Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

[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.