Dragoon DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Endwalker 6.5

This page details the ins and outs of the Dragoon rotation at level 90. The general idea of the Dragoon rotation is to perform a simple "backbone" of ten weaponskills in sequence while weaving your jump and dragon-themed abilities in-between their cooldown spins. When you perform the rotation properly, everything slots neatly in its place, and you feel a nice payoff as you ebb and flow between Blood and Life of the Dragon.

The backbone of the rotation revolves around two combos, which we often refer to as the Chaotic Spring combo (1) and the Heavens' Thrust combo (2):

1. True Thrust → Disembowel → Chaotic Spring → Wheeling Thrust → Fang and Claw
2. True Thrust → Vorpal Thrust → Heavens' Thrust → Fang and Claw → Wheeling Thrust

Disembowel applies a passive +10% damage buff called Power Surge, and Chaotic Spring applies a powerful damage-over-time (dot) effect. If that dot effect lasts longer than 15 seconds, the first combo deals more total damage than the second, assuming Power Surge doesn't fall off. However, due to the timer of 24 seconds on the dot and 30 seconds on the buff, we have plenty of time to perform the second combo without losing uptime on either effect. As such, our basic rotation of ten GCDs is simply the Chaotic Spring combo followed by the Heavens' Thrust combo.

Of note, upon completion of either of these five-hit combos, you gain the Draconian Fire buff, which wholesale replaces True Thrust on your hotbar with Raiden Thrust. Each time you use Raiden Thrust, you gain a stack of Firstminds' Focus, which allows you to execute Wyrmwind Thrust once you have collected two stacks. As such, you want to always try to complete your current combo rather than abort it to restart with True Thrust. Most content in the game should be completed with only a singular use of True Thrust in its entire duration. This is because of the 30-second timer on all combo actions and the fact that the only way to break your combo is if you press a combo starter ( True Thrust or Doom Spike) without the Draconian Fire buff. As such, mid-rotation, your ten-hit combo should always be:

1. Raiden Thrust - 280 potency
2. Disembowel - 250 potency (Power Surge)
3. Chaotic Spring - 300 potency (45p damage-over-time)
4. Wheeling Thrust - 300 potency
5. Fang and Claw - 400 potency
6. Raiden Thrust - 280 potency
7. Vorpal Thrust - 280 potency
8. Heavens' Thrust - 480 potency
9. Fang and Claw - 300 potency
10. Wheeling Thrust - 400 potency

Often overlooked in the Dragoon skills is the trait we learn at level 64, Lance Mastery. This improves your Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust, specifically when used back-to-back, as the trait allows. It is why the fifth hit of the combo is listed here as 400 potency instead of the listed 300 in the skill's tooltip.

Lastly, if you are ever forced to disengage from your target for an extended period of time to where your global weaponskill recast will refresh, you can utilize Piercing Talon to pad the downtime and minimize your losses.

Like all Melee DPS Jobs in FFXIV, Dragoon has positional requirements on several of its weaponskill actions. In order to maximize your damage, you must be on the correct side of the boss when you arrive at these points in the rotation. Thankfully, it flows rather nicely, so you can be on the rear for five GCDs in a row, then switch to the flank for the next five.

1. Rear Positionals: Chaotic Spring and Wheeling Thrust
2. Flank Positionals: Fang and Claw

Dragoon has a wide variety of off-global abilities that they need to weave between their weaponskills with precision in order to maximize their damage output. Thankfully, the cooldowns on all of these abilities align quite nicely with one another to create something of a rotation in their own right, which overlays on the weaponskill rotation to create the complete Dragoon rotation. Once you have committed the weaponskill/GCD rotation to muscle memory, you just let that flow in order while focusing on maintaining uptime on all of your off-global abilities.

These should always be pressed on cooldown as soon as possible. If you follow the recommended opener listed below and maintain their cooldowns perfectly, they will remain in the same order during every burst window.

