Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

[Apaulcalypse]

How important is mercy stroke? I do some research and people say it's worthless others say your gimping yourself by not having it.

[Ayvar]

How important is mercy stroke? I do some research and people say it's worthless others say your gimping yourself by not having it.

As Arland said above it can be quite good, but it depends on the fight. On something like Titan, T4 or T5 it can be excellent since you have the opportunity to use it multiple times and it can be a nice boost to bursting down an add, conflag, or jail/heart. There have been times I've used 4-5 Mercy Strokes on any of these fights. Over an entire fight it won't equate to a huge amount of potency output, but when you really need to burn something quickly it can be a nice little boost, and all of those fights have the opportunity for multiple uses.

[Arland]

Mercy stroke is quite usefull. Why not take the extra amount of damage when a mob is under 20%? In fights like Twintania you will use mercy stroke a large number of times, with adds, conflags and last but not least twintania herself. You are actually gimping your DPS by not choosing that skill. Your damage won't go over the top, but it is a off GCD skill which boosts your actual dps, so why not? Don't use it as a way to heal yourself, use it as a finisher on things for extra dps.

I don't see any reason to not keep it.

[Ozpa]

Your damage won't go over the top, but it is a off GCD skill which boosts your actual dps, so why not?

WHAT?!? It is???? Holy shit I have to start using it LOL.

Oh 90s cd... excitement killed.

[Bossmoney]

90s cd + only can be used when target has less than 30% health left. So that means on most endgame bosses, you'll get to use it twice IF you're lucky. I mean yeah, sure, if you're being laser focused anal on picking abilities that will only boost your damage, yeah, Mercy Stroke fits that bill, technically. But I personally think it's pretty underwhelming and ultimately meaningless in 99% of situations. If you're raid group is wiping constantly and you're telling me 1 or 2 Mercy Strokes would've changed the outcome of it, there's much better ways to try to find ways to improve your group's performance than worrying about Mercy Stroke.

My personal take is, I'd rather have Mantra there. Now now, I know this is an unpopular opinion here (partly because I think no one likes the thought of leveling MNK to 42 to get this one ability, hell, I didn't really want to honestly lol). Yes, it is pretty mediocre without the MNK trait. Yes, it's an insanely high level requirement to get. Yes, it is totally NOT NECESSARY to get, unless your group is trying to min/max your group utility. These are all true.

I still think its benefits outweigh an attack you'll do once, maybe twice during a boss fight.

Our Coil group has a MNK, me as DRG, along with 2 BRDS, both which also have Mantra. Between the four of us, we cycle through our Mantra after each other, at 15 seconds each with a 2 min cooldown, that means every 2 minutes, for 1 minute, or half the time, the entire raid group is getting healed for 5% more, 20% more when the MNK does his. It's a small bonus, but it adds up over time and our healers have said for a fact, it's made raiding way easier since me and the two BRDs got Mantra recently.

Again, totally not necessary. You can beat Turn 5 coil and never pick up Mantra. But it's not about figuring out what's needed in an absolute sense, because neither Mercy Stroke nor Mantra fit that bill. It's what gives the most benefit. And imho Mantra's utility benefit > Mercy Stroke's DPS benefit by quite a fair margin.

However if you dread leveling up a MNK to 42 just to get this, then don't, trust me, you don't need it, I only did it because I'm crazy like that.

[Bossmoney]

On most boss fights, you'll be lucky to use Mercy Stroke more than once. Yeah sure, it's high potency and off the GCD, but taking up an entire cross skill slot for what is most likely ONE attack during a fight, two if you're lucky? Eh, I rather put Mantra in there if you got it. Yeah yeah, Mantra cross skill is pretty underwhelming at 5%. But it's a group buff, can be used on the entire party in AOE gather situations and/or used on cooldown asap which will be always useful for healers since as melee DPS, you will almost always be right next to the main/off tank.

[Apaulcalypse]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[SilverRhythm]

I like the guide, well composed but somehow I have my own preferences because it strictly depends on the situation we are in. I can't really explain but there are times when the ideal rotation cannot be used.

1) Regarding to Mercy stroke:
Thinking about the 5 cross skills you can use, Fracture, Foresight, Mercy Stroke, Bloodbath, Internal Release, Second Wind, Featherfoot and Mantra are the ones I feel most useful for a dragoon.

If I am given a choice to deliver full DPS, Fracture(100 potency with 20 potency/3s over duration for 18 seconds = 220 potency), Mercy Stroke (200 potency - only when below 20%), Internal Release is a must.

