How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[raela]

*snip*

Yeah, I am 100% terrible at figuring things out on my own (I really appreciate all the comments put to this thread and the various videos on clearing content for that reason).

1. Early BotD was to have it up for the first combo on Hummel. If I use it before CT, then it gets pushed back a set later.
2. B4B was an attempt to boost DPS, from comparing parses and seeing other DRGs using it on the Fausts. SSD gap close was because previously I was using elusive to get away (died once from the drop when I ran instead of elusived, and somehow in my mind it became "died about 5 times trying to run away and I keep wiping us and oh god I am the worst." I ran this time without death so I'll try to elusive back instead).
3. The BLM/BRD mentioned that they feel they have to blow CDs to burst the Fausts, or else Hummel drops before they're dead. The time I accidentally put all my buffs on the Fausts, we only cleared due to DoTs/a final F3 proc. We all died to Panzercheck, so I do think I need to hold BL for that (but will make sure to stack it with other buffs instead). That was the 1633 parse, and I feel awful that I almost wiped us, so I don't want to repeat what I did there.
4. DFD/double weaving on a Jump were mistakes that run. I've been trying to DFD once I have Dis on both, and I have no clue why I decided to do that double weave. It's not typical for me.
5. I don't like spending gil, and don't have as much time as I'd like for grinding, so I've decided to wait to meld any Grade V materia for 240 pieces, and I do not want to deal with melding crafted gear. Current set is here: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/U0OE

Should I avoid Pthleb on both, or just not use it on the one that dies the quickest? Overall clearing the content is the most important to me, but I feel like I'm being a crap DPS when my percentile is 20~30% and everyone else is pushing 60~80%.. so I don't want to put us in danger pushing my own, but clearly there are ways I can improve. With how things are going so far, I'm tempted to just say F it and buy full lore.. really will consider it if we aren't clearing by 3.3. Might be my only way to 240. :/

Thanks for taking a look - I'll see how things go this upcoming week.

[JackFross]

Well, for starters, you shouldn't be holding out for drops from A6S when you're progressing on A5S - you're just letting your most valuable gearing resource burn a hole in your pocket. It's very very important to note that there's only one Lore purchase which is a flat waste of tokens if any other pieces are still not purchased - the chest. I argue even beyond that it's a waste because the crafted chest exists (and imho is something every single Dragoon who is raiding should invest in and use until they get the drop from A8S, but that's just my opinion on the matter).... but the other pieces are all pretty legit and not too bad for their slot. Maybe skip the belt, too, since the A5 belt is great.

I only put Vs on my 240 pieces (and 2 Det Vs on each of my crafted chest and 230 pants because 6 det is so bad but 12 is so good) so I feel you on that.

I tend to use my BotD as normal, and then just delay it one combo when he drops back down. I use 1-2 gsk on the Fausts (doubles or don't use them) and then 5-6 on Hummel. (which is the same as you, except I hold my BotD for when it's best to use it at the start)

That said:

If Hummel is dropping that close to the Fausts' dying, it's not your fault.
Don't use Phlebotomize on them, period. Ever. It will almost always amount to an overall loss with no potential gain at all.

This is worrying.
It's a comparison of you and I against the two Fausts. Your group is downing yours a bit faster than my group does, because we don't pop cooldowns for them.

I'm counting 15 GCDs for you v 19 GCDs for me - that's offset by at worst 1 GCD from the time difference. I'm not sure what exactly is happening there, but it's hurting you, substantially.

My best advice - and the advice I always give people - is to record yourself. Record a run of it and then play it back after raid and pick your own play apart from the outside. Apply all the theory from this thread to what you see yourself doing in practice and critique yourself. Pick it apart - see where you hold GCDs, where you delay an off-GCD attack, etc.

It helps more than you would think.

[CookieMonsta]

Which rotation simulators do you guys use? SimFF 2 seems dead atm

[MiniTyra]

1) There are no public simulators. People only have "models" in Excel. However, just wait for the phone Something might happen.

2) Dervy has some sets already made for different preferred skillspeed ranges and accuracies. No idea why he's not posted them though

[Jeycht]

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/T0JD

More crit, a bit less det and 609ss. That's my plan.

[JackFross]

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/T0JD

More crit, a bit less det and 609ss. That's my plan.

You have something silly in there. Why are you using an ACC III in the hat? If you swap it for ACC V, you'll be able to swap the ACC V on the belt to CRIT V and end up with a net gain of +12 CRIT over what you're running.

See here.

In comparison, the set I'm (probably, but maybe not) building toward is this one. I just want 600 Det, pretty much.

I've been torn between the two sets I just linked for a while. The first is my friend's target build, the second is mine. Not sure which I'm gonna build toward just yet. As far as stat weights go, the two sets differ by 0.45 Strength, so it's really a tossup on a pure numbers side of things. My personal DPS simulation puts my set as dealing more DPS, so I'm /kinda/ leaning toward that one right now, not least because mmmm 613 Det is nice. It uses 1 Det meld, though, which I know is a sin to many people, but it also avoids that really frustrating ACC IV meld in the helm, so I dunno.

[Thyranne]

I have 4 questions:

First: if I just did an Impulse Drive Combo + a True Thrust Combo AND I know for a fact that I only have time for 2 combos (boss will die or disappears after these 2 combos), should I do an Impulse Drive combo or should I just do 2 True Thrust Combo (the second combo won't have disembowel)?

Second: Should I be killing adds that spawn the other side of the room? Like those petrification goblins on A5S.

Third: Is it worth applying disembowel on Blaster's big add?

Fourth: Is it worth using Ring of Thorns (after Heavy Thrust) on Blaster's adds if I can hit 3 targets?

