How to Dragoon Per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[xnonamex]

Yeah. I think the penalty for missing it is waay to big. HT gives 70 penality and CT gives 50. this one gives 190.... which imo is ridiculous and that is added to random positioning. Cuz now when you have a positional movement coming you have time to prepare and go where you need without it impacting the fight. now you actually need to add the time for your brain to process what pops and where you need to go and go to the place. in addition to that it seems that they want to make SS relevant. I just have a bad feeling about this in raid situations where one needs to act as fluent and fast as possible. but will see.

[Thendiel]

Just hit 60 DRG and played around with it for about an hour. Here are a my initial thoughts/observations.

First, they must've really toned down the GCD reductions granted by Skill Speed per point. I'm at 592 SS and my GCD is still a whopping 2.41. That 2.30 second threshold I was theorizing about for Geirskogul use? Not gonna happen. I would guess that that change was intended to lighten the TP decimation that used to come with high Skill Speed. One assumes that it's offset by the SS benefits to DoT damage.

Second, the threshold of BotD duration for popping Geirskogul when BotD is recovering from cooldown is about 22 seconds for me--close to my prediction.

Third, I'm finding that Geirskogul use is pretty consistent for single-target Striking Dummy conditions. Basically, you want to go HT - combo - Geir - Phleb - combo - HT - combo - Geir - Phleb - combo - HT - combo - geir - Phleb - ID - Dis [BotD falls off and needs to be immediately refreshed] - CT - 4 - Geir - HT

...and then something very similar repeats.

If all that sounds confusing, I promise it has a relatively intuitive feel to it with some practice. Basically, every oddly-numbered combo should be followed up by Geirskogul, except after BotD comes off cooldown, when it switches to evens. Combos number 1, 3, and 5; 6, 8, and 10; 11, 13, and 15; 16... are all followed up with a Geirskogul. Also, the timing feels really tight here at my current Skill Speed, so there's probably a nearby GCD length above which this approach won't work. 2.43ish maybe?

Fourthly, based on the short cooldown of BotD and the bosses I've fought in dungeons so far, my gut tells me that we're going to have a ton of downtime in endgame fights, forcing us to think more creatively and responsively about how we play. In other words, this optimum Geirskogul stuff will probably only apply to one or two fights that matter.

Finally, I'll just say that despite all the salt concerning the 4th combo procs, I am really, really, really happy with and excited about DRG at level 60. They've managed to inject several new mechanics into the job that require care and attention to master, and it all feels very fresh and interesting. I can just... feel the potential for insane damage in endgame. My take? SE absolutely nailed it.

[ColdestHeaven]

snip

I suppose shooting a giant laser beam every two combo might give some satisfaction for keeping up the buff. Tomorrow I'll unlock Wheeling, so...yeah. We'll see how it goes. Practicing in dungeon is pure hell: Blood is useless in AOE, and giant pulls are too chaotic to try out the positionals. In open world it's not any better because mobs are always facing you. For now the training dummy will do.
For now, I really don't feel like enjoying it. It might be because I'm used to DoT/buff/debuff lining up perfectly, and there is NOTHING balanced in the current rotation, so I'm always confused half-way through. And since I can barely count on having Blood always up between pulls if the tank is slow...or making right positionals if the boss decides to dash through the damn arena or turn (LOOKING AT YOU POISON DRAGON WHAT'S-YOUR-NAME) every five seconds...I dunno.

[Thendiel]

I suppose shooting a giant laser beam every two combo might give some satisfaction for keeping up the buff.

Yeeeaaah... the giant laser beam is definitely a draw. LOL.

Practicing in dungeon is pure hell: Blood is useless in AOE, and giant pulls are too chaotic to try out the positionals. In open world it's not any better because mobs are always facing you.

You're right about that. I just think that dungeons are probably a very poor representation of endgame DRG experience, in the same way that running dungeons as a MNK probably won't tell you much about how that job works in endgame. We won't really know what dragooning is like until we start dealing with EX primals and Alexander, IMO.

[LordMaitreya]

Apparently Dragoon is bugged?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...n_heavensward/

Anyone that was at E3 to confirm this? At this point we need a developer to say if this issue is working as intended or not.

[Faltrask]

I've been trying some rotation with the new dragoon features. There are few things you have to keep in mind:

The rotation is very tight, and you probably will found it difficult even just to judge when it's time to use Geirskogul because you think you have enough time, calculating that you'll probably have to deal with mechanics too (and new dungeon mechanics are pretty rough to melee).

Considering on a mannequin you can use Geirskogul right after first "Fang and Claw" / "Wheeling Thrust", then you probably will be using it after 3 "15s charges", and then again while BotD CD come back to use it again.

Basicly you can use Geirskogul everytime you finish a combo and you have more than 19-21s, and trust me, it won't happen very often in a minute xD. The skill is cool looking and feels good to have such an high potency aoe attack (which probably will cause problems on fight which you DON'T have to touch mobs xD), but honestly I thought I would have used that slightly more often xD.

[Dervy]

I doubt it's bugged. It could of been an older build they were running at E3. Read the tooltip of Blood of the Dragon carefully.

"Grants Sharper Fang and Claw or Enhanced Wheeling Thrust when completing a combo with Chaos Thrust or Full Thrust.

Now read Full Thrusts tooltip

"Grants Sharper Fang and Claw or Enhanced Wheeling Thrust".

EDIT: And wow, this rotation is really tight... One slight delay, one slight GCD clip, and it's game-over. You can't be recklessly using Geirskogul in raids with mechanics, that is for certain. This is with 2.42 GCD. Need to go lower!

It's also not that heard to learn. If you have a set-up similar to mine, with two massive icons in the middle of your screen, as long as you know where all of your keybinds are via muscle memory, you'll see which proc is which whilst raiding/looking at mechanics, as it's directly in the middle of your screen. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but it isn't that hard to adjust to the procs. It's actually kinda fun, oddly enough.



The potency hit is harsh and I can see why we have Sonic-Tier Skillspeed on our gear. We need it.

[Starkbeaumont]

I doubt it's bugged. ...

for a non drg who's best buddy mains it though: to understand this correctly, chaos or full thrust either triggers one of the two effects and you would have to use the according skill from the correct positional to actually get the boost over a weak 100p attack? you could be lucky and CT would combo into wheeling when you are already behind or it could combo into fang and claw and would let you adjust your pos for max dmg?
and with the delay a buff appears you'd have to wait first and adjust (which takes probably a second altogether) or you'd spam right away not getting the boost every time?

[enil]

and with the delay a buff appears you'd have to wait first and adjust (which takes probably a second altogether) or you'd spam right away not getting the boost every time?

There's little to no delay on the buff. Not sure what wizardry SE used, but they actually thought out and implemented this properly.

[HeavensSword]

There's little to no delay on the buff. Not sure what wizardry SE used, but they actually thought out and implemented this properly.

If I had to field a guess, I think they may be pre-calculating which Skill will proc perhaps at the start of your combo.