Advice for Dragoons in O5S?

[Rathael]

I was told that I would have to be hitting 5k to be considered good. Do you think it would be a good idea to save B4B solely for Nastronds? Speaking of nastronds, I think I do have three on hand whenever I use them. It's just a matter of can I use them? The second time I proc nastrond I can only really use one (maybe two) due to head on.

Depends on your gear. Doing over 4k DPS on the final phase of OS5 is decent and more than enough for clear it. If you're fully melded and above ilevel 350 with a 355 or greater weapon then you can reach and just about exceed 5k DPS on the final phase as DRG but it is very difficult if you get chosen for ghost tether with a badly-positioned saintly beam and have to waste up-time on limit-break.

I would argue that fine-tuned strategy guides are much less important than fine-tuning your general mechanics and execution of the rotation. Ask yourself:
- Have I used every action (except heavy thrust) with the heavy thrust buff?
- Did I cycle every combo correctly without breaking them with wrong actions?
- Is every single up-time GCD action I am using a queued action?
- Am I weaving OGCD actions between the next two GCD actions as soon as they become available?
- Do I weave OGCD actions early enough that they do not cause GCD actions to be delayed?
- Am I weaving 2 non-dive OGCD actions between GCD actions?
- Am I using sprint and Elusive jump to gap-close or escape later and get myself more up-time?
- Did I avoid pointless loss of up-time where I could have been in range?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, then you are playing close to perfectly with your rotation and it is unlikely that you have any skill or gameplay-related problems. In this case I wouldn't worry about your actual DPS numbers but more focus on just upgrading gear. I do not think fine-tuning strategies with guides will help as much as ironing out your basics. I do not use any particular advanced delaying strategies for most fights and my DPS is still highly competitive with even players above my ilevel with better weapons.

It's highly important that you do not miss a beat. As long as you have up-time, you should be queuing actions non-stop such that your GCD counter is always ticking. Weaving actions like jump and SSDive should not intefere with or delay your queued actions.

As has probably been mentioned in this thread somewhere, use Arm's Length to dodge the pushback ghost. Use it against demonic headlamp if you do not have a dive available and the front ghost box has been destroyed (if the front box is up it will block the pushback from headlamp for you anyway).

[Reilyn]

As for saving B4B for Nastrond, that's a bit reversed, you should be saving Nastrond for B4B, at least the 1st.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...h.fr8l511eqx5b
Optimization station>Geirskogul and Nastrond
Basically you delay your 1st Life by 30s so you exit your 1st Life with 3 Eyes into your 2nd Life right after. The guide explains it better than I can.

Guide isn't exactly clear on it. Is the only adjustment needed was to gierskogul before/after getting the 3rd eye depending on blood for blood/dragon gaze cooldown time remaining?
Also, what is the ideal time remaining on those cooldowns to indicate when to delay the life of the dragon phase?

[Aldagrate]

O6S is really the fight where knowing your rotation and optimizing really gives you more obvious results since there is very little downtime.

Yeah O6S is my favorite savage fight so far. And it probably will be period. My static will work on O7S tomorrow, and I'm really not looking forward to that, as this fight actually has positional skill bonuses for melee and I'm worried the boss will be all over the place.

[enthauptet]

Yeah O6S is my favorite savage fight so far. And it probably will be period. My static will work on O7S tomorrow, and I'm really not looking forward to that, as this fight actually has positional skill bonuses for melee and I'm worried the boss will be all over the place.

Make sure to use the true north skill, but it is not always up so sometimes you'll just have to deal with it ;_; depends on your group though if they want tight stacking for puddles and things.