How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[JackFross]

Assuming it IS accurate, I'm fairly sure this set is what we should be looking at for bis:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RL2T

Though my friend thinks 650 ss is too much and prefers this:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RL2V

Either way, looks like the Brionac is taking the crown for BiS spear. \o/
That was with me messing around a bit in my spreadsheet and being wholly unable to find any way to boost the stat weights while maintaining minimum 590 ss and 647 acc. Ariyala also spits that out if you set your minimum accuracy to 629 and adjust the stat weights (and then don't include food buffs). It doesn't calculate stats post-food for BiS calculations.

[Thendiel]

is he forum banned or entire game banned?
also RIP

He is only forum banned.

[SunnyHirose]

Either way, looks like the Brionac is taking the crown for BiS spear. \o/

Hmmm... hm.

The value of skill speed has been a real gadfly in my BiS-finding attempts. Weights are a decent indicator when the value is reasonably close to linear, but SS on DRG right now is anything but! So on this Brionac set you have ridiculous crit and skill speed (if my sim isn't totally busted, that's something like 1503 DPS with party buff and no potion if you can actually get the TP!), but the next best set I've come across (without trying yours) is much more conventional (1492) and doesn't even hit the soft caps, and I can't even remember what gearset's weights I found it with (something like .173 c / .143 d / 0.101 s) but that's not the weights corresponding to it.

Hopefully that clarifies why I intend to get off my butt and lean on a program instead of a spreadsheet once my group has A4S down....

e: your set gets a score of 1491 and your friend's set gets 1486 in the current version of my sim. Time to rub it in their face? I dunno man, it's just a simulation!

[JackFross]

Yeah, I wasn't trying to say "my set is best" I was saying "this is the highest weight (according to weights in this thread) I could find." I mostly like it because it has that nice, even 900 crit along with an even 650 ss. Both those numbers just *look* good, so it makes me wanna aim for it. I know sims aren't the end-all. I used a set back pre-3.0 that gave me 415 det with food because I loved the consistency despite it being strictly "worse" weight-wise than other sets by about 6-7. I'm probably going to end up doing something similar this time around, using one of these guys:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RL5W
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RL5Y

Pretty nice, too, since the second one can be used before A4 is cleared with just 1 gobtwine (for the chest - 642 acc; 2 gets you to 647 with boots) without needing acc food for A4 progression.

[Ninjah2r]

Anyone know what the relic will be in terms of materia? I mean, do we need to stack up on crit IV's or something o.o

I'm not the richest around here so I'm really deciding wether to spend my money on leveling crafters or hold the money and buy crit iv's when 3.1 and the new relic line drops.

Can anyone give me any advice in this?

[Thendiel]

I crunched the numbers on all of the different A4S sets that you guys have been floating around, and the bests options I'm seeing a the pair that Dervy sent to me. Here they are:

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/R8V2
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/R8V1

Personally, I'm a big fan of the second choice, since it pushes Skill Speed to 604, which is a lot more comfortable than the first set's 588 in terms of HT/Ph clipping.

Methodology:

To test the different available sets against each other, I multiplied the crit, det, and SS of each arrangement by Dervy's stat weights (ignoring base crit/det/SS), and compared the resulting "strength from secondary stats" scores. Here is a picture of my calculations. I found issues with each of the non-Dervy sets.

First, I tried using Ariyala's BiS solver myself. I plugged in the up-to-date stat weights, used a minimum accuracy of 647, used a minimum SS of 590, and told the solver to include food. I came up with this set, but it turned out to have about 2 less strength weighting compared to Dervy's. (Why u do this to me, Ariyala's?)

JackFross first set came out a little low (about -4 strength) in terms of stat weights, and his second set [EDITED] performed similarly.

Sunny's first set just has too much Skill Speed IMO: it pushes the GCD to 2.37 seconds, which would place us in that uncomfortable dead zone in which your new BotD becomes available after landing Full Thrust or Chaos Thrust. His second set, on the other hand, has an unpleasantly low level of SS, and actually winds up about 2.5 strength below Dervy's sets.