1. High Jump - 30s
2. Mirage Dive - 1s (Only available once within 15s after using High Jump)
3. Geirskogul - 30s
4. Spineshatter Dive - 60s (Two charges)
5. Dragonfire Dive - 120s
6. Nastrond - 10s (Only available in Life of the Dragon)
7. Stardiver - 30s (Only available in Life of the Dragon)
8. Wyrmwind Thrust - 10s (Unlocked after two Raiden Thrust uses)

These should always be pressed as soon as they are available, after the timings listed in the opener in the next section. Each one will enhance the power of the following attacks for a short duration, and, as such, we try to pack as many of the prior damage-dealing actions into each window as possible.

1. Life Surge buffs one weaponskill to be a critical hit. 40s cooldown, two charges.
2. Lance Charge +10% damage - 60s cooldown, 20s duration.
3. Dragon Sight +10% damage - 120s cooldown, 20s duration. Also buffs your chosen target by 5%.
4. Battle Litany +10% crit rate - 120s cooldown, 15s duration. Also buffs your allies.

Dragon Sight also provides the same benefits as True North for its full 20s duration. This buff allows you to ignore all positional requirements of your actions during your larger buff windows, which makes the opener and each subsequent even-minute burst window substantially easier to pull off.

Life Surge has the most nuance out of the buff actions. Everything else is just used whenever it's ready. Which weaponskill you should use it on becomes rather obvious, however, when you look at the potency breakdown and factor in the above buffs. The only reasonable options, because Life Surge doesn't affect damage-over-time, are Heavens' Thrust and one of the fifth hits of either combo, assuming it lands on the proper positional. The full list of the various circumstances are as follows. These numbers ignore Power Surge because it is assumed to always be active.

1. Potency: 580.8 - Heavens' Thrust with both +10% buffs
2. Potency: 528 - Heavens' Thrust with just Lance Charge
3. Potency: 484 - Fifth Combo Hit with both +10% buffs
4. Potency: 480 - Heavens' Thrust with neither +10% buff
5. Potency: 440 - Fifth Combo Hit with just Lance Charge
6. Potency: 400 - Fifth Combo Hit with neither +10% buff

As such, you almost exclusively will be pairing Life Surge with Heavens' Thrust. The cooldown of the ability and the fact it has two charges means you can almost always use one under buffs without wasting a usage. So long as that lands on Heavens' Thrust or a fifth combo hit specifically during your even-minute burst windows, you want to hold for burst windows. Otherwise, using it on an unbuffed Heavens' Thrust is worth it, but only to avoid overcapping the cooldown.

Of note, as of patch 6.2, you gain an additional amount of bonus damage on your Life Surge Weaponskill when used while under the effects of Battle Litany. As such, you do want to absolutely prioritize a double-buffed fifth combo hit that also catches Battle Litany over unbuffed Heavens' Thrust uses.

Mastering Life of the Dragon can be rather difficult, and it is arguably the most complicated part of the entire Dragoon rotation. First, you need to use High Jump to unlock Mirage Dive to increase your Gaze of the First Brood stacks. Then, once you have two stacks, you need to press Geirskogul to enter Life of the Dragon. Sounds confusing? Let's break it down.

With the way Final Fantasy XIV works combat, these considerations and conditions tend to become a moot point. The optimal thing to do in almost any encounter and under almost any circumstance is to simply push all of your buttons as soon as they become available. That being said, you just push Geirskogul and High Jump every 30 seconds like clockwork and, as long as you remember to press Mirage Dive within 15 seconds of every High Jump, you'll enter Life of the Dragon on every other Geirskogul. If you follow the order in the Opener below, the order of these three actions will never change throughout the course of the encounter. You will always press them in this order: Geirskogul → High Jump → Mirage Dive.

