Breath damage against NMs

[Ophannus]

Since Breath Damage ignores the conventional Defense, Magic Defense, and Magic Defense Taken and can not be reduced by any way other than direct "Breath Damage Taken-%", the Developers have made pretty much every NM in the game after Chain of Promathia have a huge direct defense against Breath Damage. This was probably a countermeasure to prevent NMs from being killed easily with spells and weapon skills that ignore defense/magic defense and ordinarily deal extremely accurate and consistant damage(Spirits Within/Nether Blast/Various BLU spells)

Breath Damage is a component inherent to the DRG job. The damage dealt after a WS by the Wyvern breath was meant to; when combined with the DRG's WS, help us close the gap in damage compared to stronger damage dealers. On anything other than NMs(read fodder mobs) this is true, since with proper gear Elemental Breaths deal upwards of 400 damage. This means a 3k damage stardiver with a 400 damage breath is a 3400 weapon skill for all intents and purposes.

This is completely negated on NMs. NMs have a huge breath damage defense upwards of 50-90%. Even with 5/5 Strafe and other gear, on a Elemental Breath that goes unresisted, it will typically do 24-50 damage at best; mind you that's unresisted. Meanwhile PUP's Automatons can pump out 3k+ weapon skills, BST pets do tremendous damage due to their base damage and fTP on their pet attacks.

Are there any plans to:

a) Increase the potency of Wyvern Breaths to make them stronger and improve the firepower of the Dragoon job?

b) Reduce the breath damage reduction of NMs so these breaths have some kind of meaning?

There's no point of even powering them up unless this breath damage reduction is looked into. In legion and in delve, my Wyvern's normal melee hits deal anywhere from 50-60 but breaths, which take 2-3 seconds to charge, deal even less. So technically if the Wyvern didn't use breaths, it would deal MORE damage, since it's attack isn't be interrupted with the breath animation.


P.S By removing or weakening NM's defenses to Breath damage, it also opens up an avenue for BLU's to be useful again. BLU has many pieces of gear, including some which are Relic/Empyrean armor, that enhance breath damage dealt. BLU also has very powerful and efficient breath spells. Given that most NMs resist the crap out of breath damage, this aspect of the job is ignored and BLU is relegated. If BLU could make good use of their breath spells for consistant and accurate damage, they could be very useful on NMs with high def/high eva where other forms of damage fall short.

[detlef]

/cough let us disable breaths altogether.

[Tennotsukai]

I've been wanting this fixed for a very long time. They usually ignore this issue though.

[Babekeke]

I actually almost exclusively save Deep Breathing for Smiting Breath. Combined with Relic+2 aug head, the damage is almost reasonable. Even with only 2 merits into DB, the damage seems to be 3+ times more than the damage without.

Sometimes even ranging from 150 dmg without, to over 1k with DB.

It's just about worth the 3 seconds of DPS lost to hit the macro and use the JAs. But only just.

[Ophannus]

Yeah I equip Relic+2 head/Glassblower's/Lancer Torque after every WS before the breath goes off. On fodder mobs with the wyvern fully buffed from Spirit Link+Empathy, it usually does ~430ish damage. With DB and full Empathy ~900ishand augmented head(Only 1 merit in DB though).

The problem is that NMs have high breath defense and typically take 20-64 damage from an unresisted breath and with DB maybe 200ish.

[Babekeke]

Yeah pretty much everything released since level 76 has the massive breath resistance.

It's really nice for things like Early bird catches the wyrm BCNM though, and I assume other wyrm/dragons from pre-76 where DRG excells, particularly if they fly too, so melee is in-effective. I just wish that in these cases we could reverse the TP of spirit link. Jump > spirit link to give our TP to wyvern, > breath for extra damage lol.

Out of interest, what /wait do you use for equipping the breath gear after WS? I'd never considered doing this before.