Beating Camate to the punch because he's chilling on vacation, so I'm takin' his jerb:
Overall pretty decent, I'm excited for Healing Breath IV's broken-ness considering HBIII does like 800ish now and costs 0-5mp with ZERO enmity. Yet they won't let poor RDM's have Cure V. DRG healer anyone? Kind of neat that our 2hr lasts longer although it would be nice if Spirit Jump and Soul Jump could have the crticial hit property during Spirit Surge, otherwise we actually gain LESS TP during Spirit Surge since Spirit and Soul Jump do not receive the bonus TP and the Defense Down from Jump does not stack with Angon as well as the Haste boost doesn't help much if we have March/Hastes on.Changes to Wyvern:
Addition of Healing Breath IV (Lv80~)
Remove Breath will heal new status effects based on level-
Curse (Lv60~)
Virus/Plague (Lv80~)
Petra (Lv99~)
Ability Changes:
Jump
-recast lowered from 90s to 60s.
High Jump
-recast lowered from 180s to 120s
-increased usage distance
-reduces enmity of closest member behind Dragoon
Super Jump
-increased usage distance
-reduces enmity of closest member behind Dragoon
Spirit Jump
-recast lowered from 90s to 60s.
Soul Jump
-recast lowered from 180s to 120s
In accordance with this, the merits Dragoon may place for reducing the recast times for Jump and High Jump have been lowered in effectiveness:
Jump 3 => 2
High Jump 6 => 4
Spirit Surge
-Duration increased from 60s to 90s.
Requests for Spirit Surge:
-Duration was fine as is at 60 seconds.
-Soul and Spirit Jump do not crit nor give bonus TP under Spirit Surge; TP gain under Spirit Surge is lower than without the 2hr on, thus the DRG's damage overall decreases if they use Spirit Surge.
-The attack speed boost counts as "Magic-based-haste" instead of "Job Ability Haste" like Haste Samba and Desperate Blows. This makes Spirit Surge less powerful when we have Haste or March on.
-The Defense Down attribute on 'Jump' does not stack nor override 'Angon', further making Spirit Surge less appealing to use.
Even with these changes, the only use most Dragoons have for using Spirit Surge is to Spirit Jump>Soul Jump>Weapon Skill>Spirit Surge>CANCEL SPIRIT SURGE>Call Wyvern>Spirit Jump>Soul Jump>WS.
As you can see, developers, Dragoons currently rather NOT have the effect of Spirit Surge on because:
1) Our most powerful TP gaining tools do not work under its effect i.e Spirit Jump and Soul Jump. Compared to other 2hrs, Spirit Surge actually reduces a Dragoon's abilities in the respect of weakening Spirit and Soul Jump's TP and Damage.
2) The haste bonus is rendered useless with Haste and March on.
3) No DRG uses "Jump" during Spirit Surge because the defense down is equal to that of "Angon" and "Angon" effect is consistent in its duration. Additionally, Dragoons can strengthen Angon to reduce a target's defense by 25% with the new augmented relic Wyrm Finger Gauntlets +2, exceeding the potency of "Jump" under Spirit Surge.
Most Dragoons simply use the 2hr to reset Jump timers so they can cancel the effect, call their wyvern back and use Spirit and Soul Jump again. Spirit Surge is a very broad and complex 2hr to use compared to "Mighty Strikes, Chainspell, Hundred Fists, Invincible" etc... The effects are very wide in that it transfers Wyvern TP to us(hard to use since the wyvern loses its TP every time we use a WS which is often), heals us by the Wyvern's HP(decent when Restoring Breath is down), increases STR by a hefty amount(again decent, but the way the damage formula works, the +20 strength boost is very, VERY subtle, maybe if it also boosted Attack% as well. C
Please examine this well.