How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

PLD recorded a single miss at 698 ACC in A8S from the front today in Sword Oath, I kept a record of the data dump.

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Originally Posted by MiniTyra

What are some very commonly asked topics/misunderstood concepts about the Dragoon which haven't, or have been poorly addressed thus far? Dervy is doing a complete overhaul of his original guide and wants to make sure that every possible topic has been covered; and yes, AoE rotations/DoT management will also be included.

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AoE stuff is a big one that's asked for a lot, as well as potionless openers. A lot of people basically take the advanced opener, remove the potion, and shift everything up one GCD, which I think is an overall pps loss, but I haven't tested it. My current favorite actually leads with HT>LegS>BL>ID since Leg Sweep will be back after the FT/4th and before B4B drops off. And credence/a nod/calculations for the H>IDC4>P>IDC4 opener would be nice, as well.

Another thing I'd like to see explained is how long you should realistically hold off-gcd skills (primarily DFD) in order to line them with buffs (or add spawns in DFD's case) without taking pps loss.

Something that's also not very well-explained is those semi-rare circumstances where you have 2-3-4-5 GCDs left before a mob dies, and the optimal rotation to use in such a scenario. Also missing is the actual duration that your clipping CT needs to last before it's actually effective.

0 misses recorded at 699 acc as DRK without grit at times

Howdy! Figured I'd ask you guys here since I've run into a roadblock D:

character stats + item info: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...cter/13218863/

I'm debating whether or not to wait 2 additional weeks for my belt or if I should go ahead and grab the bracelet now. I've also purchased my lore earrings (but I'm not sure how I should meld them until I figure out what piece I should grab), and I'm driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to maintain the magic numbers regardless of the path I choose.

Any input on item/meld suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)

Get the belt. You'll have 2 more weeks of drops to look forward to getting one of the two items you need, plus the belt is a drastic gain over the Lore, whereas the Midan Bracelet isn't really significantly better than Lore without other pieces to compliment it.

PLUS. Belt is Vitality. Vitality is ++++++++++++ compared to any gains in secondaries for Midas.


As far as suggestions are concerned:
1. You're using a lot of g5's in slots where g4's are more efficient. Anything 230 will lose its materia when it upgrades to 240.
2. You have a LOT of accuracy - you need 699 for A8S and, assuming you've had 4 kills of A5S, you're definitely not progressing on that fight. If you're on A6, you don't need much more than 680 or so, so you're focusing quite a bit too heavily on Accuracy.
3. Upgrading to the Midan Belt and Primal Bracelets floors the shit out of your Accuracy because you've done a lot of silly melds (DET V's EVERYWHERE where you could be melding Accuracy instead to run 0 ACC pieces with Crit on them for more overall gains).

Personally, what I would do is aim for the Midan Belt asap and buy the Primal Earrings when you get it. Those two pieces together will keep your SKS where it needs to be and, if you drop some DET melds for ACC melds, you'll also get a much larger overall gain. Melding 1 Acc 4 into the ears and 2 into the head would bump you up a solid ~10-12 points of stat weight and drop to 689 ACC which should be enough for even A7S progression, by which point you should be hopefully sitting on some Midan Gloves or Midan Boots - both of which make the whole situation significantly more manageable.

A quick question concerning A7S which I'm sure was said at some point, but since I wasn't training it yet I didn't pay much attention: should I hold B4B for the second cage in P1, in case first one is healer/tank? Because whenever I forget to hold it, I can't kill the alarum in time (and it's usually a matter of one-two more skills, too); however I feel that ilvl 233 should be more than enough to actually make it. What I do is HT-ID-TTT and I repeat TTT4 (I activate BotD on the first FT) till I kill it, or I don't, depending on whether B4B is off cooldown or not. Is there a better way to deal with them?

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Originally Posted by ColdestHeaven

What I do is HT-ID-TTT and I repeat TTT4 (I activate BotD on the first FT) till I kill it, or I don't, depending on whether B4B is off cooldown or not. Is there a better way to deal with them?

