[Stormblood] [Dragoon Rotation] COME ON AND SLAM

[SunnyHirose]

Well, in HW, you had the 90s cooldown so the sync should've been somewhat natural. Never even considered it, to be honest. (I should state my bias that I was a staunch opponent of holding BfB in ARR. And to this day, I still am biased towards opportunity cost avoidance > marginal gain.) Are we now faced with an era of pooling BfB with BL?

First, I want a fuzzy estimate of Litany interpreted as a damage buff. At 20% natural rate, around 2000 crit (similar to around 1000 crit for the same in HW... it's almost like they plan this stuff!), the multiplier should be 1.55x. So, 1+0.2·0.55=1.11 naturally, and 1.1925 while under Litany. So, interpreted as an averaged-out damage buff, it's 1.1925/1.11=1.074. Pretty close to an eye-ball guess of 1+0.15·0.5=1.075, unlike HW (where at 20% rate it would be ~1.080).

(1.15·1.074·20+1.15·8·20+1.074·3·20+480)/720=1.046 synced naturally (it takes 12 minutes!)
(1.15·1.074·20+1.15·20+140)/180=1.043 manually synced

In other words, I wouldn't intentionally hold to put these together. But I also wouldn't necessarily complain if it were forced to happen... or if we had 160s Battle Litany just to make most of our teammates bemoan the timing ;D

I don't know why or how but sometimes FT is up in my rotation but Life Surge is still 2-3s away from coming off CD. Tempted to wait for it or use it on a 5th, but what is going on...?

It's not a situation I've run into before. I'll talk about something else, perhaps the reason why I can't corroborate: I've pretty much erred on the side of clipping into FT slightly when a Life Surge problem comes up! For years!

I've gotten away with it despite how counterintuitive it is; isn't clipping bad? Yes. Very. But the problem is, that doesn't hold so strictly when there is a fairly immediate interplay with your GCDs. It's better considered a part of the GCD subsystem, kinda.

? (/ (+ 180 190 230 270 290 390 150 240 440 290 390) 27.0)
113.333336 ; this might be your rotation, ish.
? (/ (+ 180 190 230 270 290 390 150 240 (* 440 1.25) 290 390) 27.25)
116.33028 ; LS with a really really bad 0.5s clip on FT but smooth for the second cycle
? (/ (+ 180 190 230 270 290 390 150 240 440 290 (* 390 1.25)) 27.0)
116.94444 ; smooth all the way through but you wait for 5th step
? (/ (+ 180 190 230 270 290 390 150 240 (* 440 1.25) 290 390) 27.1)
116.97417 ; LS with 200ms clip, which most people would notice

So uh... yeah. Maybe this is bad, but in that case, "ahm bad".

[aleph_null]

(1.15·1.074·20+1.15·8·20+1.074·3·20+480)/720=1.046 synced naturally (it takes 12 minutes!)
(1.15·1.074·20+1.15·20+140)/180=1.043 manually synced

In other words, I wouldn't intentionally hold to put these together. But I also wouldn't necessarily complain if it were forced to happen... or if we had 160s Battle Litany just to make most of our teammates bemoan the timing ;D

Hmm, I guess unless BfB is naturally shifted due to mechanics or phase changes I should just use litany on cd. Thanks a lot, that was insightful. Also yeah 160s litany would make everyone lose their minds lol.

[NineFouryFive]

And at what point do I do a chaos dunk?

[mugenwalker]

Can we talk about why DRGs STILL have 5% on piercing? I understand it was a nerf during Creator, but why is slashing still 10% then? It is far more potent than piercing. DRGs are the only melee without 10% resistance. YOSHI PLS

[LiquidSwordz]

Does anyone know the dps difference between both body pieces. At first I thought the time body was BiS because of how good direct hit is and the buff to determination but I'm seeing the savage body being BiS.

[Nominous]

Can we talk about why DRGs STILL have 5% on piercing? I understand it was a nerf during Creator, but why is slashing still 10% then? It is far more potent than piercing. DRGs are the only melee without 10% resistance. YOSHI PLS

It is not more potent than piercing.

When you look at Slashing, there's 5 Jobs that have that damage type. However, only 2 lack the ability to provide it for themselves (DRK/PLD). The other 3 (SAM/NIN/WAR) have the debuff as a required component in their rotations. Simply put, that means PLD and DRK are the only real beneficiaries of the debuff. The balance in the Slashing debuff is mostly in that multiple Jobs bring it, and the benefiting Jobs are guaranteed to be in the party (at least 1 of 2 only if you bring a WAR). It can't hurt the meta because of the nature of party setup. While the percentage is higher, those who you're bringing Slashing debuff for do less damage, so the rDPS contribution is lower than piercing.