Anyway, I guess you might consider adopting an alternative set if you prefer more Skill Speed because of latency or personal preference or whatever, such as the one that Ariyala gave me that I mentioned above, but Dervy's 604SS set seems pretty damn ideal to me. On the other hand, I'm just a calculator nerd, so there might be something more sophisticated with modeling and stat balancing that I'm missing here.

[JackFross]

You severely miscalculated the set you said was a couple dozen low. The stats of it are 511/756/620.

DET (511-218)*0.139 = 40.727
CRT (756-354)*0.162 = 65.124 (not sure how you got 48 here?)
SS (620-354)*0.104 = 27.664 (again, not sure how it was 20)

Which adds to 133.515. Still a far cry from Dervy's set, but a lot closer than your sheet shows.

Dervy's set definitely looks to be pretty ideal, imo, since it picks up the thing about the highest weight set ( http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RL2T ) that really irked me and made me wanna look for an alternative - 357 det is depressingly low. Working it out the way you did makes it spit out 138.557, which does beat out Dervy's, but the 357 v 484 det is significantly less consistent, imo.

Also Ariyala doesn't calculate the best in slot thing including food. The buff to crit from Pipira Pira isn't factored into the final weight calculations on the site, so it doesn't actually calculate true best in slots, factoring food in.

[Thendiel]

You severely miscalculated the set you said was a couple dozen low. The stats of it are 511/756/620.

DET (511-218)*0.139 = 40.727
CRT (756-354)*0.162 = 65.124 (not sure how you got 48 here?)
SS (620-354)*0.104 = 27.664 (again, not sure how it was 20)

Which adds to 133.515. Still a far cry from Dervy's set, but a lot closer than your sheet shows.

Oh, sorry about that. It looks like what happened was, Ariyala's discounted the Brionac's secondary stats when representing the "+" values at the bottom of the screen, since you told it that it had to include the Brionac when you calculated the set.

Interesting that the low-det option gives us higher stat weighting. I'm not sure what to make of that.

[JackFross]

Ahh, that'll do it. Makes sense. My bad, then, lol.

And yeah, it really puts me off. While 900 crit is gonna be rather consistent, the 650 ss and 357 det really make me wary of the set. The consistency and TP drain are gonna both be on the scary side. I much prefer the one Dervy put together for sure, because of the higher consistency and less worry of TP issues. Though I'd like to see if he can slap together a good set that makes use of the Antiquated Brionac for A4S, outside of the ones I made, since I'm sure he could do better and it's kinda a useful thing to have for clearing A4 in the first place.

[SunnyHirose]

Well, you gotta understand, I'm judging DPS as DPS (from simulation) and saying the weights aren't helpful in evaluating such extreme sets because the actual weights fluctuate too wildly. They fluctuate too wildly because the amounts you can stack can be so very different, and due to the untamed horses that are exponential crit and self-defeating ss, if the two sets you're comparing aren't in the same ballpark crit/ss-wise, the weights just don't even hold for comparing the two. Weights are only valid relative to and close to a given gearset.

Puro gave up on BLM weights for a reason; yeah, you can generate the weights no problem, but BLM was (and remains) very speed-sensitive given you have an accurate assessment of the actual number you're interested in (DPS) and can stack amounts that mean anything. Right now, we DRGs can definitely do that.

Anyway, so I double-checked my work with Dervy since he had some insane values for crit, and it turns out I screwed up auto-attack crit estimation, and that such high weights currently reflect the insanity of reality! Now my simulations yield values around .14_ for Determination and .17_ for Critical on most gear sets, and I get .10_ to .12_ for Skill Speed--the higher weights for SS basically come from sets with low values of skill speed (closing up the 24s HT/Phlebotomize gap with impunity), and the lower weights basically come from reasonable or ridiculously high values (aggravating the clipping of CT but still a net DPS gain).

Although my simulation has been very close to actual measurements the few times I've tested it against my own gear, I don't want to say it's even remotely conclusive until I have a clearer picture of how SS affects DoT potency (and ideally, the exact formula for skill speed, and I do mean exact, 3 sig figs is not enough, raaagh!).

As for what values of skill speed are too high or too low... I think the 480s are too low. So yeah, doesn't matter a bunch, if you ask me. After all, A4S Just Kills You™.