[Stormblood] [Dragoon Rotation] COME ON AND SLAM

[LiquidSwordz]

Most of the gear seems pretty straight forward as to what's BiS. We have a lot of crit/direct hit pieces out there. I've seen the savage pants over the lost allagan ones which baffle me unless the SS is a must. I'm using the omega chest till I beat OS4(currently on Neo). Left side tome piece for me are the head and legs, right side are choke, bracelet and ring

[TheKingSlayer]

From my experience is that openers change slightly with each fight in savage. Some times its Jump first, sometimes its SSD first. It all depends on the fight, when the boss goes invulnerable, what aoes are used when.
i.e. in Neo I like using jump first, since you can get a 2nd jump in before neo goes into his first alpha cross. However in O3S, I like SSD first because if you use jump first may have to hold your 2nd jump as she's doing her first spellblade holy, so you don't get animation locked in a potential blizzard aoe.

TLDR; Basically, everyone is right. Sunny's opener is great, but tweaking may be appropriate depending on fight.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I love your guide, Sunny.

One thing of note is due to the dragoon's fixed rotation, the job is more accessible to us players than it would appear at first glance. The abilities allow the player to break things down to easy to follow blocks. So this is truly a case where the job is more complicated on paper than in play. At least, it's been that way up to level 60.

[HoLoFoNo]

Nah

Nah, it was completely in general. A lot of the talk in the balance discord and forums is based around following Momo. If it were just you I would have quoted you in and replied directly to what exactly I disagree with. You bringing it up and Sunny replying making it the relevant topic is why I decided to comment on it.

When it comes to DPS improvements, unless your opener was absolutely abysmal you most likely will not see a difference. Yeah, the GCD line up and shit is important but honestly 1 single 'extra' crit can negate the potential potency difference or potential DPS increase from the line up etc.

[HoLoFoNo]

Snip

I find that jumping first is more useful in every fight apart from o1s. For o2s it is far less risky when your 2nd jump comes up. If you use jump first then your 2nd jump comes up like 6 seconds before the antilights go off, plenty of time to move into the middle. On the other hand if you use it 2nd, you will be cutting it extremely close and if the boss isn't actually in the middle, Jump will attempt to place you on its outer hitbox which WILL place you into the antilight guaranteeing your death (this has literally killed me on o2s and on o3s 'the game' when the boss is outside the dps panels, half a second of animation lock that puts you in the wrong place will fuck you).

In o3s if you use jump first, it will be used before the spellblade magic cast bar finishes, meaning you don't have to pussy foot around and have no chance of eating blizzard or thunder.

In exfaust blizzard 3 aoe comes the exact same time you use your 2nd jump after the 1st mirage dive, and if its jump you will die (this depends on how early you hit the boss, if you effectively pulled with HT this is less of a problem) but if it is spine shatter it will be close. In this case it doesn't actually matter as you wont get to the 60 second threshold anyway so if you wanna hold them for longer, its fine but it wont line up with raid buffs.

And as you said in NEO, jumping first makes it far less precarious to do it during the white screen of GC alpha (it is also important to note if you use GSK before chaos thrust if you don't have a pot or something, you can get one off comfortably before GC alpha, and instead of doing it late during the line up or skipping it completely to line up with the next trick if you have a NIN, you get it back the same time you would have used it if you held it).

[TheKingSlayer]

In o3s if you use jump first, it will be used before the spellblade magic cast bar finishes, meaning you don't have to pussy foot around and have no chance of eating blizzard or thunder.

Very true, but if you are the one who gets tethered and stunned in the mechanic before you will die to a blizzard with jump

[SunnyHirose]

Most of the gear seems pretty straight forward as to what's BiS. We have a lot of crit/direct hit pieces out there. I've seen the savage pants over the lost allagan ones which baffle me unless the SS is a must. I'm using the omega chest till I beat OS4(currently on Neo). Left side tome piece for me are the head and legs, right side are choke, bracelet and ring

Some people will always think SS is that important. Let them believe that; they're not wrong, it's actually quite subjective--in the sense of "it is not the same for everyone", not "it is an opinion". If you cannot pull off something important without it (e.g. BotD maintenance, extra Jump), then it is important.

