How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

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Originally Posted by JackFross

But uh, aside from that, I don't have anything to critique. Like you said, you're doing everything right.

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Oh christ. It's the gear. I guess it really is as strong as people say it is. Thanks for the pointer on 2GK/BfB.

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Originally Posted by Nominous

And yet still, I'm at like 1540-1550 or something DPS (if the calculator is to be believed) without a pot. It just confuses me. How can you literally be like 200+ higher than me? I'd give maybe 30-50 to the pot, but after that, where is the remaining 100+? I don't see any flaw glaring enough in my rotation, and even if there were, I'd be just as confused as to how that'd come out to 100 DPS lost.

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Simulator says that's what your average ought to look like with that gear.

As a controller player myself it drives me nuts how you switch bars to check cooldowns (I put most of the important ones up front and next to the weaponskill they pair with most often, and the rest on other hotbars; my setup is based primarily on mechanical efficiency, so I avoid having to press anything to check anything as much as possible). It didn't seem to cause any GCD delays per se, nor were the ones I could observe very long, just really hard to watch lol

@ Jack, you're on 1153 str I'm on 1151. we have the both critrate, and yet I'm at 1616 dps on the a7s dummy failed it at 5% naked.

Here is my gear : http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...acter/5733472/

Is it just the weapon?

edit: 1% now 1687 dps 25% critrate

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm posting to ask for advice for melds. I've been browsing and reading everything I can on here and Reddit and, to be honest, I feel totally lost. I know we don't have specific accuracy caps on Midas Savage and so that leads to a lot of speculation, but does anyone have any advice on what is good in general?

IL: 211. Acc: 705. SS: 751. I use all upgraded Lore gear (one ring is 200), with the exception of a Midas belt and Lore chest I bought last night. I lot of the builds I see have a lot of crit so I'm leaning towards that.

Thanks!

Any idea on the 3.2 BiS for dragoon, haven't seen many since patch hit.

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Originally Posted by Ninjah2r

Is it just the weapon?

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Yes. Absolutely. It's a full +1 Weapon Damage on top of the jump in Strength. That usually equates to ~40-50 dps gain, just from changing that one thing.

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Originally Posted by Xion777

Thanks!

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I'm sorry for you. The Lore chest is bad.

But uh, you basically want to have as much gear as possible give you crit and/or det and then meld in whichever other stat of the two it's missing, after ACC and SKS caps are reached.

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Originally Posted by Fishayy

Any idea on the 3.2 BiS for dragoon, haven't seen many since patch hit.

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I believe Dervy is still running calculations to find the exact BiS, but the set I'm currently building toward is - http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/T02S

And, without A8S killed, I'm aiming for - http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/T02X

Depending on misses, I might swap the Crit V in the belt for an Accuracy V instead. It took me a while to work out a pair of sets where any overlap pieces were rocking the exact same materia. I'm planning to immediately meld those pieces in that manner and then fill in my 220/230 with IVs to fill the gaps needed for ACC/SKS while I progress.

if we /pray to dervy, would that make him some kind of sick estinien x dervish drg primal XD?

think with all the questions of bis for drg in 3.2 in reddit and even here, ppl would have all their answers sorted out XD

edit:

what piece are you guys getting next week then with lore? (or the week after that since most of us are now low on lore cause of the pants).

I myself don't have a clue, mostly crafted gear for myself atm, so what's best to get?

i dont know about that skill speed though, especially for midas having higher that 610/650 is really good

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Originally Posted by Ninjah2r

I myself don't have a clue, mostly crafted gear for myself atm, so what's best to get?

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I'm to the point of buying nothing. My static has had one night in A5S and pushed a 9-minute run that almost hit enrage. I have pants, but now need to save my next 1000 for the spear, since if we progress at this rate (and assuming fixed glitches in A6S), we could theoretically have A6S down the week after next (since one raid day next week).

If I weren't doing this, though, ring. Absolutely the ring. It's the only piece that - no matter what - you will NOT replace with a 240 Midas drop. Ever. Plus it has good stats on it this time around.

