Splitting JA timers

[ihm]

So I hear that they're planning on splitting the Jump timers into 4 abilities now, which means that Spirit/Soul jump are now on significantly longer timers and are completely unaffected by merits.

High Jump is completely useless in high haste situations, and due to the massive delay between performing a JA then your next action (The 2 second delay), using Jump in a high haste situation just lowers your overall damage.

Why so nerf?

[Caketime]

2 seconds is a huge delay?

[ihm]

It is when your attack rounds are less than it.

[Ophannus]

If they boost Jump/High Jump damage significantly and also make them grant bonus TP, it would be worthwhile.

Jump 1.5x TP
High Jump 1.5x TP
Spirit Jump 2.5x TP
Soul Jump 3.5x TP

Under Rouse Wyvern
Jump:2x
High Jump:2x
Spirit Jump:3x
Soul Jump:4x

I think that would be fair.

[Mirage]

2 seconds is a huge delay?
It is.

However, you only have to wait 1 second before you can perform another JA, so if chain-jump, it's not as bad.

[ManaKing]

DRG is interesting because they can equip enough store TP with /SAM to make a 3-Hit Build. WS > Auto Attack > Jump > High Jump > WS. Any additional attacks in there and you do it with fewer jumps.

Use Spirit or Soul Jump, same thing but faster.

Use a Ryunohige's Aftermath, WS all day.

People just need to start gearing them and building better macro sets. I agree Mythic or GTFO is really steep, but that's the reality of it because Piercing is usually a liability instead of a boon.

[Caketime]

It is.

However, you only have to wait 1 second before you can perform another JA, so if chain-jump, it's not as bad.

So if I'm drunk then the delay probably doesn't mean much. I always operate under the assumption that we're all drunk while playing, and I'd be willing to bet the developers are drunk while coding and/or testing because if I made as much as they did to piss people off on a consistent basis I'd be sauced 24/7. My dream job, in fact. :3

[Babekeke]

It is.

However, you only have to wait 1 second before you can perform another JA, so if chain-jump, it's not as bad.

Yep, Chain Jump, or Jump > WS and the delay is irrelevant.


DRG is interesting because they can equip enough store TP with /SAM to make a 3-Hit Build. WS > Auto Attack > Jump > High Jump > WS. Any additional attacks in there and you do it with fewer jumps.

Use Spirit or Soul Jump, same thing but faster.

Use a Ryunohige's Aftermath, WS all day.

People just need to start gearing them and building better macro sets. I agree Mythic or GTFO is really steep, but that's the reality of it because Piercing is usually a liability instead of a boon.

3-Hit!? Either you're on crack or you mean 4-Hit and forgot WS hit is included.

OAT Lance is about the highest delay polearm I can see and for a 3-hit you need 142 STp (127 with /SAM) in both TP hits and WS gear.

for a 4-Hit you need 82 STp (67 with /SAM). However, assuming you only get 20 TP back from WS, which you will if you're not gimping your WS gear by WSing in full STp, you need 94 STp for TPing (79 with /SAM), which isn't sensibly achieveable.

Unless you were referring to our Conserve TP, which is completely unreliable. If only it was a static value and gear affected the % of it kicking in only. Or, it kicked in 100% and gear/traits affected the amount only.

[Tanama]

I really hope the dev-team doesn't split the Jump JA timers and leave them as is, with Spirit/Soul Jump having longer recasts. That is going to gimp DRG even more than it already is! And then for them to say:
We are also planning to make it possible to reduce the recast time further via merit points in the future. means DRG will remain the worst two-handed DD for an even longer period of time. It's bad enough DRG doesn't get invites to anything these days.

We must protest this impending nerf and explain to the dev-team what would work, for example Orphannus' post:
If they boost Jump/High Jump damage significantly and also make them grant bonus TP, it would be worthwhile.

Jump 1.5x TP
High Jump 1.5x TP
Spirit Jump 2.5x TP
Soul Jump 3.5x TP

Under Rouse Wyvern
Jump:2x
High Jump:2x
Spirit Jump:3x
Soul Jump:4x

I think that would be fair.

If they split the jump timers, I would want all jumps to auto-critical hit natively like Spirit and Soul jump do when the wyvern is alive. Also, change it so that the wyvern does not have to be alive so that all Jumps do critical damage regardless and include the TP Bonus on all Jumps as Orphannus suggested.


Please pass this on the dev-team.

Thank you

[Ophannus]

^They won't do that simply because that's what makes Spirit and Soul Jump unique. If they made Jump and High Jump better for split timer purposes, I'd rather them increase their TP gain slightly to make up for the interruption of attack speed.(Assuming 60 minutes of jumps, activating each jump exactly when they're up you're looking at something like 2-3minutes of pure JA delay per hour, that 2-3min of JA delay means that's 2-3min of 0 damage idleness.)

