierce-adjusted DPS of 92 and DPT of 2.9 ... so don't use it at all assuming you're finishing every Thrust combo and not dropping the third strike due to buff/debuff constraints. In other words, Fracture is a better "loose" GCD to spend than Thrust x2, or Thrust x1. However, if your choice is a full Thrust x3 versus injecting a Fracture, then Thrust x3 is better.

This is probably only relevant when TP management is not an issue, e.g. shorter fights. In addition, Fracture is probably effective to stack for cooldown bursting (since it does the "snapshot" DOT as described previously).

However, either way dropping Fracture probably won't result in much of a DPS loss overall, and may increase DPS due to its poor DPT.

Note: the DPS and DPT of a loose Impulse Drive + Disembowel (e.g. no Chaos Thrust) is 88 and 3.4, so it's not that bad to use as a filler if you can't get the full Thrust combo off. Fracture seems to be Not Worth It.


To recap the above numbers (DPS, DPT):

Phleb: 123, 3.4
Thrustx3: 95, 3.8
Frac: 92, 2.9
IM-DI: 88, 3.4

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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

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IMO they really need to change this. There's zero added gameplay value for allowing the player to use vorpal if true fails or isn't used. It's simply obnoxious.

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Originally Posted by 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

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I remember you ...

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

I remember you ...

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and i you.

Was actually discussing your findings with stormfall until i saw your name. (you talked to him about zerker stuff in skype apparently back in the tera days).

I need to make a spreadsheet though to figure out exactly how long of a fight it will have to be for TP to even be a problem. I'd imagine only a primal or big fate boss would you ever consider TP, and with a bard ive yet to have any real TP issues at times when im not AoEing. Of course, I'm not 50 yet.

Yeah I haven't looked at that yet; a rough estimate is slightly over 26 TP per second spent for single target pew pew. IIRC in-combat TP regen was 30 every 3s, so 10 TP/s, but my memory is fuzzy. I think I saw it tick up at a different rate in a later fight.

Invig is +500 per 180. Going to assume you frontload Invig in some fashion.

So it's basically 1500 / (26 - 10) = 94 seconds* of constant single target pew pew with no skill speed before you hit 0. After you hit 0 you basically gain 2300t every 180 seconds, which funds 2300/26 = 89s worth of spam. That's 50% of the 180s, so you spend half the time autoattacking. Then, throw in bardstuff for which I have no idea how much it actually does.

* 63 seconds without Invig, which sounds vaguely right for the dungeon I did yesterday.

Sidenote: assuming bard buffs double your TP regen on average, you'd basically have infinite TP. If it increases regen by 50% avg, then you'd last 136 seconds at full throttle, and then run at ~70% spam ~30 AA-only afterwards.

Edit: Small changes in estimated TP per sec make a moderate difference -- Phleg and Heavy Thrust use a bit more than the Thrust x3 and ID-Disembowel-CT combo. Assuming 29 spent per second, that's 79s full burn then 45% spammed. At 50% bard buff, that's 107s full burn then 61% spam.

Edit2: I think 29/s is probably slightly low so real burn rates will be higher, but real fights will have missing contact time where you don't spend. That part probably evens out.

hmm, i thought i got more TP back than that passively, easily could have been mistaking.

Im still thinking skill speed is going to be a big thing for us. While 94 seconds of uninterupted pew pewing will leave me TP starved, melee's usual "punishment" is that we lose DPS for having to move out of red circles. With enough skill speed (would change depending on the boss) we would be able to blow our damage/rotation/tp while on the boss, and the time spent off the boss/hiding would simply be "recover", auto attack being the only loss.

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Originally Posted by xyaie

hmm, i thought i got more TP back than that passively, easily could have been mistaking.

Im still thinking skill speed is going to be a big thing for us. While 94 seconds of uninterupted pew pewing will leave me TP starved, melee's usual "punishment" is that we lose DPS for having to move out of red circles. With enough skill speed (would change depending on the boss) we would be able to blow our damage/rotation/tp while on the boss, and the time spent off the boss/hiding would simply be "recover", auto attack being the only loss.

