Revaluation of DRG Group1/Group 2 merits.

[Ophannus]

Since the dev team made it a point that they would reevaluate and rebalance merits, I thought I would create a thread specifically for these kinds of adjustments to share our views.


Group 1 Merits for DRG are pretty solid but almost all DRGs will opt for Jump/High Jump recasts as these affect our two most useful abilities that create instantaneous damage as well as generate TP. This has never been more true than after Spirit and Soul Jump were added. If the dev team ever adds an expansion to the amount of points we can spend on Group 1 category, then I think some merits that lower recast of superfluous abilities should be removed. For example, I'd wager that almost no DRG ever merits Ancient Circle. It's a 10 minute ability that lasts for 60-90 seconds with such a situational and niche effect. There's no justification for adding it even if they fight Wyrms or Dragons frequently. More Jumps and more High Jumps are still better. Spirit Link recast is also something a DRG would not bother with. Spirit Link is such a hit or miss ability. If you're fighting something that does moderate AoE, a 3 minute spirit link is all you need. If you're fighting something that AoE's heavily, and extra 30 seconds off spirit link likely will just prolong the inevitable.

To replace these I submit the following:
Wyvern HP+ merits. It could be +5%, +2%, +2%, +2%, +2%. Will add wyvern survivability while also enhancing breath's.

Group 2's.

Angon: Angon is perfect, there's nothing wrong with it. The only adjustments I can see to it would be maybe create more kinds of angons we can throw that have a variety of effects. Most of the time the defense down is super awesome, but sometimes another effect would be more beneficial, perhaps an evasion down angon, or a bind angon. I realize that some mobs resist bind and that Angon's defense down always lands no matter what, but perhaps it could be more akin to a Shadowbind effect. It can even have a lower duration to make it balanced since it has a shorter recast. Or a magic defense down angon for situations where physical attacks aren't used. Just something to give DRG a more supportive effect to the party, rather than being another generic DD.

Deep Breathing: This effect is already straight forward, I can't think of any adjustments that could be made. I personally have maxed this out just because an 800 HP healing breathing or restoring breath every 5minutes has saved me numerous times. Maybe if used with a healing breath, it could be extended to be an AoE, although that might make it a bit overpowered considering it generates so little enmity. Perhaps a status effect on the elemental breath, but also it's difficult to select the breath used since it's random. I can't think of any worthwhile adjustments for this job ability.

Strafe: Strafe right now is worthless. Since Elemental Breath damage is based off of the function of WyvernCurrentHP/WyvernMaxHP it's unlikely that the wyvern will use it's breath attacks at full damage on most HNMs due to AoE. So this makes strafe only really useful for small fry mobs like EXP mobs where the wyvern will remain at full HP most of the time, justifying the higher accuracy and thus more consistent breaths. The follow are suggestions for making Strafe more useful:

1) Make it increase breath potency by 5% for the first merit and 2% thereafter in addition to the +5 accuracy it provides. This could be mutually exclusive or not, compared to the Group 1 merit suggestion for Wyvern HP merits. This would have a similar effect on wyvern breaths, though this is more specific for breaths whereas Wyvern HP merits would only increase breath damage as a residual side effect of +HP.

2) Make Strafe more like Optimization/Fine-Tuning, increasing the Wyvern's physical damage taken, attack and accuracy. Since BST pets and PUPs get Stout Servant, this would be a great way for DRGs to enhance a Wyvern's statistics and make them a more robust ally. Currently the Wyvern is like a floating 40DMG Staff, dealing 30-40 damage to most HNMs, assuming they don't miss, but take twice as much damage as we do.

Empathy: At first I thought this was a useful ability. I could give my wyvern Shell/Protect on the first Spirit Link, then Haste and minuet on the second. But as it turned out, it made such little difference increased wyvern attack and attack speed made hardly any difference in it's damage output, and the benefits of shell on my wyvern were so underwhelming on most HNMs that it was borderline unnoticable in terms of damage resistance. Instead of my wyvern being taken down to 10% HP on a single AoE, it'd be taken down to 30% in one AoE, but in both cases it'd die on the second one regardless. The only benefits I could see this trait getting is a boost to the number of effects that transfer with only Level 1 Empathy. Currently it's 1 effect for Level 1 and each additional level copies an additional effect. What needs to happen is Level 1 needs to be 2 or 3 statuses per Spirit Link. By the time Spirit Link's recast is back up, a lot of my buffs may have worn, since Haste only lasts 5 minutes and Songs only last 2-3, it's hard to maintain buffs on my Wyvern. Additionally if the ability is kept in its current form as one that transfers buffs to the wyvern, perhaps make the ability steal less HP from the Dragoon the more buffs that transfers. This would not negatively impact the amount of HP the wyvern is healed, but rather simply reduce the HP cost the Dragoon pays when using Spirit Link. 1 buff= -10% HP. 5 buffs= -50% HP. The wyvern is healed the same as it would normally just less HP is loss on the Dragoon's part depending on how many buffs he transfers.

Another approach is nix the ability to transfer buffs to our wyvern completely because in general, while allowing us to give our wyvern things like haste and march and rolls is interesting and fun, it's very novel and not useful. I propose eliminating that approach and instead make empathy grant the Wyvern a poweful latent auto regen effect. At level 1 it could trigger when below 50%. Each additional merit would increase the threshold by which the latent regen triggers by 10% per merit up to 90%. The regen could be potent as well, thinking 10-15 HP/merit. That's not a lot of HP and wouldn't upset game balance as 15hp/tick only amounts to maybe 300 hp per minute and anything hitting our wyvern is hitting it for close to 100 damage per hit anyway. But this would ease the damage our wyvern sustains in battle.

