How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

It's not terribly off, 35 det = 4.865 str per the stat weights.. But regardless.

Skill speed has more value at low levels and lower value at high levels. It's all situational. In my situation I wouldn't wear gordian boots until I could drop skill speed elsewhere, as far as I've been able to tell, running with different sets at 600, 640, and 690 numbers, there's not anything I can do at 697 I couldn't do at 647, and certainly nothing I need 747 to do. If you are talking about going from 550 to 600, or 600 to 650, then there are significant benefits that you can see.

And maybe that's the kicker. The negatives of higher skill speed are more noticeable than the benefits. It's easier to see that higher skill speed is disrupting double-weaving and nearly throwing BotD to after CT/FT instead of right before. Whereas, it's not incredibly obvious when you get an extra hit that you might not have gotten at lower levels.

Using this gearset...http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RQYP, wouldn't it be beneficial to drop the SS of the Gordian boots since its pretty excessive while gaining DET and more ACC needed for AS4?

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Originally Posted by JackFross

I think this is the major point Relia was overlooking ...

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IMO your skill speed would have to be extremely low to end with impulse drive rather than disembowel. You can also do your second jump before sluice puddles at 580 skill speed as well and not get hit.

And of course the 210 gordian boots are better than the 200 eso boots. The STR difference eclipses everything else. But the point I was trying to make was toward the initial question about sks vs det, all else equal.

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Originally Posted by ReliaWylder

IMO your skill speed would have to be extremely low to end with impulse drive rather than disembowel. You can also do your second jump before sluice puddles at 580 skill speed as well and not get hit.

And of course the 210 gordian boots are better than the 200 eso boots. The STR difference eclipses everything else. But the point I was trying to make was toward the initial question about sks vs det, all else equal.

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It all just probably feels a lot tighter than it is, then. I ran into an issue tonight with my 658 sks where I actually hit Disembowel so early that my combo died before I could get Chaos Thrust on the hand; happened twice, so that's an issue I chalk up to high sks more than anything else.

I recorded a few runs tonight to review where I was going wrong and sitting sub-1400 when I should be able to be over;;; I figured out that I seem to just... stop attacking for the second digititis pass, which is a HUGE loss I'm almost purposely taking. Not sure I'm doing anything else necessarily "wrong" but any pointers would be welcome, if you guys see anything else I'm blatantly missing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kANPLJF3YWI

And the deeps from that run through hand-adds transition was:
http://puu.sh/kCvvy/d21af4a542.jpg


I also happened to be recording when I wiped the raid because, tbh, that FaC positional is more important than the party living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRgksBkB-to

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Originally Posted by JackFross

It all just probably feels a lot tighter than it is, then. I ran into an issue tonight with my 658 sks where I actually hit Disembowel so early that my combo died before I could get Chaos Thrust on the hand; happened twice, so that's an issue I chalk up to high sks more than anything else.

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I've run into that or something similar dozens of times as well, but I have less than 600 at the moment. I do probably have higher latency though, which might be what's actually happening for me - I know that as MCH, I regularly hit Clean Shot before the server has registered the proc, thus giving me a Clean Shot with castbar even though the proc shows up milliseconds later, which would've made it instant-cast. Really weird.

Similar stuff has happened on DRG where I'll break the IDC combo partway for no apparent reason, thus not giving me a 4th and thus dropping BotD. Funtimes. :) I'll do a lot of testing on this once Chaos is moved in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping it improves to the point where I don't have to worry about being faster than my procs.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

I also happened to be recording when I wiped the raid because, tbh, that FaC positional is more important than the party living.