I finally got DRG to 60 last Saturday and read through the guides/explanations in the initial post afterwards to help figure out how to play better, and I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that has contributed to the thread so far, especially the openers and advice on GK usage. I went from not understanding how to use GK to clearing the A6S dummy in a day (still not good enough for A7S though, going to work on it more this week and see how far I can go)!

DRG feels like a blast in real fights, too. Just messing around with it on extremes is giving me a lot of insight into timings that I never got as much info on as a tank main when the content was current, so hopefully that will carry over as I get further into Midas Savage tank wise to help out my melee dps (whee vortexer).

All of the weighted BiS sets at around the projected 720 accuracy are all roughly the same. 600 DET, 600 SS, 1030CRT, tbh.

As for the sets for the lower accuracy requirements, I think it would be best to solve it for the highest accuracy requirement, then "lock" the melds into the "BiS items", when solving for the accuracy tier below.

That way you won't end up with something dumb, like two different meld combinations for 1 piece of equipment, for two different accuracy requirements.

looks like i shud never get the lore chest unless i am done with lore gear progression and only getting it for glamours...

I'm so raising my hands to give you guys energy to run those BiS calculations, because I'm a potato towards pc's and technology. \._./

In the mean time I'll use my feet to try and clear A5S dummy with i200 eso weapon. 1 clear with lucky crits, a gazillion fails to normal critrate. I cri evrtyem because my friends don't want to do Gordias Savage with me :c

Oh, and since glam was brought on the table I like the feet and arms, the chest and helm look too much Valkyria-ish and viking/northern mitology like. Legs are neutral in my book. Love the spear and would have preferred to have Leviathan lore, because you know... scales.

Thank you for doing the effort for everyone -silently continues to send energy to the dragoon overlords- \._./

Hi there. I'm kinda new to DRG, my DRG is now at full i210 (full upgraded eso except gordian gloves and one gordian ring) and I failed SSS A5S for a 4-5 times (best was 2% HP left I think) so I have some questions about my rotation.

I'm following the advanced opener posted in page 1, with some minor changes:

I changed [PS + LEGS] and [LIFES + GK] into [LEGS + PS] and [GK + LIFES] because I'm more used to the latter, but I don't think these would matter (cmiiw).

I moved BOTD between Disembowel and Chaos Thrust since I don't use potions for SSS. That 2.4-3s shift ended up changing how I use GK throughout the encounter, but I made sure to maintain 3 GK/min rate. Does this happen to mess up the potencies (in relation to buffs)?

Thanks.

So for those of you calculating BiS, if you weren't getting the ring (I know it's a safe buy) or chest (cuz it kinda sucks) this week, what would you get? Specifically from the 495 pieces (head/gloves/boots)? I'm guessing lore gloves?

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Hi there. I'm kinda new to DRG, my DRG is now at full i210 (full upgraded eso except gordian gloves and one gordian ring) and I failed SSS A5S for a 4-5 times (best was 2% HP left I think) so I have some questions about my rotation.

I'm following the advanced opener posted in page 1, with some minor changes:

I changed [PS + LEGS] and [LIFES + GK] into [LEGS + PS] and [GK + LIFES] because I'm more used to the latter, but I don't think these would matter (cmiiw).

I moved BOTD between Disembowel and Chaos Thrust since I don't use potions for SSS. That 2.4-3s shift ended up changing how I use GK throughout the encounter, but I made sure to maintain 3 GK/min rate. Does this happen to mess up the potencies (in relation to buffs)?

Thanks.