Another approach to this is simply add a powerful Regen to Spirit Link not unlike what Invigorate does to Chakra. If strong enough and given a moderate duration, could bridge the gap between Spirit Link recasts and give enough leeway to let our wyverns survive long enough for the next Link. Maybe 5-10 HP per tick for 90 seconds after Spirit Link is used. Or another deal could be it gives both the wyvern and the dragoon this regen.

[noodles355]

Your spirit link pointes are innacurate, although I agree with other points of your post.
Empathy used to copy buffs in order. Haste was before pro/shell, meaning haste would get transfered almost always first. However they have now (or it was before and I was just lucky) made it so random buffs got transfered, which isn't as useful as mostly it will be crap stuff like protect or hasso/seigan or whm cureskin.
Also I'm fairly sure thst spirit link would update current buffs if you re-spirit liniked, so say you SL protect which had 20 minutes duration remaining, and then spirt linked again in 3 minutes, you would just get protect again with 17 mins remaining. I could be very wrong though.

[Ophannus]

I also think it used to copy Signet or Sanction and since it copied in order, you'd always get those recopied even though they have no effect on the wyvern. Regardless, Empathy is very meh. It should copy 3 buffs at a time for Level 1 to make it worthwhile. The only reason I have Empathy even unlocked is so I can spirit link at 100% and get TP from my wyvern.

[Anucris]

group 1 was good cept u omitted 2 and added 1, we'll say wyvern HP is in place of ancient, i guess we could leave spirit link because well its still better than ancient circle and some may lower time for xtra tp link who knows.
Liked the idea's on angon
Deep breathing should have the AOE effect, thats not too overpowered considering its every 5+ minutes. will mostly be used just to top off the party.
Strafe should definately increase breath potency because well. even on weak mobs with full hp the wyvern breath attack is barely (10-60 points) stronger than an attack. correct breath makes little difference, (strafe could also give the wyvern a regenerating set of shadows, first lvl he gains a shadow every 5 min up to 3, with more lvls he gets a shadow regenerated per minute, this would also help with AOE's...some)
Empathy should transfer 2 buffs at lvl 1 and bonuses from the drg's gear) so if u got 57str, 26dex, 22 vit, blah blah +14 acc, +41 att, it should transfer, turns ur wyv from a staff to a nice sword with a lil xtra boost in other areas
the autoregen idea was nice but should be active even at 100%, the merits would change how much per tic i.e 10, 12, 14, 16, 18... hmm even then pple will opt for just 1 merit, there has to be something appealing per lvl. each additional lvl increases its -damage taken -20%, 25, 30, 35, 40 something like that.

[Krillin]

Interesting adjustment ideas to the merits, it would be great to replace the Ancient Circle recast timer with Wyvern hp%+!

I do think that the current utility of Empathy is being underestimated. From my experience it has been hugely beneficial in Abyssea. Copying RR/VV/Apoc to the little guy makes him a deadly partner. It's not uncommon to see consistent double/triple attacks from your wyvern with great damage on the critical hits. Tack on Haste and he really goes to work. With anywhere from 60-150+ damage per hit on your standard mobs it adds up. Great for light building and KI chest farming.

Granted against NMs with massive AOEs it is less beneficial due to the high likelihood of being brought down in 1 or 2 AoE hits. It should be noted that you can also copy Utsusemi for added protection from select physical AOE which gives some amount of additional survivability. Every bit you can prolong "the inevitable" allows for more opportunities to trigger the additional TP gain with jumps and that sweet AF3+2 "damage varies with wyvern hp" effect.

That said, it does takes a little bit of thought to ensure that you're only copying the effects you want. With it Empathy fully merited I try to only spirit link when i know the 3 ATMA combo will remain active with the other copied effects usually being protect/haste or protect/utsusemi. When Abyssea and ATMA buffs cease being the main content i could see scaling back empathy in favor of other group 2 abilities. Cheers.

[Thonuwan]

Atmas automatically transfer over to our pets.

Proof is just above the atma list down the page: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Atma

[Krillin]

If that's true I'm seriously rethinking my merit distribution... I'm almost positive you don't see certain affects until after a spirit link. Kind of hard to miss a triple attacking wyvern ^^ I'll test it out tonight and pay homage tomorrow! Cheers

Edit: Tested and confirmed... Empathy not as awesome as thought /sigh Still think it has uses but not 5/5 merits. At least now I can have fun re-balancing! Thanks for the link.

[noodles355]

Atmas automatically transfer over to our pets like the cruor enhancements do.

Proof is just above the atma list down the page: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Atma

Atma does, cruor enhancements do not. If cruor enhancements did it would be the boost to healing breath everyone's been wanting, as the wyvern would also get it's HP doubled.

[Thonuwan]

You are correct. Cruor buffs do not transfer. I changed my earlier post to have correct information.

[Ophannus]

For the thousandth time, we don't need Healing Breath enhancements. If we did they would have to nerf another aspect of it. My healing breaths are already a ZERO MP, ZERO ENMITY+ NON INTERRUPTABLE CURE 5. With correct atma you can push it to healing 1k which is like a cure 6 with Deep Breathing being a Cure 7 or Divine Seal Cure 6 except with a 5m recast instead of 10. The fact we have Restoring Breath as a /Melee sub is already remarkable considering the next best thing any other melee has is Chakra, cuz Waltzes still cost TP.