How to Dragoon Per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[Thendiel]

In this post, I want to compare a rotation that involves Disembowel and CT clipping:

HT - ID-Dis-CT-4 -Phleb - TT-VT-FT-4 - (repeat)

...to a rotation that does not involve Disembowel and CT clipping:

HT - ID-Dis-CT-4 -Phleb - TT-VT-FT-4 - HT -TT-VT-FT-4 - Phleb - ID-Dis-CT-4 - HT - TT-VT-FT-4 - Phleb - TT-VT-FT-4 - (repeat)

Basically, I was wondering if and when it would be useful to clip Dis and CT vs. letting them fall off for a few seconds.

On the one hand, if we clip, we maximize our ticks of CT, which weigh in at 35 x 1.15 raw potency per tick, plus extra damage from getting the Disembowel buff on Disembowel and/or Impulse Drive, which comes to 220 x 1.15 x 0.10 (possibly + 180 x 1.15 x 1.10) = 25.3 potency to 46 potency.

On the other hand, if we don’t clip, there is a loss of CT ticks, but with the advantage of favoring our TT-VT-FT-4 combo--which has higher initial potency values--over our ID-Dis-CT-4 combo.

The initial hit damage of our clipping approach is, (170 + 180 + 220 + 250 + 290 + 170 + 150 + 200 + 360 + 290) x 1.15 x 1.10 = 2884.2 potency across 10 GCDs.

The initial hit damage of our non-clipping approach is ((170 x 6) + ((180 + 220 + 250 + 290) x 2) + ((150 + 200 + 360 + 290) x 4)) x 1.15 x 1.10, or (1020 + 1880 + 4000) x 1.15 x 1.10 = 8728.5 potency across 30 GCDs, minus the loss of Disembowel’s bonus on Dis and/or ID’s hits. I’m guessing that, for typical levels of Heavensward Skill Speed, ID gets the Disembowel bonus but Dis itself does not. As we saw, that’s a loss of 25.3 potency per Disembowel, of which there are two. So, 8728.5 - (25.3 x 2) = 8677.9 potency across 30 GCDs.

SO. We should be able to construct an equation that tells us when clipping is or is not worth our time, based on Skill Speed:

((2884.2 potency / 10 GCDs) x (1 GCD / X seconds)) = [(8677.9 potency - ((40.25 potency / 3 seconds from an HT-buffed CT) x ((30 collective GCDs between CTs x (X seconds / 1 GCD)) - 60 seconds of CT uptime))) / 30 GCDs] x (1 GCD / X seconds)

In other words, we want to take the potency per second of the initial hits for clipping, then compare it to the potency per second of the initial hits for non-clipping minus the penalty we get for missed ticks of Chaos Thrust. Let’s solve the equation for X, which should tell us the threshold of GCD length underneath which NOT clipping Chaos Thrust (rotation #2 above) will be a benefit.

When I solve for the equation, I end up with an X-value of 2.0629 seconds. In other words, holy shit, we are never going to have enough Skill Speed for a non-clipping approach to be worth it. (A rudimentary check of the numbers does suggest that ID’s initial potency receives a Disembowel bonus at this GCD length, whereas Disembowel itself does not, which is consistent with my mathematical assumptions.)

Now, to beat a dead horse even further: keep in mind that Disembowel buffs our auto-attacks, in addition to the damage of any bard(s) or machinist(s) in our group. This means that those tiny pockets of downtime, even the ~1 second or so that we would have at a 2.13 second GCD, would cost even more than this equation suggests.

Conclusion: HT - ID-Dis-CT-4 - Phleb - TT-VT-FT-4 - (repeat) is officially our new GCD rotation.

[Gardes]

Conclusion: HT - ID-Dis-CT-4 - Phleb - TT-VT-FT-4 - (repeat) is officially our new GCD rotation.

Oooh, this makes it less complicated for me as a controller user. I can just use /chotbar change at the end of each combo to auto change sets into a set that has both 4th hits and heavy/phleb. After that, since heavy and phleb leads into static combos, I can just use that to another set with specific combos. And still without incurring macro's queue penalty! Nice!

[Jonnycbad]

Oooh, this makes it less complicated for me as a controller user. I can just use /chotbar change at the end of each combo to auto change sets into a set that has both 4th hits and heavy/phleb. After that, since heavy and phleb leads into static combos, I can just use that to another set with specific combos. And still without incurring macro's queue penalty! Nice!

Can you explain this a bit more? Currently, my setup is:

R2+Face
HT
ID
Dis
CT

R2+D-Pad
IR
LS
B4B
PS

L2+Face
Ph
TT
VT
FT

L2+D-pad
Jump
SSD
Mercy
LS

R2+L2+Face
Elusive
DFD
DS
Piercing talon

R2+L2+D-pad
Second wind
Blood bath
Forsight
Keen flurry

Then i made L2+R2+Dpad
Battle litany
Blood of the dragon
Fang and claw
Wheeling thrust


How does /chotbar work, do you just put it in a macro with chaos/fullthrust? I want to make controller play simpler :/

[whiskeybravo]

How does /chotbar work, do you just put it in a macro with chaos/fullthrust? I want to make controller play simpler :/

See here, kinda: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Stance-Dancing

Basically you would make a macro for (I'm not sure exactly what skill Gardes was referring to) some skill, perhaps Impulse Drive or True Thrust that would swap abilities present on your hotbar

So it would be something like:

/micon "Impulse Drive"
/ac "Impulse Drive" <t>
/chotbar set Disembowel [[position]]
/chotbar set "Chaos Thrust" [[position]]

Etc, Etc.. This allows you to change hotbar on the fly, less switching/fumbling around with hotbars. It's working great on War so far, I'll prolly try to clean up some other hotbars as well, it's pretty neat customization IMO.