A12S was the "oh no" moment for me, had poor framerate (literally can't register the inputs quickly enough) + low SS + SCH switched to Eos to laugh at the raidbusters, so I had the tiniest margin on BotD usually... but I also raided with a MNK, so I was always gonna be one of the upstairs DPS, and if that's the case you can kiss a high Logs percentile goodbye. Decided not to worry about it, at that point I knew I didn't want to stick around longer than it'd take my group to try out a replacement.

From my experience is that openers change slightly with each fight in savage. Some times its Jump first, sometimes its SSD first. It all depends on the fight, when the boss goes invulnerable, what aoes are used when.
i.e. in Neo I like using jump first, since you can get a 2nd jump in before neo goes into his first alpha cross. However in O3S, I like SSD first because if you use jump first may have to hold your 2nd jump as she's doing her first spellblade holy, so you don't get animation locked in a potential blizzard aoe.

TLDR; Basically, everyone is right. Sunny's opener is great, but tweaking may be appropriate depending on fight.

Don't get me wrong, I am not calling diss on anyone or their golden baby opener. Adaptability is so important, even if your raid strategy is inflexible. And this year I will be quite dependent on others for the deets on serious raids. Now, I never really ended up adjusting openers for Alex (except on really bad days with Quickthinx, and Living Liquid / Manipulator tended to force issues), but I was always considering it.

I love your guide, Sunny.

One thing of note is due to the dragoon's fixed rotation, the job is more accessible to us players than it would appear at first glance. The abilities allow the player to break things down to easy to follow blocks. So this is truly a case where the job is more complicated on paper than in play. At least, it's been that way up to level 60.

I'm glad you like it. I hope I can make it much better, of course.

You've got it right on the nose. DRG actions are heavily biased towards immediate rewards, which was SE's old justification for our lower damage. Geirskogul in HW broke this trend a little. Mirage Dive feels a little off, but it's a lot like Power Surge got inverted, so no biggie; at this point, career DRGs are used to a little bit of "no seriously don't mess this up" with jumps no matter whether we care for that aspect.

It's the Lv70 Nastrond system that breaks this trend harshly. It does too much damage to ignore, but I'd just as soon SE found a more satisfying way to accomplish whatever they were hoping to accomplish with it, which I cannot figure out for the life of me.

After some dummy testing and getting used to two sort of different rotations the dps result was almost the same, the only difference that I've noticed is really that the rotation from here doesn't buff the 2nd CT by the Potion.

It wasn't the easiest call to make. Basically what tipped the scales is that infusions aren't very bursty (HQ infusion = +137 STR -> 6.25% buff at i309, 5.35% at i340). After tallying up the damage for two rotations, I found it was a minor improvement to put the pot early because of the excellent gains on Lance Mastery. The game also seems to be a little reluctant giving you a reliably-timed first oGCD directly after engaging (I had previously assumed my fingers were just flubbing it), so a single-weave there at a weak part of the rotation suits me just fine.

[VasilissaXylonez]

Most of the gear seems pretty straight forward as to what's BiS. We have a lot of crit/direct hit pieces out there. I've seen the savage pants over the lost allagan ones which baffle me unless the SS is a must. I'm using the omega chest till I beat OS4(currently on Neo). Left side tome piece for me are the head and legs, right side are choke, bracelet and ring

Your comment is what baffles me. As bad as SS is, it's still an upgrade from the i310 or i320 crafted pants, so if you get lucky and have it dropped from o3s, then you should definitely use it and spend your creation tomes on other i310/i320 pieces.

[LiquidSwordz]

I never said it isn't an upgrade over a lower ill piece, I've just seen it over the lost allagan pants when it would seem they are the better choice

[HoLoFoNo]

Very true, but if you are the one who gets tethered and stunned in the mechanic before you will die to a blizzard with jump

That.... shouldn't be the case. oGCD timings aren't effected so you will still jump at the same time, just after a different global cooldown.