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You make a good point. My initial thought was to toss Skill Speed by the wayside due to its proclivity for TP starvation and lack of increase to auto-attack damage. After watching a few of the level 50 bosses there is an argument to be made for its benefits with the TP-recovery downtime between opportunities to dps.

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Originally Posted by xyaie

lets say str is an EP, ill set everything equal to it:
WD: 10.541
Str: 1
det: .193
crit: .222
*SS: .191

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Did you manage to confirm these numbers by the way? Cause this will be extremely useful to me, but you sounded a bit shaky when you first posted them.

Also the more I play Dragoon, the more the bug where the dotted line highlight doesn't show up on the next skill in a combo pisses me off. Especially when it happens with Impulse Drive because I can't tell if the mob shifted and I missed it, or if the highlight is just bugged.

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Originally Posted by Ayvar

Did you manage to confirm these numbers by the way? Cause this will be extremely useful to me, but you sounded a bit shaky when you first posted them.

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I rechecked my math and never found a flaw. from the data i have available they seem accurate (shy of skill speed for the reasons posted). i just dinged 50, but work the next 6 days in a row :-/ ill probably have more tested later.

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Originally Posted by Ayvar

Also the more I play Dragoon, the more the bug where the dotted line highlight doesn't show up on the next skill in a combo pisses me off. Especially when it happens with Impulse Drive because I can't tell if the mob shifted and I missed it, or if the highlight is just bugged.

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Yeah, unfortunately I've found that the positioning for the Impulse > Disembowel combo is marginally small, and thus irritating.

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Originally Posted by Crescent_Dragoon

Yeah, unfortunately I've found that the positioning for the Impulse > Disembowel combo is marginally small, and thus irritating.

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There are actually a surprising number of bugs/oversights with Dragoon combat, and once you're comfortable with your rotations they just get more and more annoying because you're doing things properly and they're screwing it up for you. Lately I've found that spamming an off-GCD ability can sometimes prevent the casting of a regular ability. So if I hit True Thrust, then start spamming Leg Sweep, sometimes the Leg Sweep will just go off and prevent the True Thrust from completing. Also the fact that we're forced to spam our abilities, but the gold highlight you get on your buttons from spamming them covers up the dotted line highlight for combo moves. Probably the most frustrating is the partial animations that play even when you're out of range on a mob, so you think your ability went off, but actually you were too far away but the animation still went off.

And then there's the Jumps...

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

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However, either way dropping Fracture probably won't result in much of a DPS loss overall... Fracture seems to be Not Worth It.

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After the testing I did I think you are correct. I was already on the fence about using Fracture but after learning that the DoT does not benefit from Disembowel I think only using it as GCD filler or with CDs popped, as you suggested, is likely the way to go. More anecdotally, after playing around with DPSing on a targeting dummy without using Fracture I was able to execute the entire Full Thrust combo much more often.

On the subject of GCD fillers, what about Feint? Obviously it's not going to be the highest DPS ability you could use on a free GCD but I believe tanks are incapable of inflicting Slow and tossing it up on a boss could be helpful to the group as a whole. I don't think we should aim to keep 100% slow uptime but I think using Feint on the occasional free GCD may be worth considering.

feint, in my opinion, is a "when needed" kind of ability. crafting the perfect rotation is pretty much a combat dummy only thing. There will be times when you have to move away from a boss, or he becomes immune, or you have to blow a defensive/healing CD rather than an offensive off the GCD ability, or feint/save stun for when its needed rather than worry about DPS. I would never -personally- include feint in my rotation, but would not hesitate to use it when needed.

to me, the idea is that you want to get as close to the perfect rotation for the entire fight as you can, knowing that its rare you will ever be 100%. So there isnt as much a point in having that perfect rotation that you strive including those things that pull you away from your maximum DPS.

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Originally Posted by xyaie

I rechecked my math and never found a flaw. from the data i have available they seem accurate (shy of skill speed for the reasons posted). i just dinged 50, but work the next 6 days in a row :-/ ill probably have more tested later.

