Dragoon Shortcomings

This is a short list of things I have found to be frustrating on DRG since coming back. I understand other people will have views as to why these things should maybe not be adjusted, and they are welcome to their view. I know a lot of these issues have been visited in previous threads, but this is really just everything merged into a single nutshell that bothers me the most about my favorite job.

First, lower the recast of Call Wyvern. I personally think I do a great job at keeping Soryu alive. I manage to keep him alive during AA fights, WKR reives, etc by constantly attending to him and watching his hp. The problem is, when you die, the wyvern goes bye bye. If you're lucky, the timer is ready. However, most of the time you won't be, then you're basically a neutered puppy until you can resummon the wyvern. This doesn't happen because I suck or don't know what I'm doing, it happens because you can't do much when you get 1 shot. A simple solution is to introduce a pet item that allows you to call wyvern without depleting the Job Ability. The better solution is to actually reduce the recast timer to maybe ten minutes. After weakness wears off the timer would be 5-7 minutes, which is still annoying, but easier to deal with than an outrageous 15 minutes.

Second, Drakesbane. I feel insulted this weaponskill was not adjusted during the major weaponskill revamp. It seems like it was intentionally not adjusted. Even with critical hit rate +20%, I found Stardiver outperforming it on fodder monsters. Also concerning Drakes is the compatibility with Stardiver. At first glance, it appears Stardiver was implemented to enhance Drakesbane with the critical hit evasion reduction. So then, why do these two not skillchain together? That just does not make sense to me. For anybody who is going to refute the need to address this, please do not use Ryunohige owners being too powerful as a defense, as they makeup a small portion of the DRG population.

Third, there's the issue of Jump not serving a purpose when your wyvern is out (and it should always be out). I will leave High Jump off this list because it does have the use of shedding enmity when Super Jump is down. Because Spirit Jump has wyvern presence bonuses, Jump is practically useless when the wyvern is out. Any bonus or perk would help. Maybe a stun effect, a drain effect, chance to reduce enemy's critical hit evasion, there are really numerous ways to make Jump relevant.

I firmly believe that all of these issues need to be addressed and adjusted. Ever since I've played DRG I've always felt it was the neglected child, and because of that it was never able to be appreciated the same way the golden child is.

Agreed on all counts.

For call wyvern, if they don't wanna reduce the recast, they could have the wyvern automatically come back when you're raised after death.(assuming the wyvern was present when the DRG died) Seeing as the DRG dying is more the issue than the wyvern dropping. Although this would probably be harder to code, so take the easy way out and just lower the recast. <,<

Drakes, so much rage and sadness. Seeing it ignored in the ws adjustments was really disappointing. I'd love to see a good drakes buff. Including a change to SC properties.(lvl3 light please~)

Jump, and imo high jump are both pretty pointless atm. Tanking has made a come back, but even now there very little to no need to ever drop enmity. DMG enmity is so weak now, that DD's can hardly keep hate off mages, much less a tank. Hardly need to reduce enmity. <,< So I still see High Jump as a waste of a jump recast when you could have soul jumped.

Solution. Split the jump recasts already. And no, you don't need to nerf recasts to do that. Having 4 usable jumps will not break the game. Nor will it push DRG into the top DD slot, or anything of the sort. It would just be nice if there was actually a reason for jump and high jump to exist now. And you know, a use for the metric tons of jump enhancing gear SE keeps adding. Most of which doesn't freaking work on spirit/soul jump. -.-;

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This doesn't happen because I suck or don't know what I'm doing, it happens because you can't do much when you get 1 shot.

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This is the fundamental problem, and it doesn't concern drg only but all melees, as we can see with all the /shout asking for a lot of things but melees.
Ranged DD have the big advantage of, well, attacking from far. Melees don't have anything to compensate.

