How to Dragoon Per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[Hakmatic]

Any level of skill speed that would be sufficient for a dummy rotation wouldn't change anything I'm doing in there.

(insert surreptitious congratulations for hak and yan here)

Thanks sunny!

[Gailo_P]

so what skill speed should we be sitting at ideally? Especially for savage? im sitting at 602 ilvl 181. I know thats going to more the likely fluctuate when i get more of the 190 armor. My 190 armor im sitting on is head and waist and all 190 accessories besides one ring.

[Dervy]

600-630 is a safe range.

Any level of skill speed that would be sufficient for a dummy rotation wouldn't change anything I'm doing in there.

(insert surreptitious congratulations for hak and yan here)

Just checking cause I've heard a lot of things from another DRG on A3S and I'm not actually on the fight myself, so I can't confirm anything. He said, she said, kinda things, ya know?

And yeah, congrats on World 4th/6th Hak + Ricky

[KaldeaSahaline]

Hey all,

I have a few quick questions, as I begin to really tighten up my play:

1) DoTs - How do they work if you overwrite a B4B buffed CT with a non-buffed CT. I know it doesn't roll DoTs, so does it simply overwrite and you lose that buffed damage on those leftover ticks? Does it acknowledge it's a lesser DoT and ignore it? I don't think I've ever seen the latter behavior.

2) Building off #1 then, we've established that clipping is more PPS, but if losing 1.9 (maybe possibly 2 ticks of a B4B buffed DoT) does it stand to benefit to use the TTT x2 and suffer the minor downtime of Disembowel/CT when under B4B? The reason I mention is occasionally I'll try it and my DPS does tend to stay up a little higher, but my testing is anecdotal at best, unsubstantiated at worst. This is ignoring the DPS gain to MCH/BRD.

3) Even though my ping is super low ~24 (based off pinging the server directly and this value is almost identical to the one I see in the network resources in Task Manager) I still get what appears to be fairly significant GCD clipping when using double oGCD. I suppose I could be mashing faster, but as a top world ranking Ret in WoW I'd posit that my mashing skills are pretty solid. Any thoughts on this? I may try WTFast to see if there's a difference even though I don't think I need it. I use Comcast Cable - not FIOS.

4) How much time is ok to wait to hit a positional? I.e. in A1S I'm about to hit CT, but we're stacked on the right side. Do I hit it, or wait the requisite .25-.5 seconds and hit the positional? What if it's longer, like ~1 full second to hit positional? In WoW maximizing GCD usage brought maximum DPS, but there were no potency differences for positions so I'm not sure how to accurately calculate which would be ideal. Logic tells me that unless I can hit the positional very quickly to get the bonus potency it may be better just to fire it off (worst case being -90 potency, but 90 is still less than say 150 if I miss an entire GCD by delaying. In which case it could potentially add up to a significant amount over an 8 minute fight. Thoughts?

5) SkS - I know we should have ~600, but I've been raiding ~ like 550 so far, cleared A1S ~900 dps @ i187 (hq x pots & hq truffle risotto), with far from perfect execution. I think I even remember reading a post here that someone gained a ton of DPS by finally getting the correct amount of SkS. I should have the SkS tonight by snagging the Alex chest & legs. Just curious on this as well. To clarify my question on this one, I guess what I'd like to know is what DPS other DRG's are doing on the fight, and what their SkS value/ilvl is to just kinda plot it out for my own knowledge.

[Gardes]

What happened to the bullet points for GK timing on the 1st page? The one that wasn't just listing 'use after 1st chaos' but was more about generally safe times to use GK based on different timers? Just replaced with 'as long as you're above 21'..? Which doesn't seem to apply to me either. It's more like 23 for me and I'm not not queuing my gcds.

[SunnyHirose]

Never trust a 22, that's what I tell people.

[Dervy]

I'm gonna rework a lot of the OP this week now I have time, don't worry my loves.

There's going to be A LOT of new info

[SunnyHirose]

1) DoTs - How do they work if you overwrite a B4B buffed CT with a non-buffed CT. I know it doesn't roll DoTs, so does it simply overwrite and you lose that buffed damage on those leftover ticks? Does it acknowledge it's a lesser DoT and ignore it? I don't think I've ever seen the latter behavior.

It overwrites. It used to not let you overwrite with a weaker DoT back in 2.0 (no 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5). And it was horrible because anything you could do to get around this was horrible, potency-wise.

2) Building off #1 then, we've established that clipping is more PPS, but if losing 1.9 (maybe possibly 2 ticks of a B4B buffed DoT) does it stand to benefit to use the TTT x2 and suffer the minor downtime of Disembowel/CT when under B4B? The reason I mention is occasionally I'll try it and my DPS does tend to stay up a little higher, but my testing is anecdotal at best, unsubstantiated at worst. This is ignoring the DPS gain to MCH/BRD.