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Good to hear! I've been using those numbers to make my Darklight decisions. One thing I'd love to know is the Accuracy cap. People often forget to maintain their accuracy at a good level, since missing abilities as a Dragoon will murder your dps.

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Originally Posted by Brynmor

After the testing I did I think you are correct. I was already on the fence about using Fracture but after learning that the DoT does not benefit from Disembowel I think only using it as GCD filler or with CDs popped, as you suggested, is likely the way to go. More anecdotally, after playing around with DPSing on a targeting dummy without using Fracture I was able to execute the entire Full Thrust combo much more often.

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There is an issue with dropping Fracture. Even though it doesn't hit as hard as Phlebotomize, it is still a dps increase. The reason is that dropping Fracture from the rotation will cause you to overwrite your Heavy Thrust buff and Phlebotomize DoT by at least 2 seconds. There is space for a single ability in the few seconds that HT is still running and Phlebotomize is still ticking, and Fracture fills it nicely. If you're having issues with executing the rotation and hitting your Full Thrusts with the HT buff still active pick up a little more spell speed. I've found a huge improvement in my time lost to movement just from dropping down to a 2.4 GCD. Also even if you don't like Fracture it is still great to use when you have any kind of downtime from dpsing bosses, such as when Garuda teleports away and you have to LoS, the DoTs will keep ticking.

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Originally Posted by Brynmor

On the subject of GCD fillers, what about Feint? Obviously it's not going to be the highest DPS ability you could use on a free GCD but I believe tanks are incapable of inflicting Slow and tossing it up on a boss could be helpful to the group as a whole. I don't think we should aim to keep 100% slow uptime but I think using Feint on the occasional free GCD may be worth considering.

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xyaie has the right of it in that Feint is enough of a dps loss that you wouldn't want it in your regular rotation, however I've been finding it to be very useful when fighting adds or waiting for something to be picked up before dropping the deeps on it. For example, when dealing with the two adds on Garuda, I'll Feint both of them to help reduce the large amounts of AE damage during that phase, as well as give myself something to do while I wait for the OT to grab them. You are correct that Feint is an excellent tool in our repertoire, but it isn't as useful in a primary rotation as just putting out more dps.

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Originally Posted by Ayvar

Good to hear! I've been using those numbers to make my Darklight decisions. One thing I'd love to know is the Accuracy cap. People often forget to maintain their accuracy at a good level, since missing abilities as a Dragoon will murder your dps.

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The calculator doesnt include accy, but if its a linear increase like most games (ex: each point is a .04% chance to hit, you have a xx% chance to miss) then it would be easy to assign an EP value to it in line with the rest. Atleast with skill speed (not perfectly accurate but a good idea).

best i can gather from a quick google search (dont have as much time as i'd like right now unfortunately) shows 412 as never missing ifrit, 404 as missing him 3%. the difference seems too much so i'd assume RNG based. I can likely do a bit of testing on the combat dummy, but without knowing the exact rules of the game it could be close to useless without knowing if there is a DR (i'd hope not, life gets too complicated with hit having a DR), the hit chance changes per enemy (im actually thinking this will be the case) and if each attack has its own hit/miss chance.

Does Fracture have a duration of 30s or 18s? I had used 18s in my spreadsheet based on one source but I just saw another that had more detail, clarifying that the duration is changed to 30s after level 28. Is that right? If it's 30s then it is efficient.

Edit: Nevermind, that's the traited Fracture. Silly websites listing traited MRD values for DRG.

On a separate subject, I double checked and the TP regen is 60 per 3s, not 30, so yeah I'm guesstimating roughly 30 burn, 20 regen per second. 100 seconds of burn without Invig., 150s with. Only able to use about 75% of GCDs after you run dry.

Edit:

Apparently I can't make another post. So:

So I looked at the rotation in the OP in detail and it has 89% HT uptime (assuming HT does not buff itself, which is a safe-ish assumption based on the "snapshot" behavior for DOTs), 89% DE uptime, 89% CT uptime, and 80% PH uptime.