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Yes.. Yes it is lmao

I did find something I could do at 697 that I didn't seem to be able to do at 640ish.. The last boss of neverreap always goes invulnerable right as the 2nd 4th hit comes up.. Not anymore xD

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Originally Posted by JackFross

A3 stuff

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I thought you did a few IDs going into the hand phase, then Dis-CT after? That's what I've been doing, haven't lost the combo. The second digi in our group is f'd kinda because we still doing fist > EC > fist.. So it's run to the edge, wait, run to center, (2nd digi), wait, run to edge.. Inefficient for sure.. And I find my self stopping about halfway, GK, check the debuffs, then run back in. We've been making it further more recently so while we can definitely improve overall dps it's not holding us up from transitioning, at least.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I thought you did a few IDs going into the hand phase, then Dis-CT after? That's what I've been doing, haven't lost the combo. The second digi in our group is f'd kinda because we still doing fist > EC > fist.. So it's run to the edge, wait, run to center, (2nd digi), wait, run to edge.. Inefficient for sure.. And I find my self stopping about halfway, GK, check the debuffs, then run back in. We've been making it further more recently so while we can definitely improve overall dps it's not holding us up from transitioning, at least.

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I had been doing HT>ID>ID>[ID] at the end of P1, but a few people pointed out that I get the extra GCD there so might as well make it a Disembowel. What I was also considering doing is going back to ID>ID>ID then after transition just doing Dis>CT>TTT4 without the Phleb there; would be the same amount of GCDs without that irritating delay on will I drop combo or will I not, and cutting Phleb from the rotation isn't a massive pps loss right there, I don't think.

The way my group does it, we don't even bait hand or fist. It's always just one or the other and we just... deal with it, more or less. If you see in that video, DRK holds his all the way at the edge, but WAR holds hers about halfway between mid and edge. It'll be hand OR fist and we just adjust to whichever. It doesn't really impact my dps very much, since I drop gsk after the second CT combo finishes on the split hands so meh? But we're also hitting ~71% after hands, which is pretty significantly far behind. So I'm putting a lot of effort into maximizing my dps to do everything I can to push that harder.

Also, I've had a few pulls where I've been using HQ X-Pots. I see no notable difference in P1 or P2 dps when using them. I'm usually 1500-1550 without potion, and with potion I do like 1520-1580 or so with one lucky run cresting 1600. Just almost feels like it's pointless.

I didn't watch it since I'm at work but will check it out later. I do find it a little odd that you were/are able to get 3 IDs before hand, even at 697 skill speed I HT>ID>[ID] then Dis once it's targetable again. Maybe you are attacking it a bit sooner than I am on the pull?

71% when he's human form again after the adds? Or you talking about when they merge to begin add phase? IIRC the few times we've made it past adds he was 65-68%. As for the xpots, it kinda makes sense but kinda doesn't.. Since 84 str is less % the more str you have.. Like at 1100 str its 7.6% but 1000 str is 8.4%. So it's just less impact at higher str maybe?

That comment on the potion is what I'm thinking. 84 Strength just isn't all that much anymore. I feel one lucky run is just as helpful as a potion. The potions raise your average dps, sure, but when the range is so wide, that increase can't really be meaningful enough that it should be necessary to use them.

And talking 71% when the hands merge back together at the end of the phase. I've read you want 69% at most at that point, so my group is like way behind and I don't know how to really bump that up. Since we do around 29% damage, we'd need to boost it by 2%, which is like a 7% raid-wide dps increase to manage. Since we have like 6700 dps, that's an extra 450-470 dps we need to pump out. I can't do it alone, but if I could shave off 50-60 of that on my own... x_x

And it's either that you're slow on the pull or you don't have that beautiful lady known as Selene.

I'll tell you how to bump it up, tell that monk to get good. Lol

A cooldown is a cooldown, you should use it regardless.
Multiple members of your group are underperforming - apart from "getting good", what helped us alot for the DPS during the first 3 minutes was - emphasize the WHM solo healing most of the first 3 minutes.. The SCH should be able to put out 500+ dps, some groups like to give the SCH dps down here since the WHM has better single target for the 2xhands. The warrior should be able to deliverance pretty much all the 2xhand phase and the DRK can drop GRIT, this gives you more single target dps and allows the SMN and everyone else to multidot/aoe more.

I looked for the slowest kill I could find on fflogs with a similar group set-up (12:52) and isolated the first 3 minutes, you can see how far behind you guys are comparatively. (7,590 dps vs 6,651 dps).
http://www.fflogs.com/reports/QLRB9m...7&end=14310609

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Originally Posted by enil

A cooldown is a cooldown, you should use it regardless.
Multiple members of your group are underperforming - apart from "getting good", what helped us alot for the DPS during the first 3 minutes was - emphasize the WHM solo healing most of the first 3 minutes.. The SCH should be able to put out 500+ dps, some groups like to give the SCH dps down here since the WHM has better single target for the 2xhands. The warrior should be able to deliverance pretty much all the 2xhand phase and the DRK can drop GRIT, this gives you more single target dps and allows the SMN and everyone else to multidot/aoe more.

