[Stormblood] [Dragoon Rotation] COME ON AND SLAM

[Jonnycbad]

(Heavy Thrust) strength potion**
(Impulse Drive) Blood of the Dragon + Battle Litany
(Disembowel) Dragon Sight + Blood for Blood
(Chaos Thrust) Jump
(Wheeling Thrust) Mirage Dive + Geirskogul
(Fang and Claw) Spineshatter Dive
(True Thrust) Dragonfire Dive
(Vorpal Thrust) Mirage Dive + Life Surge
(Full Thrust)
(Fang and Claw)
(Wheeling Thrust)

Why not SSD before Jump in this rotation? SSD has a longer cooldown, isn't it better to get its timer rolling ASAP? Or is Jump's potency better in the long run?

[SunnyHirose]

I may be looking at this wrong but, wouldn't we still want to use the infusion before chaos thrust, just like in the past. With the duration being 30 seconds, and a gcd of around 2.4, and even technically should work at 2.5, you would be able to buff chaos thrust with the potion twice, and chaos thrust is still by far our highest potency skill. If my napkin math is right, the downside of this is that BfB and DS don't get the second lance mastery in opener, falling off the global before, but I would think the second chaos thrust under infusion would outweigh this? Thoughts?

I think that's a good point. The problem with all such questions is that you're always gonna lose something--no free lunch, as many economists say--and the focusing question is, "what do you lose?"

I am going to start by guessing: In the case of "Infusion of Strength", the STR cap on an HQ potion is 137. That's really low. Let's say you're around i310 so your STR (with no party bonus) is approaching 2200. Assuming Attack Power is a scalar in the potency->damage equation, potion is therefore ~6.2% damage bonus and will only get lower as a percentage with better gear.

So, an extra 6.2% on a full Chaos Thrust snapshot is ~38.44 to gain (but we expect to clip that a little), and an extra BfB on 5th tier of combo is 58.5 gain. It's clearly in a different ballpark, though of course I must admit this is not the whole picture.

If the real situation is as your question poses (I haven't checked), then it's not better in the short term. But what I like to do for looking at short term is to put add up every skill and buff on a spreadsheet and just add up all the potency instead of trying to look at just the start and end. Right now what I have for that... hasn't been touched since ARR (heh), but it's something most spreadsheet warriors could replicate no sweat. If no one else does, I'll get around to it eventually.

Why not SSD before Jump in this rotation? SSD has a longer cooldown, isn't it better to get its timer rolling ASAP? Or is Jump's potency better in the long run?

Jump not only has a higher potency, it has a shorter cooldown. That has been the reason to prioritize it over Spineshatter Dive since ARR; if you do not know when the fight will end, the odds will be stacked so that you lose the lower potency/time, not the higher.

It is also very fortunate that 4.05 adjustments make it a decent timing to use Jump right after Chaos Thrust, because the positional is the same as Wheeling Thrust and having to change positional and Jump in the same 2 seconds feels just awful. Even if True North changes that dynamic just a little....

[Jonnycbad]

Jump not only has a higher potency, it has a shorter cooldown. That has been the reason to prioritize it over Spineshatter Dive since ARR; if you do not know when the fight will end, the odds will be stacked so that you lose the lower potency/time, not the higher.

It is also very fortunate that 4.05 adjustments make it a decent timing to use Jump right after Chaos Thrust, because the positional is the same as Wheeling Thrust and having to change positional and Jump in the same 2 seconds feels just awful. Even if True North changes that dynamic just a little....

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

[Thandronen]

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

I played with both options last night and I agree with you that SSD seems to line up better with everything else when used first instead of Jump. Curious to see what the parsed out differences are. I understand that Jump is 50 more potency than SSD and so it is the better of the two to receive ability buffs more frequently but I felt like there was a longer wait time to get to that last Mirage needed to spring LotD and Nastrond.

Can someone point out the numbers on how detrimental it may or may not be to go with SSD first over Jump in the rotation?

[SunnyHirose]

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

If we're talking more or fewer Mirage Dives sooner, then I suppose that's correct. I'm thinking this is irrelevant in the scheme of what Mirage Dives do for Life of the Dragon; the 30 second periodicity on Jump/Spineshatter clustering means you will often be letting something or other stew for a bit, usually sitting around waiting for BfB.