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It doesn't matter too much, but I think the way it's listed is a little bit quicker when you take into account animation locks and such. Some abilities just pair better together when you are double-weaving. When I'm not using a potion I just use PS+LegS in the same spot, it keeps botd consistent at least. The only difference between using botd between ID-Dis and Dis-CT is you can execute a GK one combo sooner. Either way you still get 3/min, it just shifts after which combo. (there are considerations on some fights like a3s where the phase is 60 sec, if you use botd between ID-Dis you can not get 3 GK off, you have to pop it between Dis-CT to get 3 off before phase change)

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Originally Posted by Khadroth

So for those of you calculating BiS, if you weren't getting the ring (I know it's a safe buy) or chest (cuz it kinda sucks) this week, what would you get? Specifically from the 495 pieces (head/gloves/boots)? I'm guessing lore gloves?

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1000 tomes for weapon. But that's just me having a bugger of a time trying to figure out the next best piece to upgrade. Most likely I'll need a couple of pieces together to keep stats reasonable so I'm just gonna save for the weapon now.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

1000 tomes for weapon. But that's just me having a bugger of a time trying to figure out the next best piece to upgrade. Most likely I'll need a couple of pieces together to keep stats reasonable so I'm just gonna save for the weapon now.

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Yeah that's the same problem I'm having at the moment. Gloves and ring seem like the best choices but I can't really afford the accuracy hit with my crafted chest (also because I keep failing those darn Acc 4 melds). Slipstream helm seems to solve all my issues in one fell swoop (I'm high on sksp as well), but I'm not sure about it being BiS. http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/T5D5 is what I'm working with.

Edit: Nvm, that Midan helm is terrible in the same way that the lore chest is. Makes the choice pretty clear.

Ring and head piece swap some sksp for crit which is nice, probably my next in line upgrades. But I still think I'll save tomes for now, see what, if anything, drops from savage in my favor and make adjustments. I just really want to get the most out of the melded stuff I can. 100k a pop for crit IVs is too much to be replaced in 1 week lol

doing above 1600+ on dummy and clear A5S SSS with 2-3 sec left (no food nor pots, didn't pop B4B at the very end, but feel like i should), currently at i217 with Sephirot spear crafted chest, belt and earrings, the rest are midan 220 gears except the eso feet and neck, and a gordian ring (although i haven't melded anything on the midan 220 gears). now, we are hitting enrage in A5S, which 3 of our dps were around 1100-1000 (maybe it's our party comps, we have WHM and AST while WHM was the dps healer and AST was full time healing), but anyhow, i just wondering what i can do better and what's the next piece i should get from lore tomes, or maybe i shud save them up for the weapon since we are actually progressing in Midas now...

It depends on your current gear, tbh, and whether or not you'll be killing A6S this week. If you ARE killing it and you get the tomestone (or you already have one) the weapon is the obvious choice. If you're not, you should be looking at a few *really good* pieces:

Legs
Boots
Ring

More or less in that order. Because the Midan Jacket is so sexy, you'll end up wanting the SKS from the Midan Mask to supplement the dearth of it you'll get from upgrading crafted (70 sks) to Midan (0 sks). The legs will always be bis - you'll likely not even consider using the 240 Midan (78 acc / 112 sks...) over the 230 Slips, especially since you'll likely be first or second in line for a Twine, anyway, and those pants should be the first upgrade.

The boots are kinda debatable, since if you don't need the acc, the Midas ones are way better, but you can meld 18 Crit into them compared to what 12 det? 18 acc? so it's not really as far off as it seems at first, imo.

Ring is always a safe bet, ears and wrist are pretty safe bets, but you'll be using Midas over them if it drops (until they're 240). The hands are also a pretty okay purchase, but you might wanna be rocking the Midas ones while you have the crafted chest, if you care about keeping approximately 600 skill speed.

Things to think about.

