It's belated, but I wish worthy men a happy International Men's Day. Not those who beat their wives, force their girlfriends to get abortions, and break the law even if they're university students, mind you. Instead, it's to the men of responsibility and integrity. Those who slog to bring food to the table, ensure they're responsible for their children, and refuse to break the law even if they're failures in the education system. To such worthy men, I wish you all a happy International Men's Day. Before I continue, I will up a few songs from some series where the protagonists are clearly men worthy of International Men's Day.
Why Total Recall?
The reason behind this post title is simple: Arnold "not Weissenegger" Schwarzenegger and Gray "still a blue" Davis. Like how the state of California decided to do a Total Recall on Davis back then, I decided to do the same on specific rotations in FF14. The reason behind this was the Balance guide website for FF14 gamers. I went through the standard opener diagram for Dragoon. I told myself, "That's インポシブル". The reason is that trying to do that is like alternating between braking and accelerating. Already, I'm struggling with using the Dragon Sight-Battle Litany rotation. However, seeing how Dragon Sight and Lance Charge were utilised in a 120-second-60-second rotation gave me something to think about. At the same time, going through the guide for Machinist also told me I was doing certain things wrong.
Total Recall: Dragoon
In terms of the GCD rotation, there's no change. The same goes for the Geirskogul-Nastrond-Stardiver and High Jump-Mirage Dive rotations. Only two changes were made. Instead of continuing with Dragon Sight-Battle Litany and Lance Charge-Life Surge rotations (the former for the Chaos Spring GCD rotation and the latter for the Heavens' Thrust GCD rotation), I decided to go for Dragon Sight-Lance Charge for my Chaos Spring rotation and Battle Litany-Life Surge for my Heavens' Thrust rotation. In boss fights, the DPS clearly went better. In fact, the time taken to conclude a boss fight was considerably shortened. However, there's a catch: For this to be done, I chose to burn the 5% bonus from buffing a party member for Dragon Sight. It definitely works, though. It's like Oda Nobunaga leading a squad of 2500-3000 dudes instead of 5000 against Imagawa Yoshimoto's army of 25K men.
Maximising Dragon Sight in the middle of a fight was a nightmare when I looked back at it. It hampered my DPS momentum and disrupted my focus. In short, I wasn't using it frequently enough. I can't say I'm autistic, but I do have tunnel vision. This is why I dare not run as a tank or healer in any group content beyond MSQ roulette. Playing FF14 on a Japanese server has its challenges, the language barrier being the most significant one. While Japanese players are really good at doing group content (apparently, they're going to be very happy to see Dawntrail coming), the fact is that I can't communicate with them.
Interestingly, as a DPS player, I already obtained 350+ player commendations. It doesn't seem like much. In fact, it's probably not much. But as a casual player who can only play well as DPS, I find it surprising. I actually expected less than that.
Back to the Dragon Sight dilemma. The only way for me to maximise Dragon Sight is as a preparation buff before entering combat. Against bosses, this is detrimental as the damage will not come out fast and furious enough. Against mobs, however, that's a different story since they last shorter than bosses in any fight. At the same time, being a melee DPS means the likelihood of the Dragoon being the last to enter the fray.
The Battle Litany-Life Surge rotation is effectively a 120-second-40-second buff rotation. At the same time, this buff rotation would have come out in the middle of the combat instead of at the beginning. By then, my party's DPS momentum would have stabilised. In short, the party benefit of Battle Litany is made better. In my last Fell Court of Troia run via level 90 dungeons roulette, the final boss fight was over surprisingly fast despite struggling with the mechanics. The tricky part is whether I should use Battle Litany before or after Vorpal Thrust. The good thing about running a 2.5-second GCD build is that you can calculate when the Battle Litany buff will expire. 15 seconds would mean 6 GCDs. It should end at Raiden Thrust if I use it before Vorpal Thrust. If it's after Vorpal Thrust, the duration should end at Disembowel. If the math looks weird, it's because your eyes aren't playing trick attacks on you since I have to consider around 0.1-0.3 second's worth of difference. When I activate Battle Litany, the GCD would have already hit zero.
Note 1: Using Dragon Sight with Lance Charge can also result in effective True North management due to Dragon Sight ignoring positional restrictions. It's either Dragon Sight-Lance Charge or Lance Charge-True North. The worst-case scenario is wasting one charge of True North due to occasional panic. That's all.
Note 2: Right now, I have to decide between using the second charge of Life Surge on Wheeling Thrust while Battle Litany is active or saving it for the next Heavens' Thrust after the duration expires.
Total Recall: Machinist
The only change made is lining up Wildfire with Barrel Stabiliser, as it would ensure more consistent usage. My main issue was that I needed to use both more often. Right now, Wildfire is executed first before Barrel Stabiliser. But it will probably change because I suspect my brain would trigger faster if it is to process Barrel Stabiliser before Wildfire instead of vice versa. As for Chainsaw, lining it up with Reassemble is possibly a better bet than doing so with Drill. The reason is that doing otherwise may mess up my Hypercharge rotation. At the same time, I use Reassemble sparingly. So, there's a theoretical chance of pulling off a Reassemble-Chainsaw-Air Anchor rotation more often.
Note: My Machinist has yet to hit level 90. So the Chainsaw part does have a chance of changing.
Total Recall: Black Mage
There are a few changes I need to think about. Namely, forcing myself to use Aetherial Manipulation more often and lining up Ley Lines (no pun intended) with Amplifier. In certain fights, there's a need to close the distance ASAP. Playing Samurai and the resultant ease in using Hissatsu: Gyoten taught me that. At the same time, mistakes were made before where I should have used Spineshatter Dive instead of moving forward while sprinting was on cooldown.
As for Ley Lines with Amplifier, that can be very useful in any fight, be it mob or boss. If I can make Dragon Sight-Lance Charge rotation work in both scenarios, I wouldn't be surprised if I can pull this off as well.
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