How to Dragoon per Second: A DPS Paradigm

[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.