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Scholar is usually around 450-500 or more; that run he happened to be doing dps out of Cleric in P1 and so he ended up super low. Thanks for the advice, though, I passed it on, link and all!~ C:

I also found that I need to work on my geirskoguls. I generally get like 7; even in that video I probably got 7 maybe 8 (haven't gone back to count) when I should be hitting 9...

I streamed our runs last night but need to go back and edit, unless you want to sit through 3 hours of decent runs and random wipes mixed together lol

I didn't realize the HP drops during adds, so ours is 72% when the hands merge and 68% or so when he comes back to human form. I guess each wave of adds drops it down a bit. Seems like we have quite a bit of damage to make up as well :/

Is 69% that minimum point, kinda like a1s if you don't get to 60% before split you're likely to hit enrage?

69% is comfortable to clear the fight without worrying about enrage. It's apparently possible at 71%-ish, but it's a LOT tighter.

And yeah, all the adds in phase 3 are spawned from the Living Liquid's HP pool, so every add you kill is damage dealt to the boss.


//I think it's mostly just an indication of how your team handles mechanics in terms of dps output, which helps to indicate how you'll do in the final phase in terms of clearing in time.

Here's a video of one of our more decent attempts. Not my best but was the only I saw where we got to 71%

https://youtu.be/r0wgqKsHuPU

I know there's a few things I can do, such as not hold B4B until equal.. EJ back after 2nd wash away (hard to do this quick and accurately on controller). I've got to where I pretty much can hit positionals during the stack phase which helps a lot, tighten up GK usage in that phase.

I tried to use potions in the opener on a few attempts but kept messing up my jump/sluice timing. Will have to figure out a better place to use them.

Oh, another thing is, after 2nd wash away.. Since we were having problems before with % differences I drop Dis-CT to make sure there wasn't any dots messing us up on equal. I'm sure it's a loss but honestly once I stopped doing that we stopped wiping on it.. If it's that big of a deal I can go back to at least IDC with no Phleb, but I'd need to tell the group in case we start wiping again lol

Not to be overly critical, but it's what I tell my group, too. If you wipe to Equal Concentration because Chaos Thrust is ticking on the wrong hand, someone isn't pulling their weight, and it isn't necessarily the dragoon. Once when we wiped to it, everyone was really confused and I mentioned I swapped over a GCD too late - I hit LS+FT on the wrong hand just after EC casted. But like. No buffs; it was about 3000-ish damage. That was apparently enough to make us fail.

That's bad. The group around you needs to step it up if numbers that small in the wrong direction cause you to fail the check this late in gear progression.

When you're looking at doing upwards of 9000 raid dps to the EC hand in 20s, that's 180,000 damage you can be pumping out - at least. If a swing of 3k here or there fucks that up, the group needs to get better. There's no more polite way to put it.

Also, don't worry about the not-holding-b4b thing. The difference that makes to your overall dps is likely not gonna be noticed. Yeah, it's more to NOT hold it, but your second B4B won't be full duration, and the first one won't get 2-3 gsk on double hands nor will it get dfd on double hands. So like... without running numbers for it, I can't see it being too huge a gain to use it on CD compared to saving it for EC/double hands. I didn't even notice a (significant) gain when I stopped holding it, tbh.

Yea :/ after talking a bit about it (Dervy drive-by on my vid lol) I think some of our probs with dots before might not have been the dots only. Like, there were probably other things causing us to not make it and the dots just didn't help. So we are going to try double-dotting again along with some other things Dervy mentioned and see if that helps get the % down.