[Kezy_Kaatapoh]

I have 4 questions:

First: if I just did an Impulse Drive Combo + a True Thrust Combo AND I know for a fact that I only have time for 2 combos (boss will die or disappears after these 2 combos), should I do an Impulse Drive combo or should I just do 2 True Thrust Combo (the second combo won't have disembowel)?

Second: Should I be killing adds that spawn the other side of the room? Like those petrification goblins on A5S.

Third: Is it worth applying disembowel on Blaster's big add?

Fourth: Is it worth using Ring of Thorns (after Heavy Thrust) on Blaster's adds if I can hit 3 targets?

1) Do the Impulse Drive combo then the True Thrust combo. Impulse Drive combo is better after 1-2 ticks and you'll get that and more in the time it takes to do another full combo.

2) When adds spawn on the other side of the room, in 99% of cases, you can get the ranged in your group to take care of them on their own. The exception to this is if you're needed to LB said add, or your ranged aren't good enough to take it down themselves (or the rare case where you do actually need a 3rd person on it, like the adds in the 2nd phase of T13 during early progression). While in that case, it's better for them to try and git gud and learn what they're doing wrong from an ideal perspective, you have to do what's best for your raid team at a given point of time, so you might have to help for the sake of progression and rework it when they either get better or you replace them.

3) No, because of number 4...

4) I'm gonna semi answer your question here. It's best to use Ring of Thorns on Blaster adds, even without Heavy Thrust when you can hit all 5, which you can if you just stand in the exact middle of the center one. Just looking at the potency, without Heavy Thrust it's 100 per add, so 500 total. Typically you want to start of the phase doing one of 3 things: finishing the 4th ability of your combo that you have proced, starting with Heavy Thrust, or starting with Ring of Thorns because you used Heavy Thrust as he jumped. In the first case, I typically use Heavy Thrust right after so that it lasts me the whole phase and I don't need to reapply mid way through (that may not be optimal though). After this I spam Ring of Thorns until at least one dies. Now, there's the case of alternating Heavy Thrust and Ring of Thorns. Doing this gives you an extra 250 potency out of your Ring of Thorns (50 per) at the cost of using a 170 potency ability which is a 330 potency loss over just using Ring of Thorns. Aka, not worth it.

But you asked if it's worth it on 3 targets. I would ask why are you only hitting three targets when you can hit all five? If you weren't aware you could hit all five, then now you know (it won't look like you are since not all of them will show the damage go out on them). If you're talking about when 2 are dead and there's only a few others standing, then they should be dying before you get another GCD off, but if not, it depends. With Heavy Thrust, yes, as it's 450 potency vs full duration Chaos Thrust, which is 322.5 potency per GCD. Without Heavy Thrust though, no, if you get full duration. I'm not actually sure because I haven't timed the phase and I've never done anything but RoT there, so it's hard to say. I'll leave that one to someone else.

[Thyranne]

I'll keep doing Impulse Drive combo then.

Normally me and the other melee only attack the adds that are far away just to help things but I guess we can stay on boss (like the goblins in A5S).

Yeah I was not aware I could hit all 5.

Thank you for your time.

[JackFross]

I have 4 questions:

First: if I just did an Impulse Drive Combo + a True Thrust Combo AND I know for a fact that I only have time for 2 combos (boss will die or disappears after these 2 combos), should I do an Impulse Drive combo or should I just do 2 True Thrust Combo (the second combo won't have disembowel)?

Important to note re: the above! When in normal rotation, you are always clipping your Chaos Thrust. You need that CT to last longer than 1 tick for it to be more effective than a Chaos Thrust in that same position. In fact, it needs to last for at least 3 full ticks (~9s) for it to beat out the FT there. If the boss will die less than 9s after applying Chaos Thrust (in normal rotation), you're taking a loss. In this case, since there's 5-6 gcds after Chaos Thrust hits, you're fine.

The "one tick" nonsense that spreads around all the time assumes two things.
1. You got your Chaos Thrust positional. If you miss this, you need 2 ticks (and 1 auto-attack under Disembowel).
2. You have just started attacking said target.

It's just very important to keep these things in mind when discussing Chaos Thrust v Full Thrust.

Third: Is it worth applying disembowel on Blaster's big add?

Fourth: Is it worth using Ring of Thorns (after Heavy Thrust) on Blaster's adds if I can hit 3 targets?

The person above is completely ignoring how this phase works. The add in the middle has far more health than the ones on the edges. Yes, it is absolutely optimal to be dropping RoT on the adds, but someone needs to be single-target attacking the middle one to kill it at the same time as the edge adds. What they said is all totally right.

5x100 = 500 (Ring of Thorns)
3x160 = 480 (Doom Spike)

However! A few things:

1. Be sure to burn a Geirskogul on three adds (pull off the middle a bit to hit it)
2. Be sure to hold Dragonfire Dive for the add spawn.
3. Be sure to use Jump, Mercy Stroke, and Leg Sweep on the center add.



And their response to 2 is very very important. Your DPS doesn't mean shit if you wipe. For example - I took a massive hit during Vortexer in a run where I was on the second rotation and had gotten no element passes yet. Our usual thunder soak (previous water) popped to Drainage, so I booked it across to grab the second Thunder, which meant I soaked the third one, too. We survived the fight and killed it so we could get back to A7 - and that's much more important than the 1500+ I was poised to get on that run.

That said - if your strategy includes Melee killing the goblin adds in A5S, you're no handling that mechanic properly. Ranged LB can catch both goblins and all the pigs. Caster LB is a lot trickier to target properly.