Dear Dragoons. Your AoE is actually good.

[JackFross]

I read some things but I wont bother answer them, because in my opinion they're stupid.
Multidot, 60-1:20, Tp <-- my answer on these things still: lol still serious about that? boy
*vanish again*

It baffles me how obnoxious you are toward people providing proper information that you yourself have accepted and agreed with not two pages ago.

So it really doesn't seem to me to be worth it at all. But I'm not a melee DPS person so I'm only running your numbers vs mine.

Still completely ignoring or missing what I was saying. I give up.

The table assumes you just missed the 3 second TP tick when you used the first DB. Also, it leaves out the time of casting 2 Doton. I used 2.1 sec GCD and rounded up to get 40 sec.

Yeah, it's not exact. All that will probably bump it to 40s, but it's still very rare you're gonna run into a situation where an aoe pull lasts that long in a solo queue in df, so knowing how to handle an aoe situation when it stretches on longer is incredibly important.


This is all a silly discussion about optimizing dps in dungeons, where dps matters the least. I've discussed the topic to death and proven what I've been saying with numbers in this thread, so I'm just done trying to educate people on how to play this class when they clearly already have their (potentially sub-optimal) methods ingrained in their psyche. I feel like I'm saying the same damn thing again and again and having people counter with the same argument that doesn't even argue against what I said again and again. It's boring and rote. So, let me spell this out, in one sentence.

Using AoE skills (such as Ring of Thorns and Doom Spike) is absolutely optimal in any situation where you are facing four or more enemies at once, however, if you ever drive your TP to zero in order to maximize casts of those AoE skills, you will do considerably less damage to that pull before the group dies than if you cut early and shift into a Blood of the Dragon rotation, spreading Chaos Thrust and hitting Geirskoguls.

This statement can be expanded similarly to any other job, not including the casters, though some will slightly modify the "four" based on their AoE potential and how their AoE works (like MNK does AoE rotation in 2+ (pls no Arm of the Destroyer tho, thx), NIN should start AoE at 3+, etc). By AoE here, I'm referring to spending GCDs on AoE.

[Alistaire]

Using AoE skills (such as Ring of Thorns and Doom Spike) is absolutely optimal in any situation where you are facing four or more enemies at once, however, if you ever drive your TP to zero in order to maximize casts of those AoE skills, you will do considerably less damage to that pull before the group dies than if you cut early and shift into a Blood of the Dragon rotation, spreading Chaos Thrust and hitting Geirskoguls.

Saying "four or more" here makes this incorrect, again there's a # of enemies where there's at least that # where you're better off waiting for tp to aoe. Generally around 5+ though at 5 the difference is minor. You can't honestly think if you have 12 mobs your solo rotation over 2 hits makes up for hitting all 12 mobs...

[JackFross]

Saying "four or more" here makes this incorrect, again there's a # of enemies where there's at least that # where you're better off waiting for tp to aoe. Generally around 5+ though at 5 the difference is minor. You can't honestly think if you have 12 mobs your solo rotation over 2 hits makes up for hitting all 12 mobs...

In the case of Dragoon, I can expend 250 TP over 4 gcds (9.6s; net: 70 TP spent) to put out a combo that will run to completion for 1344 potency = ~140 pps, not including shared buffs. This can be dropped on subsequent mobs and never re-applied to the same one in a pull of sufficiently large (3+) size. In that same span of 9 seconds, I would get 180 TP back and then burn it on a 160 potency skill to hit all 12 for 160x12 = 1920 potency = ~213 pps. So yeah, in the instance where you run into 12 mobs, then sure, waiting on TP becomes a gain.

This threshold is only crossed at 9 mobs being hit with Doom Spike, and the threshold becomes even higher when you take into account the fact that using Heavy Thrust to buff the potency would *lessen* its overall effectiveness in a 0-TP situation, whereas if I incorporate a Heavy Thrust buff into the first combo (since it will most certainly have it), we can see that it'll be ~1545 potency = ~161 pps, which will beat out waiting on TP for Doom Spike up and through 9 mobs.

And, try as I might, I can't think of any situation where you fight 12 mobs at once where ALL of these conditions are simultaneously met:
1. Optimal strategy = kill all enemies
2. 12 mobs live long enough for your TP to drain to zero
3. 12 mobs actually exist in the same pull

So I don't know why you're randomly plucking 12 out of thin air like this.

Arboretum:
Pull 1 is 8 mobs; they spawn a Malboro that you pull to a pack of 6 Korpukkurs - a 7-mob pull.
Boss 1!
Pull 2 is usually 6 mobs. At absolute maximum, it would be 11, including the wall. If you're burning walls, you ignore these adds. Otherwise, that's a huge pull.
Pull 3 is completely irrelevant (also less than 12) because the optimal strategy is to burn down the wall and get to the boss, ignoring the adds.
Boss 2!
Pull 4 is 4 mobs.
Pull 5 is 6? I think. I forget exactly how many spawn here. I think it's 3 bears, 1 biloko, 2 little shits.
Pull 6 is 3 mobs.
Boss 3!

Pharos Hard shakes out similarly. Even the first pull is only 10 mobs, and the Corruption enemies die incredibly fast, so you'll never hit 0 before you're down to 6 enemies.
That's the biggest pull in the entire dungeon, unless you pull after the second boss and grab the 1+3+1+3 and then kill the furnace to get another +3 to get 11 mobs, still not 12, and there's no way you survived the pull to the furnace, due to AoEs from mobs slowing the dps burn and the sheer amount of health your tank will be losing due to the type of mobs that are on it.
The last pull in the dungeon is only 6? 7? Still not 12.

There MIGHT be a 12-mob pull in Fractal, but the mobs there die long before your TP runs dry unless the other dps in the party is wearing greens. I can't pinpoint it, but I think it's the second pull, *maybe*, and even that, I think, is just 8? 9? And the manikins all die in a couple shots.


But, yes. I agree with you that, in that hypothetical, has-never-been-realistic-since-geirskogul scenario, you should optimally burn your TP to 0 and then wait on refreshes and throw out Doom Spikes, even if they don't have a Heavy Thrust buff. Absolutely.