I'll leave the math alone for today, but not worth it. Clip it like your barber missed a spot.

3) Even though my ping is super low ~24 (based off pinging the server directly and this value is almost identical to the one I see in the network resources in Task Manager) I still get what appears to be fairly significant GCD clipping when using double oGCD. I suppose I could be mashing faster, but as a top world ranking Ret in WoW I'd posit that my mashing skills are pretty solid. Any thoughts on this? I may try WTFast to see if there's a difference even though I don't think I need it. I use Comcast Cable - not FIOS.

Unfortunately, while it's perfectly possible with a good connection, it isn't an option for some people.

My connection to this game has been very good on the whole with pretty good ping, until about 2-3 weeks ago when I started getting lots of dropped packets somehow. WTFast often makes it worse than I used to get, but right now it's better than what I'd be getting without.

4) How much time is ok to wait to hit a positional? I.e. in A1S I'm about to hit CT, but we're stacked on the right side. Do I hit it, or wait the requisite .25-.5 seconds and hit the positional? What if it's longer, like ~1 full second to hit positional? In WoW maximizing GCD usage brought maximum DPS, but there were no potency differences for positions so I'm not sure how to accurately calculate which would be ideal. Logic tells me that unless I can hit the positional very quickly to get the bonus potency it may be better just to fire it off (worst case being -90 potency, but 90 is still less than say 150 if I miss an entire GCD by delaying. In which case it could potentially add up to a significant amount over an 8 minute fight. Thoughts?

Due to BotD maintenance, this is a more complicated question than it used to be. It used to be that you could just assume that the slight delay wouldn't mess up your rotation significantly due to a built-in delay in buff applications, so the break even point on, say, Chaos Thrust really would be the intuitive 200 potency / 1 GCD = 250 potency / 1.25 GCDs.

If I were to hazard a guess, the Chaos Thrust clipping will mitigate a very slight delay in order to get a positional, but certain buff timers, especially Blood of the Dragon, wait for no one.

As far as the mentality goes that losing uptime is the greater of two evils... it's generally true in this game, but do bear in mind that for DRG, losing a combo is catastrophic.

[rickyguo]

in our opener we clip a bfb+ir+battle litany+pot ct with like x seconds with a fresh non buffed ct

are you sure that's more dps

from a potency perspective yes, clipping is higher but that doesn't really take into account the buffs

whats the math on doing ct ft ft on the opener and then trying to go back to the ct clipping after

[KaldeaSahaline]

I'm gonna rework a lot of the OP this week now I have time, don't worry my loves.

There's going to be A LOT of new info

Awesome man, looking forward to it. Thanks for all the hard work you do! I also saw your post on the next page going over the math. So ~32 potency loss to not clip. Duly noted.

It overwrites. It used to not let you overwrite with a weaker DoT back in 2.0 (no 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5). And it was horrible because anything you could do to get around this was horrible, potency-wise.

I'll leave the math alone for today, but not worth it. Clip it like your barber missed a spot.

Unfortunately, while it's perfectly possible with a good connection, it isn't an option for some people.

My connection to this game has been very good on the whole with pretty good ping, until about 2-3 weeks ago when I started getting lots of dropped packets somehow. WTFast often makes it worse than I used to get, but right now it's better than what I'd be getting without.

Due to BotD maintenance, this is a more complicated question than it used to be. It used to be that you could just assume that the slight delay wouldn't mess up your rotation significantly due to a built-in delay in buff applications, so the break even point on, say, Chaos Thrust really would be the intuitive 200 potency / 1 GCD = 250 potency / 1.25 GCDs.

If I were to hazard a guess, the Chaos Thrust clipping will mitigate a very slight delay in order to get a positional, but certain buff timers, especially Blood of the Dragon, wait for no one.

As far as the mentality goes that losing uptime is the greater of two evils... it's generally true in this game, but do bear in mind that for DRG, losing a combo is catastrophic.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I don't have any packet loss from what I gleaned, so I'm not sure how I should tackle this issue or if I should just suck it up and 1gcd opener it.

@Kaldea, I did 947 on AS1 but I'm at 140-180 ping. I think a significant amount of damage loss from Dragoons comes from the adds and how quickly you can get back on the boss. Saving gap closers is ideal but not always a solution if resin baiting went awry. If you'd like Id be happy to discuss specific scenarios on that fight. I'm always looking to improve or help others.

Thanks for responding, what ilvl did you do 947 on? I am generally good on the fights, with probably BotD and GSK usage probably being the only thing I need to optimize.

in our opener we clip a bfb+ir+battle litany+pot ct with like x seconds with a fresh non buffed ct

are you sure that's more dps

from a potency perspective yes, clipping is higher but that doesn't really take into account the buffs

whats the math on doing ct ft ft on the opener and then trying to go back to the ct clipping after

Yeah that's basically the question I was asking, that Dervy cleared up for us.