If anything I'd rather them give us traits that enhance our Jump damage/tp gain, something like each tier adds 10 base damage and either a Store TP+ to the Jump, or Jump TP Bonus. I'd really rather them not introduce more "Jump TP Bonus" gear because we don't have the inventory to carry that crap around, and that would also reduce damage of our jumps since we'd rather be jumping in Double/Triple/Quad Attack Gear or Crit Damage Bonus gear than Jump TP bonus gear--unless they make a compound item that beats everything else for that slot in terms of Jump damage AND has a Jump TP Bonus attribute(maybe for neo-Ares gear).

The most parsimonious way to go though is to give us Traits like Shield Mastery/Dual Wield that just improve Jump base damage/TP gain.

+++ Could come up with badass names for the traits:

Skydiver
Airtime
High Time
Killer Air
Air Hike
Spring Heel
High Dive

[ihm]

DRG is interesting because they can equip enough store TP with /SAM to make a 3-Hit Build. WS > Auto Attack > Jump > High Jump > WS. Any additional attacks in there and you do it with fewer jumps.

Use Spirit or Soul Jump, same thing but faster.

Use a Ryunohige's Aftermath, WS all day.

People just need to start gearing them and building better macro sets. I agree Mythic or GTFO is really steep, but that's the reality of it because Piercing is usually a liability instead of a boon.

Can I please get the set you recommend for a 3-hit build? I would LOVE to see it. I assume you cap haste in said 3-hit build and can pull it off without a sTP polearm right?


^They won't do that simply because that's what makes Spirit and Soul Jump unique. If they made Jump and High Jump better for split timer purposes, I'd rather them increase their TP gain slightly to make up for the interruption of attack speed.(Assuming 60 minutes of jumps, activating each jump exactly when they're up you're looking at something like 2-3minutes of pure JA delay per hour, that 2-3min of JA delay means that's 2-3min of 0 damage idleness.)

If anything I'd rather them give us traits that enhance our Jump damage/tp gain, something like each tier adds 10 base damage and either a Store TP+ to the Jump, or Jump TP Bonus. I'd really rather them not introduce more "Jump TP Bonus" gear because we don't have the inventory to carry that crap around, and that would also reduce damage of our jumps since we'd rather be jumping in Double/Triple/Quad Attack Gear or Crit Damage Bonus gear than Jump TP bonus gear--unless they make a compound item that beats everything else for that slot in terms of Jump damage AND has a Jump TP Bonus attribute(maybe for neo-Ares gear).

The most parsimonious way to go though is to give us Traits like Shield Mastery/Dual Wield that just improve Jump base damage/TP gain.

+++ Could come up with badass names for the traits:

Skydiver
Airtime
High Time
Killer Air
Air Hike
Spring Heel
High Dive

While your idea of increasing the tp does sound nice, the problem is it's not really going to be beneficial to overall damage. If you're on a 5hit and your jump gets 1.5 hits worth of TP, that just means you have an overflow on your WS. Now I get you said 1.5 on Jump and 1.5 on High Jump so that means 3x TP if you use both back to back, but their timers don't line up for that to happen so you'll still end up with that overflow. I know the overflow does help your WS (More Crit on Drakes and higher fTP on Stardiver) but still. The reason Spirit/Soul jump are so useful still is that they give such a big increase in TP, being 2 and 3 times your base TP, which will actually add into a TP phase to effectively WS back to back even in a capped haste zerg situation, which lets be honest, any content that matters these days is a capped haste zerg.

[ManaKing]

3-Hit!? Either you're on crack or you mean 4-Hit and forgot WS hit is included.


3 Hits + WS = 3 hits to me. If you want to call it something different, then sure, but that's what I'm referring too as well.

Jumps are nice because you can jump in whatever gear you want. It doesn't require capped haste. So if you want solid TP gain, you can use your jumps as auto attacks with maxed Store TP.

If you have a Mythic with lvl 3 Aftermath, you can OaThrice with your Store TP set and automatically go back to WSing.

DRG is just as savagely gear dependent as a job can get in this game. I don't play my DRG because I know it's not better than a normal DD unless I'm geared to the teeth. I'm not geared to the teeth, so I continue to collect pieces until I am.

The splitting of JA timers will only help serious DRG. It will probably do very little for people who are poorly geared or not particularly knowledgeable of how to max out DRGs strengths. I personally look forward to it because all of the complaints about normal Jump and High Jump go away when your goal is getting a Mythic and having an amazing Store TP set.

IMHO DRG is about Spaming WSs like there is no tomorrow and then Super Jumping away if things get too crazy. King Behemoth used to be solo'd by DRGs with Penta Thrust before they adjusted WS TP gain. There is enough gear in the game to emulate most of what DRG used to be capable of.

[Ophannus]

TP overflow isn't a big deal really. Even if Jumps did double damage, it still doesn't justify interrupting your attack for them unless the mob is near death or you're lowmanning something. Interrupting your high haste attacks for an attack that does slightly more damage than a normal strike with the same TP gain and with a 2-3second delay is not justifyable. At least the slightly extra TP would allow you to Jump in damage/DA/TA/QA/STR/Att gear instead of STP to preserve your 5hit rather than basically having to cram every drop of Jump Bonus TP/STP gear into every slot to make NQ Jumps worth a damn. Plus the extra TP overflow helps for times where you get a lousy TP return on a WS or where you miss the first hit.

