How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[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).

[Dualgunner]

So this is a FoF rumor, probably unsubstantiated but I have to check, but apparently dragoons are hitting 2k dps in a3s? The most I can do in A1S on Faust is 1467 and that's my best rotation; is there something in A3S that allows this?

[Aeromat]

So this is a FoF rumor, probably unsubstantiated but I have to check, but apparently dragoons are hitting 2k dps in a3s? The most I can do in A1S on Faust is 1467 and that's my best rotation; is there something in A3S that allows this?

In the the opening part of the first phase yes, not throughout the fight though.

[JackFross]

People are talking about the opening burst. Full-geared Dragoons can pretty regularly crest 2000. I'm max gear for having not cleared A3 yet and my opening burst is generally 1700-1850 without using a potion. That's with 200 weapon+head+chest+legs, a full like 35 strength below where I will be at 210. At maximum gear level you can see stuff like:

Phase 1
Phase 1+2

On a parse that finished over 1300.

Same guy ranks at having dealt 1681 dps strictly ST on Faust in A1S.

[SunnyHirose]

And that's why people have ninjers ;P

[JackFross]

Yeah, I've come to the depressing conclusion that there's no way in hell I'll be hitting those 1450 numbers with DRG/MNK/MCH/SMN/DRK/WAR/WHM/SCH raid comp until I get more gear than the gated poop for those who have not yet killed pepsiman. If people are consistently hitting 1400 with my gear and I hit it once in a blue moon (twice over all attempts so far, once with potion, once without - but with like 30% critrate), I'm fairly sure a good chunk of that is thanks to the sexy beast that is Trick Attack.


And then tonight I lucked into a 1406 with no pot through the end of hand phase with our MCH missing and replaced by a pug BRD. So... maybe I can! Can't wait for tomorrow, now. That was 30% critrate, though. I won't be seeing that again...

[seekified]

I don't raid at the moment since Alex honestly doesn't interest me very much, so I'm just going for full eso at a half-casual rate. Potions, though - drac pots are a tad expensive by my standards, but there's no cheap version like the old poison pots as far as I can see. Would it be worth it to level an alchemist just for that, you reckon?

[SunnyHirose]

In clearing Gordias Savage, the only fight I really needed to use Draconian potions was A3 (as in, with my team, with our gear, with our raid composition, running into 1% enrages with X-potions). If you're not doing Nisi, the DPS check for A4 is not strictly a matter of raw DPS and X-potions will probably do the trick; did for me, in fact our first clear caught 100% of our video-capable people by surprise and not all of us were putting on our game faces. A1 and A2 were probably possible potionless from week 1. And also probably not worth wasting time seeing if they could be done potionless week 1....

NQ Mega-Potions can be purchased from a vendor in Ishgard for 950 gil. This is cheap enough for me to spam it in any casual content if I so wish. It was also good for the first umpteen pulls of savage progression. Biggest downside might be the 5m cooldown... it doesn't align with very much (Battle Voice, anyone?), and it doesn't feel like it's worth waiting for.

Leveling crafts was a satisfying experience for myself and has made me plenty of gil, but it's basically a different game and a timesinky investment. It's not gonna be everyone's thing, but I encourage people to try it out. If you have the proper cross-class skills (sorry, there's really no getting around that and even specialist skills don't quite compensate enough) and are appropriately geared, it should be really easy to produce X-potions at around level 55 or so, and you don't even need master alchemist books unlocked or anything.

Any kind of poisoning potion is completely useless against any mob level 51 and up (that is not an opinion! I mean useless in the sense that the game will actually not let you use it). They were also not cost effective whatsoever at level 50 (at least in PvE, PvP's beyond my expertise). I only used them for crucial raid progression, and I'm sure they were also great if you're into speedruns. Now they are probably best used for the lv. 45 levequest.

[seekified]

Sunny wisdom

I see! I'm going to check out the NQ Mega-Potions, I have a feeling they're more expensive on Cerberus but you never know. Depending on how long the 3.1 content keeps me entertained, I may well give crafting a go - it's something I really haven't touched much at all since the closed beta/early open beta period.

I used HQ poison pots a lot in FCoB progression and farms since they were actually cheaper than strength pots, but as you say there's no 3.0 version of them that works on level 60 content, so STR pots it is.