Another way to write your rotation is:

HT FR PH ID DE CT TT VT FT
HT FR PH TT VT FT ID DE CT
HT FR PH TT VT FT TT VT FT

The HT buff does not time neatly with the ID/DE/CT (herafter referred to as IDC combo or IDC), so you are using HT to anchor the rotation and shifting the IDC to accomodate the timing. The issue is that this full rotation does not overlap with itself. The third line of that rotation has no IDC sequence, because you used it at the "end" of the second line. The problem is that when you repeat this rotation, the first half of the "4th" line will not have the DE debuff or CT DOT, resulting in 89% uptime only.

Assuming we stick to strict-ish 2.5s GCDs (e.g. no/low skill speed), I drafted a rotation based on using IDC as the anchor (because it's the largest and most awkward part of the sequence):

IDC HT ttt PH ttt HT
IDC PH ttt HT ttt PH

This is a 2-line rotation that's anchored by IDC, and alternates HT-PH-HT with PH-HT-PH. This results in 100% uptime for DE, PH, HT, and CT. The "ttt" refers to the True/Vorpal/Full Thrust combo filler. The main difference in my rotation is that the staggered HT/PH and PH/HT allows the HT-PH 20-second timing to interleave with the IDC 30-second timing without conflict. The problem is that the rotation is susceptible to clipping the CT DOT (everything else doesn't matter much) if you have any skill speed because it is exactly 100% uptime (this is a bad thing). The solution to that is some combination of "use Jump before CT" or "use off-GCD buffs before CT" or simply stutter the CT by a half second (make sure CT ticks down to 1.xx before you press the button). The other issue is that with a lot of skill speed the whole rotation's borked because it's pretty tight.

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

Does Fracture have a duration of 30s or 18s? I had used 18s in my spreadsheet based on one source but I just saw another that had more detail, clarifying that the duration is changed to 30s after level 28. Is that right? If it's 30s then it is efficient.

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It's an 18s duration, but I find it's better to think in terms of potency. Both Fracture and Phlebotomize have a 120 potency DoT (18/3*20), and Chaos Thrust has a 200 potency DoT.

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

Does Fracture have a duration of 30s or 18s? I had used 18s in my spreadsheet based on one source but I just saw another that had more detail, clarifying that the duration is changed to 30s after level 28. Is that right? If it's 30s then it is efficient.

Edit: Nevermind, that's the traited Fracture. Silly websites listing traited MRD values for DRG.

On a separate subject, I double checked and the TP regen is 60 per 3s, not 30, so yeah I'm guesstimating roughly 30 burn, 20 regen per second. 100 seconds of burn without Invig., 150s with. Only able to use about 75% of GCDs after you run dry.

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Ahh. 60 every 3 sounds much better to me

Ayvar (multi-quoting sucks from my phone) arr you sure? I thought ours had a 160 base potency to fracture's 100. Not posative.

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Originally Posted by xyaie

Ayvar (multi-quoting sucks from my phone) arr you sure? I thought ours had a 160 base potency to fracture's 100. Not posative.

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By "ours" do you mean Phlebotomize? If so I am quite sure, it's 170 initial potency with a 20 potency DoT over 18s

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Phlebotomize

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Originally Posted by xyaie

Ahh. 60 every 3 sounds much better to me

Ayvar (multi-quoting sucks from my phone) arr you sure? I thought ours had a 160 base potency to fracture's 100. Not posative.

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Phlebotomize has 170 base potency and Fracture has 100. However, he was referring to their DoT potency only, which are equal at 20/sec for 18sec (120 total).

Ahh, my mistake. Misread.

Just got 50, only 2 of us in my fc atm. It seems the damage and crit rate formula is known. What is still unknown other than hit that can be tested without a group?

Do Buffs like Heavy Thrust get applied when we hit the ability keybind or when they land?