Even if Jump and HJ did 2x the damage soul and spirit jump do, i'd be hard pressed to use them in zergs, i'd much rather them boost the TP gain than the damage and lets be honest, they'll never give 2x and 3x TP to Jump and High Jump so 1.5x and a bonus to base D are reasonable. Considering DRG has no native attack boosting abilities they might as well make DRG a TP machine since even when we have tons of TP our WS averages are still terribad compared to jobs like DRK and WAR that have 1.5k+ attack without cor or brd buffs or jobs like SAM that get retarded WS Damage+% traits and gear and WS with cratio bonuses.

[ihm]

3 Hits + WS = 3 hits to me. If you want to call it something different, then sure, but that's what I'm referring too as well.

Can I see this gear set you're imagining?


TP overflow isn't a big deal really. Even if Jumps did double damage, it still doesn't justify interrupting your attack for them unless the mob is near death or you're lowmanning something. Interrupting your high haste attacks for an attack that does slightly more damage than a normal strike with the same TP gain and with a 2-3second delay is not justifyable. At least the slightly extra TP would allow you to Jump in damage/DA/TA/QA/STR/Att gear instead of STP to preserve your 5hit rather than basically having to cram every drop of Jump Bonus TP/STP gear into every slot to make NQ Jumps worth a damn. Plus the extra TP overflow helps for times where you get a lousy TP return on a WS or where you miss the first hit.

Even if Jump and HJ did 2x the damage soul and spirit jump do, i'd be hard pressed to use them in zergs, i'd much rather them boost the TP gain than the damage and lets be honest, they'll never give 2x and 3x TP to Jump and High Jump so 1.5x and a bonus to base D are reasonable. Considering DRG has no native attack boosting abilities they might as well make DRG a TP machine since even when we have tons of TP our WS averages are still terribad compared to jobs like DRK and WAR that have 1.5k+ attack without cor or brd buffs or jobs like SAM that get retarded WS Damage+% traits and gear and WS with cratio bonuses.

Jump can put out decent-ish damage really if you throw the gear into it, max out STR and VIT, and I guess if they did adjust the TP gain on it to 1.5x then it means you could essentially forgo sTP under assumption 1.5x base tp is probably around the tp required to count as a single hit in a 5hit, but unless the jump its self actually is doing about 3 times your melee damage then it's worthless, considering that at capped haste you're attacking every 1.6-1.7 seconds, the 2 second delay after the JA means that your overall dps is going down by using it.

[Ophannus]

Even with a 50% VIT mod, dumping a ton of VIT really doesn't boost the damage much. Adding a crapton of VIT adds very, very little damage and you're lucky to notice it unless your pdif is capped or when you crit.

The only way they can make the split timers viable is if they lower the intended Spirit/Soul Jump timers lower than they're currently aiming for. Something like 90seconds for Spirit Jump and 2.5min for Soul Jump followed by either 1.5x TP for NQ jumps or Regular TP+X bonus where X is like 10-15ish. Or give us a JA stance that lets NQ Jumps DA or something for 3minutes.

[Tanama]

@Orphannus

Jump enhancing traits would be most welcome if done properly. I would hope they add traits that increase jump damage and TP gain. Then, add powerful merits like DRK's "Desperate Blows", DNC's "Saber Dance" etc. you get the picture.

From the sound of things, it looks like the next category of merits will look something like this:



A lot of that is hopeful thinking.


Bottom-line: I am all for increased jump damage if the Jumps do get separated. As Ihm posted, it needs to be significant for it to be worthwhile.

[ihm]

Tbf, I'll let them do anything they want with jumps if they take the attack penalty off drakesbane <3. A guy can dream right?

[Tanama]

Well, there is this from the Job Adjustments Manifesto written in 2011:

Additional Planned Adjustments

Weapon skill refinements

and this from earlier this year:

In regards to weapon skills, we are also planning to revamp each job's weapon skills in the future.
There's still hope!

[Ophannus]

Doubt they're still going to do that, it was almost 2 years ago.

[Ophannus]

All DRG really needs is just an Attack Buff JA of some sort and to reduce breath damage% from new NMs so Wyverns can deal more than 0.5% total damage in a fight.

[Camate]

Greetings!

The post made on the Japanese forums the other day in regards to dragoon was a response to a player asking to have the timers split. This response was not mentioning that the development team would definitely be splitting the timers, it was only illustrating what would have to happen to the new special ability as well as the current jump cool down timers in the event that they were to change. I apologize for there not being an official translation of this and for any confusion.

Basically, IF they were to split the timers the below changes would have to be made to the new special ability and jump abilities:


New special ability

Effect duration: 45 seconds (no change)
Recast time for each jump: Increase time from 10 seconds to 15 seconds

Recast time for each jump

Jump: 60 seconds (no change)
High Jump: 120 seconds (no change)
Spirit Jump: Increase from 60 seconds to 90 seconds
Soul Jump: Increase from 120 seconds to 180 seconds
Merit points used to reduce Jump/High Jump recast timers will be changed so the effect does not apply to Spirit Jump/Soul Jump


If you feel strongly or have feedback to give on this we would be happy to pass it on to the development team.

