How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[SunnyHirose]

SKS is basically trash in practical situations due to phase transitions.

On the contrary! Skill speed's value is mostly in its practicality, not in its stat weight. If it eases getting in a hit within some timed window (a boss phase, greased lightning, berserk, blood of the dragon, the long dark night of the Fire IV casting period) then it has helped you in ways that won't register on a dummy.

[Nayefj]

Hi.

I just started this game and I'm a level 18 lancer. Which level should I reach before leveling up as a marauder in order to become a dragoon?

[ReliaWylder]

Hi.

I just started this game and I'm a level 18 lancer. Which level should I reach before leveling up as a marauder in order to become a dragoon?

At 30 you can level Marauder to 15 in order to become a Dragoon. I would then finish leveling Dragoon to 50, then go back and get some cross class skills (unless you want to do that earlier, of course).

[ReliaWylder]

On the contrary! Skill speed's value is mostly in its practicality, not in its stat weight. If it eases getting in a hit within some timed window (a boss phase, greased lightning, berserk, blood of the dragon, the long dark night of the Fire IV casting period) then it has helped you in ways that won't register on a dummy.

The problem is that (depending on the skill speed difference) in many cases you cannot get an extra hit until 4 minutes of uninterrupted GCDs. It makes it easier to do the same amount of hits with less strict timings, but you don't actually gain any and therefore gain no dps. And once fights have been practiced to the point that they're basically a dummy parse and you don't make mistakes on them anymore, it doesn't provide any value. And even if you do get an extra hit in, in many cases the DET or CRT would have already more than made up for that hit (as described above). What I'm saying is that the stat weight for skill speed looks good, but its practicality is very bad. At least for DRGs, I don't claim to know anything about other classes.

You can maintain 3 geirskoguls/min with about 480 skill speed. I feel that 580+ skill speed, already having a 100 skill speed buffer, is plenty for slight mistakes already. Any more skill speed is generally a waste.

Especially as phase transitions can make skill speed almost completely worthless. Again, if there is a phase transition before you can gain a full extra GCD, literally the only effect of skill speed is that your DoTs tick slightly harder. As there is no effect on the actual damage output of the weaponskills or off-GCDs. The entire effect on GCD is then wasted since the invuln period allows the lower skill speed person to "catch up" and begin at the same step in the GCD as the higher skill speed person once the invuln drops and DET would then scale about 8x stronger than SKS (since DoTs are only about 1/8th of your damage).

Edit: This is incorrect - further math has proven that skill speed is useful and I eat my words.

[SunnyHirose]

The problem is that (depending on the skill speed difference) in many cases you cannot get an extra hit until 4 minutes of uninterrupted GCDs. -snip-

I believe I have understood perfectly what you have said. And I think you are mistaken on two primary counts.

Practicality is recognizing that there will be imperfect conditions and mistakes, not perfect conditions. So, the consideration is not "such and such DPS from an extra hit in this dummy puncher raid", it's "will I get this one super important hit in X GCDs after RNG 'befriends' me all the way to the other side of the arena".

That brings us to the other point naturally: It's not just the enrage timer you're racing; you're racing all the timers all the time! You don't need a full extra GCD to jam the last hit into a narrow window. Losing (for example) BotD at the last second due to things going slightly off is... well, maybe not catastrophic but it's not great.

So, the more your job relies on a tightly timed game of keep-up, and the more the fight tries to screw you over, the more practical skill speed is, however poor the stat is in perfect conditions (and yeah, it's pretty bad). DRG has it relatively good in that regard--certainly much better than ARR monk or BLM right now--and besides that our rotational potency is self-correcting, but we do get a soft benefit out of being able to save our primary mechanic. That's worth far more DPS than however much of a secondary you do or don't stack.

Selene gon deliver to ya.

[JackFross]

That brings us to the other point naturally: It's not just the enrage timer you're racing; you're racing all the timers all the time! You don't need a full extra GCD to jam the last hit into a narrow window. Losing (for example) BotD at the last second due to things going slightly off is... well, maybe not catastrophic but it's not great.

I think this is the major point Relia was overlooking. Yeah, you need 108 continuous gcds to get 109 instead in the exact same time, but the bonus of 58 sks gains you 0.021s (about) every single time you hit your gcd over what the person with 58 less gets. This could be the difference between +1 gcd here and there throughout the course of the fight. You don't need to finish that 109th gcd for it to be noticed that you got an extra hit. That's just the time that you'll see DRG A hit gcd 108 0.021s before DRG B hits gcd 109, and both those gcds reset at exactly the same time. It's FAR less than that before you will effectively gain an extra hit. If your sks is too low, for instance, you'll get one fewer GCD in phase 1 of A3S and have to end with Impulse Drive rather than Disembowel, since the latter won't drop its debuff on the mob. That phase is 56 seconds long. Not 4:18. Similarly, lower sks means you'll have to hold your second Jump for after the sluice puddles; that extra 58 sks gives you about 0.1s of bonus buffer on the reset timer for Jump, which is significant when looking at such a tight timing.

That said, I definitely see the merit in both sides; det is more consistent, sks is more situational.


But I'm gonna defend to the death that if you have a gobtwine and your [head, chest, or pants] and [boots] are i200 AND you own the Gordian Sabatons of Maiming, you're throwing your twine away if you upgrade the boots. You're also taking a substantial hit to your damage if you wear the 200 boots over the 210 Gordian ones, because 35 det in no way is gonna make up 5 strength in addition to the potential bonus utility of 58 sks. Which is all I was trying to imply in my initial post on this topic.

[whiskeybravo]

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.

[LiquidSwordz]

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?

[ReliaWylder]

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

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.

[JackFross]

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.

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