Most MMO don't have this problem because they use a lot of attack pattern targeted to ranged/mages, like attacks that only hit players that are far away (even if it does break a little the idea of being a ranged dd in the first place).
It's a shame but we need something ridiculous like a big boost to the hp, magic defence and/or magic evasion of all melees.
Or, if we think about dragoon only, give us some mean to spam super jump to avoid aoe, or give us far more defensive/healing ability with /mage.

The balance of this game has always been trash, especially this aspect, but since they're planning a new release with the "native app" from Nexon, they need to improve it and the best way to do it is to do it now with the current game.
Crappy balance was more or less ok in the past because of novelty or stuff, but now people don't like to lose time, so they don't like to level up a class and learn hours later that said class is useless, thus people hate lack of balance. The native app is doomed to fail if they don't improve the balance drastically.

They can reduce the recast of Call wyvern all they want, they may even remove it completely, it won't change the fact that melees sucks and die all the time.

It would have been cool if Spirit Surge could be used without a Wyvern, but doing so would summon a Wyvern in a powered up state for 60 seconds, keeping in line that Spirit Surge is an SP ability. Back before we got Fly High, the prototype we got was called Rouse Wyvern which made the Wyvern invincible to all damage, powered up its stats and attack speed, and reduced Smiting/Restoring breaths to 10 seconds and strengthened them. Seeing as how if Call Wyvern is down and our Wyvern is dead, we're in deep trouble, Spirit Surge having a secondary purpose would be welcomed. Not only would this idea prevent us neglecting our Wyvern's survivability (if the timer was 5min recast, nobody would care about Spirit Link or Steady Wing) but allow us to get *SOME* use out of Spirit Surge when our wyvern is dead. Also, since the secondary effect of Spirit Surge (when no wyvern is present) would be the same as Rouse Wyvern, it would ensure for 60 seconds our Wyvern is unkillable, which would be amazzzzzzzing for certain fights. It would also be cool to have a branching-use SP ability that's properties depend on if the wyvern is present or not. If wyvern is present, the wyvern's strenght is added to our own, if the wyvern is KO'd, our strength is added to the Wyvern(by summonming it back, and with 60sec of enhanced strength).

Simply lowering the recast would invalidate all the buffs we got to Wyvern over the last 3 years and would likely necessitate them nerfing their HP, Def, Mag.Def, Evasion, doubling the recast of Spirit Surge and halving its strength(basically quartering its effectivness), removing wyverns' -40% damage taken, and reducing Steady Wing back to its original potency which was 25% stoneskin not 33%.

Instead of simply lowering the recast and subsequently nerfing every survivability bonus they gave to them, I would rather them make Spirit Surge have an alternative use of a "Deus Ex Automata" for Dragoons, albeit on 60min timer so it can't be abused. This would give us a much needed 'second chance' at recalling our Wyvern when it counts, at the cost of an SP ability, but with an added bonus of 60 seconds of being impervious to damage -- assuring its survival.


High Jump has its uses for sure, and I've used it countless times to shed hate in small parties of 6 doing content with a PLD. That 75% hate shed comes in handy when Super Jump is down.

Jump needs some kind of bonus, though technically it has a higher base damage than Spirit Jump. If you have Ryunohige and not worried about TP, technically Jump is stronger than Spirit Jump due to the VIT bonus, however the extra TP is almost ALWAYS worth it. One small change that could make Jump useful again is giving it a short 1second Stun effect. There are 4 'Knight' style jobs in FFXI. PLD DRK SAM DRG. Each of these have a 'Killer' trait and a 'Circle' ability. In addition, 3 out of the 4 also have a 'bash' or an instant ability that deals a small amount of damage and stuns. DRG does not have a stun 'bash' ability. Why not add a short 1s stun to Jump? That would make DRG decide to use Jump to stun a spell or TP move when it's up, giving it very good utility in certain fights, and Spirit Jump can be used for damage/TP. Or, maybe make Jump steal 25% of the damage it deals as HP, making it useful as a quick emergency heal and would fit in line with DRG's 'lancet/lancer' ability from previous FF games. In fact, make it a job point like you guys did for Mug. Every upgrade, 2.5% of the damage dealt is converted into HP, so 25% when capped out. At least draining a few hundred points of HP every 50 seconds would make it somewhat useful I suppose...though still not as useful as if the recasts were simply split...

