Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

[xyaie]

I remember you ...

and i you.

Was actually discussing your findings with stormfall until i saw your name. (you talked to him about zerker stuff in skype apparently back in the tera days).

I need to make a spreadsheet though to figure out exactly how long of a fight it will have to be for TP to even be a problem. I'd imagine only a primal or big fate boss would you ever consider TP, and with a bard ive yet to have any real TP issues at times when im not AoEing. Of course, I'm not 50 yet.

[EasymodeX]

Yeah I haven't looked at that yet; a rough estimate is slightly over 26 TP per second spent for single target pew pew. IIRC in-combat TP regen was 30 every 3s, so 10 TP/s, but my memory is fuzzy. I think I saw it tick up at a different rate in a later fight.

Invig is +500 per 180. Going to assume you frontload Invig in some fashion.

So it's basically 1500 / (26 - 10) = 94 seconds* of constant single target pew pew with no skill speed before you hit 0. After you hit 0 you basically gain 2300t every 180 seconds, which funds 2300/26 = 89s worth of spam. That's 50% of the 180s, so you spend half the time autoattacking. Then, throw in bardstuff for which I have no idea how much it actually does.

* 63 seconds without Invig, which sounds vaguely right for the dungeon I did yesterday.

Sidenote: assuming bard buffs double your TP regen on average, you'd basically have infinite TP. If it increases regen by 50% avg, then you'd last 136 seconds at full throttle, and then run at ~70% spam ~30 AA-only afterwards.

Edit: Small changes in estimated TP per sec make a moderate difference -- Phleg and Heavy Thrust use a bit more than the Thrust x3 and ID-Disembowel-CT combo. Assuming 29 spent per second, that's 79s full burn then 45% spammed. At 50% bard buff, that's 107s full burn then 61% spam.

Edit2: I think 29/s is probably slightly low so real burn rates will be higher, but real fights will have missing contact time where you don't spend. That part probably evens out.

[xyaie]

hmm, i thought i got more TP back than that passively, easily could have been mistaking.

Im still thinking skill speed is going to be a big thing for us. While 94 seconds of uninterupted pew pewing will leave me TP starved, melee's usual "punishment" is that we lose DPS for having to move out of red circles. With enough skill speed (would change depending on the boss) we would be able to blow our damage/rotation/tp while on the boss, and the time spent off the boss/hiding would simply be "recover", auto attack being the only loss.

[Narcariel]

hmm, i thought i got more TP back than that passively, easily could have been mistaking.

Im still thinking skill speed is going to be a big thing for us. While 94 seconds of uninterupted pew pewing will leave me TP starved, melee's usual "punishment" is that we lose DPS for having to move out of red circles. With enough skill speed (would change depending on the boss) we would be able to blow our damage/rotation/tp while on the boss, and the time spent off the boss/hiding would simply be "recover", auto attack being the only loss.

You make a good point. My initial thought was to toss Skill Speed by the wayside due to its proclivity for TP starvation and lack of increase to auto-attack damage. After watching a few of the level 50 bosses there is an argument to be made for its benefits with the TP-recovery downtime between opportunities to dps.

[Ayvar]

lets say str is an EP, ill set everything equal to it:
WD: 10.541
Str: 1
det: .193
crit: .222
*SS: .191

Did you manage to confirm these numbers by the way? Cause this will be extremely useful to me, but you sounded a bit shaky when you first posted them.

Also the more I play Dragoon, the more the bug where the dotted line highlight doesn't show up on the next skill in a combo pisses me off. Especially when it happens with Impulse Drive because I can't tell if the mob shifted and I missed it, or if the highlight is just bugged.

[xyaie]

Did you manage to confirm these numbers by the way? Cause this will be extremely useful to me, but you sounded a bit shaky when you first posted them.

I rechecked my math and never found a flaw. from the data i have available they seem accurate (shy of skill speed for the reasons posted). i just dinged 50, but work the next 6 days in a row :-/ ill probably have more tested later.

[Crescent_Dragoon]

Also the more I play Dragoon, the more the bug where the dotted line highlight doesn't show up on the next skill in a combo pisses me off. Especially when it happens with Impulse Drive because I can't tell if the mob shifted and I missed it, or if the highlight is just bugged.

Yeah, unfortunately I've found that the positioning for the Impulse > Disembowel combo is marginally small, and thus irritating.

[Ayvar]

Yeah, unfortunately I've found that the positioning for the Impulse > Disembowel combo is marginally small, and thus irritating.

There are actually a surprising number of bugs/oversights with Dragoon combat, and once you're comfortable with your rotations they just get more and more annoying because you're doing things properly and they're screwing it up for you. Lately I've found that spamming an off-GCD ability can sometimes prevent the casting of a regular ability. So if I hit True Thrust, then start spamming Leg Sweep, sometimes the Leg Sweep will just go off and prevent the True Thrust from completing. Also the fact that we're forced to spam our abilities, but the gold highlight you get on your buttons from spamming them covers up the dotted line highlight for combo moves. Probably the most frustrating is the partial animations that play even when you're out of range on a mob, so you think your ability went off, but actually you were too far away but the animation still went off.

And then there's the Jumps...

[Brynmor]

...

However, either way dropping Fracture probably won't result in much of a DPS loss overall... Fracture seems to be Not Worth It.

...

After the testing I did I think you are correct. I was already on the fence about using Fracture but after learning that the DoT does not benefit from Disembowel I think only using it as GCD filler or with CDs popped, as you suggested, is likely the way to go. More anecdotally, after playing around with DPSing on a targeting dummy without using Fracture I was able to execute the entire Full Thrust combo much more often.

On the subject of GCD fillers, what about Feint? Obviously it's not going to be the highest DPS ability you could use on a free GCD but I believe tanks are incapable of inflicting Slow and tossing it up on a boss could be helpful to the group as a whole. I don't think we should aim to keep 100% slow uptime but I think using Feint on the occasional free GCD may be worth considering.

[xyaie]

feint, in my opinion, is a "when needed" kind of ability. crafting the perfect rotation is pretty much a combat dummy only thing. There will be times when you have to move away from a boss, or he becomes immune, or you have to blow a defensive/healing CD rather than an offensive off the GCD ability, or feint/save stun for when its needed rather than worry about DPS. I would never -personally- include feint in my rotation, but would not hesitate to use it when needed.

to me, the idea is that you want to get as close to the perfect rotation for the entire fight as you can, knowing that its rare you will ever be 100%. So there isnt as much a point in having that perfect rotation that you strive including those things that pull you away from your maximum DPS.