The slipstream hat is a really good choice, too, it's just very likely to be replaced by the Midas helm eventually when you down A8S, whereas the slipstream boots, pants, and ring are unlikely to ever leave your character once they're on.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

It doesn't matter too much, but I think the way it's listed is a little bit quicker when you take into account animation locks and such. Some abilities just pair better together when you are double-weaving. When I'm not using a potion I just use PS+LegS in the same spot, it keeps botd consistent at least. The only difference between using botd between ID-Dis and Dis-CT is you can execute a GK one combo sooner. Either way you still get 3/min, it just shifts after which combo. (there are considerations on some fights like a3s where the phase is 60 sec, if you use botd between ID-Dis you can not get 3 GK off, you have to pop it between Dis-CT to get 3 off before phase change)

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I see, thanks. I guess I'll try again later and record it, I might be doing something wrong that I never noticed.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

Boots...
...The boots are kinda debatable, since if you don't need the acc, the Midas ones are way better, but you can meld 18 Crit into them compared to what 12 det? 18 acc? so it's not really as far off as it seems at first, imo.
...whereas the slipstream boots, pants, and ring are unlikely to ever leave your character once they're on.

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Yeah that's where you surprised me with this. I wasn't even looking at the Slip boots because of the discrepancy in the weighting with the Midan boots. It's sorta why I asked haha. It can be tough trying to predict which pieces are actually feasible to use later, even though they look like BiS at the moment.

It depends on what kind of build you're aiming for. My current goal is kinda weird-ish, I guess? And it's a tiny bit different from what I'm gonna be getting before killing A8S. (I have plenty slots I can change to +12 ACC if it ends up being needed. Currently assuming 717-718 would be good enough for A8S)

The main Lore pieces that stick around are pants/boots and then there's some accessories I use in both places, but those are more-or-less interchangeable while gearing up tbh, and I would take a 240 Midan acc over a 230 Lore acc in pretty much every situation.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

It depends on what kind of build you're aiming for.

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The one that RNGesus gives me ; ;

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

The one that RNGesus gives me ; ;

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I got the ring from A5S last week, so I'm currently sitting pretty. Thank you, RNGesus. *bowbow*

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Originally Posted by MiniTyra

I'm going to do a Dragoon write-up for those suffering with 710+ SS.

Saw a thread on reddit last night and just face-palmed all the way through. For those who're genuinely curious, unless you're running 714 SS at a maximum, you should not have any BOTD issues for at least 3 cycles, or 3 minutes. It's only after 3 minutes where you'll offset your BOTD stuff.

Once you hit the 650SS mark, approximately every 20 SS you gain knocks off the maximum BOTD cycles by 1. 654, which happens to also be the next CT clip marker, is the last SS where you'll have "infinite" cycles with no clipping issues.

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This would be cool to see, actually, since I currently have 726 SS. (Send help.)

Crafted i220 belt or the midan i220 belt? which one is better?

Hi! I have two questions:

1) If I never plan on running Midas savage (odds are not good), what is my BiS gear?

2) I may have chosen poorly when purchasing Lore gear <.< Is the chest piece so bad that I should switch back to my artifact chest? Or can I mitigate it by slotting crit materia?

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Originally Posted by Braneric

Hi! I have two questions:

1) If I never plan on running Midas savage (odds are not good), what is my BiS gear?

2) I may have chosen poorly when purchasing Lore gear <.< Is the chest piece so bad that I should switch back to my artifact chest? Or can I mitigate it by slotting crit materia?

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Both of these answers depend on how much money/time you're willing to spend on crafted gear and overmelding. Taking out Savage Midan gear leaves you only Lore and Crafted gear to choose from. The lore chest isn't bad if you need accuracy and skillspeed in spades, it's just not likely that you do without crafted gear/midan spear. Thus the crafted chest should outweigh the even the augmented lore one assuming you meld correctly.

One day I'll have a worthwhile question.. For the mean time:

Should I be holding buffs for Hummelfaust or not? Exp people in the FC said hold BFB and stuff.. But I see Dervy doesn't, and Jack does.. Most of the drgs I looked at don't.

I had some depressing and uncharacteristically low damage. Didn't keep us from clearing it, kinda figured it was due to holding buffs, but then I see Jack tearing it up and it looks like he held BFB.. Aside from Jack just being a bad ass with mch and nin >.>.. What should I do? Leaning towards not holding them tonight and seeing how it goes.