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If the bolded is a typo, then yes. You forgot to press Chaos Thrust.

My group has our WAR taking them, now, but I have my first kill with two jails. I never held anything for them and never had a problem killing it, so long as I didn't fuck up and forget to hit a button. Especially for the second one. :0 You shouldn't hold B4B for it, but you should have offgcd skills.

This is how I usually did the second Jail in the first set, if I got the Alarum. After that FT comes SSD onto the boss followed by the 4th hit.

Those skills should all be up there, using them on cooldown. I only use most of my skills on the boss, especially during that phase of the fight. There's very little reason to burn jumps and such outside of the boss phases (aside from perhaps SSD back to the boss after padlock) and most of them come back during that phase - aka come back for the Alarums.


Also! I decided to try something today. I went to the A8S dummy and tried to kill it without using Heavy Thrust. Unfortunately, my best attempt only got it to 1% remaining. I can only average around 1720-1740 without HT compared to my more usual 1890-1910 with it. D:

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Originally Posted by JackFross

snip

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It wasn't a typo, I figured that considering CT was gonna last much less than 30 seconds (I'm supposed to kill it before that after all) and the fourth combo isn't getting full damage, rushing directly into TTT was a better idea. Thank you for pointing that and confirming the CD bit.

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Originally Posted by ColdestHeaven

It wasn't a typo, I figured that considering CT was gonna last much less than 30 seconds (I'm supposed to kill it before that after all) and the fourth combo isn't getting full damage, rushing directly into TTT was a better idea. Thank you for pointing that and confirming the CD bit.

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Ah - but CT with the positional bonus needs to last for 3s in order to be a net gain over using FT instead (assuming CT is not currently flowing). CT without positional bonus loses 50 potency - the CT DoT bit is 35 potency per tick - +2 of those will put you over what you'd get from a TTT combo. For more efficient display, we'll assume no positional bonus on:

H>ID>TTT4>TTT4>[ded mob]
H>IDC4>TTT4>TTT4?

First:
100 + (180 + 220 + (150+200+360+200)x2x1.1)x1.15 = 2862.3
= 2862.3 in 11 GCDs

Second:
100 + (180 + 220 + (200+200+150+200+360+200)x1.1)x1.15 = 2217.15
DoT effector: 35x(5*2.4+1)x1.15/3 = 174.42
= 2391.57 in 9 GCDs
Assume we add +2 GCDs to this, we'd do ID>Dis for maximum potency
(180+220)x1.1x1.15 + 35x(2x2.4)x1.15/3 = 570.4
= 2961.97 in 11 GCDs

Overall more potency to use Chaos Thrust.

Mine in that image died in 8 GCDs, so if we truncate these two, we end up with:

First:
2862.3 - (200+360+200)x1.1x1.15 = 1900.9

Second:
2391.57 - 200x1.1x1.15 - 35x2.4x1.15/3 = 2106.37

Net gain in those first 8 GCDs, where you weave in oGCDs to kill the thing asap.

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Originally Posted by MiniTyra

In regards to gear, Dervy is actually doing a complete overhaul of his set. He's getting Augmented Gloves, Belt and Earrings swap once he gets the Twines/Coats and dropping to 558 SS (well, 558ss + ss from lore weap)

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In case people are curious, I think I have stumbled onto this exact set while tinkering with things.

I like it a lot - 1135 Crit with exactly 699 Accuracy and 601 Det just sorta looks and feels really sweet. It's absolutely what I'm aiming for, now, and it gives a few easy spots to throw VIT melds in during progression, since 3/5 of your BiS accessories are rocking Crit.

I think I've got the gist of it. I'll try this next time and see if I make it.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

Super helpful advice.

