Dragoon DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Dawntrail 7.1

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 → Spiral Blow → Chaotic Spring → Wheeling Thrust → Drakesbane
2. True Thrust → Lance Barrage → Heavens' Thrust → Fang and Claw → Drakesbane

Spiral Blow 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 9 seconds, the first combo deals more total damage than the second. 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 landing Drakesbane with its combo bonus, 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 - 320 potency
2. Spiral Blow - 300 potency (Power Surge)
3. Chaotic Spring - 340 potency (45p damage-over-time)
4. Wheeling Thrust - 340 potency
5. Drakesbane - 440 potency
6. Raiden Thrust - 320 potency
7. Lance Barrage - 340 potency
8. Heavens' Thrust - 440 potency
9. Fang and Claw - 340 potency
10. Drakesbane - 440 potency

Lastly, there is Piercing Talon. It has a range to it, so if you are ever forced to disengage for longer than half of a GCD spin, you can use it to pad the space. Just be aware that your auto-attack cannot be executed at range, because you are a Melee DPS Job. In addition, if you use Elusive Jump, your next Piercing Talon used in the following 15s will be Enhanced. While Enhanced, it has 350 potency, which is still lower than the average potency of your normal gcd string (398 per gcd), so you will ONLY want to use it when FORCED to disengage for an extended period.

In fights where you know such a disengage is coming, you can use your Elusive Jump anywhere in the 15s preceding the disconnect in order to set up a single use of the enhanced version of Piercing Talon for the disconnect.

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 actions can be split into two sub-categories. Most of our off-Global actions (oGCDs) are flexible in that we are given a timer in which we get a certain number of uses. As such, using them strictly on cooldown is not generally necessary. The three exceptions to this rule are High Jump, Geirskogul, and Dragonfire Dive. These three skills should always be kept on hard cooldown at all times.

1. High Jump - 30s
2. Mirage Dive - 1s (Only available once within 15s after using High Jump)
3. Geirskogul - 60s (Provides a 15% damage buff called Life of the Dragon)
4. Nastrond - 2s (only available once in each 20s Life of the Dragon window)
5. Dragonfire Dive - 120s
6. Rise of the Dragon - 1s (Only available once within 30s after using Dragonfire Dive)
7. Stardiver - 30s (Only available once in the 20s of Life of the Dragon)
8. Starcross - 1s (Only available once in Life of the Dragon, after executing Stardiver)
9. Wyrmwind Thrust - 10s (Available after two Raiden Thrust uses; must use before the next one.)

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 all following attacks for 20s, 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. Geirskogul +15% damage - 60s cooldown, 20s duration. Also unlocks several actions.
4. Battle Litany +10% crit rate - 120s cooldown, 20s duration. Also buffs your allies.

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. In general, you will be using every Life Surge in your buff windows - one in each, with an extra in your even-minute windows (when Battle Litany is available). Because Life Surge doesn't affect the damage-over-time effect of Chaotic Spring, you will almost always want to use it on either Heavens' Thrust or Drakesbane, as they have our highest potency among our Weaponskills with 440 base.

Occasionally, your even-minute buff window will only contain one of either Heavens' Thrust or Drakesbane under all three buffs. In this situation, you will want to use your second Life Surge on one of those two actions that only gets one or two of the buffs or, if this is impossible, on any of the actions with all three buffs that has 340 potency. These would be Fang and Claw, Wheeling Thrust, Chaotic Spring, and Lance Barrage.

Of note - it is entirely possible that you will run into a situation where the only way to execute two Life Surges in a 2-minute window will require you to triple weave it after the forced buff double-weave at the start of the burst window. This is not necessarily possible to do without clipping, based on your ping and other situations. It is not recommended to use the triple weave tech unless you know for sure that you are NOT clipping or that your clipping does not result in any loss of potency in a particular fight's phase.

Life of the Dragon is incredibly straightforward in Dawntrail. Every minute, you have access to a single cast of Geirskogul. Pressing it will trigger Life of the Dragon - an effect which increases your damage dealt by 15% for 20 seconds while also allowing you to utilize Nastrond, Stardiver, and Starcross. This is our primary damage phase and, because it shares a cooldown of one minute with Lance Charge, you will always have the 10% and 15% damage buffs combined together (26.5% damage buff) every minute, with Battle Litany further augmenting it every other minute.

