A way to fix DRG's weak firepower endgame.

[Ophannus]

I'm extremely conservative with all of my recommended Dragoon posts. I don't think we need more accuracy and attack bonus traits, though I'd welcome them. Dragoon is hybrid-ish in that we're relatively strong AND accurate whereas other DDs tend to fall into either or except during periods of higher acc under JAs that grant acc bonuses. Given that we have A+ Polearm, have tons of acc gear and 3 traits, our ACC is probably #1 amongst 2handed DDs.

Jump Mastery would be mitigated if they simply gave DRG "Critical Attack Bonus I". I always felt like we deserve it more than DRK, given that our DEX is naturally higher, we have multiple abilities revolving around Critical Hits, and we have multiple critical hit weapon skills. DRK has none of these, instead we were paradoxically given Critical Defense Bonus up to tier III.

True Pierce would be nice but I'd rather them make piercing weapon damage resistence more in line with blunt and slashing. Right now there are very few(if any) mobs that takes -50% damage to slashing or blunt damage but many that take -50% to Piercing. I think this was done because there are many more mob types that are WEAK to piercing so they felt that because more monsters are weak to it, they ought to make more enemies that are strong to it. Unfortunately the -50% penalty is absolutely,catastrophically devastating to Dragoon. I could understand 25% but 50% makes us laughably worthless. Hitting Naraka mobs for 50-60 damage in Legion while fully buffed and doing 400-500 damage weapon skills while everyone else is nailing 2k+ weapon skills make me very, very sad. I know "tomahawk, Banish III" but still.

Drachen Evolution is superfluous. Our Wyvern's DMG is actually quite high it's just that its Attack is low. I'd rather us get a Job Ability that restricts them from using TP during a breath or even preventing them from using breaths after a ws at all(since their melee does more than breath and breath charge delay slows down their melee). Additionally letting them retain their TP lets us get a nice bonus chunk of TP every 90 seconds from Spirit Link(drains half of the wyvern's TP, wyverns can get 150-180 TP every 90 seconds roughly, so it's almost a free WS worth of TP).

[Jaall]

These are some really great ways to boost drg's endgame potential and I agree with most of them, but then I think really instead of creating whole new JA's for DRG, why don't they remove the attack penalty on drakesbane and add an attack boost to both stardiver and drakesbane? Pretty simple job I would have thought and would allow the ws's to be on par with most other weapons, while not making normal hits OP. Just another idea to add, seems to work very well for Ruinator and has already been implemented so we know it's possible and can work.

[Mirage]

well, boosting stardiver increases its power for non-DRGs too, but it doesn't matter too much. Also, changing the WS won't help DRG with its auto-attack damage problem.

[Jaall]

The only other jobs that use stardiver is sam, and they dont have A+ skill in polearm so we'd still have the upper hand. Only times I ever see sam using polearm these days is in VW for procs when there's no DRG. Also I don't really see a massive problem with auto attack damage seeing as in most zergs it's the WS damage that makes people come out tops. I don't really tend to notice other peoples auto attack damage so not sure how big the problem is tbh.

[Mirage]

They don't have A+, but they do have overwhelm, native Hasso and /war. In either case, I already said it didn't matter a lot. It is however more logical to fix the job rather than just one of the things used by the job.

And again, autoattack damage.

[Jaall]

I agree they could do a lot more, but the fact is they aren't. DRG has always been ignored much like SMN, getting maybe 1 update every 3 years which nobody knows the reason behind. I think, personally, asking for smaller things will have more of a chance of being implemented as it's very hard for them to lose balance with smaller adjustments, whereas whole JA and traits would need serious consideration. And on top of that they would be introduced a lot faster as they can be done as an adjustment and not completely new content. SE has always ignored some jobs even though they are in dire need of changes and DRG is a perfect example of that. Everyone agrees with the fact that DRG is very lacking in pretty much everything, hence the nickname "loldrg" that has been around since it was introduced and yet SE has ignored that and not addressed the underlying fact that DRG is lacking attack options. At least if they gave DRG ws's an attack boost it would be a welcome start and would improve DRG until such a time (if one will ever arise) where DRG will get its much needed JA's and traits.

[Mirage]

But if they're gonna change something for DRG right away,why not let it be the JA instead of changing the WSes?

[Jaall]

Because we've been asking for JA for a very long time and seen nothing or no intention at all to change them, so why not try a different tact and ask for WS changes? I don't see any downside to asking for WS changes especially with the state DRG is in at the moment. No change is bad and a WS dmg bonus would certainly help us a lot, but I agree more needs to be done. Just a shame SE are having none of it, despite all the complaints and obvious signs that it sucks, so just my opinion, we should ask for less to get more.

[Tanama]

It may come down to what the development team decides to do with tier III merits which we probably won't see until after Seekers of Adoulin is released. Will they follow the same path as the tier II merits and offer two new job abilities and two new traits? Only time will tell. At this point I will be surprised if they add some game changers for us.

I won't hold my breath but when they add the third merit category, I hope we get traits and job abilities as powerful as the effects of Overwhelm, Desperate Blows and Saber Dance. Upgrades to Jump damage would also be welcome considering the dev-team are more than likely going to split the Jump timers with Soul Jump and Spirit Jump having longer recasts.

EDIT: There is also this to consider:

Happy Friday everyone!

Next, on to dark knight…

There are two large principles that the development team is keeping in mind:

• To make job adjustments by comparing aspects collectively to close the gap between dark knight
• To not make adjustments by comparing only fire-power to leave dark knight behind

As mentioned previously, with the adjustments to the attack/defense ratio, a greater emphasis will be placed on defense. In the event that you jump into battles and pay no attention to your defense, you will take damage for nearly two-times the amount that it is now, so the way the job is played will change. With that said, based on these changes to the attack/defense ratio we will be fleshing out specifics for what kind of adjustments are necessary for other jobs and let you know once we have some information.

[Jaall]

Would be nice to see what new merits they give, hope it's not more solo stuff for DRG. One change I really do wanna see is the def down stack with Angon, and Gungnir and Angon def down stacking, or at least Angon overwriting it. Not really sure why that change never happened but yet another example of why SE confuses me! Only time will tell I guess. I doubt anything major is gonna happen from now until SoA is properly launched so I guess 6 months+