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Thanks dude! This isn't the first time I've taken your advice from this thread, and I appreciate your direct feedback ♥

What are you guys aiming for in terms of pre A8s kill gear set? Personally I'm getting this one:

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA90

To be honest it's a pretty bad one but I'm to cheap to redo a lot of grade V melds and we decided on having Vit melds during progression so this is what I'm left with. If I'm lucky enough to get my chest piece and the spear I'm gonna go for this one:

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/TVJH

Any thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Gripen

Any thoughts?

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Lots of thoughts!

I really value the ability to NOT re-meld my gear going from pre-A8S to BiS, so I focused my pre-A8S set on this exact concept. Before I started building a set to use with the Anima coming next week, this is what I would have been building toward:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9Y

That said - I know that set is sub-optimal. I'm building toward this, currently, only obviously sub the Anima in where the Midan spear is:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9X

Note that both of those sets have THREE Vitality V melds on them - this bumps your max health to 20620 as a Xaela with Flint Caviar, 20743 with Pipira Pira. You can stand to drop one of those melds, but absolutely not all three. 19800 with Pipira is nice, but not for progression. That extra ~1000 health could make or break you surviving a mechanic.


That said, my best in slot is pretty much identical to that, with just the singular change of swapping out the chest piece and turning the VIT melds into actual melds:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9Z


Your BiS looks pretty good, though! It's a bit lower weight than mine (by ~2.5 effective strength), but it should work just fine, if you prefer running ~600 sks.

I'd just go for this set: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9Z

It's the set that Dervy is aiming for and just use whatever i240 weapon you can get your hands on. That way, Pre-A8S is exactly the same as Post-A8S, only a Midan Spear swap. Chances are, Relic will be customisable and would best be invested into crit/det and there's a high chance Nidhogg weapon will be i240 Crit/Det. If it's Accuracy/Det, then of course, we'll have to see which is better :P

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Originally Posted by MiniTyra

That way, Pre-A8S is exactly the same as Post-A8S, only a Midan Spear swap.

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The Midan Jacket of Maiming drops from A8S as well, so you'll be missing that before killing, as well. That has a pretty substantial impact on how you build that set. If the issue was just SKS from the spear, then yeah, it'd be great, but both non-Midan options for the chest have 70+ SKS on them IN ADDITION TO the skill speed from the spear, all of which stacks on top of the 558, forcing you to sit at 712 Skill Speed - quite a bit more than is realistically worthwhile.

It's also been confirmed - 100% confirmed - that the next patch will bring 240 Anima relics with completely customizable stats. Screenshots seem to imply a 120 maximum for Crit/Acc/Sks and a 115 maximum for Det, with 228 maximum stat points allowed to be allocated (the exact same amount of points you can put on an i240 Slipstream spear - 120 Crit + 84 Sks + 24 Det = 228 total points).

Oh it drops from A8S? :( That's a bummer. Maybe I should of been paying more attention to the items that drop, lmao.

Yeah, it's kinda weird this time around.

A5S - Belts + Accessories
A6S - Two each of Head/Hands/Feet per Job + Deep Gobcoat + Tomestone
A7S - Leftover of Head/Hands/Feet per Job + Legs + Deep Gobtwine + Deep Gobdip
A8S - Chest + Weapon

A6S pages work for all of Head/Hands/Feet - 6 per, so most people who are not Dragoon because the Mask drops in 7 and it sucks will buy their 7 drop with their first 6 pages from 6.

To be honest, I wish they had put the Legs and Chests into that same pool of gear and had one in 7 and one in 8, with it differing per Job to give the good one in 7 and the shittier one in 8 :C... Or even just to let the 7 pages buy chest pieces.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

Yeah, it's kinda weird this time around.

A5S - Belts + Accessories
A6S - Two each of Head/Hands/Feet per Job + Deep Gobcoat + Tomestone
A7S - Leftover of Head/Hands/Feet per Job + Legs + Deep Gobtwine + Deep Gobdip
A8S - Chest + Weapon

A6S pages work for all of Head/Hands/Feet - 6 per, so most people who are not Dragoon because the Mask drops in 7 and it sucks will buy their 7 drop with their first 6 pages from 6.