It's just kind of misleading, like how we can make it past that, make it past adds and into the last phase with dps still being "low" by comparison. SE please give us more DPS checks xD

Most classes will fire off a nearly full opener on Equal Concentration by holding a few buffs for it (since they're buffs you likely won't use during adds anyway, so you don't take a hit). Something important to note is that a lot of players can blow Faust up and then fail the dps checks on Oppressor and hit enrage. Just think about it. If you had the dps to clear Faust, how is your dps too low to clear Oppressor? Yet it happens. It's because "anyone" can do the opener/that initial burst. The skill of playing any DPS class is in how you adjust your playstyle to the mechanics of the fight at hand.

You burst EC down. "Anyone" can do that. It doesn't mean your dps for the rest of P2 is where it could/should be.

A3 is a marathon haha;;; being able to get those quick bursty moments down (EC, Gaols) doesn't necessarily mean your dps is high enough to clear the fight before enrage hits. But learning to keep your dps high WHILE still downing those checks is the tricky part of the fight. What you should hold and when to start holding it, what you shouldn't, etc.


- anyone meaning people who know the basics of how the class works and can parse well on a dummy.

On Normal, every pulse from the Waterspout, which is what creates the adds, consumes 1% of its HP. Is it the same on Savage?

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Originally Posted by Teiren

On Normal, every pulse from the Waterspout, which is what creates the adds, consumes 1% of its HP. Is it the same on Savage?

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Spawning adds consumes Living Liquid's HP in Savage too, yes

So over the last couple of days I've spent a lot of time adjusting my hot bars and keybindings trying to suit it to the rotation. A couple of people in my FC have suggested I use more keys rather than clicking on skills. Currently I only use keys for my two combos (2,3,4 and Q,E,R) ,phleb (Shift + 3), Heavy Thrust (1) and my 4th combo attacks (MB4, MB5), would it be better to rely on more keys and get used to it or just stick to what I have and what I am used to? Bearing in mind I'm not used to using Ctrl, Shift or Alt at all

I have a new computer and am finally in reach of my lifelong dream of making random Dragoon videos. I don't do progression raids anymore, so only ever expect to see A1S and A2S on here until they lift loot lockout. Also, I took a month long break and don't farm cap Esoterics anymore because I'm lazy, so that's why my gear sucks. Nothing super special, but good if you want to see how the pros some person does it. Here is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVS9i8X6Mfo Some will have cool bantz and voice commz like that one.

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Originally Posted by GeneralDowns

So over the last couple of days I've spent a lot of time adjusting my hot bars and keybindings trying to suit it to the rotation. A couple of people in my FC have suggested I use more keys rather than clicking on skills. Currently I only use keys for my two combos (2,3,4 and Q,E,R) ,phleb (Shift + 3), Heavy Thrust (1) and my 4th combo attacks (MB4, MB5), would it be better to rely on more keys and get used to it or just stick to what I have and what I am used to?

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Wish I could help you more, I'm used to ps4 and am dreadfully terrible with KB+M. I could see where having a key bind would be slightly faster than having to scroll over and click an icon, it's a fine line to walk with muscle memory and what you're used to though. Seemed like Dervy had a pretty good setup he shared in the old how to drg per second thread if you want to pour over that until a pc drg shows up here and can offer insight.

Found better link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3066030

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Originally Posted by seekified

Similar stuff has happened on DRG where I'll break the IDC combo partway for no apparent reason, thus not giving me a 4th and thus dropping BotD. Funtimes. :) I'll do a lot of testing on this once Chaos is moved in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping it improves to the point where I don't have to worry about being faster than my procs.

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Having same issue here, especially neverreap because everyone is buring the last boss so quick nowadays so he goes 'invulnerable' fast. But in other instances too, I sometimes miss my combo for some weird ass reason o.O

I hope it'll be fixed come tuesday with chaos, and I also hope that the latency will be good for botd uptime :D

Neverreap boss goes invuln on a timer, not on percentage health. It's always just when you're about to hit that second fourth hit. Confirmed by the fact I ran it with another DRG who was crapping 1400 dps right along with me and it still went at that time. We only saw one invuln phase and both ended over 1300.

Anyway, back on topic... If I'm getting latency, I'll sometimes hit a skill and have my GCD go on cooldown without it ever activating the skill. That might be what's happening there. It's also possible you're missing. That happened to me once and I chalked it up to lag until I noticed my food had worn off.

