[Stormblood] [Dragoon Rotation] COME ON AND SLAM

[SunnyHirose]

5. stats and gearing [5% complete]

Better info TBA

For a savage-clearing raider who can expect to obtain all the i340 gear in this gear set, I believe your stat weights are or are close to:
19.25 Physical Damage
1.000 Strength
0.166 Critical Hit
0.149 Direct Hit
0.145 Determination
0.120 Skill Speed

For a tomestone-only dragoon who will only be getting to i340 sometime in patch 4.1, this is what you can look forward to. Your weights at i340 are rather different:
19.28 Physical Damage
1.000 Strength
0.128 Critical Hit
0.147 Direct Hit
0.142 Determination
0.126 Skill Speed

Lately I've been thinking that since stats are tiered, the concept of weights has a shaky theoretical foundation anyway. #DestroyAllWeights #DYEL

What to meld? At the start of 4.05: Direct Hit (Heaven's Eye Materia) is the choice with the most damage to it. Grade VI materia is best, of course, but Grade V is an acceptable budget option. Some gear will come with maximum Direct Hit; Determination (Savage Might Materia) is the next best thing, and you can use that. Accessories give you the option to use Vitality for more HP. For most players, this is the prudent choice;* however, Direct Hit > Determination is still the technically stronger DPS option. Whether it is better to lose a few points to a capped stat or to move to the next best stat is a toss-up.

Approaching item level 340, however, it would appear your priorities truly depend on what gear is available to you. Someone with a choice of any Lost Allagan and Genji gear and all the Grade VI materia they want can maximize damage from Critical Hit (Savage Aim Materia) > Direct Hit > Determination. The difference is more theoretical than practical, it should be noted. Some players may wish to keep some skill speed for reasons that have nothing to do with dummy DPS. And being so early in the expansion, some of this analysis will later seem foolishly wrong to begin with. Therefore, I will not say there is something you should do, other than to meld sensible materia to your the slots.

*Technically, this is just my opinion. But I do feel that at high levels of play there is a long history of raiders doing early clears and speedrunners cheesing the healing a bit with a little more HP (someone being able to DPS at all > slightly more DPS of your own), and at lower levels of play it's just more forgiving of your own mistakes and competent but less skilled healing.

"Put on gear with lots of Strength. That seems to help."

TBA

6. making keybinds you can work with

TBA

[ChaozK]

For a savage-clearing raider who can expect to obtain all the i340 gear in this gear set, I believe your stat weights are or are close to:
19.25 Physical Damage
1.000 Strength
0.166 Critical Hit
0.149 Direct Hit
0.145 Determination
0.120 Skill Speed

For a tomestone-only dragoon who will only be getting to i340 sometime in patch 4.1, this is what you can look forward to. Your weights at i340 are rather different:
19.28 Physical Damage
1.000 Strength
0.128 Critical Hit
0.147 Direct Hit
0.142 Determination
0.126 Skill Speed

Could you elaborate a bit on what the threshold is where you start to favor crit over det?

[SunnyHirose]

Could you elaborate a bit on what the threshold is where you start to favor crit over det?

Verily, I do nothing of the sort! What I do is use estimations of DPS to determine what the changes in DPS ought to be per stat point (relative to that gearset), then use that to maximize weights into a new gearset, and repeat over and over until I'm not getting new results. Then I settle on the best one I found thus far. So for true BiS, that especially means redoing melds to give all candidates for "best stat" a fair shot, whereas for the tome-only set, you're stuck with whatever ballpark it's in.

Weights are always relative to a gearset, so basically I don't look at thresholds and I don't come up with half-baked rules of thumb as to when one is better or whatever. Ever since the page system got added I have simply assumed you know what gear you will get in the end and should meld towards that.

Alas, it gets worse than that. Because the reward from stats has rounding stuff going on, you do not get rewarded for every single point of a stat you put in. That means maximizing weights does not guarantee you find the best result, although you can expect to get close; e.g. even when CH>DH by weight, it is often the case that +40 DH > +40 CH, and very very often +12 DH > +12 CH. There is no good way to tell that just by looking.

This is the problem I'm looking to solve. I think I've devised a computationally sane way around it; only building it and testing the program can prove it, though.

[AgitoKaguya]

Hey fellow Dragoons,

After reading this thread since SB, I've decided to make a post to see if I can find some opinions. I live far away from the datacenter and have a high latency (~250ms). Double weave is impossible without clipping GCD so I'm working on an opener with a minimum of double weave.

I came with this first : http://ffxivrotations.com/13h0
Not that bad but the 2nd 5th combo is not buffed by DS (buff falling off). No potion cause finding a slot for it will force double weave.

I came with a 2nd opener: http://ffxivrotations.com/13h3
The 2nd 5th combo is buffed by DS and I can even fit a potion but I'm worried with the way Jump and Spineshatter are delayed.

I have to sacrifice something to get the 2nd 5th combo buffed but is it worth it ?
I need opinions of DRG with maybe a better analysis and vision of the problem.

Sincerly, a DRG that doesn't want to drop the spear

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Hey fellow Dragoons,

After reading this thread since SB, I've decided to make a post to see if I can find some opinions. I live far away from the datacenter and have a high latency (~250ms). Double weave is impossible without clipping GCD so I'm working on an opener with a minimum of double weave.

I came with this first : http://ffxivrotations.com/13h0
Not that bad but the 2nd 5th combo is not buffed by DS (buff falling off). No potion cause finding a slot for it will force double weave.

You can lower your Skill Speed to better accommodate double weaving. Dragoon can work with 512 Skill Speed, which may work better for you.

That aside, I would actually delay Diversion in your rotation. I know it sounds odd, but you have ample opportunity to exploit Elusive Jump through each fight. In V1S, you can position yourself on the opposite side of your assigned clock position and once the field turns to ice purposely press back to trigger the slide, then Elusive to your actual clock position. V2S you can Elusive whenever you need to stack near the walls and V3S when Briers happens. By doing this you can shift all your buffs one GCD back and fit a pot in just before Chaos Thrust. Personally, I would experiment with the low Skill Speed build before anything else.