To clarify.....if there's 1 sec left on HT and I hit an ability does the Buff get applied or would it not because the animation ends after the Buff has worn off? For some reason I'm having trouble even seeing the effect of HT in my logs.

The reason I ask is some games with complex animations only register damage when the ability lands.

I could be wrong, but I swear I've gotten the bonus damage from HT so long as an attack's animation starts before the buff falls off.

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

So I looked at the rotation in the OP in detail and it has 89% HT uptime (assuming HT does not buff itself, which is a safe-ish assumption based on the "snapshot" behavior for DOTs), 89% DE uptime, 89% CT uptime, and 80% PH uptime.


Another way to write your rotation is:

HT FR PH ID DE CT TT VT FT
HT FR PH TT VT FT ID DE CT
HT FR PH TT VT FT TT VT FT

The HT buff does not time neatly with the ID/DE/CT (herafter referred to as IDC combo or IDC), so you are using HT to anchor the rotation and shifting the IDC to accomodate the timing. The issue is that this full rotation does not overlap with itself. The third line of that rotation has no IDC sequence, because you used it at the "end" of the second line. The problem is that when you repeat this rotation, the first half of the "4th" line will not have the DE debuff or CT DOT, resulting in 89% uptime only.

Assuming we stick to strict-ish 2.5s GCDs (e.g. no/low skill speed), I drafted a rotation based on using IDC as the anchor (because it's the largest and most awkward part of the sequence):

IDC HT ttt PH ttt HT
IDC PH ttt HT ttt PH

This is a 2-line rotation that's anchored by IDC, and alternates HT-PH-HT with PH-HT-PH. This results in 100% uptime for DE, PH, HT, and CT. The "ttt" refers to the True/Vorpal/Full Thrust combo filler. The main difference in my rotation is that the staggered HT/PH and PH/HT allows the HT-PH 20-second timing to interleave with the IDC 30-second timing without conflict. The problem is that the rotation is susceptible to clipping the CT DOT (everything else doesn't matter much) if you have any skill speed because it is exactly 100% uptime (this is a bad thing). The solution to that is some combination of "use Jump before CT" or "use off-GCD buffs before CT" or simply stutter the CT by a half second (make sure CT ticks down to 1.xx before you press the button). The other issue is that with a lot of skill speed the whole rotation's borked because it's pretty tight.

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I had considered this rotation before initially posting, but it runs into two main issues that made me decide against it. First let's compare how much extra damage you receive from complete uptime of HT/Disembowel vs. the slightly lower uptime of my own rotation, it's always best to consider potency and I'll use your notation to keep things simple.

Mine:

HFP IDC TTT
170-110/132-187/132-198-242-193/220-181-242-363

HFP TTT IDC
187-121/132-205/132-181-242-363-217-242-193/220

HFP TTT TTT
187-121/132-205/132-181-242-363-181-242-363

The Heavy Thrust buff falls off prior to its reapplication, as does the Disembowel prior to its own, which has been accounted for in the potency numbers. You also have to add on an extra two moves (so 29 moves total) for coming back to the beginning of the rotation as the initial Heavy Thrust and Fracture are now buffed by Disembowel, so +187-121/132 . Now the same treatment for yours:

Yours:

IDC H TTT P TTT H
180-220-176/200-187-181-242-363-205/132-181-242-363-205

IDC P TTT H TTT P
217-266-193/220-205/132-181-242-363-205-181-242-363-205/132

And then +217-266-193/220-205 for coming back to the start as these moves are now buffed by the end of the previous rotation (so 28 moves total). In total potency per second mine produces 109.1 potency/s (7594/69.6s) and yours produces 111.9 (7525/67.2).

So the potency is extremely close. This resolves our first issue, which is that you don't actually obtain any more damage by sacrificing Fracture for increased buff uptime. You could argue for increased autoattack damage in the very brief downtime of the buffs, but I doubt this would account for much extra damage.

