How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[JackFross]

(snip)

You missed the discussions where all of these were brought up.

That was pretty much the consensus, but the damage differentials were all decided among most/all of us to be so small/negligible that they just sorta don't matter. The set that's attributed to me is the "technical" best in slot based solely on stat weights. Dervy's is a more consistent version (more det at the cost of ss and crit) of mine, and the other set is low on ss but technically higher weight than either of the others.

It's hard to settle on one set as being "best" when you're looking at numbers on the scale of 1500 and seriously coming in to say that one set will give you +30 dps over another. That +30 dps is literally one dropped Blood. It's one flubbed Wash Away backflip. It's not something that I feel comfortable saying definitively one way or the other, especially when people have pings such that 606 ss isn't enough for them to get 3 GSK per minute and other people who find 700 ss to just be unwieldy because of how fast you become.


The discussion of best in slot this patch is a lot more nuanced than just "which set is definitively the best" because that question doesn't exactly have an answer that is very satisfying, due to the way the different stats work and play with each other and the person using them.

I mean, this is the set that I'm personally building for, which is Dervy's set with the weapon swapped. It's weaker, yes, but I much prefer the grace I get from higher skill speed; it gives ME higher gains in the long run because I end up less self-conscious about losing Blood to a Geirskogul or two and end up actually squeezing them out.


That said, what set are you referencing? FFXIVGuild's?


///Oh, it's the same as mine but with 700 accuracy? That's silly. The det/ss is strictly better than the acc/crit. There's no question to be had there. There's not near enough crit to make up for the gains you get from the other secondaries. Otherwise, you're telling me that the raw difference in damage power between 30 crit and 29 determination is more powerful than the gains from 44 skill speed. I don't think that's something that should even be in question. There's no way that's the case.

[Strident]

Otherwise, you're telling me that the raw difference in damage power between 30 crit and 29 determination is more powerful than the gains from 44 skill speed. I don't think that's something that should even be in question. There's no way that's the case.

I think that asking whether or not the bolded statement is true is a valid question. Sometimes silly things turn out to be the most optimal alignment because it is more powerful in another specific area. This is why I wanted to avoid making any conclusions or hypothesis' on your build in comparison, because I am unsure of how to mathematically value Skill Speed. I would like to believe that 29 DET and 44 Skill Speed is superior to 30 Crit and an overload on accuracy, but I refrain from making that judgement. You seem to be confident that it is, and that's valuable information for me; how so exactly? I would be intrigued to know how I should value Skill Speed and in what context.

I also acknowledge that the mathematics I based my calculations on are (which were provided in the OP) are outdated; a more accurate assessment of the numbers would require more research.

That being said, this consideration was purposed solely to investigate flat hitting power in the comparison between Crit and Determination, which finds that every point of Crit is worth at least two points of DET for the purposes of DRG BiS. When comparing FFXIVGuild's configuration against the other two, I thus found that the flat hitting power of the former is significantly superior despite its Skill Speed advantage against both, which I thought was important. If we use 1500 as the baseline, the ~4.4% differential can lead to a 66 DPS increase.

Is this still true? I don't know and I would very much so like to hear about this.