I get that there is a huge feel-bad factor in watching Jumps keep getting later and later as they get delayed by GCDs twice as often. This has been a problem since ARR, but at least we used to be able to hit a point where you just Spineshatter before Jump is ready. In light of Mirage Dives, the dynamic may have changed, particularly in realistic timeframes; I will need to see it in simulation. But for now I choose to err on the side of what was more obviously beneficial in the past ("the past is vast"). Please forgive my knee-jerk reaction, I should remember such things may turn out to be in error due to unaccounted factors. I will not deny that this makes the first LotD feel a bit less roughshod, and that may be the only LotD you can count on in some fights.

Can someone point out the numbers on how detrimental it may or may not be to go with SSD first over Jump in the rotation?

The difference is more philosophical than anything. We're talking about roughly 8% or less of our total damage here, so only a major difference to this dynamic wouldn't be hidden by other factors.

If it is a few seconds till the end of a fight and you have two cooldowns, you pick the one that does the most damage in itself for the most DPS; few would argue against that. The theory behind Jump > SSD where Jump has both the greater damage and the shorter cooldown (so we don't have to consider a shift in priorities), is that it would be worth pushing SSD back >2 seconds to gain every 1 second something would delay Jump: ((250*1.3+200)/30)/((200*1.3+200)/60)=2.283. This "expected value", a simple means of abstracting the worth of each without regards to whether you can expect to get that value ("expected utility"). It relies on a fairly safe and reasonable--but not absolute--assumption that there is a probability of that scenario.

But here's something else to consider: openers can and should be adapted to fights where necessary. There are certainly no Opener Police coming to arrest you for doing it wrong, and in the past it was sometimes beneficial to plan out gap closers.

In fact, you could make some serious theoretical boo-boos and come out very high percentile on FFLogs if you (for example) have better uptime than anyone else. I strongly believe there are such living aberrations playing the game (in truth I have some particular players in mind). And I'm thinking, kinda like some people can live on <5 hours of sleep every day, these people cannot be the model for most others to imitate, no matter how nice and open and honest they may be about what they do; it just works for them and life isn't fair. Likewise, a heavily rational player like my forum-posting persona should not necessarily be the model for such an experiential player to copy. Most people will fall somewhere in between, including myself when I do play.

[Ogulbuk]

But here's something else to consider: openers can and should be adapted to fights where necessary. There are certainly no Opener Police coming to arrest you for doing it wrong, and in the past it was sometimes beneficial to plan out gap closers.

In those rare cases where I tank or heal for 2 dragoons (have still to see this since, but it's just a mater of time) it is hilariously sad to see both stick to their rotation and both throw Battle Litany on top of eachother... So yes, adapting to many things, even the group composition can change the use of some cooldowns.

[Thandronen]

If we're talking more or fewer Mirage Dives sooner, then I suppose that's correct. I'm thinking this is irrelevant in the scheme of what Mirage Dives do for Life of the Dragon; the 30 second periodicity on Jump/Spineshatter clustering means you will often be letting something or other stew for a bit, usually sitting around waiting for BfB.

I really appreciate your open-minded mentality on these types of things... it's refreshing to hear someone else say there's more than one way to reach the objective, etc. I'll continue to experiment using both depending on the situation/fight and report any new findings back here!

[AlereRaeder]

I know potency is better on Jump and has a shorter CD, but am I wrong in thinking having the longer SSD on cool down sooner is better for getting more Mirage Dives or is it irrelevant?

Think about it like this: if you know an exampled fight will be over in 10 minutes. While having SSD on a 60 second cooldown, you'll get at least 9 Spineshatter dives. On the same fight you'll be getting at least 19 Jumps.

(I think this is how potency per second works right?)
Jump's potency before buffs is 250 with a 30s CD meaning. 250/30s = 8.43 potency/s
SSD's potency before buffs is 200 with a 60s CD. 200/60s = 3.33 potency/s

Every second you don't use Jump is a 8.43 potency loss versus losing 3.33 potency in that second not using SSD.

[Frowny]

In a B4B window, you can easily squeeze both in. The only time PPS would come into play, I'd think, is if a buff is going to fall off soon which requires prioritizing. Yes, Jump is more potent but when we look at possibly opening a 320 potency move sooner... perhaps shifting SSD isn't a bad idea?

[TheKingSlayer]

In a B4B window, you can easily squeeze both in. The only time PPS would come into play, I'd think, is if a buff is going to fall off soon which requires prioritizing. Yes, Jump is more potent but when we look at possibly opening a 320 potency move sooner... perhaps shifting SSD isn't a bad idea?

While it may be a small potency loss, I like SSD and Geirk early in the opener. It lines up better with 2nd SSD (4th eye) and Gierk coming off CD with in 6 secs of each other, this allows less time having to wait for Geirk to come back up to pop LoTD. Just a QoL sorta thing.