To be honest, I wish they had put the Legs and Chests into that same pool of gear and had one in 7 and one in 8, with it differing per Job to give the good one in 7 and the shittier one in 8 :C... Or even just to let the 7 pages buy chest pieces.

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or even better, I wish they let the chest drop from 7S with the only things dropping from A8S are the weapons and a selection of cool mounts/pets. I feel getting the chest as a drop from A8S feels like a troll drop since you could've gotten the massively better weapon.

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

or even better, I wish they let the chest drop from 7S with the only things dropping from A8S are the weapons and a selection of cool mounts/pets. I feel getting the chest as a drop from A8S feels like a troll drop since you could've gotten the massively better weapon.

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Well, it's two chests, no? It drops weapon and chest. And - at least for me - the chest is a larger upgrade than the weapon, due to using the 220 crafted in my final no-8 set.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

Lots of thoughts!

I really value the ability to NOT re-meld my gear going from pre-A8S to BiS, so I focused my pre-A8S set on this exact concept. Before I started building a set to use with the Anima coming next week, this is what I would have been building toward:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9Y

That said - I know that set is sub-optimal. I'm building toward this, currently, only obviously sub the Anima in where the Midan spear is:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9X

Note that both of those sets have THREE Vitality V melds on them - this bumps your max health to 20620 as a Xaela with Flint Caviar, 20743 with Pipira Pira. You can stand to drop one of those melds, but absolutely not all three. 19800 with Pipira is nice, but not for progression. That extra ~1000 health could make or break you surviving a mechanic.


That said, my best in slot is pretty much identical to that, with just the singular change of swapping out the chest piece and turning the VIT melds into actual melds:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UA9Z


Your BiS looks pretty good, though! It's a bit lower weight than mine (by ~2.5 effective strength), but it should work just fine, if you prefer running ~600 sks.

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Yeah your Anima set feels like the way to go but unfortunately it's not going to be an option for me due to lack of time and my very personal opinion that the relic grind is just an insult to humanity but that's a completely different topic :)

Melding Vit felt really awful but it has been a life saver on numerous occasions so very much worth it in my opinion.

I was thinking of going for that "low sks" BiS set but in the end I enjoy being 600+ so I guess I'll stick to that.

Don't forget about my favorite set: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/U5BI with about 1~ strength less and dirt cheap grilled sweetfish for food

The Above set is great for me since it shares right side melds and gear with the Monk BiS.

Never understood the whole required skillspeed thing. Extra skillspeed is just wasted stats imo

I'll say it again: that whole business is bogus. You need a much lower SS to get the purported benefit in an actual raid (i.e. with Selene).

And now we have yet ANOTHER patch with absolutely NO attempts to deliver any of the fixes they promised us two patches ago..Drg, the class this whole expansion was supposed to be about, remains the most heavily fucked over one. Every single other class has been adjusted and/or buffed over the last few patches, EXCEPT us, and they screwed us over worse than anyone else with this 'fight against yourself' bullshit. I havent fought a single enemy since 56, the only thing I have ever fought is my own damn abilities.

There's a lot more to Dervys oCD placement than just the opener.

The BFBs and IRs are all "slotted" into their highest PPS placements which benefit oCDs in the opener and further in the rotation. That's the main reason for the swap.

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Originally Posted by Aiurily

oh i forgot to edit it in

edit: actually i shouldn't do this kind of thing when im half asleep oh god im going over it and noticing a lot of dumb things

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Part of the reason is it was intentional to skip the Phleb immediately before the 2nd BFB. I think the intention was to delay the 2nd BFB to slightly after TT so it catches double Geirskoguls and a jump while still getting a Phleb on the last second.

http://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/0e2...be5ebb57_8.png

If I'm reading this correctly, we're gonna be able to have 120 crit, 115 det, and a tiny bit of accuracy/SS depending on need. How's everyone feeling about this?
That trade of SS for Det seems to put it ahead of the lore weapon at the very least

I'd avoid putting stat points in acc/ss on the relic actually and dump everything on det/crit. This way you adjust melds/gear while still getting full scaling benefits (in future iterations of the relic I mean) on those two stats; if I remember correctly, splitting stat points in more than 2 stats led to a very small loss of points (like 1 or 2 less than a pure det/crit). Not sure how/if this would translate in a much larger pool of stats implemented on the weapon.