[Babekeke]

Merit points used to reduce Jump/High Jump recast timers will be changed so the effect does not apply to Spirit Jump/Soul Jump

If you feel strongly or have feedback to give on this we would be happy to pass it on to the development team.

Thank you Camate. With regards to this statement, I do feel strongly, and I'm sure others do too. Might I propose that if these changes were to come into effect, the merit point categories change from:

Jump Recast: Each level of this enhancement decreases the recast time of Jump by 2 seconds, to a minimum recast time of 50 seconds.

To:

Spirit Jump Recast: Each level of this enhancement decreases the recast time of Spirit Jump by 3 seconds, to a minimum recast time of 75 seconds.

And from:

High Jump Recast: Each level of this enhancement decreases the recast time of High Jump by 4 seconds, to a minimum recast time of 1 minute, 40 seconds.

To:

Soul Jump Recast: Each level of this enhancement decreases the recast time of Soul Jump by 6 seconds, to a minimum recast time of 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

Personally though, I don't see that we'd get much benefit from having the jump timers split like this, only that the price of 'Jump' gear will rise, as we'll be using jump/high jump again. More inv space lost >.>

[DaBackpack]

I'm pretty sure that splitting the Jump timers in the proposed way does much worse for DRG than good. Someone better at FFXI math can explain better than I can, but unless Jump or High Jump get buffed on a level comparable to Spirit/Soul Jump, your damage output is negatively affected by using Jump and High Jump because of JA delay.

In other words, we still won't be using Jump/High Jump, but now our recasts for Spirit/Soul Jumps are increased. This is bad.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the impression I got.

EDIT: Yeah, better explanations are given at the start of this thread.

[Martel]

Nononononono, please no. If splitting jump timers comes at the cost of nerfing the hell outta spirit/soul jump timers, then no thanks.

The potential new timers have been looked into mathematically already and really, splitting timers with those recasts is a DPS nerf for DRG. As much as I'd have liked the use of all four jumps, done like this, it's not worth it.

/sigh, and I was so excited when I first saw the new DRG SP. Immediately followed by nerf, nerf, then the nerf bat looms over non-SP DRG too...

Throw DRG a bone here. The Original 0 recast jump SP wasn't anymore broken than Mighty Strikes is already(and that's before adding the new DA SP.) And splitting jump timers with the current recasts isn't suddenly going to push DRG to the top of the DD chart.

Honestly, considering the accumulation of JA delay on melee rounds from spamming so many JA, the value of jump/high jump is questionable during high haste zergs(90% of current content.)

[Ryx]

I'm gonna have to agree here.

While it might sound nice to have the additional job abilities from splitting the recast, hurting spirit/soul jump will only have negative consequences on the overall output of Dragoon. Spirit and Soul jump are just stronger and more useful than the original jumps while the wyvern is present.

Splitting jump timers would mostly go to make Dragoon that much better at job ability procs in dynamis, something we're already great at. We don't need this.

If the devs really want to split jump timers, then please do it like this:
Jump: Returned to its original 90 seconds recast
High Jump: Returned to its orginal 180 seconds recast
Spirit Jump: Left at its current 60 seconds recast
Soul Jump: Left at its current 120 seconds recast
Dragoon Group 1 Merits:

Change Jump merits to Spirit Jump merits
Change High Jump merits to Soul Jump merits


I think I speak for the community on this one: Do NOT hurt spirit/soul jump. If it's between having shared timers or hurting Spirit/Soul to get Jump/High back, we'd rather keep things as they are.

High Jump's enmity shed might be more of a consideration, if enmity itself wasn't in dire need of an overhaul right now.

That's my two gil on the matter.

-Ryx

tl;dr: Don't hurt spirit/soul jump.

[Motenten]

I'm pretty sure that splitting the Jump timers in the proposed way does much worse for DRG than good. Someone better at FFXI math can explain better than I can, but unless Jump or High Jump get buffed on a level comparable to Spirit/Soul Jump, your damage output is negatively affected by using Jump and High Jump because of JA delay.

In other words, we still won't be using Jump/High Jump, but now our recasts for Spirit/Soul Jumps are increased. This is bad.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the impression I got.

EDIT: Yeah, better explanations are given at the start of this thread.

Doing a quick check, I don't think this is the case. Even in high haste situations, Jump should still be a net positive, though High Jump is mostly a wash. In low haste situations they should both be a net positive.

Edit: This does not address whether the change in Spirit/Soul Jump timers would be a negative for drg, only whether the JA delay on Jump/High Jump themselves make them a net loss.

[Aramaic]

Gonna have to say no to this proposed change. It will do more bad than good the way they want to adjust it for splitting timers.

[ManaKing]

New special ability
[list]
Effect duration: 45 seconds (no change)
Recast time for each jump: Increase time from 10 seconds to 15 seconds


That part is fine and having 5 total jumps would make for a very fun and satisfying SP ability. BUT it shouldn't come at the cost of DRG being in a worse position when they are not in their new SP.




