How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[Thyranne]

I have 4 questions:

First: if I just did an Impulse Drive Combo + a True Thrust Combo AND I know for a fact that I only have time for 2 combos (boss will die or disappears after these 2 combos), should I do an Impulse Drive combo or should I just do 2 True Thrust Combo (the second combo won't have disembowel)?

Second: Should I be killing adds that spawn the other side of the room? Like those petrification goblins on A5S.

Third: Is it worth applying disembowel on Blaster's big add?

Fourth: Is it worth using Ring of Thorns (after Heavy Thrust) on Blaster's adds if I can hit 3 targets?

[Kezy_Kaatapoh]

I have 4 questions:

First: if I just did an Impulse Drive Combo + a True Thrust Combo AND I know for a fact that I only have time for 2 combos (boss will die or disappears after these 2 combos), should I do an Impulse Drive combo or should I just do 2 True Thrust Combo (the second combo won't have disembowel)?

Second: Should I be killing adds that spawn the other side of the room? Like those petrification goblins on A5S.

Third: Is it worth applying disembowel on Blaster's big add?

Fourth: Is it worth using Ring of Thorns (after Heavy Thrust) on Blaster's adds if I can hit 3 targets?

1) Do the Impulse Drive combo then the True Thrust combo. Impulse Drive combo is better after 1-2 ticks and you'll get that and more in the time it takes to do another full combo.

2) When adds spawn on the other side of the room, in 99% of cases, you can get the ranged in your group to take care of them on their own. The exception to this is if you're needed to LB said add, or your ranged aren't good enough to take it down themselves (or the rare case where you do actually need a 3rd person on it, like the adds in the 2nd phase of T13 during early progression). While in that case, it's better for them to try and git gud and learn what they're doing wrong from an ideal perspective, you have to do what's best for your raid team at a given point of time, so you might have to help for the sake of progression and rework it when they either get better or you replace them.

3) No, because of number 4...

4) I'm gonna semi answer your question here. It's best to use Ring of Thorns on Blaster adds, even without Heavy Thrust when you can hit all 5, which you can if you just stand in the exact middle of the center one. Just looking at the potency, without Heavy Thrust it's 100 per add, so 500 total. Typically you want to start of the phase doing one of 3 things: finishing the 4th ability of your combo that you have proced, starting with Heavy Thrust, or starting with Ring of Thorns because you used Heavy Thrust as he jumped. In the first case, I typically use Heavy Thrust right after so that it lasts me the whole phase and I don't need to reapply mid way through (that may not be optimal though). After this I spam Ring of Thorns until at least one dies. Now, there's the case of alternating Heavy Thrust and Ring of Thorns. Doing this gives you an extra 250 potency out of your Ring of Thorns (50 per) at the cost of using a 170 potency ability which is a 330 potency loss over just using Ring of Thorns. Aka, not worth it.

But you asked if it's worth it on 3 targets. I would ask why are you only hitting three targets when you can hit all five? If you weren't aware you could hit all five, then now you know (it won't look like you are since not all of them will show the damage go out on them). If you're talking about when 2 are dead and there's only a few others standing, then they should be dying before you get another GCD off, but if not, it depends. With Heavy Thrust, yes, as it's 450 potency vs full duration Chaos Thrust, which is 322.5 potency per GCD. Without Heavy Thrust though, no, if you get full duration. I'm not actually sure because I haven't timed the phase and I've never done anything but RoT there, so it's hard to say. I'll leave that one to someone else.

[JackFross]

I have 4 questions:

First: if I just did an Impulse Drive Combo + a True Thrust Combo AND I know for a fact that I only have time for 2 combos (boss will die or disappears after these 2 combos), should I do an Impulse Drive combo or should I just do 2 True Thrust Combo (the second combo won't have disembowel)?

Important to note re: the above! When in normal rotation, you are always clipping your Chaos Thrust. You need that CT to last longer than 1 tick for it to be more effective than a Chaos Thrust in that same position. In fact, it needs to last for at least 3 full ticks (~9s) for it to beat out the FT there. If the boss will die less than 9s after applying Chaos Thrust (in normal rotation), you're taking a loss. In this case, since there's 5-6 gcds after Chaos Thrust hits, you're fine.

The "one tick" nonsense that spreads around all the time assumes two things.
1. You got your Chaos Thrust positional. If you miss this, you need 2 ticks (and 1 auto-attack under Disembowel).
2. You have just started attacking said target.

It's just very important to keep these things in mind when discussing Chaos Thrust v Full Thrust.

Third: Is it worth applying disembowel on Blaster's big add?

Fourth: Is it worth using Ring of Thorns (after Heavy Thrust) on Blaster's adds if I can hit 3 targets?

The person above is completely ignoring how this phase works. The add in the middle has far more health than the ones on the edges. Yes, it is absolutely optimal to be dropping RoT on the adds, but someone needs to be single-target attacking the middle one to kill it at the same time as the edge adds. What they said is all totally right.

5x100 = 500 (Ring of Thorns)
3x160 = 480 (Doom Spike)

However! A few things:

1. Be sure to burn a Geirskogul on three adds (pull off the middle a bit to hit it)
2. Be sure to hold Dragonfire Dive for the add spawn.
3. Be sure to use Jump, Mercy Stroke, and Leg Sweep on the center add.



And their response to 2 is very very important. Your DPS doesn't mean shit if you wipe. For example - I took a massive hit during Vortexer in a run where I was on the second rotation and had gotten no element passes yet. Our usual thunder soak (previous water) popped to Drainage, so I booked it across to grab the second Thunder, which meant I soaked the third one, too. We survived the fight and killed it so we could get back to A7 - and that's much more important than the 1500+ I was poised to get on that run.

That said - if your strategy includes Melee killing the goblin adds in A5S, you're no handling that mechanic properly. Ranged LB can catch both goblins and all the pigs. Caster LB is a lot trickier to target properly.