I'm guessing the people spending B4B are doing so because its only an 80 second cooldown and will come back up while hummel is being killed. Meanwhile if they waited they'll only get one. It seems to be a case of do you want to pad your numbers for a better parse (popping B4B early while there's multiple targets and getting it back non-optimally later) or do you need to maximize your hummelfaust damage to ensure a clear (lining it up better with other cooldowns for a pseudo-opener on hummel).

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Originally Posted by JackFross

The slipstream hat is a really good choice, too, it's just very likely to be replaced by the Midas helm eventually when you down A8S, whereas the slipstream boots, pants, and ring are unlikely to ever leave your character once they're on.

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Thx for a detail explanation, we just cleared A5S last night, guess i will save lores for weapon from now on, otherwise i wud get the ring or boots this week

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Should I be holding buffs for Hummelfaust or not? Exp people in the FC said hold BFB and stuff.. But I see Dervy doesn't, and Jack does.. Most of the drgs I looked at don't.

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personally, i who doesn't really care abt the numbers unless we can clear the fight easily. i hold my B4B for hummelfaust, but i guess we have a different arrangement for my static. we have the Mnk, Mch and myself the Drg who hold our burst at the beginning (i hold B4B, but i use all the IR BOTD jump SSD and dragonfire on them, so i can have the 4th hit and GK on both of them), and only had the Blm use his burst at the beginning. once hummelfaust arrived, the 3 of us will,of course, use our regular burst. in my case, during my first Chaos thrust combo on hummelfaust i won't have BOTD nor GK (or maybe one GK right before disembowel depends on how fast we were killing the two fausts), but during the Full thrust combo i will have IR and all the rest back up as usual, and my jump wud still cover in the last second of B4B, but not the SSD. However, we started this method becuz we didn't have enough dps to actually clear it at the very first beginning while we were not as geared as now, but anyways it works out at the end, i mean, at this point we only concern abt safe and solid clears.

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Originally Posted by Braneric

2) I may have chosen poorly when purchasing Lore gear <.< Is the chest piece so bad that I should switch back to my artifact chest? Or can I mitigate it by slotting crit materia?

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i'd say, talk to a GM, tell him u bought the wrong piece accidentally, and ask him to switch the chest to the pants for u. every account has one chance once a life time to do this, if u want to progress in Midas or already having a static group progressing there, i will suggest u to do this

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Originally Posted by Khadroth

I'm guessing the people spending B4B are doing so because its only an 80 second cooldown and will come back up while hummel is being killed. Meanwhile if they waited they'll only get one. It seems to be a case of do you want to pad your numbers for a better parse (popping B4B early while there's multiple targets and getting it back non-optimally later) or do you need to maximize your hummelfaust damage to ensure a clear (lining it up better with other cooldowns for a pseudo-opener on hummel).

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yea i think so too, for myself i dont really care abt so much abt numbers at this moment anyways, so we have 3 dps holding our burst on the two fausts. and for myself, yes i was only getting one B4B, the 2nd B4B actually came at the last 4-5% of hummelfaust, most of the time i wont pop it there cuz we wnna shorten the cd wait time as much as possible when we get to the boss room, and we didn't really need that B4B there either, tbh i feel that if a 2nd B4B is needed at that moment, it would very likely gonna hit enrage not matter what

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Originally Posted by Khadroth

stuff

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Yeah, Dervy only does it for padding. Day 1, no Sephi Weapons, you HAD to save all of your CDs, except 60s ones, for Hummlefaust, otherwise you'll not make the DPS check.

The best thing to do, for ultimate padding, is H -> IDC4 -> switch -> IDC4, with your PS + Jump used on the first add, and DFD + GK pading on both. Depending on your groups kill speed, you may not be able to use PH, so you can get the additional 4th in just before Faust jr 2 dies, and have BOTD up for Hummlefaust. Elusive Jump is also your friend for this fight.