The first one seems to be controlled by HP in my experience but not the ones after that. It could just be coincidence. And yeah, combos have unpredictable results under extreme latency or lag spikes.

Hello everyone, my first time posting in DRG thread although I've been lurking with you for more than half a year now.
I finally gathered some courage to jump in with you, as I have some points I'd really appreciate if I could get your opinion on.

First off, my group is currently at A4S (we're on 3d leg, so you could say we're pretty much new to the last floor), and here's what my gear looks like: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RT7Q. Next week I'll probably have 2 twines to upgrade the eso chest and eso pants. Here are my logs: http://www.fflogs.com/ru/rankings/ch.../23108/latest/

I have a few of general DRG questions and two related to A3S specifically (even though it's a farm content for my group now, I want to improve my performance there).
So, for general questions:
1) Despite the dropped head and bracers I'm still aiming for Dervy's balanced set, and the reason why is because my team mates told me that Dervy calculated that starting from 780 crit deminishing returns start to kick in for this stat. Is this indeed true and if yes, is it so for every job?
2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing? I understand some mechanics call to the stacking, but I'm mostly asking in general, without regard to any specific encounter.

As for A3S specific questions, there reason why I bring it up is because according to the logs I'm in 26 percentile and I'd really like to go up. My dps is around 1070 atm and I feel like with my gear I could easily go up to 1200. So the questions re A3S are:
1) What do you do with transition to the last phase? The consensus in my team is to use all cds+litany+pots as soon as Pepsiman becomes targetable, but I'm reluctant to do so, because I feel like magnets after the cascade disturb the burst too much. So what I do currently is I still cast litany for my team mates on transition, but delay all of my personal cooldowns until after magnets (so I'm using them during and after protean).
2) I read previous posts and saw that this question was asked a few times already, but I still would like to again confirm this: during add phase the most seem to agree that going with HT+TTT(4?) is the best way? So never Chaos Thrust rotation and never Phleb? And what to do with BoTD? Keep it during the entire phase for buffed Jump and 4th and use Geir only if add is about to get away?

Any other tip you have for me, be it re my gear or useful tricks for either A3S or A4S - I'd much appreciate those.

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Originally Posted by Nucl3arSnake

2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing?

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Wondering this myself. As Dragoon I tend to wait for all my buffs to get off cool down since the are all pretty close, so at most I only need to delay for a combo or two and then basically repeat my opener. Of course I use shorter cool downs when available like Jump, Leg Sweep and Geiroskogul when applicable. Everything else I tend to save for another opening round of burst damage. As Bard though I find myself able to and using cooldowns in tiers, partly because Raging Strikes and other buffs have more staggered times. So I can use some whenever they're up while also being able to build up for another opening rotation later on.

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Originally Posted by Nucl3arSnake

1) Despite the dropped head and bracers I'm still aiming for Dervy's balanced set, and the reason why is because my team mates told me that Dervy calculated that starting from 780 crit deminishing returns start to kick in for this stat. Is this indeed true and if yes, is it so for every job?

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Nothing special happens at 780 crit.

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Originally Posted by Nucl3arSnake

2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing? I understand some mechanics call to the stacking, but I'm mostly asking in general, without regard to any specific encounter.

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This is a bad thing to do, for the most part. It can pay off, but you will more likely delay long enough to cause a potency-per-second loss.

Holding onto IR for B4B is not worth it. If you just use both on CD, your 3rd B4B and 4th IR line up naturally after 240 seconds. If you hold IR everytime, you only get 3 IR's instead of 4, which - even though all 3 would be buffed by B4B - is a dps loss. 2 buffed + 2 unbuffed IR's > 3 buffed IR's.

Gonna preface this by saying that, while I saw a 17% enrage with another group (due to a hundred billion deaths), my static is still barely past adds because of latency issues and real life nonsense allowing for less-than-ideal raid time.

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Originally Posted by Nucl3arSnake

2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing? I understand some mechanics call to the stacking, but I'm mostly asking in general, without regard to any specific encounter.

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Never hold any cooldowns. Always pop everything as it comes up, if you're going for optimal dps in any given encounter.