Recast time for each jump

Jump: 60 seconds (no change)
High Jump: 120 seconds (no change)
Spirit Jump: Increase from 60 seconds to 90 seconds
Soul Jump: Increase from 120 seconds to 180 seconds
Merit points used to reduce Jump/High Jump recast timers will be changed so the effect does not apply to Spirit Jump/Soul Jump



DRG isn't more powerful compared to other DD jobs and has liabilities like Piercing damage and reliance on your Wyvern being alive to be effective. If DRG is to have more liabilities than other DDs then it isn't unreasonable for us to be asking for our output to be higher.

Spirit and Soul Jump are valued much higher than Jump and High Jumps. I don't think it would be acceptable to split timers until you are willing to also give DRGs the ability to keep their cool downs for Spirit and Soul Jump lower by gear or by merits.

The point of splitting the jumps is to make DRG better for this community. If the point of this adjustment is only to make the new SP more attractive but not help DRG in general, then it seems to be against what people are asking for.

[Valkrist]

New special ability

Effect duration: 45 seconds (no change)
Recast time for each jump: Increase time from 10 seconds to 15 seconds

Recast time for each jump


With current jump timers and TP gain, DRGs are currently able to WS with practically every jump. We're literally getting anywhere from 50 to 200+ TP per jump if you're geared properly. No one uses any of the jumps as a medium to deliver direct damage. They're used purely as tools so that we can WS more often. Jump and high jump both give minimal TP returns that can not justify the additional 30-60 second increase in spirit and soul jumps (40-80 seconds with merits).

Unless jump and high jump's TP return is -radically changed- by either having significant TP modifiers, and to give equal TP return to double/triple/quad attack procs, or to have their damage significantly increased so that they do more than a normal swing. It's true that regular jump does more damage than the other jumps, but it's marginal even if you can afford to gear more VIT.


As for Camate's quote... Huhwha~? Please re-explain this. A JA that lasts 45 seconds, that makes all jump recasts -increased- from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This can't possibly be talking about anything that currently exists, even on the test server. Did you mean that it -decreases- recasts 10 seconds, to 15 seconds? One way or another... This ability needs to be explained since I have never heard any mention of any JA that even changed recasts by 10 seconds. Also what would be the recast of this skill?

If this JA decreases all jump recasts by 15 seconds, this would increase DPS -post- change. Overall this would not make up for net loss of spirit and soul jump TP return due to increased recasts.

[Kysaiana]

I'm for keeping jump timers together. Jump and Hi-jump are fairly useless and the increase in recast to soul/spirit jump with no ability to lower them with merits is simply a nerf.

As far as the DRG-SP goes, it was originally (after the rework) going to be just jump with no recast for I think 30 seconds. Then it was changed to all jumps with 10 sec recasts for 45 seconds, and now all jumps with 15 second recast for 45 seconds. So I guess 12 jumps in 45 seconds assuming split timers and you can fire them off fast enough.

[Yugl]

Lets say you have 1hr of a jumps (60*60 = 3600s):

New system with merits: 248 rounds of TP (20 rounds of Soul Jump; 40 rounds of Spirit Jump)

Old system with merits: 252 rounds of TP (36 rounds of Soul Jump; 72 rounds of Spirit Jump)

Should get more damage from the old system too.

Method (In case of an error):

Jump/Old Spirit Jump: 50s
High Jump/Old Soul Jump: 100s
New Spirit Jump: 90s
New Soul Jump: 180s

X = Jump recast
3600/X = N jumps
(N Jumps)*(TP Multiplier)

Spirit Jump TP Multiplier = 2
Soul Jump TP Multiplier = 3


In terms of TP and on a 6 minute rotation:
6 Jumps
3 High Jumps
4 Spirit Jumps
2 Soul Jumps
High and normal Jump are increased 20% with full merits.
1.2*(6+3)+8+6 = 24.8 hits of TP without merits

Currently in 6 minutes:
6 Spirit Jumps
3 Soul Jumps
Spirit and Soul Jump are increased 20% with merits.
12+9 = 21 hits of TP*1.2 = 25.2 hits of TP without merits

Now, you obviously do more damage and rely less on having a Wyvern out, but I would be really hesitant to endorse the new option as superior from a high-haste DD standpoint.

Splitting timers is a nerf for DRG under those conditions. If you're going to split them, have . . .

Jump: 1min
High Jump: 2min
Spirit Jump: 1min
Soul Jump: 2min

Don't forget that we often combine 2hrs with high haste situations, so JA-delay will affect total damage as well. For each jump, we embrace a 1s delay, so if you're using four jumps during the 2hr, you already cut 4s from the delay itself. Give 1-2s for the ability as well (Assumes super fast macro smashing) and you're looking at 8-12s just using the first round of jumps. Quite frankly, an SP like Mighty Strikes would offer more during high haste for DRG. Not to mention, this 2hr doesn't work comfortably with our other 2hr since taking advantage of high haste and using jumps contradict each other.

[Tanama]

I agree with my fellow Dragoons. Extending the recast timer on Spirit Jump and Soul Jump will impact Dragoon negatively. Making Dragoon weaker will worsen the current situation.