As listed in the 'Use Everything On Cooldown' section below the opener, you can see that following this order forever will cause you to gain your first eye during the opener, then your second Geirskogul will land before you get your second eye at 30s. From there, your next Geirskogul will consume those eyes to enter Life prior to overcapping, and you'll therefore gain your first eye again after entering Life. Because the cycle then lasts for 30 seconds, you always exit Life with Geirskogul as well as High Jump and Mirage Dive, in that order, gaining you a second eye at around 90s to set up for another entry into Life at 120s - right during your next burst!

In other words, if you press the buttons in the opener in the order as written, then all you need to do for the rest of the encounter is use everything on cooldown, and your Life of the Dragon cycles will solve themselves.

Below is the general-purpose opener that is used in almost all scenarios. If you cannot afford to use potions, simply leave that weave slot empty. Shifting everything forward by one GCD actually results in lower overall damage (in general). Two different placements for Spineshatter Dive are shown between the written and image variations. Either one is perfectly fine - use whichever one is more comfortable for you.

Click the image for a full view with action names.

• True Thrust → Current Tincture of Strength
• Disembowel → Lance Charge → Dragon Sight
• Chaotic Spring → Battle Litany → Spineshatter Dive
• Wheeling Thrust → Geirskogul → Life Surge
• Fang and Claw → High Jump → Mirage Dive
• Raiden Thrust → Dragonfire Dive
• Vorpal Thrust → Life Surge
• Heavens' Thrust → Spineshatter Dive
• Fang and Claw
• Wheeling Thrust
• Raiden Thrust → Wyrmwind Thrust
• Disembowel

Following this opener and then pressing every button on cooldown will lead to each subsequent burst window feeling neat and orderly, following that same basic layout. Every two minutes, we loop back around to a re-opener, of sorts, but with Life of the Dragon entry.

Action	0s	30s	60s	90s	120s
Lance Charge
Dragon Sight
Battle Litany
Geirskogul	X	X	X	X	X
Life Entry			!!!		!!!
High Jump	X	X	X	X	X
Dragonfire Dive	X				X
Mirage Dive
Nastrond			2 buffed		2 buffed
Stardiver			X		X
Spineshatter Dive	2X		X		X

With practice, you'll also find that you can fit one to two Wyrmwind Thrust actions into every buff window, depending on where the buffs fall on your backbone rotation.

The basic idea of combat in multi-target is identical to that in a single target scenario. You have a static set of weaponskills you execute in order, laying on your ability rotation over the top of them. Almost nothing else is changed, aside from what weaponskills you are using. Of note, we perform different rotations against two targets versus three or more.

Base weaponskill rotation:

• Raiden Thrust
• Disembowel
• Chaotic Spring (Target one)
• Wheeling Thrust
• Fang and Claw
• Raiden Thrust
• Disembowel
• Chaotic Spring (Target two)
• Wheeling Thrust
• Fang and Claw

You can use Life Surge on fifth hits, but use it only to prevent overcapping the cooldown. Otherwise, it's better to just hold for a future Heavens' Thrust or the next larger pack for a Coerthan Torment. While using this rotation, you should make sure to keep using your actions to get into Life of the Dragon, as many of your normal skills hit multiple targets and gain more benefit against two compared to one enemy.

Base weaponskill rotation:

• Draconian Fury - 130p per target (390+)
• Sonic Thrust - 120p per target (360+)
• Coerthan Torment - 150p per target (450+)

You should be using buffs whenever they're available and saving Life Surge for Coerthan Torment. It will make every hit of the action an automatic critical hit. In addition, this combo automatically refreshes Power Surge and gives stacks of Firstminds' Focus, allowing you to execute Wyrmwind Thrust. Since the combo is shorter - three GCDs instead of five - it also means you will gain a significantly large amount of additional uses of this powerful crowd-control move by using this rotation.

When running dungeon content with regular trash packs, you can feel free to save your Spineshatter Dive charges to chase the mobs as the tank gathers them. Also, make sure to use High Jump as close to on cooldown as possible. It's a single-target hit, so landing it and Mirage Dive while running to gather mobs helps to jumpstart your Life cycles.