DRG lv 50 Cross Hotbar Setup?

[AvonRekaes]

Hi folks,

So, I'm about to hit level 50, and I've been practicing the 27 gcd move rotation from Ayvar's awesome Dragoon: A Rotation Reborn thread (minus Chaos Thrust of course). I have that down, and I'm starting to practice incorporating the off-gdc abilities into the rotation, but one of the main difficulties I'm running into is hotbar space.

I play on PC, but prefer to use a PS3 controller (just feels more natural to me). I suppose I've been spoiled with mostly single-player story quests up until now, but I've never needed more than one Cross Hotbar for combat and one for utility menu options (like inventory, hunting log, character screen, duty finder, etc.). I like being able to switch between utility and combat with a single press of the R1 button, rather than hitting it repeatedly to cycle between multiple combat hotbars to get to the one utility bar I need, or being in the middle of combat and having to cycle past a utility bar to a specific combat bar.

I guess I would just like some input on what Lv 50 Dragoons are doing for their hotbars. How popular is Ayvar's 27+ move rotation? I assume that's the standard, his math seems airtight. So what do some of my fellow illustrious dragoons do for their cross hotbars?

Also, please don't tell me to "just use a keyboard and mouse". I am more comfortable playing with a controller, and my reaction time (and dps) will suffer if I switch input methods.

[EasymodeX]

... obligatory "switch to KBM" even though you said you won't, because while your manual performance will suffer in the short term, it will improve in the long term.

That aside, my only recommendation would be to make a macro with you oGCD buffs/"always-use" attacks (BFB, IR, Mercy Stroke, Power Surge). E.g.:

/macroicon "Blood for Blood"
/action "Blood for Blood"
/action "Internal Release"
/action "Mercy Stroke"
/action "Power Surge"

This way you can spam the button for pew pew as necessary.

Since you are on a PC*, you can optimize usage of the macro by placing each individual ability elsewhere on your UI so you can track individual cooldowns.

For example, I use the macro to execute those buffs, but I have BFB, IR, MS, and PS separately on my UI to watch their cooldowns. This way I almost never accidentally waste the Power Surge even if it's on the macro.


*PS3 users generally can't afford to do this due to raw limitations with hotbar/crossbar space and UI customization, I've been told.


Beyond that, my only general suggestion would be to place the Thrust combo and CT combo in similar logical places, since they are both "main combos". Similarly, you could place HT and PH in similar logical places because they are similar "non-combo" ST abilities.

[AvonRekaes]

Here's what I got so far:

L2
Left Internal Release
Down Blood for Blood
Right Power Surge
Up Leg Sweep
Square Heavy Thrust
Cross Fracture
Circle Phlebotomize
Triangle Jump

R2
Left Impulse Drive
Down Disembowel
Right Chaos Thrust
Up Spineshatter Dive
Square True Trust
Cross Vorpal Thrust
Circle Final Thrust
Triangle Life Surge

This is what I have managed to plan, but I don't know what to do about the third attack jump from Dragoon or Mercy Stroke. I didn't account for mercy stroke because it wasn't in Ayvar's rotation.

Your suggestion to put all the off gdc buffs in one button (I assume I'd add Power Surge to it) is very interesting, but how do you use it without wasting some of the buffs? For example, I want to hit Blood for Blood as early in my rotation as possible, but I want to save Life Surge for just before using a comboed Final Thrust while my Heavy Thrust buff and my Disembowel debuff are on. Also, how are you saving space if you have the icons up to look at anyway? Is there a way to have other non-button hotbars on the screen at the same time as the cross hotbar?

[EasymodeX]

how do you use it without wasting some of the buffs? For example, I want to hit Blood for Blood as early in my rotation as possible, but I want to save Life Surge for just before using a comboed Final Thrust while my Heavy Thrust buff and my Disembowel debuff are on.

Life Surge is not on the macro. LS has a specific use case: "before Full Thrust", and use it at almost any other time is a DPS loss because it modifies weaker attacks. Edit: Although this is actually just a broad assumption. It would be an interesting analysis to determine how much of a DPS loss it would be to use it on cooldown rather than synchronizing it with Full Thrusts. It would probably be minuscule.

BFB, IR, and Mercy Stroke all have the following condition: "anytime".

Power Surge has its own use case for "Jump" (and SSD I guess), but using other abilities won't mess up Power Surge. I just have to stop rollfacing the macro button if a Jump isn't available / I don't plan on using a Jump soon.

Also, how are you saving space if you have the icons up to look at anyway? Is there a way to have other non-button hotbars on the screen at the same time as the cross hotbar?

It saves hotbar space, not screen space. I'm not really familiar with the crossbar's detailed operation, but it seems likely you should be able to display additional hotbars on the screen and move them, at least on the PC. If not, then it won't work unfortunately.

As a sidenote, this method also enables a KBM player to manually click something like Mercy Stroke (in the very infrequent situation where you want to use MS, but do NOT want to use BFB, but BFB is available ... this situation occurs for oddly-timed Gaols on Titan and for certain Conflag situations on Twintania ... this comment does not apply to controller users though ...).

Edit: A controller player might be able to put Mercy Stroke in an obscure crossbar location, and then only deal with accessing it in the situations outlined above, but use the macro for general MS usage.