The very rare exceptions to this rule include situations such as A1S - near the end of the first phase before he jumps, you can hold your very last PS+Jump and SSD to use under the following B4B, since they're the last ones you'll get before he jumps and they'll be back when he lands if you use them soon enough into B4B, so you don't take a pps loss. Even if they're not back *immediately*, you'll still manage 2 PS+Jump and 2 SSD on the next phase, which will similarly mean you haven't lost any casts and gained pps by having an extra PS+J and DFD and SSD under B4B.

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1) What do you do with transition to the last phase? The consensus in my team is to use all cds+litany+pots as soon as Pepsiman becomes targetable, but I'm reluctant to do so, because I feel like magnets after the cascade disturb the burst too much. So what I do currently is I still cast litany for my team mates on transition, but delay all of my personal cooldowns until after magnets (so I'm using them during and after protean).

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In my limited experience with this, I think it's better to pop everything immediately. It'll all come back sooner and - even if you miss the last one or two GCDs of B4B because of it - you'll get net gains out of the potential for more casts of B4B and more casts of Jump. If you're more comfortable holding it, it's also worthwhile to note that you should *at least* be hitting Leg Sweep and Jump (without PS, if you wanna hold that for the burst), since both will be back to use during the burst that you start after ferrofluid.

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2) I read previous posts and saw that this question was asked a few times already, but I still would like to again confirm this: during add phase the most seem to agree that going with HT+TTT(4?) is the best way? So never Chaos Thrust rotation and never Phleb? And what to do with BoTD? Keep it during the entire phase for buffed Jump and 4th and use Geir only if add is about to get away?

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I've been pulling ~1100 (no pots, flint caviar hq) through the end of add phase using just HT+TTT4 with Jump and PS/Jump flowing on CD. I hold SSD the entire phase and only use it in the last set of 4 if necessary for a stun. I'll pop DFD if it'll hit multiple targets*. I ONLY use Geirskogul in a situation where I can hit more than one target with it; otherwise I just maintain BotD using essentially HT>TTT4>TTT4 repeatedly (It might be better to just maintain a normal BotD+gsk rotation here and just carry it into phase transition, because there's no downtime between Adds phase and Final phase). The lack of Phleb gives you a nice grace period on HT runoff which is useful for traversing the field to chase Gears and Pistons.

Hitting DFD on multiple targets with HT buff v hitting DFD on one target with HT+B4B+IR+BL+Dis:
Base 817 crit - 16% critrate, 156% crit damage.
240*1.15*x
x=2 > 552 | crit adjust: 601.4592
x=3 > 828 | crit adjust: 902.1888

240*1.15*1.3*1.1 = 394.68
16%+10%+15%=41% crit rate with buffs.
394.68*0.59+394.68*1.56*0.41 = 485.2985

So getting DFD on CD earlier is beneficial, so long as it'll hit more than 1 target - ideally 3+ since that makes your 0-crit multi-target higher potency than a crit single-target full buffed.

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Any other tip you have for me, be it re my gear or useful tricks for either A3S or A4S - I'd much appreciate those.

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I could only give tricks for P1+2 and I'd need to see/know how you handle those to let you know anything that I do differently; would also need to know what your dps looks like at the end of hands to know if I even do anything better, since I average around 1350-1400 without potions, and I've heard of/seen people doing more, though I'm really unsure how much of that was due to RNGesus, gear, and Ninja presence.

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Originally Posted by Nucl3arSnake

1) Despite the dropped head and bracers I'm still aiming for Dervy's balanced set, and the reason why is because my team mates told me that Dervy calculated that starting from 780 crit deminishing returns start to kick in for this stat. Is this indeed true and if yes, is it so for every job?

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Dervy would like to know where they heard this, because he has no recollection of saying it (maybe something similar about Bloodletter pre-Heavensward, but it was a statement about bard only). What he has said is that crit scales exponentially in Heavensward.

Just an observation from myself: secondary stat breakpoints have only rarely proven to be more than a curiosity in this game. The main exception to that being the 9-hit Berserk. Even the 9-hit Blood for Blood wasn't actually that great, and that's a 30% buff for goodness' sake (now we have those levels of skill speed by default so it's moot).