I wouldn't intentionally put much if any accuracy on it, if only because other weapons won't come stock with any (the whole point being that it could get difficult to swap out weapons in ARR without having side/downgrades for other slots).

I've got an full 230 LORE build, anyone can recommend decent DRG Melds?
So far I've been experimention with Crit and Skillspeed (Tier5) and no Determination.

ACC: 693
CRIT: 872
DET: 486
AttP: 1216
SS: 791

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Originally Posted by ColdestHeaven

I'd avoid putting stat points in acc/ss on the relic actually and dump everything on det/crit. This way you adjust melds/gear while still getting full scaling benefits (in future iterations of the relic I mean) on those two stats; if I remember correctly, splitting stat points in more than 2 stats led to a very small loss of points (like 1 or 2 less than a pure det/crit). Not sure how/if this would translate in a much larger pool of stats implemented on the weapon.

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If you can put 240 points of stats in it, and crit maxes out at 120 and det maxes out at 115, then you'd have 5 leftover stat points. I figure why not use em all? This is of course assuming that whole bonus point thing they talked about in the live letter only rushes you to the cap as opposed to giving you extra points

Dat armor from Weeping City: Crit/Det, oh thanks sweet baby Jesus!

http://i.imgur.com/UoyfwL5.png

Face Spear for worst looking anima weapon 2016

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Originally Posted by MaelstromMickey

Face Spear for worst looking anima weapon 2016

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It's so the anima can whisper mean things while you're stabbing them.

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Originally Posted by Shenjiro

Dat armor from Weeping City: Crit/Det, oh thanks sweet baby Jesus!

http://i.imgur.com/UoyfwL5.png

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Got it few minutes ago from Ozma.

http://s33.postimg.org/r1lgt1obz/ffx...016_154348.png

Nice stats but if I equip this one my SS is going down and I'd have to grab 50~70 SS to back it up. Not sure how I'll do that. Gotta think about it.

You know, with 600SS, maybe lower, you can now double weave with a potion. It's absolutely ridiculous.

There might be an opportunity to completely rework the opener.

H -> [LEGS + BL] -> ID -> [BOTD+BFB] -> DI -> [POT+IR] -> CT -> [PS] -> 4TH -> [JUMP] -> P -> [SSD] -> TT -> [DFD] -> VP -> [LIFES + GK] -> FT -> 4TH [LEGS]

EDIT:

My simulation shows it to be a 23DPS increase just from that swap, as long as you have low enough SS to do a POT + IR opener. That's insanity.

At 557 SS, it looks like there's a 0.1/0.2 GCD clip, so at 600, I can see a 0.2/0.25 clip. I sincerely doubt such a small clip will mitigate a 23DPS increase, which my simulation cannot account for unfortunately.

Could give it a shot yeah.

Worked around to get a decent setup with the new 230 body and I'll be using this :

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UCX5

I'll add one more CRIT V Mat to the body.

Edit : fixed build posted

I'm completely lost on how to make the anima work without resorting to using the augmented lore chest. Otherwise I will be stuck with 530 Skillspeed. I'm using the Horde Spear as a placeholder for now. Any suggestions? And even when I switch things around to compensate (mainly swapping savage and lore neck or belt) I end up with with under 1k crit.

This is what I've got so far.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UD8S

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UD9G Build CRT/DET... That way, you're literally 2 item swaps from BiS.

Talking of A8S BiS @ 600SS:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/U9K7

And what Dervy is opting for this patch:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/U9K0