How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[Nucl3arSnake]

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.

[Moo_Cow]

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?

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.

[SunnyHirose]

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?

Nothing special happens at 780 crit.

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.

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.

[JackFross]

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

[SunnyHirose]

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?

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).