Fundamentals

Rules of Thumb:

• Always start with a full Ragnarok gauge!
• Try to sync the majority of Godsfall/Ragnarok with the majority of Enrage phases!
• You want 40+% Godsfall/Ragnarok (combined) uptime for every fight -- the higher the better!
  • The most important thing is to get at least 4 full Shining Crescents off within Ragnarok!
  • Know your party, their buffs and how they work -- take advantage of their party buffs!

With that being said, the key to effectively playing this class relies on 6 things:

1. Sound Judgement

Always, always, always be aware of what is going on! They call this "Situational Awareness". Know what the boss is doing and what they're about to do. Know what you have on cooldown, what is about to come off, how many Runemarks you have and how full or empty your Ragnarok Gauge is.

Do not use Ragnarok when the boss is about to do a mechanic where you can't deal damage! That's wasting it!

Try to use Godsfall/Ragnarok in enraged phases as often as possible. This will be a significant damage increase in itself.

2. Hits Per Minute

First of all, Shining Crescent is about 40% of our total damage. It can be more or less depending on the fight but for most legitimate fights, Shining Crescent supplies about half of our total damage output. So with this skill being almost half of our total net damage output, we want to get as many hits off as possible.

While this isn't really the all-in-one DPS fix, this is definitely the one with the most direct impact. So with that being said, you want to be actively aware of this rule and trying your best to get the most Shining Crescent hits off as fast as you can. To help focus your sights on a target HPM, I've created a sort of self-help list below. Use this to better tone your skill as a Valkyrie:

• Top Valkyries: 16+
• Good Valkyries: 14+
• Valkyries Needing Improvement: 12 or less

Note: keep in mind that Shining Crescent counts as 2 hits per the actual complete skill cast.

TIP: if SC is coming off cooldown within 3 seconds wait for it, as it'll increase your SC HPM. If SC is longer than 4 seconds on cooldown, do not wait on it - as doing so generally decreases your SC HPM.

Important Note: Shining Crescent HPMs aren't the only ones you should be trying to improve. Many top Valkyries also have high Leaping Slash, Ground Bash, Runeburst and Twilight Waltz HPMs on top of their perfect Shining Crescent HPMs. Whenever you start feeling the need to improve, try to up any of these HPMs as well.

3. Godsfall/Ragnarok Management

Godsfall and Ragnarok are indirectly your biggest sources of dps.

Due to the extra power, attack speed, and decreased cooldowns these give these 2 burn phases allow you to reach an acceptable Shining Crescent HPM. Effectively managing your Ragnarok Gauge means:

1. Always know how close you are to being able to use Godsfall/Ragnarok. When you get within 100 points you should be able to reach max within 5 seconds with Leaping Slash alone.
2. Always try to aim for the fastest Ragnarok Gauge replenishment as possible. Maximize the amount of Leaping Slashes and Runebursts you can achieve.
3. Ideally, you want the majority of your Shining Crescents in an Enraged Cycle. Try to build Ragnarok out of enrage cycles.

In Godsfall and Ragnarok, be ready to use the next skill and eat boss attacks. In Godsfall, even a 1 second delay on can botch your Twilight Waltz from landing in its duration. In Ragnarok, even a 1 second delay on Shining Crescent can botch your fourth Shining Crescent from landing in its duration and going on a shorter cooldown.

4. Runemark Management

Basically, you want to have a constant flow of Runemarks being stacked. You don't really want to go over 7 as this is inefficient, but there are certain situations where its alright. One of these cases are during the Twilight Waltz rotation when you'll Ground Bash before Gungnir's Bite due to its sheer damage and how fast it is.

With Awakening, there are two common situations a lot of Valkyries seem to be having trouble with their runemark management:

• Wasted Leaping Slash resets
• Incorrect Twilight Waltz

The biggest issue within these scenarios is that they use their skills incorrectly. A common mistake is that they ignore a Leaping Slash reset and then use another skill that resets Leaping Slash and effectively deny Leaping Slash from being off cooldown in time for the next rotation. Another unfortunate scenario is that they miss a skill during Twilight Waltz and Shining Crescent at 6 runemarks and that botches their whole Twilight Waltz rotation.

5. Fluid Rotations and a Rhythmic Fight

Similar to the "Management" sections, Fluid Rotations could also be called Skill Management.

A fluid rotation takes account of all skill's cooldowns and uses them accordingly so that they match up at the end so that by the time you are finished with your main rotation, you can start another seamlessly without having to add in filler - or worse: stand there doing nothing cause you didn't think that far ahead. Fluid rotations are not always the highest damage possible out of rotations but they most often merit higher damage in longer fights as long as you manage them correctly. This is why the guide has a section called Rotations as they may not be 100% the best rotation in every scenario, but they are easy, efficient and generally a very decent and only a slight variation of the optimal rotation.

A frequent blunder to an otherwise fluid rotation is the neglect Leaping Slash and its reset triggers. Leaping Slash is an important core to the Valkyrie not only for its high Ragnarok point value, but also its ability to chain skills, stack runes and its decent-ish damage contribution of itself through the sheer amount of times it is actually used.

Rhythmic fights focuses in on the situational awareness aspect of a fluid rotation. A rhythmic fight will generally come down to 2 things: experience as a player and experience in a dungeon.

6. Your Party

Unfortunately, you will never be the top valkyrie on your own. You may still be the top dps in your party, but being a top dps valkyrie overall falls heavily on your party. The reason is because Valkyries rely on their party to sync enrages, buffs and debuffs with their unique skill-sets (Godsfall/Ragnarok) - the same with any parse run to be honest.

This is honestly the biggest part of being a top parse valkyrie. Your team can carry you harder than you can carry yourself. The reason this is at the bottom instead of the top is because you should really work and perfect all of the fundamentals before this to truly shine. Any class can get decent damage with a short enough fight. With a master of the fundamentals, you can shine brighter in the same scenario.