[Stormblood] [Dragoon Rotation] COME ON AND SLAM

[Dacen_Drg]

I may be looking at this wrong but, wouldn't we still want to use the infusion before chaos thrust, just like in the past. With the duration being 30 seconds, and a gcd of around 2.4, and even technically should work at 2.5, you would be able to buff chaos thrust with the potion twice, and chaos thrust is still by far our highest potency skill. If my napkin math is right, the downside of this is that BfB and DS don't get the second lance mastery in opener, falling off the global before, but I would think the second chaos thrust under infusion would outweigh this? Thoughts?

[Jonnycbad]

(Heavy Thrust) strength potion**
(Impulse Drive) Blood of the Dragon + Battle Litany
(Disembowel) Dragon Sight + Blood for Blood
(Chaos Thrust) Jump
(Wheeling Thrust) Mirage Dive + Geirskogul
(Fang and Claw) Spineshatter Dive
(True Thrust) Dragonfire Dive
(Vorpal Thrust) Mirage Dive + Life Surge
(Full Thrust)
(Fang and Claw)
(Wheeling Thrust)

Why not SSD before Jump in this rotation? SSD has a longer cooldown, isn't it better to get its timer rolling ASAP? Or is Jump's potency better in the long run?

[SunnyHirose]

I may be looking at this wrong but, wouldn't we still want to use the infusion before chaos thrust, just like in the past. With the duration being 30 seconds, and a gcd of around 2.4, and even technically should work at 2.5, you would be able to buff chaos thrust with the potion twice, and chaos thrust is still by far our highest potency skill. If my napkin math is right, the downside of this is that BfB and DS don't get the second lance mastery in opener, falling off the global before, but I would think the second chaos thrust under infusion would outweigh this? Thoughts?

I think that's a good point. The problem with all such questions is that you're always gonna lose something--no free lunch, as many economists say--and the focusing question is, "what do you lose?"

I am going to start by guessing: In the case of "Infusion of Strength", the STR cap on an HQ potion is 137. That's really low. Let's say you're around i310 so your STR (with no party bonus) is approaching 2200. Assuming Attack Power is a scalar in the potency->damage equation, potion is therefore ~6.2% damage bonus and will only get lower as a percentage with better gear.

So, an extra 6.2% on a full Chaos Thrust snapshot is ~38.44 to gain (but we expect to clip that a little), and an extra BfB on 5th tier of combo is 58.5 gain. It's clearly in a different ballpark, though of course I must admit this is not the whole picture.

If the real situation is as your question poses (I haven't checked), then it's not better in the short term. But what I like to do for looking at short term is to put add up every skill and buff on a spreadsheet and just add up all the potency instead of trying to look at just the start and end. Right now what I have for that... hasn't been touched since ARR (heh), but it's something most spreadsheet warriors could replicate no sweat. If no one else does, I'll get around to it eventually.

Why not SSD before Jump in this rotation? SSD has a longer cooldown, isn't it better to get its timer rolling ASAP? Or is Jump's potency better in the long run?

Jump not only has a higher potency, it has a shorter cooldown. That has been the reason to prioritize it over Spineshatter Dive since ARR; if you do not know when the fight will end, the odds will be stacked so that you lose the lower potency/time, not the higher.

It is also very fortunate that 4.05 adjustments make it a decent timing to use Jump right after Chaos Thrust, because the positional is the same as Wheeling Thrust and having to change positional and Jump in the same 2 seconds feels just awful. Even if True North changes that dynamic just a little....

[Noshpan]

I love you for making this thread. I've asked others about melds and they were all "lol idk" and had no luck figuring that stuff out myself.

[Jonnycbad]

Jump not only has a higher potency, it has a shorter cooldown. That has been the reason to prioritize it over Spineshatter Dive since ARR; if you do not know when the fight will end, the odds will be stacked so that you lose the lower potency/time, not the higher.

It is also very fortunate that 4.05 adjustments make it a decent timing to use Jump right after Chaos Thrust, because the positional is the same as Wheeling Thrust and having to change positional and Jump in the same 2 seconds feels just awful. Even if True North changes that dynamic just a little....

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

[Thandronen]

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

I played with both options last night and I agree with you that SSD seems to line up better with everything else when used first instead of Jump. Curious to see what the parsed out differences are. I understand that Jump is 50 more potency than SSD and so it is the better of the two to receive ability buffs more frequently but I felt like there was a longer wait time to get to that last Mirage needed to spring LotD and Nastrond.

