How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[JackFross]

with that gcd (around 600 sksp), ht (ir bl) -> id (botd bfb), ir wears off before vorpal and geirskogul. in exchange you gain bfb on ht instead of impulse drive (8-9 potency gain) and litany on 4th hit. in a dummy situation at 2.39-2.40 gcd as well, the 2nd bfb will start earliest on on true thrust instead of a phleb, ending on a 4th hit instead of CT

B-bolded minor fixes to not confuse people. S-silly Machinist...;;
(and potentially picking up the Jump there which you'll generally miss otherwise)

But, yeah.

it's pretty minor either way though. im always gonna root for ht->litany because it means as a machinist, my lead shot is guaranteed to be buffed, huhuhu~

It's very minor and makes a few wonky things happen later on that are different than the normal rotation. Those differences are generally not noticed in practical application due to dropped GCDs thanks to the mechanics of Midas Savage, which is a good thing.

It really comes down mainly to personal preference. The MAIN THING is you need to have BL, B4B, IR, HT, and Dis all active before you use any damage over time skills or off-gcd attacks. BotD needs to be up before Jump or Spineshatter are used, and the first Jump should be Power Surged. Every ogcd should be buffed by both BL and B4B (and IR should hit as many as possible).

If you do all that ^ your opener is gonna be within poking distance of the optimal opener in terms of pps. So, yeah. If you're aiming for optimal, it definitely depends on what you define optimal to mean.


And, I mean, I don't use Dragonfire or Battle Litany in my A5S opener, since I save DFD for the snake and BL to use as soon as he's small. It makes their timers nicer for the duration of the fight (DFD on snake and pigs - with b4b - with one in-between during babby mode is <3) without dropping any uses.

[PheonixCain]

btw has anyone tried Feast with Drg?

I did not play a lot of PVP in this game, only ran some seal rock/frontline here and there back then just for the glamours

the very first thing i would ask is, how do you arrange your hotbar, since Drg is alrdy one of the jobs that has A LOT OF buttons to press, thta situation for us only bcomes even worse in pvp, i guess a 3rd horbar wud be very necessary, but then u would have to switch between them constantly...

[Aiurily]

.

yeah, the main goal overall is to just get the big hitters fully buffed and stuff, which most openers these days do. the rest is sorta personal pref because of how it changes cd timings

also i was tired ok, i was drg main originally, no bully

[JackFross]

also i was tired ok, i was drg main originally, no bully

bullying intensifies

well you should always remember everything tbh i mean come on gosh

[BalmungAzuresky]

I ran the A8S dummy using my no-potion opener and didn't optimize for 3-minutes. 1743, came within 1% of killing it with no food, no potions.

I hope that video can help you see a bit of how my buffs line up as I go through the whole thing. I screwed up Leg Sweep at the start, though, (used it after Disembowel the second time, rather than after Impulse Drive) which almost screwed me out of a Leg Sweep at the end. D:

Gear reference

Tried again, but no real progress, guess I am messing up somewhere :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ikhwIlFU4

If you have any idea, feel free to let me know please.

[Khadroth]

The big thing that's standing out to me is you're letting off globals sit unused for extended periods. You definitely lost at least a leg sweep and a jump somewhere in there. Honestly your setup makes me cringe a bit. You perform the opener just fine but it seems like your bars are setup specifically for that and not the rotation itself. This is probably causing you to focus on certain parts of your bar and directing your sight away from other parts where your cooldowns are sitting ready for use.

Now I'm not about to try and claim there's some perfectly optimal way of organizing your bars, but the way I've always done it is to group my 2 combo chains in lines together, and bunch up all my off globals nearby. That way I can simply throw a glance to see whats coming up and can be used immediately. You seem to also have a bit of navigational troubles as you're moving through the bars making you lose fractions of a second here and there from not having the skill queued in time.

[JackFross]

I'm seeing a lot of hanging gcds. You're delaying them pretty consistently, and that's a massive loss in dps. One thing to note: at 6s remaining in your video, you're waiting on Disembowel to hit it. At 6s remaining in mine, my Chaos Thrust animation is already going off. Over the course of the fight, you've lost approximately an entire gcd (or more) of dps. You should never, under any circumstances, be delaying your gcd.

A few other things -
1. Your bars shouldn't be built around the opener. Rather, they should be built so everything is readily visible and available when you need it.
2. If you're clicking every skill like you are, you should turn off those help windows. They're massive and make it near impossible to see when cooldowns are up when they overlap them - check out where Jump is held and you'll see. Jump comes up around 1:28 in the video. You don't use it until 1:40. That's 12s of cooldown time lost. It comes up again with PS at 2:42. You don't use it until 2:53. So you've lost ~24s of cooldown time for a skill that has a 30s cooldown. That's a massive loss. Leg Sweep has similar problems.
3. At 2:12, you double-weave Jump with Geirskogul - don't do this. Geirskogul is short, but still not short enough to weave with a jump skill without clipping the gcd.

4. In general, you seem to wait for the exact point in the rotation where skills are used during the opener before using them again, which is bad? Pretty much the only skill you seem to use regularly is the non-power surge Jump, which you hit as soon as it's up.


That's pretty much it. I would personally rearrange those bars to make them more, uh... conducive to playing the Job, in a sense.

[whiskeybravo]

Yea I noticed a few things too. First off, BotD usage, you missed 1 opportunity on the 3rd GK, after completing a combo segment if you have less than 10 sec on botd cd you need to burn GK there and use botd before your next CT/FT. This effects the 2x GK under B4B, which you don't get because the the timer never gets to 30 sec. Hold the GK after your second BotD, it will have around 27 sec, DON'T use GK. Complete your next CT combo (there will be jumps here), then after that CT combo you should have 30 sec on the timer. Pop B4B, GK, finish that combo and you should have 22-23 sec left which is the threshold for popping GK. Go ahead and use it when you can and Jump will be up during that segment to squeeze in as well. The FT combo after that you will blow GK again as botd has 8 or so seconds left so you'll be able to get it back up during the next combo.

That should straighten a few things out. It will take practice to get used to popping jumps and everything absolutely at the right times, knowing when exactly to hold GK for B4B and when to burn, but focus on these and it will improve.

Also, the hotbars are rather cringeworthy lol. Take the bottom row of geatset shortcuts and put them on one of the vertical bars off to the side (like hotbars 9/10), you can shrink them a bit and put them on the side to clear up some room. I'd also get rid of all the duplicate buttons but that's just me. But TBH, I wouldn't be half the drg I am if I had to play with KB+M.. Controller ftw lol

That being said, it looks like you have the rotation down pretty good, it's just tweaking a few things and tightening up your CD usage.

[BalmungAzuresky]

Thanks for your feedback guys. I am trying to use GDC and oGDC whenever they are up and from my position I feel like I am smashing them as soon as they're up but there's probably something I am missing.

You're right about my setup. I've tried to build something specially for the opener and trying to handle the rotation from the same setup but from what I get that's not a good idea. I'll probably try to keep my opener setup and build something else for the rotation itself. Not sure how I'll do it yet but I have to work on it.

Thanks again !

[JackFross]

Thanks for your feedback guys. I am trying to use GDC and oGDC whenever they are up and from my position I feel like I am smashing them as soon as they're up but there's probably something I am missing.

Watch the video you posted. Check the time stamps I mentioned in my previous post. Self-criticism is always the most effective form of improvement. Whenever I feel I'm underperforming, I record myself doing the thing and watch the video back to see what mistakes I'm making.