I agree with Ryx's suggestion:

If the devs really want to split jump timers, then please do it like this:
Jump: Returned to its original 90 seconds recast
High Jump: Returned to its orginal 180 seconds recast
Spirit Jump: Left at its current 60 seconds recast
Soul Jump: Left at its current 120 seconds recast
Dragoon Group 1 Merits:

Change Jump merits to Spirit Jump merits
Change High Jump merits to Soul Jump merits

If it's done that way, leave Spirit Jump and Soul Jump as they are. I feel Jump and High Jump should be strengthened regardless. Dragoon definitely needs a boost to it's damage because at the moment, we are an unpopular choice for high-end content unless you have a Ryunohige.

The wyvern needs a damage dealing boost and enemies need reduction to breath resistance so that Wyvern Breath actually matters. At this time, the wyvern is solely used to strengthen Spirit and Soul Jump and an occasional heal. Damage-wise it does almost nothing on high-level content because the wyvern is either dead or incapacitated from the heavy aoe damage and status effects.

Everyone else explained the job ability delay issue a lot better than I could. Make note of this and I sincerely hope the development team decides to aid us rather than weaken us further.

[Frapp]

I too am for keeping the timers consolidated (Jump + Spirit; High Jump + Soul). The math and JA delay everyone is talking about, I agree with.

I would like to make the additional point against splitting timers with what we were told a long time ago by SE. That we are running out of "slots" in the code for job abilities. Yes, we are about to add 20 new abilities in a coming update. Those were originally going to be on a shared timer, but progress being made with the coding is allowing them to be separate. Also, that same work is being done so that 2 new jobs can be introduced with Seekers of Adoulin.

I don't know how many JA "slots" the developers are going to be able to add, but we should consider that the number will be just as finite as it is now. GEO and RNF are going to need the bulk of the new JAs. Each job will probably get a handful of new abilities as well. I would much rather leave DRG's JAs (and by extension, most of the shared JAs on other jobs) alone simply to be able to get more abilities down the line.

[Nightfox]

Can always split the timers with no change to recasts.

[Tennotsukai]

yeah, I don't agree with the proposed idea either. I would love to be able to see jump and high jump again but not at this cost

[Vivik]

NO! That is all.

[Ophannus]

Yugl I don't think we could utilize both 2hrs effectively since they both require the wyvern to be used. If we use Rouse Wyvern first for the reduced Jump timers then do Spirit Surge, we lose the Wyvern and thus we lost the bonus TP from Spirit/Soul Jump, so you'd have to calculate if losing the bonus TP from Soul Jump/Spirit Jump is worth combining Rouse Wyvern with Spirit Surge for just the 25% JA haste.

[Sp1cyryan]

Greetings!

The post made on the Japanese forums the other day in regards to dragoon was a response to a player asking to have the timers split. This response was not mentioning that the development team would definitely be splitting the timers, it was only illustrating what would have to happen to the new special ability as well as the current jump cool down timers in the event that they were to change. I apologize for there not being an official translation of this and for any confusion.

Basically, IF they were to split the timers the below changes would have to be made to the new special ability and jump abilities:


New special ability

Effect duration: 45 seconds (no change)
Recast time for each jump: Increase time from 10 seconds to 15 seconds

Recast time for each jump

Jump: 60 seconds (no change)
High Jump: 120 seconds (no change)
Spirit Jump: Increase from 60 seconds to 90 seconds
Soul Jump: Increase from 120 seconds to 180 seconds
Merit points used to reduce Jump/High Jump recast timers will be changed so the effect does not apply to Spirit Jump/Soul Jump


If you feel strongly or have feedback to give on this we would be happy to pass it on to the development team.

In all honesty I would rather Spirit and Soul Jump stay the same timer and Jump and High Jump increased in recast. For the sake of the argument we can not merit the timer of those down, but can on Jump and High Jump.

In all honesty whether you know it or not DRG is behind the output of all the other 2H DDs. If you were truly going for balanced then there is no reason to increase the recast at all. Even with the timers split and kept the same DRG still will still be vastly inferior to its 2H weapon counterparts of WAR, SAM, and DRK.

DRK got a huge buff with last resort and the accompanying diabolic eye merits. What does DRG now get after having become even weaker in comparison? An extra jump that doesn't help in zerging (DRGs don't really get accepted into that due to being, you know, inferior..) and does not level the playing field between the four jobs at all.

On a side note Spirit and Soul Jump are weak when the wyvern dies (ANY high end content). Personally I would rather see the jumps not dependent on the wyvern, but I that will never happen.

[Babekeke]

Well this seems to be a fairly firm "no thanks" to splitting the timers on these terms.

The majority vote seems to be keep spirit/soul on the timers they are, swap merits to spirit/soul, and raise jump/high jump back to their original timers.

Or just leave them adjoined.

[ManaKing]

The big issue I've had with DRG since they added the new jumps is that they are just better than the originals. They become less attractive when your pet is dead, which will happen if you are fighting anything serious. And then you are left with no real choices. Jump and High Jump don't really offer anything outside of Spirit and Soul Jump when your wyvern isn't present except some pre 75 gearing choices that add significantly smaller TP gains VS full strength Spirit and Soul Jumps.