Can someone point out the numbers on how detrimental it may or may not be to go with SSD first over Jump in the rotation?

[Ghanbaatar]

Thank you so much for this! I'm trying to learn DRG as best I can but with so much back log on the forums its hard to pares it out!

[SunnyHirose]

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

If we're talking more or fewer Mirage Dives sooner, then I suppose that's correct. I'm thinking this is irrelevant in the scheme of what Mirage Dives do for Life of the Dragon; the 30 second periodicity on Jump/Spineshatter clustering means you will often be letting something or other stew for a bit, usually sitting around waiting for BfB.

I get that there is a huge feel-bad factor in watching Jumps keep getting later and later as they get delayed by GCDs twice as often. This has been a problem since ARR, but at least we used to be able to hit a point where you just Spineshatter before Jump is ready. In light of Mirage Dives, the dynamic may have changed, particularly in realistic timeframes; I will need to see it in simulation. But for now I choose to err on the side of what was more obviously beneficial in the past ("the past is vast"). Please forgive my knee-jerk reaction, I should remember such things may turn out to be in error due to unaccounted factors. I will not deny that this makes the first LotD feel a bit less roughshod, and that may be the only LotD you can count on in some fights.

Can someone point out the numbers on how detrimental it may or may not be to go with SSD first over Jump in the rotation?

The difference is more philosophical than anything. We're talking about roughly 8% or less of our total damage here, so only a major difference to this dynamic wouldn't be hidden by other factors.

If it is a few seconds till the end of a fight and you have two cooldowns, you pick the one that does the most damage in itself for the most DPS; few would argue against that. The theory behind Jump > SSD where Jump has both the greater damage and the shorter cooldown (so we don't have to consider a shift in priorities), is that it would be worth pushing SSD back >2 seconds to gain every 1 second something would delay Jump: ((250*1.3+200)/30)/((200*1.3+200)/60)=2.283. This "expected value", a simple means of abstracting the worth of each without regards to whether you can expect to get that value ("expected utility"). It relies on a fairly safe and reasonable--but not absolute--assumption that there is a probability of that scenario.

But here's something else to consider: openers can and should be adapted to fights where necessary. There are certainly no Opener Police coming to arrest you for doing it wrong, and in the past it was sometimes beneficial to plan out gap closers.

In fact, you could make some serious theoretical boo-boos and come out very high percentile on FFLogs if you (for example) have better uptime than anyone else. I strongly believe there are such living aberrations playing the game (in truth I have some particular players in mind). And I'm thinking, kinda like some people can live on <5 hours of sleep every day, these people cannot be the model for most others to imitate, no matter how nice and open and honest they may be about what they do; it just works for them and life isn't fair. Likewise, a heavily rational player like my forum-posting persona should not necessarily be the model for such an experiential player to copy. Most people will fall somewhere in between, including myself when I do play.

[Ogulbuk]

I "just" got 70 a few days back and I was extremely disappointed to realize that clicking Blood of the Dragon will kick you out of Life of the Dragon state. That is ridiculous and IMO should be changed. The click should add time to Life when used under that state, would alleviate many issues with pauses in between spawns in dungeons too, if we could click on that cooldown to extend the Life of the Dragon.

That rant aside: I have issues with SSD. It's a stun, this means it builds resistance if spammed on the target. I have trouble incorporating it as a "must always use" in rotations in fear that I may be messing things up in an encounter. Even if it was seen as a nerf, I would honestly wish SSD had it's stun removed (or just take damage away and reduce the cooldown on Jump to compensate.) Would also be nice if DFD gave us Dive Ready state. But there I go again... ranting about things I'd like to see happening.

Anyways: any advice on how to approach the stun resistance point? Other than pre-emptively knowing every single mob that may be messed up by using it?

[Ogulbuk]

But here's something else to consider: openers can and should be adapted to fights where necessary. There are certainly no Opener Police coming to arrest you for doing it wrong, and in the past it was sometimes beneficial to plan out gap closers.

In those rare cases where I tank or heal for 2 dragoons (have still to see this since, but it's just a mater of time) it is hilariously sad to see both stick to their rotation and both throw Battle Litany on top of eachother... So yes, adapting to many things, even the group composition can change the use of some cooldowns.