However thinking about Titan HM, BC(especially turn 4), Survival is still essential for a dragoon. Thus I decided to pick Fracture(which does more damage than Mercy and can be used anytime), IR, Second Wind, Foresight and Mantra(to help boost tanker's healing and my own second wind). Why I did not choose Mercy stroke, because its only 200 potency with a 90s CD and only able to cast when below 20%. I prefer to utilize a cross skill that can be usable at any time needed and boosts survival.

2) Regarding the rotation
Nice calculation on the rotation, but what if you meet bosses where the tankers practically cannot stand at one spot or switch tanking is needed, you going to have the boss facing in different directions in a nick of time? And what if the boss got agro'ed accidentally by a range/healer. This kind of situation, are you still going to try your very best to keep this rotation up at all time?

Are you willing to keep casting HT HT HT HT until it hits the damage boost to start the rotation? I feel its a very big waste of DPS that time. You might as well if you need the boost of damage, go for B4B first, then FT VT TT for first burst till the boss is at a stable position.


3) HT or Disembowel?

If you have 2 bards in your group, Disembowel can practically assist to boost their piercing damage onto the debuffed target by 15%. Will you still try to focus on getting HT on first or help the team quick with a Disembowel so that we can DPS the boss down faster? My preference is go for Disembowel ASAP. The solo 10% HT boost is nothing compared to 3 players having a quick boost of 15% while there is the opportunity to cast it.


4) My starting rotation if the boss stands at a stable spot.

HT --> B4B --> ID --> Disem --> CT --> Phletom --> IR --> TT --> Power Surge --> VT --> Life Surge --> TT --> Jump and then its just nice that HT and B4B buff ends to deal this rotation. Am not really good at maths but as I know I managed to give the boss 2 DOTS skill, with FT (1k+ damage crit ) with Jump (chance of another 1k+ damage crit) this starting rotation was a great help to me. In condition the player is able to non-stop clicking because time is very short for the HT and B4B buff.

Why I did this rotation?

HT is a GCD skill, there will be the usual GCD timer. I don't like to see my character standing idle just to wait to cast ID. So I went for B4B.

Once ID is casted, I realized my other GCD skill is already ready. The casting animation for ID, Disem, CT is long enough that you can cast the next GCD skill consecutively.

After Phletom, you realized that there is a short pause, use a non-GCD buff Internal Release for this is the right time. You have B4B, HT buff on and Disem on boss ready for a big blast. Then go TT, and without waiting for GCD timer, go Power Surge. Then VT, Life Surge, FT (BAM 1k+ damage with my current gear setup). And without wasting any second after FT, press the Jump (non-GCD skill, still buffed with B4B, IR, HT and Disem) BAM for another 1k+ crit damage if hit.


5) After Jump,

Use Fracture --> Leg Sweep --> HT --> Dragondive --> ID --> Disem and .....

Just wish to share my starting rotation to everyone Hope it helps.

WARNING: you might agro the boss by accident, and you may not wanna include Spineshatter or Leg Sweep for Ifrit boss HM.

[EasymodeX]

Nice calculation on the rotation, but what if you meet bosses where the tankers practically cannot stand at one spot or switch tanking is needed, you going to have the boss facing in different directions in a nick of time? And what if the boss got agro'ed accidentally by a range/healer. This kind of situation, are you still going to try your very best to keep this rotation up at all time?

This is a skill question and therefore has a skill answer: if you're good, you won't spend a half dozen GCDs trying to get your HT off. The better you are, the more you will minimize missed flanks due to boss casting / aggro failure.

[Sir_Maxwell]

4) My starting rotation if the boss stands at a stable spot.

HT --> B4B --> ID --> Disem --> CT --> Phletom --> IR --> TT --> Power Surge --> VT --> Life Surge --> TT --> Jump and then its just nice that HT and B4B buff ends to deal this rotation. Am not really good at maths but as I know I managed to give the boss 2 DOTS skill, with FT (1k+ damage crit ) with Jump (chance of another 1k+ damage crit) this starting rotation was a great help to me. In condition the player is able to non-stop clicking because time is very short for the HT and B4B buff.

With regards to your opening rotation, it's the same one as Easymodes in the op, although your timing of ogcds is off. His opener is a few pages back but it's somthing like:

Ht-bfb-id-ir-dis-sweep-ct-ps-phleb-jump-tt-ssd-vt-ls-ft-dfd

Only small detail I see wrong with yours is that ir crit chance is "wasted" by using life surge when it's up