So you split the JA timers AND you penalize Spirit and Soul Jumps. What are DRGs actually getting out of this? Spirit and Soul Jumps were capable of placating DRGs because they offered a direct improvement over what they had originally, and it was very much needed because other jobs were getting much farther ahead. The other jobs are still outclassing DRG, and this solution doesn't offer DRG any sort of direct improvement, unlike plenty of jobs new SP abilities.

For this kind of a change to be valued, Jump and High Jump have to be improved significantly. You could also not increase the recast timers on Spirit and Soul Jumps and keep merits affecting them. Not to mention, can we even use both of our SP abilities together effectively? It really doesn't looks like that is the case, which once again, WAR beats us out hard. Why bring a DRG when you can bring a WAR?

No matter what, DRG needs changes if you expect people to play it in high end content because presently it loses too much when it doesn't have a Wyvern and it loses even more when a mob is strong VS piercing, like Undead are.

[Cair]

Dragoon already struggles to keep up with other DD, and can't even come close without the use of a Mythic weapon (you're looking at 40% less damage output without). Don't bring it down even further. The proposed changes would be a very unwelcome nerf. Leave it how it is, or if the timers are separated, leave Jump and High Jump with the higher recasts. Allow merits to affect both.

[Calysto]

while i'd like to have all jumps available, this change would not be good...

why do you have to make it so bad for us seriously ?
drg can't even keep up with other 2 handed (drk/sam/war) with wyvern.
we may gain a bit more tp with the jumps(i'm not even sure given sam is sam, war has double attack and retaillation and drk got absorb tp)
their ws can easily do twice what our bests do.(got camlaan's 90 and caped stardiver, with ws sets. can't come close to thoses jobs ws damage.)
of course, wyvern's damage is far from making up for the difference.
without wyvern it's not even worth looking.
yet sam and war can tank to some extent, drk has enfeebles.
all thoses jobs have buffs.
drg only defensive abilities are evading hate and a 1 mn recast heal.(in a damage dealer situation).
we don't have any buff of our own(not counting useless circle <.<).
we HAVE to keep our wyvern alive not only so it help a little with damages, but because not having it would hurt our damages even more.
(i'm not sure what would cost the most, the loss of the wyvern damage by itself or the loss of OUR damages by spirit/soul jumps).

yet what you offer is nothing but a nerf...
where is your "balance" ?

[Caketime]

Balance is playing Canasta behind the couch with Jesus and Garfield.

[Ophannus]

DRG is highly competive in non Legion situations. I've parsed second or third in PW or in many VW parties with 99 Rag's getting equal buffs, with average stardivers doing 2-3k+ etc. The problem is once you get rid of temp items, DRG falls behind in the buff department. While DRK can Souleater/LR for huge buff to their WS, DRG has no self WS buff without /WAR and DRG can't /WAR in Legion since we lose Hasso/Third Eye. Since DRK has LR, they don't need Berserk so they get to enjoy Hasso without worrying about losing out on much Attack. Obviously WAR doesn't lose Berserk since it's their ability so they benefit from /SAM fully. SAM has Hasso and Third Eye natively so they /WAR is an obvious choice. DRG is the only 2handed job that must choose between an attack buff subjob or /SAM and for endgame we have to use /SAM unless it's in VW where Atmacites/Temps make up for Store TP/Hasso.

If DRG had it's own form of Hasso that increased Attack/Attack Speed or made us Ignore Defense so our lowish Attack Value mattered more, we'd be more competitive. As it is now Stardiver is an amazing WS--but DRG lacks the Attack and job abilities to make it useful on high level targets. WAR and DRK both have several JA's to enhance the strength of their WS. Bloodrage/Warcry/Restraint/Last Resort/Souleater/Scarlet Delirium etc/=. DRG has not a single ability to enhance our WS, you know why? Because the Wyvern was designed to use an Elemental Breath after each WS. Elemental Breaths on non-NMs do fantastic damage to bridge the gap. I can go into Abyssea, pop a 4k Drakesbane and my Wyvern will do a 450 damage breath attack after it. That 400 breath is supposed to bridge the gap between a 4k Drakesbane and a 4.5k Ukko's Fury fully buffed. Now on NMs(specifically newer NMs post WoTG), these new NMs have HEAVY resistance to breath damage. This was probably done to preemptively shoot down any attempts at cheesing the mob by exploiting spells and WS that do low, albeit consistent damage over time and ignore physical and magical defenses i.e Atonement, BLU Breaths, Wyvern Breaths, Chi Blast, Spirits Within. This also negates the Wyvern's usefulness almost fully, as Wyvern Breaths go from doing 300-350 damage to regular mobs outside of Abyssea at 99, to about 20 damage on NMs. Literally 20-50. And make no mistake, that's unresisted. 5/5 Strafe does not help because it's not a resist, these NMs simply have "Breath Damage Taken-90%" or something. This is painful, as a Wyvern will hit these high level NMs for 50-65 damage but deal 20-50 damage from a Breath. Since DRG uses WS a lot in a Legion scenario(Fully buffed Marches+Haste), the Wyvern's damage is so terrible because instead of actually meleeing(which does 60-65 damage) they stop and delay their attacks to charge up a Breath attack which actually does LESS(20-50) than if they just melee'd. This is why I advocated a JA pet command for DRG to inhibit their breath attacks and strengthen their attack speed and damage/attack ratings. If a Wyvern never used a Breath unless you activate smiting/restoring breath, it would feasibly hold on to its TP, which means Spirit Link becomes another JA to grant us TP, another useful tool.