We were able to collect some answers for two of your suggestions.

- Jump and Call Wyvern
We currently have no plans to make adjustments in this direction as it'll move away from the concept of dragoons being strong while they maintain their wyvern.

- Drakesbane
The Drakesbane weapon skill isn't meant to be used in a skillchain with Stardiver, therefore we will not be making any adjustments with the premise of skillchains in mind.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

We were able to collect some answers for two of your suggestions.

- Jump and Call Wyvern
We currently have no plans to make adjustments in this direction as it'll move away from the concept of dragoons being strong while they maintain their wyvern.

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well that's stupid. while I have no particular feelings on the Jump request Call Wyvern has a tremendous argument in its favor and you just used it to deny the need, "the concept of dragoons being strong while they maintain their wyvern." Wyverns are not durable, I don't recall them EVER being durable. and as you just stated without them dragoon is not strong. an update to Call Wyvern or a dragoon version of Deus Ex would go a long way to making this job party viable in end-game. Because this position statement, coupled with the timetable for ending support for FFXI has just signed the death warrant of dragoon's viability as an end-game contributor, and at the actual end of the game as well. I understand that he Devs may feel dragoon is powerfull enough as it is, but with all due respect the devs' feelings on the subject mean nothing, because they aren't getting dragoon any party love, and pretty much the entire reason for this is the (valid) public perception that without a wyvern dragoons are next to useless and that a wyvern usually won't live more than 2 minutes in end-game.

so, perchance the Devs could come on here and explain how that perception is wrong or that dragoons ARE in fact sought after for end-game content? because honestly, with all of us in the forum as direct observers of the opposite in action we'd really like to know how we are wrong.

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Originally Posted by Glamdring

well that's stupid. while I have no particular feelings on the Jump request Call Wyvern has a tremendous argument in its favor and you just used it to deny the need, "the concept of dragoons being strong while they maintain their wyvern." Wyverns are not durable, I don't recall them EVER being durable. and as you just stated without them dragoon is not strong. an update to Call Wyvern or a dragoon version of Deus Ex would go a long way to making this job party viable in end-game. Because this position statement, coupled with the timetable for ending support for FFXI has just signed the death warrant of dragoon's viability as an end-game contributor, and at the actual end of the game as well. I understand that he Devs may feel dragoon is powerfull enough as it is, but with all due respect the devs' feelings on the subject mean nothing, because they aren't getting dragoon any party love, and pretty much the entire reason for this is the (valid) public perception that without a wyvern dragoons are next to useless and that a wyvern usually won't live more than 2 minutes in end-game.

so, perchance the Devs could come on here and explain how that perception is wrong or that dragoons ARE in fact sought after for end-game content? because honestly, with all of us in the forum as direct observers of the opposite in action we'd really like to know how we are wrong.

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Sounds like they want drg to be more of a non-pet based job with their statement and calling the pet is just an optional ability to call forth and if i'm not mistaken thats how they first made dragons in the ffxiv game? Soo drg isn't a drg without a pet wyvern it's just another type of job entirely then or a drg isn't a drg without having a highly functional stable pet that can take high amounts of dmg thrown at it even thrown at it rapidly countless times...:confused:

Well have at it with the contributes to this post>:-) :cool:

YYB, here's the thing, I tend to think when developing jobs for balance they do an equation where all jobs are to add up to 1000 points +/- 50 points-note the point numbers are arbitrary, for all I know the actual total for a naked 99 is supposed to 33,745 +/-2,213. on that scale they use a set of values for different aspects of the job like durability, DPS, buffing, debuffing, healing, etc.; somehow sub-jobs are factored into that as well. then potential yield assuming 100% efficiency on your button mashing is used for all traits to achieve an aggregate score for a naked player. once they have THAT within tolerances they start in with gear combinations to see that proportionally all jobs maintain within the same range up to top tier equipment (although I believe we have all seen clearly there is some error in their methodology for that gear evaluation). But that methodology is severely inadequate when a portion of that yield is based on a pet and I don't think they have a clue how to get their equation to balance.

