recommendation for single-target dps handling downtime well?

[RylaBee]

I’d recommend samurai, unlike mnk and drg it has nothing like greased lightning or blood of the dragon to maintain (or lose during phase changes), unlike nin it has no long recast debuffs that are wasted if the boss goes invulnerable, it has burst phases but since it has no damage buffs like internal release or blood for blood it’s no big deal if you can’t finish it and when the boss does leave the field you have a move to build kenki while you wait meaning the boss leaving actually helps you.

Thx, that sounds more reasonable, will give it a shot next.
Well, I already got DRG to 61^^ (and I do like the combat animations overall).

I think on DRG, designers got too much in love with they own cleverness and all the interconnected mechanics, mistaking that for fun.
Can always hope, they make some rework eventually.

[Selova]

Snip.

Dragoon really isn't that bad. Once you Learn how all your abilities flow together it's rotation is incredibly fun. Since HW the reduced the cd of botd quite a bit and once you get the trait at 65 that let's you use both fang and claw and wheeling thrust back to back it's even easier to maintain it than before and once you start your rotation you shouldnt ever lose botd. The only other thing that you're doing is weaving in both your jumps and mirage dives in between your attacks and keeping up your HT buff. Id say stick with it, Dragoon has been my main since ARR and it's currently in the best spot it's ever been in terms of performance and fun factor. Cheers.

[Grimoire-M]

Bard here. They don't have issues with downtime unless Raging Strikes comes up right before it (So far only Exdeath in O4S has really forced this scenario, and I'll hold it to line up with the next TA window) Usually I'll pop Paeon to lead into any downtime if I know I'll want a different song coming out of it. It's not a good song to be in, but it is extra dps to just pop it if you're gonna waste enough song time anyways, since they are 100 potency each. Again, I only seem to encounter these issues in O4S.

The main thing with them is to track your party's raid cooldowns because snapshotting your DoTs with their raid buffs is worth a massive amount of dps, as is lining up Refresh/BV/Foes with one of their buffs.

Also Troubadour management is trickier than it seems. Think about what you want to lead in with after each invul phase in order to get the right song at the right time, but keep in mind the duration lets you take it through the next song or cover multiple mechanics. It's certainly possible to line up WM Trou with half of the Algamests to ease the healing burden, and it's trivial to get WM Trou to cover everything from Spellblade Holy all the way to Dimensional Wave during the first phase in O3S too, as some examples.

Ballad Trou is good only if your healers are aware of/need it, and it can kill you in O4S due to White Hole. Not proud of making that mistake myself.

[Llugen]

What I mean is if you're delaying your spineshatter dive by like 20 seconds then its a loss and you might as well just move, but if it's like 1-2 GCDs of delay to save it, then save it.

In general you don't want to sit on your cooldowns especially long ones, but if you find yourself using the dive mere seconds before you need to gap close then the difference was worth it. Just don't sit on it for 10+ seconds.