We align up full burst around 20s into killing Hummlefaust. TA, BL, IR, POT, HE for the MCH etc.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...acter/9688754/

need help am i doing something wrong? i can clear a5s dummy with crits on and off. im a week away from upgrading to lore pants which will give me crit/det is 590 ss still optimal for drgs?

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Originally Posted by Tonkosi

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...acter/9688754/

need help am i doing something wrong? i can clear a5s dummy with crits on and off. im a week away from upgrading to lore pants which will give me crit/det is 590 ss still optimal for drgs?

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Well from just a cursory look at your equipment, you seem to have chosen some upgrades poorly, though I can't say for sure without knowing what you started with. That 190 ring needs to be gotten rid of asap (190 to 220 would be an 11 str upgrade right there). Outside of that, you simply haven't been getting your weekly midas story tokens. You seem be placing an over emphasis on making sure your secondaries are perfect amounts (645 acc, 620 sksp) while shooting your main stat in the foot (I'm sitting at ilvl 220 with 44 more str than you, despite not having a savage drop or this week's lore upgrade yet). Don't be afraid to go over on accuracy or skillspeed temporarily. As long as it's for the sake of grabbing an upgrade you can adjust to make it work.

I was to stupid to do math but I had all bis up to a3s which I didn't clear. thank you I always thought crit needed to be stacked but I was to stupid to look at str

I upgraded on emphasis for crit but I should've done it over str I see your point I'll do math on this thank you very much

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Originally Posted by Tonkosi

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...acter/9688754/

need help am i doing something wrong? i can clear a5s dummy with crits on and off. im a week away from upgrading to lore pants which will give me crit/det is 590 ss still optimal for drgs?

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You should be crushing the dummy with that gear, not only on a lucky parse. At full i210 with 210 spear, the dummy is killable on-and-off. The addition of the Sephirot spear makes the check a non-issue. If you're struggly for consistency, you really need to look no further than right here:
http://puu.sh/nBKhI/649849395f.png

That is low - no joke. With the stats pouring out this patch, you should be able to maintain 500 minimum DET. I know a comparison to my current gear is unfair because ~crafted~ but, still: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...acter/2766552/

I'm rocking 1000 crit alongside 650 sks, 660 acc, AND 586 det. Even with literally no melds, I'm at 526/906/582/588 det/crit/sks/acc. I don't know where your Midas tokens are going, but you need to start getting the 220 Midas gear, since every single 220 piece is strictly better than every single 210 piece by a country mile (aside from Gordian hands > Proto Midan hands and Gordian ears > Proto Midan ears, however the hands become better with 2 Crit IV melds. The ears are trash, tho.)


590 sks is still optimal, in a sense, but also not really? Fights are significantly less draining on TP in the current meta. A5S is the exact opposite of TP issues, unless you use TP-consuming AoE on the pigs (which you shouldn't), and A6S is a series of fights, each of which 2m or less, with 1 Invigorate per fight. Just from normal, A8S looks like it won't be an issue for TP, either, assuming that phase in the middle of the last phase still happens - full 30-40s of running around letting TP regenerate and cooldowns reset so meh.

A7S is the only one that *might* be an issue, since there's not much downtime in the normal mode.

So, while 590 is still "optimal" - it's not NEARLY as detrimental to stack additional skill speed in this tier as it was in Gordias. The main issue with it, as Dervy mentioned, is de-syncing your BotD - but that requires a standing stretch of 3-4+ minutes, which is very rare if not non-existent in the current raiding landscape.

I'm not TOOO far behind I can clear a5s with enough crits atm and I just changed my 190 ring to 220. next week I can upgrade to 220 armor 220 gloves and 230 pants so I'm not completely terrible.

if you would've read what I wrote to reply to Khadroth I said I made a mistake from not doing math for the new tier gear I always thought crit was dps to stack crit on drugs but I see am I wrong. I just learned about the stat weights not to long ago, but I am upgrading my pieces Tuesday and maybe even buy 230 gear to replace my shirt necklace and ring. buy I never thought det would be beneficial to drg