How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[GeneralDowns]

So over the last couple of days I've spent a lot of time adjusting my hot bars and keybindings trying to suit it to the rotation. A couple of people in my FC have suggested I use more keys rather than clicking on skills. Currently I only use keys for my two combos (2,3,4 and Q,E,R) ,phleb (Shift + 3), Heavy Thrust (1) and my 4th combo attacks (MB4, MB5), would it be better to rely on more keys and get used to it or just stick to what I have and what I am used to? Bearing in mind I'm not used to using Ctrl, Shift or Alt at all

[Mibhas]

I have a new computer and am finally in reach of my lifelong dream of making random Dragoon videos. I don't do progression raids anymore, so only ever expect to see A1S and A2S on here until they lift loot lockout. Also, I took a month long break and don't farm cap Esoterics anymore because I'm lazy, so that's why my gear sucks. Nothing super special, but good if you want to see how the pros some person does it. Here is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVS9i8X6Mfo Some will have cool bantz and voice commz like that one.

[whiskeybravo]

So over the last couple of days I've spent a lot of time adjusting my hot bars and keybindings trying to suit it to the rotation. A couple of people in my FC have suggested I use more keys rather than clicking on skills. Currently I only use keys for my two combos (2,3,4 and Q,E,R) ,phleb (Shift + 3), Heavy Thrust (1) and my 4th combo attacks (MB4, MB5), would it be better to rely on more keys and get used to it or just stick to what I have and what I am used to?

Wish I could help you more, I'm used to ps4 and am dreadfully terrible with KB+M. I could see where having a key bind would be slightly faster than having to scroll over and click an icon, it's a fine line to walk with muscle memory and what you're used to though. Seemed like Dervy had a pretty good setup he shared in the old how to drg per second thread if you want to pour over that until a pc drg shows up here and can offer insight.

Found better link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3066030

[Ninjah2r]

Similar stuff has happened on DRG where I'll break the IDC combo partway for no apparent reason, thus not giving me a 4th and thus dropping BotD. Funtimes. I'll do a lot of testing on this once Chaos is moved in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping it improves to the point where I don't have to worry about being faster than my procs.

Having same issue here, especially neverreap because everyone is buring the last boss so quick nowadays so he goes 'invulnerable' fast. But in other instances too, I sometimes miss my combo for some weird ass reason o.O

I hope it'll be fixed come tuesday with chaos, and I also hope that the latency will be good for botd uptime

[JackFross]

Neverreap boss goes invuln on a timer, not on percentage health. It's always just when you're about to hit that second fourth hit. Confirmed by the fact I ran it with another DRG who was crapping 1400 dps right along with me and it still went at that time. We only saw one invuln phase and both ended over 1300.

Anyway, back on topic... If I'm getting latency, I'll sometimes hit a skill and have my GCD go on cooldown without it ever activating the skill. That might be what's happening there. It's also possible you're missing. That happened to me once and I chalked it up to lag until I noticed my food had worn off.

[Teiren]

The first one seems to be controlled by HP in my experience but not the ones after that. It could just be coincidence. And yeah, combos have unpredictable results under extreme latency or lag spikes.

[Nucl3arSnake]

Hello everyone, my first time posting in DRG thread although I've been lurking with you for more than half a year now.
I finally gathered some courage to jump in with you, as I have some points I'd really appreciate if I could get your opinion on.

First off, my group is currently at A4S (we're on 3d leg, so you could say we're pretty much new to the last floor), and here's what my gear looks like: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RT7Q. Next week I'll probably have 2 twines to upgrade the eso chest and eso pants. Here are my logs: http://www.fflogs.com/ru/rankings/ch.../23108/latest/

I have a few of general DRG questions and two related to A3S specifically (even though it's a farm content for my group now, I want to improve my performance there).
So, for general questions:
1) Despite the dropped head and bracers I'm still aiming for Dervy's balanced set, and the reason why is because my team mates told me that Dervy calculated that starting from 780 crit deminishing returns start to kick in for this stat. Is this indeed true and if yes, is it so for every job?
2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing? I understand some mechanics call to the stacking, but I'm mostly asking in general, without regard to any specific encounter.

As for A3S specific questions, there reason why I bring it up is because according to the logs I'm in 26 percentile and I'd really like to go up. My dps is around 1070 atm and I feel like with my gear I could easily go up to 1200. So the questions re A3S are:
1) What do you do with transition to the last phase? The consensus in my team is to use all cds+litany+pots as soon as Pepsiman becomes targetable, but I'm reluctant to do so, because I feel like magnets after the cascade disturb the burst too much. So what I do currently is I still cast litany for my team mates on transition, but delay all of my personal cooldowns until after magnets (so I'm using them during and after protean).
2) I read previous posts and saw that this question was asked a few times already, but I still would like to again confirm this: during add phase the most seem to agree that going with HT+TTT(4?) is the best way? So never Chaos Thrust rotation and never Phleb? And what to do with BoTD? Keep it during the entire phase for buffed Jump and 4th and use Geir only if add is about to get away?

Any other tip you have for me, be it re my gear or useful tricks for either A3S or A4S - I'd much appreciate those.

[Moo_Cow]

2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing?

Wondering this myself. As Dragoon I tend to wait for all my buffs to get off cool down since the are all pretty close, so at most I only need to delay for a combo or two and then basically repeat my opener. Of course I use shorter cool downs when available like Jump, Leg Sweep and Geiroskogul when applicable. Everything else I tend to save for another opening round of burst damage. As Bard though I find myself able to and using cooldowns in tiers, partly because Raging Strikes and other buffs have more staggered times. So I can use some whenever they're up while also being able to build up for another opening rotation later on.

[SunnyHirose]

1) Despite the dropped head and bracers I'm still aiming for Dervy's balanced set, and the reason why is because my team mates told me that Dervy calculated that starting from 780 crit deminishing returns start to kick in for this stat. Is this indeed true and if yes, is it so for every job?

Nothing special happens at 780 crit.

2) What should I do with cds outside of opener? I noticed I tend to delay cds if I see that my B4B will be up in 20-30 seconds so that I can allight for example B4B+IR+PS. Is it a bad thing to do? Shall I just use everything as it comes off cooldown and don't go for the "stacking with B4B" thing? I understand some mechanics call to the stacking, but I'm mostly asking in general, without regard to any specific encounter.

This is a bad thing to do, for the most part. It can pay off, but you will more likely delay long enough to cause a potency-per-second loss.

[MrCookTM]

Holding onto IR for B4B is not worth it. If you just use both on CD, your 3rd B4B and 4th IR line up naturally after 240 seconds. If you hold IR everytime, you only get 3 IR's instead of 4, which - even though all 3 would be buffed by B4B - is a dps loss. 2 buffed + 2 unbuffed IR's > 3 buffed IR's.