How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[JackFross]

Yeah, I've come to the depressing conclusion that there's no way in hell I'll be hitting those 1450 numbers with DRG/MNK/MCH/SMN/DRK/WAR/WHM/SCH raid comp until I get more gear than the gated poop for those who have not yet killed pepsiman. If people are consistently hitting 1400 with my gear and I hit it once in a blue moon (twice over all attempts so far, once with potion, once without - but with like 30% critrate), I'm fairly sure a good chunk of that is thanks to the sexy beast that is Trick Attack.


And then tonight I lucked into a 1406 with no pot through the end of hand phase with our MCH missing and replaced by a pug BRD. So... maybe I can! Can't wait for tomorrow, now. That was 30% critrate, though. I won't be seeing that again...

[siverstorm]

That was 30% critrate, though. I won't be seeing that again...

Pls stop hacking the game and/or gib me that crit rate holy crap ;-;

[JackFross]

Pls stop hacking the game and/or gib me that crit rate holy crap ;-;

I wish I could hack the game and get that crit rate again;;; Parses from tonight where my friend the other drg subbed in for our missing MNK. 8 runs, 19-20% crit across all of them. Spoopy as heck!

http://imgur.com/a/F1aNt

[seekified]

I don't raid at the moment since Alex honestly doesn't interest me very much, so I'm just going for full eso at a half-casual rate. Potions, though - drac pots are a tad expensive by my standards, but there's no cheap version like the old poison pots as far as I can see. Would it be worth it to level an alchemist just for that, you reckon?

[SunnyHirose]

In clearing Gordias Savage, the only fight I really needed to use Draconian potions was A3 (as in, with my team, with our gear, with our raid composition, running into 1% enrages with X-potions). If you're not doing Nisi, the DPS check for A4 is not strictly a matter of raw DPS and X-potions will probably do the trick; did for me, in fact our first clear caught 100% of our video-capable people by surprise and not all of us were putting on our game faces. A1 and A2 were probably possible potionless from week 1. And also probably not worth wasting time seeing if they could be done potionless week 1....

NQ Mega-Potions can be purchased from a vendor in Ishgard for 950 gil. This is cheap enough for me to spam it in any casual content if I so wish. It was also good for the first umpteen pulls of savage progression. Biggest downside might be the 5m cooldown... it doesn't align with very much (Battle Voice, anyone?), and it doesn't feel like it's worth waiting for.

Leveling crafts was a satisfying experience for myself and has made me plenty of gil, but it's basically a different game and a timesinky investment. It's not gonna be everyone's thing, but I encourage people to try it out. If you have the proper cross-class skills (sorry, there's really no getting around that and even specialist skills don't quite compensate enough) and are appropriately geared, it should be really easy to produce X-potions at around level 55 or so, and you don't even need master alchemist books unlocked or anything.

Any kind of poisoning potion is completely useless against any mob level 51 and up (that is not an opinion! I mean useless in the sense that the game will actually not let you use it). They were also not cost effective whatsoever at level 50 (at least in PvE, PvP's beyond my expertise). I only used them for crucial raid progression, and I'm sure they were also great if you're into speedruns. Now they are probably best used for the lv. 45 levequest.

[seekified]

Sunny wisdom

I see! I'm going to check out the NQ Mega-Potions, I have a feeling they're more expensive on Cerberus but you never know. Depending on how long the 3.1 content keeps me entertained, I may well give crafting a go - it's something I really haven't touched much at all since the closed beta/early open beta period.

I used HQ poison pots a lot in FCoB progression and farms since they were actually cheaper than strength pots, but as you say there's no 3.0 version of them that works on level 60 content, so STR pots it is.

[Teiren]

More expensive? What? No, he means an NPC vendor. Just look around in the market at Ishgard.

[SunnyHirose]

Mega-potion of Strength is also an lv 45 alchemist leve turn-in, by the way. Because the shark oil being in short supply wasn't enough of a problem, apparently :P

With NQ mega-potions, it works out to 14250 gil / 117261 XP (before you hit 50 and leve XP gets capped). NQ PPPs will be equally cost-to-XP effective at ≤8397 gil per 3, or ≤16795 per 3 HQ PPPs.

[JackFross]

I'm not as cool as Dervy or anywhere near as good at manipulating these numbers as he is. I try my best, though. And honestly, you're only looking at a 3 minute parse. If you get a shit opener (which happens) and are sub 1500, your final dps at the end of hand phase is gonna be absolute garbage (compared to how you could have done), regardless how effective your dps was in that phase.

As a nice example, there was this run I did for P1+2. If you look at just P1, you'll see that I ended that phase at merely 1437. I do Phase 1 exactly the same every single run - exactly the same amount of hits and exactly the same skills used. The variance is *massive* - ranging from 1437 to 1600. Neither of those runs had a Potion used. That swing of 170 dps is a HUGE difference in the final parse, regardless how P2 is handled.

[RapBreon]

I'm not as cool as Dervy or anywhere near as good at manipulating these numbers as he is. I try my best, though. And honestly, you're only looking at a 3 minute parse. If you get a shit opener (which happens) and are sub 1500, your final dps at the end of hand phase is gonna be absolute garbage (compared to how you could have done), regardless how effective your dps was in that phase.

As a nice example, there was this run I did for P1+2. If you look at just P1, you'll see that I ended that phase at merely 1437. I do Phase 1 exactly the same every single run - exactly the same amount of hits and exactly the same skills used. The variance is *massive* - ranging from 1437 to 1600. Neither of those runs had a Potion used. That swing of 170 dps is a HUGE difference in the final parse, regardless how P2 is handled.

I really think you hit the nail on the head with this. Dragoon's being so bursty means an unlucky opener makes for sad Dragoons due to the 3 minutes. Possibly why I may be overvaluing MNK, which seems to be much more stable and opener independent.

Hopefully Jigglybutt will die soon - we've made it a full way through a p4 rotation. Then I can go to FFlogs and cry about how bad I am.