The second issue is that the first rotation benefits from (1) boss downtime (such as moving out of AE) since you have more DoT damage ticking (MORE DOTS), and (2) it gets significantly better as we acquire more skill speed. As you remarked, the second rotation gets worse with added skill speed (which is inevitable given the future of the game), and since there are only two DoTs being applied instead of three, it starts falling behind as soon as you spend any time away from whatever you are hitting.

However, it deeply warms my heart to see people taking the dragoon moveset and trying to optimize it in ways I may not have thought of. I've been really pleased by how this thread has progressed (compared to say the "lol who is best dps" thread) and I've referred back to everyone's comments continually for useful information. So thank you all, let's keep doing the job that we love (no matter where we might fall on some unknown parse) and optimizing it in every way that we can!

I see you fixed some of it. You should assume the looped buffs to make a simpler evaluation. The way you're compensating for it skews your buff uptime upwards inaccurately and also frontloads the FR buff, basically double counting / skewing it. Also, the last PH in the second line of my rotation is also wrong and should be /132, not /220.

In any case, your rotation is 106.8 potency per second. Mine is 109.5 pps (difference of 2.7, or 2.5%).

In addition, that is just for abilities, not autoattacks.

Adding in an assumed 35 PPS baseline for AAs, the two rotations are: 151.9 and 148.3 (diff of 3.6, or 2.4%). ::surprise:: I guess the autoattacks didn't favor full buff uptime as I had thought. Wonder why. Sidenote: they must favor the buff uptime less than special attacks do, and just up the baseline. Lulz.

That aside, we're not talking major differences.


The real analysis will be how sensitive the "IDC" rotation is compared to the "HT" rotation to skill speed buffs (there are ways to compensate for the CT clipping in the IDC rotation but it is an issue) next to the alternative cost of having Fracture selected.

There's also the general speculation of how complex it is to mentally maintain an "IDC is rotating" sequence versus a "PH and HT are alternating" sequence. I think the latter lends itself to a priority approach better:

1. If <5s is left on DE, use IDC.
2. If <3s is left on HT or PH, use that ability.
3. Finish TTT.

In fact it's probably easiest to perceive the sequence as "H -> IDC" alternating with "P -> IDC" and just refreshing and filling based on the 3 rules above.

That aside, the basic advantage to dropping FR is that you get another defensive cooldown to pop. That may or may not be worth much (and is not worth anything for DPS).

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

I see you fixed some of it. You should assume the looped buffs to make a simpler evaluation. The way you're compensating for it skews your buff uptime upwards inaccurately and also frontloads the FR buff, basically double counting / skewing it. Also, the last PH in the second line of my rotation is also wrong and should be /132, not /220.

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Actually the reason I do not assume auto looped buffs is these rotations will primarily be formed with buffs down when they begin. Take Ifrit or Gaurda for example, you'll get through the initial rotation, then they teleport or you have to go kill adds and the buffs come off. Assuming buffs are already running doesn't take into account the reality of the rotations. In addition, my method of accounting for non-looped buff uptime works just fine. Essentially I am saying in a perfect rotation, how much potency will my rotation have created by the time you've executed 29 moves, and how much does your create by the time you've executed 28 moves, then converts that to potency per second. I also "frontloaded" the Chaos Thrust DoT in your rotation in the same way I did the Fracture DoT in my own, so that isn't an issue.

Factoring in the slight mistake on the Phlebotomize in your rotation that brings the comparison out to 109.1 for the first and 108.9 for the second.

EDIT: I took into account your possible meaning that I skewed the total % buff uptimes. With the way I have done it the Heavy Thrust buff is missing on 4/29 moves or has 87% uptime, and Disembowel is missing on 6/29 moves or 80% uptime, so it actually errs on the side of caution. With yours you are missing Heavy Thrust on 4/28 (86%) and Disembowel on 2/28 (93%)

Ok so this is getting kind of annoying.

1. The Disembowel in the second line of the HT rotation should be 266, not 242.

2. All the Disembowels should be 266 even if you're truncating (266.2). You've allocated 264 in several places.

3. Rounding / truncation aside (sidenote: you truncated everything), the sum for the IDC rotation that you list is incorrect: based on the numbers you posted using your adjustment methodology, the total should be 7521, not 7316. You fat-fingered the sum somewhere in there. I'm not truncating / rounding in my calculations (except at the end), and the total I'm getting is 7534.

