[Stormblood] [Dragoon Rotation] COME ON AND SLAM

[Adriosh]

All positionals are a must as a DPS its your job to do as much damage as possible and not hitting positionals means youre not doing your job. if youre having trouble hitting positionals at a certain point use true north, if you just cant hit positionals then melee dps might not be for you.

[Ogulbuk]

The heavy trust flanking and fang and claw flanking, are they a must??? and what difference is it (%) or dps wise?? advanced combat tracker doesnt work for me anymore dunno why.
Because i find it a really pain doing that AND avoiding crap from the bosses, is it really a must? i know that it if you look at base dmg of the skills when flanking its about 40% more. Just trying to know if its worth the hassle for doing it.

OK, ignoring off gcds, you are inflicting about 305.4545 potency per gcd if you use the positionals

If you ignore positionals and always attack from the rear: 281.18 potency per GCD
If you ignore positionals and always attack from flank: 289.09 potency per GCD.

So you are losing between 5.4% to 7.9% less potency per GDC damage.

*for simplicity, assuming the Full Thrust buff and Disembowel Debuff are maintained throughout a long boss fight.

If you are having issues maneuvering for any personal reason, then I'd try your best to at least always attack from flank. It is well worth to put the effort to seek the right position, though. No one ever gets it always perfect, some enemies just randomly turn, sometimes the tanks are hysterical on their feet and turn the boss. If you can avoid AoE patches regularly, with practice, you can get the hang out of the positional. As everything: practice makes perfect.

[SunnyHirose]

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?

It hasn't been super important since like... Leviathan, I wanna say. Even when stun was a required action in Gordias, it was not possible to stun until the actual thing you had to stun was casting, hence no resistance buildup. And you need pretty unfortunate timing to have it affect resistance during a WHM's Holy. So in most cases that takes it down to what has become faceroll content thanks to gear, and to dungeon trash with annoying AoEs.

I really appreciate your open-minded mentality on these types of things... it's refreshing to hear someone else say there's more than one way to reach the objective, etc. I'll continue to experiment using both depending on the situation/fight and report any new findings back here!

Well, it's not conclusive, but I tested both ways while trying to not mess anything up, and so far it seems like "do you want the pain now, or later?" So SSD first seems easier in a short window (especially that crucial first LotD), and Jump first seems easier many minutes down the line. As for the title of that thread... I think of that scene from "The Princess Bride".

I appreciate the time and effort put into this guide but I have to say the approach just bothers me. It's like a lower effort more casual approach than all the previous guides on these forums ("No calculations here, just trust me on this". That sort of flies in the face of why the guides existed in the first place. Before they could point to calculations done and show why one thing was actually better than another despite what it seemed like on paper. But I guess that's because a lot of the theory crafters have moved to other venues so this is what's left. I'm not saying this guide is useless but I hope that newer DRG players who use the info they get in this thread will also do their research and find other sources for information.

I appreciate the feedback. I might point out that neither of those guides were complete a month into their respective expansions, even if they did have some math. Their authors also had different priorities, and you can see this in what they left incomplete at the end of their respective expansions. Neither of them had to anticipate changes this early into the expansion, either, and those being to a level cap mechanic, the style of which is rather unlike things DRGs have handled before.

In my mind I know what I have started to write may be too ambitious and aims higher than either of those two guides. So, if you would kindly take some time to view my contributions to past DRG threads (starting around FCoB era), and/or if you are aware of which formula discoveries I've made (that a lot of people seem to be unaware I did them), you'd have a hint of how solid the OP will become in terms of math. I have a degree in a related discipline, if that counts for anything.

Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7 are currently set aside for highly mathematical matters, but I felt those were not "first things first". To whet your appetite, chapters 3 and 4 are slated to cover the sort of rotational analysis readers of past threads have come to expect and more; those will probably be written next after I prepare some graphics for chapter 1 (I only put chapter 2 "recovery"--which should cover what to do in event of downtime or an error--ahead of those on the reasoning that the conclusions are more interesting than the proofs). Chapter 5 "stats and gearing" will outright explain the heretofore obscurantist stat weighting methodology; at this point, it is only for want of level 70 damage formulas that I can't just cook up a basic spreadsheet DPS calculator.

