Rest in peace War dps

[RapBreon]

-snip-

Yeah I do like 1kish+ (varies wildly depending on party make-up) if I never, ever drop deliv the entire fight (this can make you unpopular :>). 870 sounds pretty solid for MTing the first phase of that fight. A lot of those sick Sephi parses come down to gear, time-to-kill (TTK) and party combination (AST babysitting you says hi). For instance one of my best parses was when I was in a group where I was the second highest DPS. The low DPS allowed me to fit in a 3rd berserk at the start of the add phase and not lose it for the opener in P3 it also had a NIN and a MCH, I was only short an AST for world's luckiest WAR.

Regardless, I can see your problem just looking at lodestone. It starts with a W ends with an N (also haven't melded some pieces). Seriously 1050 with your gear is about right. A Weapon will add 50+ to your dummy parses alone, which brings you within striking distance of me and my sub-optimal gear. We're on the same server, hit me up if you want to chat.

On a side note, I want to ask about using berserk optimally. Of course we should take note of mechanics/phases where we can't hug the boss 20s straight, but suppose there's no such mechanic when berserk is off cd, should I immediately use it before my next gcd, or wait for 4 stacks and heavy swing for triple cleave berserk?

For example in sephirot ex p1 with my stats I'd be at 4 stacks when berserk is like on 7s cd, so I either do another eye rotation and waste 2 stacks or do a fell cleave and build stacks again (which I guess would be a big dps loss since that's like holding berserk for 10-15s).

I struggled with this problem as well when I switched to WAR not long ago. After some experimentation (and deep loathing towards A8S dummy) I found that if I weave in fracture twice (preferably at 4+ Wrath stacks) + infuriate Fell Cleave as soon as it's off CD, at my current SS it means Berserk is up on my heavy swing after the fourth stack. That means I can go ape the moment it goes off CD. Once my skill speed gets high enough, I'll probably alter my rotation to drop fracture and fit in an extra Fell Cleave. Mainly because I'm lazy and fracture is a button I really ceebs pressing.

Given the options you presented, I'd just sac the two stacks to the wind. Holding Berserk will give you a terminal disease (unless you only get one more Berserk until the boss dies, then ya it's ok). EDIT: I think I was wrong here.

[aleph_null]

Thanks. But the SSS trial is kinda short so it's much easier to keep track of how many stacks you can gain so I can drop those two stacks (similar to in seph ex p1) without dropping a fell cleave. Also it ends right there so there won't be any implications to later phases.

Now the question becomes how many gcds I can hold berserk, or how many stacks I can waste (like using combos when I already have 4-5 stacks) until it becomes an overall loss compared to using it immediately without doing triple cleave rotation. For comparison, since I also play DRG, the DRG guide thread mentioned that holding BFB even for one gcd is a dps loss regardless of where you are in the rotation. Of course there are differences like the 5s pacification and berserk being a bigger dmg boost %-wise, but there should be a breaking point.

[RapBreon]

-snip-

SSS length shouldn't make a difference, the time between Berserks won't change, ergo the amount of stacks you gain between Berserks won't either. The rotation is well...cyclic with Berserk marking the start of a rotation. Unless you infuriate Fell Cleave soon as available, then strictly speaking it would be every Berserk beginning with an odd number (Triple Fell Zerk, Double Fell Zerk, Triple Fell Zerk, etc.). That's how I came to the conclusion of 2 fractures + infuriate. This isn't really an answer to your first question, more of a rotational alteration to skirt the problem instead.

Now if you can't make your rotation line-up perfectly and your only option is to 'waste a resource' then I think my original comment was wrong. All that matters in the end is the number of Berserks you get. No fight lasts long enough that holding Berserk for 7.5 seconds between each Berserk will generate a free Berserk. Not unless A8S is roughly an 18 minute fight with no downtime. It simply takes far too long to reap the benefits (if it turned out to be a gain). The Fell Cleave though is an instant gain and so would building 4 stacks before Berserking (assuming the same time-frame of 7.5 seconds). I wouldn't mind someone a little more experienced at this (Paging JackFross) weighing in though, I haven't given this enough thought (clearly).

I was actually under the impression that holding BFB for a single GCD on it's first reactivation was the correct decision so as to ensure Chaos Thrust gets the tail end of the buff. However, I played DRG in 3.0, when skill speed numbers weren't as high, things may have changed now.

[aleph_null]

Hmm I mean, it's easier to calculate it for isolated short fights like SSS, for example (just a random number) if the maximum number of stacks you can get during the whole 3 minutes excluding infuriates is 48, then you can safely "waste" 2 stacks by doing an extra eye rotation while having 4-5 stacks since that wouldn't cost you any fell cleave. Obviously during 3 minutes you have 2 berserks and 3 infuriates/internal release, so holding berserk by ~7s won't hurt you. Surely we can do the same thing for any length of fight, but it doesn't seem very practical considering there are many more things to consider (moving bosses, dodging aoes, doing mechanics that may or may not always make you move from the boss, etc.). I guess for now the best conclusion we have would be that it is fine to hold it for a few gcds as long as it won't reduce the total number of berserks in the fight or make the 20s duration clip into mechanics/phase changes that make us unable to hit the boss.