4. [Edit] Oh, you are using 2.4s GCDs. That changes the behavior of both rotations and improves your uptimes. I had actually done a second analysis and shifting from a 2.5s GCD to a 2.4s GCD (roughly 4.2% skill speed) changes the DPS loss for your rotation from 2.4% to ~1.1%.

5. Your adjustment method is arbitrary and assumes disengagements at random times. There may or may not be merit to it but that is a simulation consideration, not a sustained DPS consideration.


Overall I think it's more worth using the HT rotation because it has more stable scaling with skill speed, although the alternative skill slot is still a consideration and it's still ~1% lower in DPS.

As a sidenote: the next (1) part to assess is the performance of both when TP has run dry. Specifically, the HT rotation burns about 2.4% more TP than the IDC rotation (because Fracture is slightly inefficient).

In a TP starvation context, it would probably be mostly similar: both approaches would maintain HT and IDC and then do nothing except thrust x3 combos.

The other next (2) part to assess would be the DPS loss with replacing Fracture with another LNC ability if/when you want to load another defensive ability instead of FR.

Hmm. Pps is an interesting concept globally. It seems like on paper each class's rotation could be converted to that (adjested for buffs) and you could probably give a good prediction on "who is the best dps"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EasymodeX

Ok so this is getting kind of annoying.

1. The Disembowel in the second line of the HT rotation should be 266, not 242


2. All the Disembowels should be 266 even if you're truncating (266.2). You've allocated 264 in several places.

3. Rounding / truncation aside (sidenote: you truncated everything), the sum for the IDC rotation that you list is incorrect: based on the numbers you posted using your adjustment methodology, the total should be 7521, not 7316. You fat-fingered the sum somewhere in there. I'm not truncating / rounding in my calculations (except at the end), and the total I'm getting is 7534.

4. [Edit] Oh, you are using 2.4s GCDs. That changes the behavior of both rotations and improves your uptimes. I had actually done a second analysis and shifting from a 2.5s GCD to a 2.4s GCD (roughly 4.2% skill speed) changes the DPS loss for your rotation from 2.4% to ~1.1%.

5. Your adjustment method is arbitrary and assumes disengagements at random times. There may or may not be merit to it but that is a simulation consideration, not a sustained DPS consideration.


Overall I think it's more worth using the HT rotation because it has more stable scaling with skill speed, although the alternative skill slot is still a consideration and it's still ~1% lower in DPS.
As a sidenote: the next (1) part to assess is the performance of both when TP has run dry. Specifically, the HT rotation burns about 2.4% more TP than the IDC rotation (because Fracture is slightly inefficient).

In a TP starvation context, it would probably be mostly similar: both approaches would maintain HT and IDC and then do nothing except thrust x3 combos.

The other next (2) part to assess would be the DPS loss with replacing Fracture with another LNC ability if/when you want to load another defensive ability instead of FR.

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1/2) fixed, but actually they were all 264, there was never a Disembowel that was at 242 that should've been 266 (so 7525 total)

2/3) yeah, must screwed it up somewhere, which is annoying because I checked it twice

3) I always round down because we have no idea how the game treats damage decimal places.

5) Simulation calculations will always be more applicable. If I'm going to use a rotation I want something that doesn't assume absolutely perfect conditions, we want to aim for perfection while being as realistic about using these rotations as possible.

Either way I completely agree with you. There isn't enough p/s difference between the rotations to justify the switch away from one that will scale better with time, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussion, I'm far from perfect and will definitely make mistakes here and there.

Some more data pertaining the discussion at hand;

The HT buff appears to activate ~1.75 seconds after initiating the attack. So when determining rotations/priorities it may be worthwhile to keep in mind that the buff does not apply immediately when the ability is used or at the end of the 2.5 (before Skill Speed) GCD.