For all openers and burst windows on Dragoon, the only buttons which will be forced static and unmoving are Lance Charge, Geirskogul, Battle Litany, High Jump, and Dragonfire Dive. Everything else can be shuffled and shifted for your comfort, so long as it all still falls within the approximately 18s window of the overlap of all three buffs. The openers below prioritize stacking the highest potency actions near the center of the 20s window to maximize the probability of these actions being affected by your allies' raid buff actions.

Below is what we would call the Standard Opener that will be used as the default to run off of. With the changes in Dawntrail, double-weaving with potions has become about as easy as any other double weave, so we gain potency by doing so. This opener should always be used if you can begin the fight in melee range. If you are forced to pull at range, you can either utilize Winged Glide prior to starting this or utilize the Piercing Talon opener listed after.

Click the image for a full view with action names.

• True Thrust
• Spiral Blow → Lance Charge → Current Gemdraught of Strength
• Chaotic Spring → Battle Litany → Geirskogul
• Wheeling Thrust → High Jump → Life Surge
• Drakesbane → Dragonfire Dive → Nastrond
• Raiden Thrust → Stardiver
• Lance Barrage → Starcross → Life Surge
• Heavens' Thrust → Rise of the Dragon → Mirage Dive
• Fang and Claw
• Drakesbane
• Raiden Thrust → Wyrmwind Thrust
• Disembowel

To use this opener, we prepare ahead of time at some point within 15 seconds of the pull by pressing Elusive Jump. Make sure not to angle toward the boss or towards your death while doing this. Pulling with Piercing Talon allows us to get the GCD rolling sooner and also injects just enough delay to our initial True Thrust so that our Battle Litany lines up even better with other raid buffs, granting the party - and us - more overall damage in the course of the encounter, assuming everything continues to be pressed on cooldown.

This opener should only be used when you are forced to pull from afar (most encounters work this way). In order to close the distance quickly, you should either employ Sprint (pressed between Elusive Jump and Piercing Talon) or Winged Glide (pressed between Piercing Talon and True Thrust), whichever one allows you to close the distance faster. The latter is generally preferred, but one or the other may need to be used based on specifics of the first 60-120s of the encounter.

Click the image for a full view with action names.

• (-15s) Elusive Jump
• Piercing Talon
• True Thrust → Current Gemdraught of Strength
• Spiral Blow → Lance Charge → Battle Litany
• Chaotic Spring → Geirskogul
• Wheeling Thrust → High Jump → Life Surge
• Drakesbane → Dragonfire Dive → Nastrond
• Raiden Thrust → Stardiver
• Lance Barrage → Starcross → Life Surge
• Heavens' Thrust → Rise of the Dragon → Mirage Dive
• Fang and Claw
• Drakesbane
• Raiden Thrust → Wyrmwind Thrust
• Disembowel

Following the opener and pressing your core skills exactly on cooldown when they show up will result in a very satisfying cadence to the overall rotation of your oGCD actions, as seen in the table below.

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
Geirskogul
Battle Litany
High Jump	X	X	X	X	X
Dragonfire Dive	X				X
Nastrond	X		X		X
Stardiver	X		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. You can only hold it until the next Raiden Thrust after it becomes available, but you can hold it that whole time.

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
• Spiral Blow
• Chaotic Spring (Target one)
• Wheeling Thrust
• Drakesbane
• Raiden Thrust
• Spiral Blow
• Chaotic Spring (Target two)
• Wheeling Thrust
• Drakesbane

You can use Life Surge on Drakesbane as usual. If this is the end of a trash pack with another coming up after, you can hold your Life Surge for the next pack for a Coerthan Torment, instead. The entire rest of the normal rotation remains the same - all of your oGCD actions deal damage to multiple targets aside from High Jump and Mirage Dive, after all.

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.

Many dungeons in Dawntrail feature trash packs with a single enemy that has higher health than all of the others. It would be wise to take note of them as you run the dungeon for the first time. All of your oGCD actions deal more damage to your main target, so singling out the highest-health enemy will help cut them down to size faster and make it less likely to leave such an enemy lingering once the others are all defeated.

Most of our Area-of-Effect actions produce a line effect. As such, once you have locked on to this top-health enemy, you should attempt to position so that all the enemies are in the line made between you and that target. Ideally, this target is also in the center of the pack for the circular effects that several of our oGCD AoE skills hit ( Dragonfire Dive, Stardiver and their follow-ups).