[AvonRekaes]

Unfortunately I've listed the maximum available button-press keys for the Crossbar right there. The D-Pad and the Square, X, Circle, and Triangle Buttons are the only ones that can be mapped, and holding/toggling with L2 and R2 gives you two sets of key bindings visible on the screen at once. You can press R1 to cycle through up to 8 different crossbars, each with their own L2 and R2 bindings of the 8 keys.

I've been thinking of doing a crazy three-bar rotation, where the three moves in any one combo are mapped to the same button, and pressing R1 will rotate you toward the next move in the combo, while the non-combo actions are copied through the three crossbars so they're static. It would basically become muscle memory to hit R1 right after a combo move to cycle you toward the next combo.

I was hoping for input from someone that actually uses the crossbar, however. While your opinion that my performance will suffer for using the controller is noted, I don't feel like all PS3 players are automatically without question worse at DPS, regardless of stereotypes, or I'd have heard more about it (Mostly I just hear about their lag issues). Also anyone that's used the crossbar in, say, the Coil probably knows how to make it work efficiently as it'll ever need to be.

[JetBrooks]

You're fine.

For people new to controller, you wanna break stuff into groups. Groups that require positioning go on buttons, rather than D-pad.

Main Groups (CrossBar1)
TVF Group: True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust
IDC Group: Impulse Drive > Disembowel > Chaost Thrust
Buffs Group: Blood for Blood > Internal Release > Life Surge
DOTs Group: Heavy Thrust > Fracture > Phlebotomize
You'll notice these first 4 groups only have 3 abilities, I leave the top slot (Up or Triangle) in each group open for commonly used off-GCD abilities. Use them in whichever top slots are comfortable to you.
Off-GCD Group: Sweep, Jump, Power Surge, Spineshatter Dive

Secondary Groups (CrossBar2)
Jump Group: This group is for jump moves that you don't use very often. Just throw whatever you like to use in here
AOE Group: Heavy Thrust > Doom Spike, Ring of Thorns, Invigorate. Here we see Heavy Thrust for the 2nd time. This group allows you to do AOE fights without switching the CrossBar.
Cross-Class Group: Whatever less common cross-class abilities you like
Quick-Reaction Group: Limit Break, Mercy Stroke, whatever else you might need to hit quickly, but not commonly enough to keep in main rotation

Your priority should be: Survivability (be able to dodge attacks) > Position-Specific > Quick-Reaction > Other

Here's a decent starting point:

CrossBar1 (2 Rotation Groups, Buff Group, DOT Group)
R2 - ID-Dis-CT Group on D-Pad, TVF Group on Buttons. TVF Group is simply used more commonly, so it's best to keep it on buttons for dodging attacks. Survivability > Position-Specific.
L2 - Buffs Group on D-Pad, HT and DOTs Group on Buttons. HT requires positioning. Position-Specific > Other.
Fill in top slots with Off-GCD Group

CrossBar2 (Auxiliary Groups)
R2 - Jump Group on D-pad, AOE Group (HT-DS-ROT-Invig) on buttons. You want AOE group on buttons so you can easily hit Doom Spike while positioning. Position-Specific > Other.
L2 - Cross-Class Group on D-pad, Quick-Reaction Group on Buttons (LB-Mercy-etc.). It's good to have LB & Mercy Stroke on buttons so you can quickly R1 (switch crossbar) and hit them while moving out of attacks/spells, if needed. Quick-Reaction > Other.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can use additional hotbars while in crossbar mode, so you need to be able to see all of your off-GCD cooldowns. I could be wrong, though.

[AvonRekaes]

Thanks for the input, Jet. Looks like I already followed your advice pretty closely with the main 3 combos. So you use an auxillary bar for the off-GDC stuff. I currently have my LB on the Chaos Thrust button (since I'm not lvl 50 yet), and I was concerned about having to let that go (I have, twice now, been the last man standing on the last boss in a dungeon and managed to kill it with a timely LB, so I really liked having quick access to it).

What do you do about the utility buttons, like inventory, character screen, main menu, mount, sprint, etc? Do you completely remove it when doing a dungeon, or do you just ignore it and hit R1 twice to get back to your main combat crossbar? Or do you not even have one?

[JetBrooks]

I currently have my LB on the Chaos Thrust button (since I'm not lvl 50 yet), and I was concerned about having to let that go (I have, twice now, been the last man standing on the last boss in a dungeon and managed to kill it with a timely LB, so I really liked having quick access to it).

What do you do about the utility buttons

I've revised my post a little bit. Just have LB and Mercy Stroke (if you have MS) in your Quick-Reaction group, so you can R1 and quickly hit a button (not d-pad) for those, while dodging attacks if needed. LB use is simply not common enough to keep it in CrossBar1, and depending on your fight, you'll know the time to use it is coming up.

I put all utility buttons on a third crossbar, since they are not involved with combat performance.

[AvonRekaes]

Hmm. Do you think switching Jump, (as in, just Jump, not SSD or DD) to the Quick Reaction group would make sense if you're not including SSD or DD in a main rotation, but you are with Jump?

[Alexander_Dragonbane]

Hmm I'm not sure if you want to just stick to one cross bar only but I use two. The first one I have all of my main combos and my off CDs that do damage and I place all my buffs on the second one. You can hit R1 once to swap to second crossbar use the move your after then hold R1 and hit triangle to instantly swap back to the first crossbar to continue your rotation. And yes I use the rotation on a rotation reborn minus fracture/mercy stroke. The only thing you will have to learn is the timing of the off gcds on the second crossbar. I time them using my lifesurge buff on the main crossbar.