Instead of splitting Jump timers, how about focusing on

1a) Giving DRG a stance, or self buff ability that increases Attack by a large amount.
1b) The ability could also increase Attack Speed slightly, less than Hasso, like 5% or so.
2a) Replace Critical Defense Bonus traits with just the first tier of Critical Attack Bonus. Just one tier is fine.
2b) Attack Bonus III at 99.
3) Make Gungnir's Defense Down 25% and replace/overwrite Angon.
4) Make Angon start at 25% and scale up to 30% with AF2+2 hands to make it competitive with Tourbillion/Ageha(only if these get fixed, DRG spends gil to use this JA and merit points as well, this ought to be the best Defense Down ability, especially for its recast otherwise)
5) Pet command to restrict AUTO BREATHs from Wyvern; speeds up Wyvern Attacks by 15-25% and strengthens Wyvern's Attack Power(Not STR, not DMG. ATTACK)
6) Remove the Attack Penalty to Drakesbane. Have you seen how powerful Resolution is? Have you seen how powerful Tachi: Shoha is? Drakesbane has such a low base Critical Hit modifier at 100% TP that removing the Attack Penalty from it won't make it anywhere near as powerful as Ukko/Resolution/Shoha. Drakesbane is basically a slightly stronger Penta Thrust with a 5% chance of critical at 100% TP if they removed the Attack Penalty, but it will at least give us another decent WS to use endgame.
7) Don't split Jump timers unless you buff up Jump and High Jump TP or damage considerably.
8) Either reclassify Wyvern Breaths into another damage category or ease up NM's resistence to breaths. Honestly the only jobs that even use Breath damage are BLU, DRG and sometimes PLD. These are 3 jobs that could USE enhanced damage versus NMs and yet they're crippled. Having BLU use Breath Attacks actually gives them an avenue to deal unique damage versus endgame NMs yet this was never explored, even though they have many pieces of gear that Enhance Breaths(Mavi Tathlum; Mirage Keffeyih) and dozens of Breath spells. Paladins wouldn't mind being able to Atonement certain NMs when they aren't getting buffed. Is a PLD doing a 500-700 Atonement every once every few minutes that terrible when DRKs and WARs are busting out 4k Resolutions every 8 seconds?
9) Give us a final Jump that shares a timer with Super Jump. There's already an animation for it in the .dats files and it APPEARs to be a damage version of Super Jump(comparable to Freya's Jump in FFIX). The player Jumps up like Super Jump but in this case is still vulnerable to damage even though the animation shows them off screen, then the DRG charges up energy and throws their lance down causing heavy damage followed by the Dragoon landing and pulling the lance out of the target) ( Animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv13Cm2YCpQP)

[Mirage]

Please do not by any means lower the frequency of Soul Jump and Spirit Jump. The TP gain from those two jumps is very important.

[Ophannus]

I realized that if they reduce 2hours to 1hour and then we can merit them down to 30minutes, we'll most likely see Call Wyvern be changed to a 10minute timer. They also reduced Circle abilities and Breaker abilities to 5 minutes recently. I think they're changing the JA timers to reflect the faster pace of battle. If they think having 2hrs on a 30min recast is ok, I'm sure they'll reduce Call Wyvern to a 10min recast, which I think is a good compromise.

[Sekundes]

It's been said by many but just to reinforce that idea... I'm not okay with the current conditions for splitting jump timers. Drg needs a buff, not a nerf... I honestly don't see it as a problem to just separate jump timers with no changes in the recast as drg is already behind most DD's.

[ihm]

Doing a quick check, I don't think this is the case. Even in high haste situations, Jump should still be a net positive, though High Jump is mostly a wash. In low haste situations they should both be a net positive.

Edit: This does not address whether the change in Spirit/Soul Jump timers would be a negative for drg, only whether the JA delay on Jump/High Jump themselves make them a net loss.

Yeah I just ran the numbers on your calc and yeah, you are right, it does give a boost, but it lessens as your haste levels go up. Would it take much to modify it based on Camate's post to compare the damage difference between 4 slow recast jumps or the 2 quick recast jumps, would be interesting to see the actual numbers I guess. Maybe I jumped (Hehebadpun) the gun a little >.>;.

[Ophannus]

This does not address whether the change in Spirit/Soul Jump timers would be a negative for drg, only whether the JA delay on Jump/High Jump themselves make them a net loss.

This is what's most distressing, as a large portion of our damage output relies on these Jumps, especially OAT users. This does however make Ryunohige users slightly better as more opportunities for Jumps in general and under AM III a 3 hit Jump and High Jumps net a lot of TP/Damage.