Piercing is done by 3 Jobs, and only 1 (DRG) provides piercing. That's the first problem. If anyone's to benefit from Piercing, it forces you to lock at least 2 of 4 slots. And if both BRD and MCH are in good spots, offering great DPS and/or utility, you've locked 3. Overall rDPS contribution is higher, due to MCH/BRD damage being higher. The potential it has for stifling variety in party composition is too great, because any buff to Piercing brings us closer to DRG/MCH/BRD meta. Buffs to Slashing certainly change the overall output of each individual Slashing Job, but it wouldn't affect the overall party composition as much as Disembowel could alone.

Coming from a DRG main since 2.0, dabbling in other melee. It needed toned down. More specifically, all of these debuffs need replaced with something a little more interactive or interesting.

[SunnyHirose]

And at what point do I do a chaos dunk?

The first time will be an accident and nearly everyone who survives it will hold a grudge against you for the rest of your life. Also the Deactivated Ultimate B-Ball mount will drop and you will roll 99. Riding a bouncing Allagan orange into the sunset, you casually remark once again that you are not a role model, despite any indications to the contrary.

Does anyone know the dps difference between both body pieces. At first I thought the time body was BiS because of how good direct hit is and the buff to determination but I'm seeing the savage body being BiS.

1) There is a lot of misinformation out there concerning the relative merits of DH vs. CH. This is not my first rodeo, though, so I waited to see what the choices were before drawing any conclusions. Even though I'm basically looking at the same formulas as anyone else....

2) The BiS is just a guess. But I am a good guesser, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, recent investigations show that I do actually have to do the thing I didn't want to have to, which is to write a computer program to find the real one via exhaustive search.

3) Specific gear pieces don't actually do more or less damage; the difference is only accurate in context of the rest of the set. Plus, with accuracy requirements removed and TP relaxed greatly, there aren't even those few pieces that are nigh on unusable like there used to be.

Secondaries matter so little that the difference between that BiS guess and going all Lost Allagan + Genji spear + Genji ring is about 0.6%. Just the weapon and one of the rings is the discernible difference between a raider's and a non-raider's potential DPS, once upgrade items start being available outside raids (happens in odd-numbered patches).

[Frowny]

Yea, seems min-maxing right now gains very little. Using a new calculator that was released on reddit (holy numbers!), shifting 250 DH and 250 DET to crit is only a .22% increase. Still messing around a bit but the 4S chestpiece, if you're shooting for BiS, seems like the good choice.

[aleph_null]

Slightly off-topic, Momo recently posted a dragoon guide which covers a lot of optimization tips, including fight specific uptime optimizations, which I found pretty helpful: https://youtu.be/E-tWGBZZ-5E. I hope Sunny doesn't mind me posting this here, since this thread is the most active 4.x dragoon discussion thread.

[SunnyHirose]

I think it is on topic, thanks for sharing. It is pretty spot-on from a "this is what you do if you are Robocop" perspective. Which is the complete opposite angle from what I'm trying to take, of course; the further your and your raid group's performance is from Momo's (it is a very skilled melee player and a very skilled team), the less I feel that should be the concern. So surely I've made myself a laughingstock in some Discord chat or two, but when it comes to very different recommendations, it's really not about whether the legit speedrunner or some sweaty goonlord on the OF with too many spreadsheets open (and isn't raiding this season) is more credible. It's different goals.

For instance, my sample opener is not there to take you to the top of FFLogs or prevent any awkwardness; it's there for learning the job. So you get to the unavoidable and common BfB -> FT/WC check -> Geirskogul -> Mirage check -> Nastrond sequence almost ASAP, instead of hesitating about whether such-and-such really the best place to BfB (but note the guide never says that, it is rather my hope that one tries it out and starts internalizing that sequence without my input). And where Jump gets awkward, it's at that time you're staring the actual cost in the face, rather than eating it in the opener. Hiding it can be optimal in many situations, in fact, but from the emphasis I'm trying to place, I file that under "clever gambit", not "should do".

In economic terms, the "cost" of something is what you could have done with the same resource (time, for most DPS activity). But also in economic terms, your options to exercise are limited, and further limited by your awareness of those options. So I'm trying to look at it as a problem of calling the shots as they come, and that must give you different conclusions from the problem of fitting the most actions into a time window, aligning your buffs for one last hurrah as a fight closes, etc.

If I did have a criticism: Some of the stuff in the first section doesn't sound factually correct, e.g. you can just hold that Geirskogul for Dragon Sight, no biggie, but maybe there are different opener considerations that are being taken as a given there.

If I had praise: Momo has masterful uptime, observe it closely. I also seem to recall a reddit comment that was good enough to be a guide on its own, but I can't find it now and I may just be misattributing it in my head.