I think your worries are well founded, but to that end, my excuses would be in the vein that I enjoy the game at a glacial pace, I try to test things before writing about them, and ultimately I cannot write/edit both carefully and quickly. I also encourage contributions and will try to source anything I didn't come up with myself (especially, I will try to link within the thread when discussion turns that way). Alternative sources of information that I think do not mislead people will get links as I come across them. It is just a matter of time and caution that I have not yet backed my conclusions up with how I came about them; proper math is always correct until you find out you didn't account for something important, and misleading people that way is what I am trying to avoid most. Thanks for reading.

[Fannah]

I just want to thank you, now I have the SpaceJam opening stuck in my head and going on repeat everytime I come on the forum and see your post title x)

Also thank you for this amazing guide after looking all the complain about this class It's nice to see people having some faith in the character they love :3

[J1992]

thanks for the reply, just found today out that flanking was also a thing thats why the question. even without the flanking i did get 2900 dps at the snake boss. Just tried flanking with susano extreme, i think i need to get familier with it, first pull was disaster but steadily i avoided everything and did the right things. No ACT atm, it doesnt work dunno why. but i did see the difference, when i flanked i saw crits of 11k orso with fang and claw, and heavy trust was also quite high. Just need to figure out what my dps is, damn meter doesnt work.

[Ogulbuk]

It hasn't been super important since like... Leviathan, I wanna say.

Weeping City could easily wipe due to stun resistance in the DPS check of the second boss. It still can be a bit of an issue in Sirensong Sea, the mini-boss before the final boss (no one should wipe to that error, but it sounds like the devs are screaming at us: "don't forget this is still a thing".

It being rare is also precisely the fact that it's still relevant in rare situations that make it a bad idea to always use it by default, it can easily become a hard to avoid practice. Not saying no one should, but I fear people becoming too straight on a rotation and refusing to not hold back SSD when it needs to be held back.

[kyrios91]

The heavy trust flanking and fang and claw flanking, are they a must??? and what difference is it (%) or dps wise?? advanced combat tracker doesnt work for me anymore dunno why.
Because i find it a really pain doing that AND avoiding crap from the bosses, is it really a must? i know that it if you look at base dmg of the skills when flanking its about 40% more. Just trying to know if its worth the hassle for doing it.

It's a must. It's not even a min-maxing matter anymore, esp. a 5th combo FnC and WT since it's a +90 potency difference so you wouldn't want to miss it.

[Frowny]

Snip

There really aren't any calculations or hardcore info yet. There are a lot of theories (like tier cutoffs for which stat to use), but remember that those guides we see now started from somewhere.

To the post about positionals: do everything you can to hit them; a DPS loss is a DPS loss period and if it is an avoidable loss then the player was just being sloppy. True North should always be on your hotbar but if it is down and you just can't hit it... it happens. But do not be lazy as it will hurt your numbers. Part of melee's "thing" is knowing how to move to avoid really bad stuff yet keep positionals ticking. One thing we share with BLM is sometimes eating a hit might be worth it. If the hit won't outright kill you, sometimes a regen is enough to get you by along with a Second Wind (especially if a raid-wide which will NOT kill you is inbound as AoE heals will be going out).

Also, possibly a DUMB question but.... those posts reminded me of it. Does the potency increase for a rear hit on Chaos Thrust apply to the DoT tick or just the initial hit?

[TheKingSlayer]

Also, possibly a DUMB question but.... those posts reminded me of it. Does the potency increase for a rear hit on Chaos Thrust apply to the DoT tick or just the initial hit?

There are no dumb questions, Sunny made this is a safe space. The potency increase is only for the initial weapon skill hit. DoTs are snap-shotted by what buffs you have.

[Vincent_Mateus]

As much as I love the lore and theme of the class, I can't bring myself to play it yet. I'm still not satisfied with the changes they made. I did have a question on how it's performing for players running savage though. I imagine the changes to elusive are incredibly useful, as my RDM is getting tons of optimal places to use Displacement.