Maybe this was obvious, but the HT buff does affect HT so reapplying while the buff still persists (if only barely) may be worthwhile.

As was previously mentioned, I was able to confirm that if you initiate an ability with the HT buff (or any buff) up but the animation/damage finishes after the buff has faded you will still receive the benefit of the buff.

Heavy Thrust - Phlebotomize - Impulse Drive - Disembowel - Chaos Thrust
x2 [True Strike - Vorpal Thrust - Full Thrust]
Heavy Thrust - Phlebotomize
[True Strike - Vorpal Thrust - Full Thrust]

Repeat. You'll need to add jumps and buffs between the combos but that's pretty much the perfect rotation. It's not as complicated like you make it seem. I wouldn't suggest taking Fracture because it's not really that good. Much better to run around with Internal Release, Bloodbath, Second Wind, Featherfoot and Mercy Stroke.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ayvar

3) I always round down because we have no idea how the game treats damage decimal places.

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A member of my FC was doing a little bit of number crunching and felt that the game generally rounds down. I think he was figuring out hit or crit %, but usually if a game's programmed to round down on one of those, it rounds down on all combat-related numbers. From what I've noticed, at least.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ricauer

Heavy Thrust - Phlebotomize - Impulse Drive - Disembowel - Chaos Thrust
x2 [True Strike - Vorpal Thrust - Full Thrust]
Heavy Thrust - Phlebotomize
[True Strike - Vorpal Thrust - Full Thrust]

Repeat. You'll need to add jumps and buffs between the combos but that's pretty much the perfect rotation. It's not as complicated like you make it seem. I wouldn't suggest taking Fracture because it's not really that good. Much better to run around with Internal Release, Bloodbath, Second Wind, Featherfoot and Mercy Stroke.

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Converting this to our usual notation comes out as:

H P IDC TTT TTT H P TTT

Looking at the pattern of the rotation you should already be able to see that your Heavy Thrust buff falls off by the second True Thrust, meaning Vorpal Thrust and Full Thrust don't get buffed, and you never want to cast an unbuffed Full Thrust considering the huge benefits it gets from combining both Heavy Thrust and Disembowel. Also, by the conclusion of the rotation, when you loop back to the start you overwrite the Heavy Thrust buff and Phlebotomize DoT from the end of the previous rotation before they had time to finish, and your Disembowel buff and Chaos Thrust DoT fall off 4 moves before their reapplication. Converting this to potency we get the following:

170-187/132-198-242-193/220-181-242-363-181-220-330-187-205/132-181-242-363

+187 for looping back around to the start since now the initial HT is buffed from the end of the previous rotation. In total potency this is 4356 over 17 moves (40.8s using a 2.4 GCD) producing 106.8 potency/s. Comparing this to the rotations used by myself or the one suggested by EasyModeX above you suffer a 3-6 potency per second drop, with no possibility of improvement with added spell speed, and less DoT damage when you're not beside the mob. The loss of 3-6p/s may not seem like a lot, but consider that is 900-1800 potency lost over a 5min fight with 100% uptime, and that gap gets worse when you have to move away due to AE or add spawns since there are less DoTs running. The 3p/s gap between EasyModeX's rotation and my own was more acceptable since this closes dramatically with more spell speed, and the added DoT damage helps in downtime, this is not the case with your moveset.

Assuming Dragoons are easy to play is something I see a lot, particularly when people are discussing Monks (note I am not commenting on which one is harder than the other because that is a pointless discussion). However, the assumption of simplicity arises from people's non-optimization of buff/debuff durations. Yes you can use a 15 or 10 or 5 ability rotation over a 24 or 27 length moveset, but to do this you sacrifice a large part of the dps Dragoons can produce.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vies

A member of my FC was doing a little bit of number crunching and felt that the game generally rounds down. I think he was figuring out hit or crit %, but usually if a game's programmed to round down on one of those, it rounds down on all combat-related numbers. From what I've noticed, at least.

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This is very useful to know, thank you for the info!