As for BFB I'm not sure but I think my second BFB would never activate before chaos thrust, I think it's somewhere between the 4th skill and phlebotomize (or chaos thrust and 4th, can't remember exactly), but admittedly my DRG play has been a bit messy recently due to massive changes in skill spd while switching gears. I think the guide mentions in the cd management part that you shouldn't hold BFB even for one gcd for any instance other than the opener.

Edit#2: sigh I hate this character limit thingy

[RapBreon]

-snip-

I don't really try to game SSS like that tho. The only time I do something along those lines is pop remaining CDs at the end. The purpose for me to work on a stable rotation.

It was phleb not chaos thrust, my DRG is rusty too.

Yeah, I bloody hate the limit too.

[SpookyGhost]

Saving Berserk will only harm you if you're:

1. Losing a Berserk
2. Pushing your Berserk back to a place where it becomes unoptimal later, IE later into a phase which should've been a burn but it came up too late to get the full duration out of it
3. Similarly, pushing your Berserk back so it no longer lines up with party offensive buffs

Another thing to consider is if you'll end up in a situation soon where you can OP spam and Decimate your heart out, in which case saving Berserk a bit for that is usually worth it. I haven't done Seph as WAR yet, only DRK, but I can't imagine Berserk really going too well in add phase since they die so quickly anyway, but it'd probably be worth considering on the adds in the last phase. For SSS you should only get 2 Berserks, so you definitely want triple FC there - I open with the pre-Infuriate pull, extending with Vengeance, and using RI for the extra stack which lines it up for when I need it later. Also allows for an extra stack with Vengeance, think I use that in a case where I'm at 4 stacks after SE/BB so I can HS -> FC, but can't remember off the top of my head.

Anyway, Berserk is finicky, just try and plan out when it'll be back up and see what you can do with it from there.

[aleph_null]

I see, I guess I'll just have to experiment with it myself depending on encounters and party compositions. Thanks for the replies, Rap and Spooky.

[RapBreon]

I see, I guess I'll just have to experiment with it myself depending on encounters and party compositions. Thanks for the replies, Rap and Spooky.

Np, I wasn't much help TBH. My rotation is going to alter tomorrow once I get a lot more SS. So we'll see.

[Brian_]

You sound like you're doing fine. Its probably a combination of melds and that weapon you're missing. The people hitting 1.1k in sephex are likely using very good food and pots and have well-melded gear. Nobody was doing 1.1k (no tanks anyway) during week 1.

If you're getting those numbers from fflogs, take them with a grain of salt, as people will go into fights they have on farm with extremely unorthodox and buff-heavy comps for the sole purpose of ranking.

Get your weapon and some more melds, maybe a few crafted pieces and you'll be fine.

If you are potting with "very good" food and babysitting from an AST, you can probably parse for 1300+ these days. The top fflogs parses are ~2+ weeks old (though they do have stacked comps) and most people stopped caring about and doing Sephirot EX. My parse of 1143.5 from a week+ ago from a partial PF group hit that in a 9 minute kill with no potting, no food, no AST, and no on-demand pacification removal (the SCH might've removed it once).

To answer the actual question with more than a pat on the back, the biggest determining factor for WAR DPS comes down to 4 things. When I compare parses these are the key things that I look at when trying to improve.

The first and biggest influence on WAR DPS is Deliverance up-time. The numbers in question are an MT parse so your Deliverance up-time is probably lower.

The second is general up-time. Lost GCDs are a big hit to your DPS so your goal is to maximize up-time. Up-time optimization is fight specific -- in a fight like Sephirot, there is some nuance to this like lost GCDs during p1 movement for re-positioning and green / purple, Holmgang usage, timing pacification to correspond with orange if you are not using green stacking for melee, add management, etc. Look at a top parse and compare their aDPS up-time to yours.

The third is your stack management. Find a comparable clear-time parse with better DPS and look at how many FC / IB / Decimate / Steel Cyclone uses they are getting. If you are lower, chances are you are holding stacks or messing something else up.

The fourth is your buff management. The biggest contributing aspect of buff management is your Berserk up-time. For Sephirot EX, you can use 2 full 9GCD Berserks every p3 cycle on the same rotation but most WARs mess this up. When judging a fight, pay attention to the duration of phases, the timing of down-time and maximize your Berserk uses. There are some exceptions to this like Hummel (where there is an actual downside to getting 2 Berserks vs. 1) but generally you want to keep Berserk as close to off CD as possible while not sacrificing its up-time or buff synergy (using it on 4-5 stacks with Infuriate or syncing with buffs like Balance, IR, TA, BL, etc.).