with dragoon it's magnified even over the other pet jobs because of the extremely limited control of the pet by the player, i.e. the pet will only attack when the player does, cannot be forcibly disengaged to heal outside combat range, does not self heal and yes, has extremely limited tools for the player to heal it coupled with the longest recall time of all pet jobs. and while healing breath-especially with gear-is some of the best healing in the game offensive output is severely lacking from the pet, the ability to take a hit and now with the limited hate for damage inflicted the wyvern is likely to take hate by virtue of that HB use when it lacks the defense to cope with the consequences of the hate. it's unrealistic to expect the player to only use HB when Superjump is up as well as Spirit Link because if they hold for that they are not fulfilling their role in the party, even soloing it is lacking in performance because of that.

I don't know if they've just given up because they can't make their evaluation criteria work or it requires the use of half values to put in changes but the code doesn't accept fractional values or what. I mean I have to assume they know what they are doing for the most part; after all, drg has in several of its incarnations worked just fine, but this is clearly NOT one of those incarnations.

They definitely don't use an equation to calculate DPS to balance jobs. If they did, I would be surprised and almost guarantee it's a new schema. 2004-2008 was the era of extreme unbalanced gameplay. WAR/SAM/NIN/MNK were extremely good for almost all content, NIN/DRK, RDM/NIN and BRD/NIN nvalidated PLD tanks, RDM invalidated WHM healing, DRG BST PUP THF were trash DPS jobs with HUGE flaws, not things that could be fixed with minor adjustments--these jobs were poorly thought out and they must've had tunnel vision moving forward.

DRG had teeny-weeny fixes here and there, but really, the way DRG is currently--is how it should have been from day 1. After thousands of posts from my self and tens of thousands of posts from everyone else in the DRG community, we finally got decent changes, but it took over a decade of complaining, brainstorming and forum posting(i've been posting for DRG fixes back since 2004 if you were to check the history of the allakhazam forum) and it's absurd. I don't know the FFXI team is on such a high horse and is so obstinate it takes them years to implement changes that the community has wanted forever. The FFXIV dev team is so fast and onboard with fixes balance issues from patch to patch. There's a few hiccups but in general, there's really no terrible jobs, and if there are, it's situational. The FFXIV team is not much larger than the FFXI team was back in its heyday, yet, the FFXI team had this community/developer barrier where they were extremely resistant to change, and they never validate us.

I must've seen hundreds of posts from people on forums saying how poor Call Wyvern was as a SP ability, and each post probably represents 20-30 people who share/agree with the view, so really thousands of people believed it was ineffective for HNM fights. Then, when SE finally gave us Spirit Surge, they *barely* acknowledge their lack of foresight by saying in the teaser notes something to the effect of "Although we disagree that DRG's two-hour ability "Call Wyvern" is anything but weak, we feel DRG are slightly behind other jobs when it comes to needing a burst of strong damage in tight spots". So they hedge their confession with "although we disagree", "slightly" and other ways to undermine how the community regards it. Its only now that DRG is several-fold stronger than it ever was, compared to other jobs. But my point is, although I'm happy they fixed it, too little;too late, and I think the design philosophy of SE's FFXI dev team always had this dissociation between community and developers. This is most likely why FFXI steadily declined over the years. Countless updates of making SAM stronger and other jobs weaker...then finally, once the game starts dying, BAM, one-handed weapon upgrades, WS updates, and huge quality of life updates that should have been implemented--AND THAT PEOPLE WERE ASKING FOR back in 2004. I've been playing FFXI for over a decade and just in retrospect, the amount of time I spent lamenting over poor job balance was ridiculous. FFXIV by comparison is closer to perfect balance than FFXI ever way at any point in time, and their dev team actively adapts their game to the players rather than forcing players to adapt to their 'vision'. I know this post won't be translated to the Devs because it's negative and it's slightly denigrating, but it's just an observation from a veteran player. And I'm sure other veteran DRGs would agree with me at how disappointing job balance has been since day 1 and this constant game of tug of war.

