How to Dragoon Per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[SunnyHirose]

1) DoTs - How do they work if you overwrite a B4B buffed CT with a non-buffed CT. I know it doesn't roll DoTs, so does it simply overwrite and you lose that buffed damage on those leftover ticks? Does it acknowledge it's a lesser DoT and ignore it? I don't think I've ever seen the latter behavior.

It overwrites. It used to not let you overwrite with a weaker DoT back in 2.0 (no 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5). And it was horrible because anything you could do to get around this was horrible, potency-wise.

2) Building off #1 then, we've established that clipping is more PPS, but if losing 1.9 (maybe possibly 2 ticks of a B4B buffed DoT) does it stand to benefit to use the TTT x2 and suffer the minor downtime of Disembowel/CT when under B4B? The reason I mention is occasionally I'll try it and my DPS does tend to stay up a little higher, but my testing is anecdotal at best, unsubstantiated at worst. This is ignoring the DPS gain to MCH/BRD.

I'll leave the math alone for today, but not worth it. Clip it like your barber missed a spot.

3) Even though my ping is super low ~24 (based off pinging the server directly and this value is almost identical to the one I see in the network resources in Task Manager) I still get what appears to be fairly significant GCD clipping when using double oGCD. I suppose I could be mashing faster, but as a top world ranking Ret in WoW I'd posit that my mashing skills are pretty solid. Any thoughts on this? I may try WTFast to see if there's a difference even though I don't think I need it. I use Comcast Cable - not FIOS.

Unfortunately, while it's perfectly possible with a good connection, it isn't an option for some people.

My connection to this game has been very good on the whole with pretty good ping, until about 2-3 weeks ago when I started getting lots of dropped packets somehow. WTFast often makes it worse than I used to get, but right now it's better than what I'd be getting without.

4) How much time is ok to wait to hit a positional? I.e. in A1S I'm about to hit CT, but we're stacked on the right side. Do I hit it, or wait the requisite .25-.5 seconds and hit the positional? What if it's longer, like ~1 full second to hit positional? In WoW maximizing GCD usage brought maximum DPS, but there were no potency differences for positions so I'm not sure how to accurately calculate which would be ideal. Logic tells me that unless I can hit the positional very quickly to get the bonus potency it may be better just to fire it off (worst case being -90 potency, but 90 is still less than say 150 if I miss an entire GCD by delaying. In which case it could potentially add up to a significant amount over an 8 minute fight. Thoughts?

Due to BotD maintenance, this is a more complicated question than it used to be. It used to be that you could just assume that the slight delay wouldn't mess up your rotation significantly due to a built-in delay in buff applications, so the break even point on, say, Chaos Thrust really would be the intuitive 200 potency / 1 GCD = 250 potency / 1.25 GCDs.

If I were to hazard a guess, the Chaos Thrust clipping will mitigate a very slight delay in order to get a positional, but certain buff timers, especially Blood of the Dragon, wait for no one.

As far as the mentality goes that losing uptime is the greater of two evils... it's generally true in this game, but do bear in mind that for DRG, losing a combo is catastrophic.