So this is a FoF rumor, probably unsubstantiated but I have to check, but apparently dragoons are hitting 2k dps in a3s? The most I can do in A1S on Faust is 1467 and that's my best rotation; is there something in A3S that allows this?

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

So this is a FoF rumor, probably unsubstantiated but I have to check, but apparently dragoons are hitting 2k dps in a3s? The most I can do in A1S on Faust is 1467 and that's my best rotation; is there something in A3S that allows this?

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In the the opening part of the first phase yes, not throughout the fight though.

People are talking about the opening burst. Full-geared Dragoons can pretty regularly crest 2000. I'm max gear for having not cleared A3 yet and my opening burst is generally 1700-1850 without using a potion. That's with 200 weapon+head+chest+legs, a full like 35 strength below where I will be at 210. At maximum gear level you can see stuff like:

Phase 1
Phase 1+2

On a parse that finished over 1300.

Same guy ranks at having dealt 1681 dps strictly ST on Faust in A1S.

And that's why people have ninjers ;P

Yeah, I've come to the depressing conclusion that there's no way in hell I'll be hitting those 1450 numbers with DRG/MNK/MCH/SMN/DRK/WAR/WHM/SCH raid comp until I get more gear than the gated poop for those who have not yet killed pepsiman. If people are consistently hitting 1400 with my gear and I hit it once in a blue moon (twice over all attempts so far, once with potion, once without - but with like 30% critrate), I'm fairly sure a good chunk of that is thanks to the sexy beast that is Trick Attack.


And then tonight I lucked into a 1406 with no pot through the end of hand phase with our MCH missing and replaced by a pug BRD. So... maybe I can! Can't wait for tomorrow, now. That was 30% critrate, though. I won't be seeing that again...

I don't raid at the moment since Alex honestly doesn't interest me very much, so I'm just going for full eso at a half-casual rate. Potions, though - drac pots are a tad expensive by my standards, but there's no cheap version like the old poison pots as far as I can see. Would it be worth it to level an alchemist just for that, you reckon?

In clearing Gordias Savage, the only fight I really needed to use Draconian potions was A3 (as in, with my team, with our gear, with our raid composition, running into 1% enrages with X-potions). If you're not doing Nisi, the DPS check for A4 is not strictly a matter of raw DPS and X-potions will probably do the trick; did for me, in fact our first clear caught 100% of our video-capable people by surprise and not all of us were putting on our game faces. A1 and A2 were probably possible potionless from week 1. And also probably not worth wasting time seeing if they could be done potionless week 1....

NQ Mega-Potions can be purchased from a vendor in Ishgard for 950 gil. This is cheap enough for me to spam it in any casual content if I so wish. It was also good for the first umpteen pulls of savage progression. Biggest downside might be the 5m cooldown... it doesn't align with very much (Battle Voice, anyone?), and it doesn't feel like it's worth waiting for.

Leveling crafts was a satisfying experience for myself and has made me plenty of gil, but it's basically a different game and a timesinky investment. It's not gonna be everyone's thing, but I encourage people to try it out. If you have the proper cross-class skills (sorry, there's really no getting around that and even specialist skills don't quite compensate enough) and are appropriately geared, it should be really easy to produce X-potions at around level 55 or so, and you don't even need master alchemist books unlocked or anything.

Any kind of poisoning potion is completely useless against any mob level 51 and up (that is not an opinion! I mean useless in the sense that the game will actually not let you use it). They were also not cost effective whatsoever at level 50 (at least in PvE, PvP's beyond my expertise). I only used them for crucial raid progression, and I'm sure they were also great if you're into speedruns. Now they are probably best used for the lv. 45 levequest.

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Originally Posted by SunnyHirose

Sunny wisdom

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I see! I'm going to check out the NQ Mega-Potions, I have a feeling they're more expensive on Cerberus but you never know. Depending on how long the 3.1 content keeps me entertained, I may well give crafting a go - it's something I really haven't touched much at all since the closed beta/early open beta period.

I used HQ poison pots a lot in FCoB progression and farms since they were actually cheaper than strength pots, but as you say there's no 3.0 version of them that works on level 60 content, so STR pots it is.