Oph, the equation reference was to ALL elements of a job, not DPS-there is no way you can look at a bard's DPS and say it's balanced with a Sam's DPS unless you chop off both of the Sam's arms. Best way to demonstrate it is likely Pld, you could drop a piano on a paladin, he's likely just saying "what was that?" as he shrugs off the 5 HP damage he took while he swings at his opponent who says "seriously? what is this, a sissy slap fight?" Conversely, you hit a War with that piano and he's gonna say "what the?! you hit me with a piano!!!" and need his caved in ribs healed, while his opponent says "what the?! he hit me with a piano!" and needs his own ribs tended to. it's more complicated obviously, the pld can cure, has autorefresh, defends well against everything, has multiple hate control means, etc, etc. well every job brings a bunch to the table beyond DPS and base stats that create the aggregate utility of the job, if they didn't how would a bard have ever gotten an invite in the 1st place? because he brings other goodies to the table even if his DPS is to say the least lacking. Problem is, I don't think SE and the playerbase are on the same page as to the relative value of each trait, example, SE places a much higher value on a job's defense, the playerbase could largely care less and just expects healers to curebomb them, even if it does throw hate control into a cocked hat.

As to where drg is now, I still don't think it's there yet. but it's only 1 element that's missing, the ability to keep a wyvern out and alive. your little flapping lizard needs a bit more durability, and a greater means to heal it and/or a means to recall a dead wyvern sooner. as grekumah stated above "the concept of dragoons being strong while they maintain their wyvern". the clear implication is two-fold, a. without the wyvern dragoon is not strong, and thus b. maintaining a wyvern is of paramount importance. so is it too much to ask that the means to maintain one be out there? the rest of what the job can do is fine as is, but no other job is capable of being gimped to half or less effectiveness instantly as dragoon, because if Fluppy gets 1-shot you have no means of recouping that lost effectiveness, all the other pet jobs can get a pet back faster-and most take a hit better-and the rest of the jobs can't be crippled like that short of a K.O. and reraise weakness.

honestly, I think you and I are on the same page here as to the job-although I maintain the key time of job imbalance was from the start of Abyssea until today, maybe before with the release of scholar and its immediate killing of rdm. I do however maintain that an offensive breath wyvern needs its damage output increased dramatically, i.e. it should do as much damage with a breath attack as a defensive wyvern can heal with a Healing Breath. the in between ones should heal and hurt the same, just less than a pure offensive or defensive one. That likely entails increasing the Wyvern's MACC dramatically, or whatever stat controls offensive breath.

these are just my thoughts here. I've been playing since the NA release so I do remember the "good old days" and how they sometimes fell well short of "good"-remember finding a tank for your Dunes party before level sync? I also agree that yes, some of this should have been handled a decade ago, but I think a lot of the problem came with removal of the 75 level cap. it was simply handled too piecemeal. I mean, look at how many minor tweaks they've had to release to try to make pets viable post 75. They were plenty viable AT 75-sure there was a player wish list, but since we were playing pet jobs at 75 it clearly wasn't the major drop off vs. other jobs we saw at 80 and up. Abyssea masked the weakening of pets with Atma that kept them alive when they would have been dead meat anywhere else, but moving to VW showed them as weak in a hurry and it got worse as we moved to 99 and then into ilevels. Frankly, the Dev team just dropped the ball when it came to ALL pets, and they were too timid and unrealistic in their testing using all these minor tweaks spread over a year of updates; as you said, they never had difficulty installing a nuclear weapon on a Sam, so why did pets take so long to address?