Dragoon and voidwatch + some other stuff

[Kavik]

Ok, all these points have been said before but they were all at least 4 months ago so I am going to say them again. Also thank you for the recent updates which will tie into one of my points below.

1) First off, and subsequent posters can comment on this but it's really for the dev team. Is or is not dragoon a PET job? We cannot a)tell our wyverns what to attack independently of us attacking something. b)recall our wyvern without disengaging the monster, unless we dismiss them which is generally impractical considering the recast timer if wyvern has been injured. c) Give our wyvern any specific direction to do anything until a ridiculous level, which is also incredibly unreliable because it's not very specific. d)Wyverns have less AI then any other pet, automatons will cast on their own ws on their own etc, bst pets will attack things which have attacked them already even if it is often to the bsts peril, avatars will attack anything that attacks their master without being prompted to do so.

Pet Commands
Level Name
1 Dismiss
90 Smiting Breath
90 Restoring Breath
95 Steady Wing

We really have to wait till lvl 90 for our pet to learn that we wish him to cure us without casting a spell? Also, they have no way to cure themselves. For most people these factors mean that drg is not classified as a 'pet' job, even though many of drg's abilities rely heavily on our wyvern and having our wyvern fight by us is the very definition of drg. This also means that drg does not fall into any defined category.

Solution(s): Solution 1 > Give drg in some capacity all the things listed above that they do not currently have.

2) The recast time on our pet, while drastically better then 2 hrs, is too long. This is especially true in voidwatch where even with all of the buffs/hp you can put on your pet, they will not save his life and he WILL get one-shotted at some point. Meaning you're out of luck for at least another 20 mins if you just summoned him.

Solution(s): Solution 1> Reduce timer. I'm not asking for 0 here, 5 or even 7 minutes would be something more reasonable. Solution 2 > Give new ability like Deus Ex Automata which allows us to summon our wyvern in a low hp state, so we can use those items to heal him or spirit link etc. And I know the recast time would be easier since it's a matter of changing those digits just like was done with Besieged.

3)Enable more specific classifications for 'Smiting breath'. Anecdote about voidwatch: Recently I have been going to voidwatch a lot as my drg for proc purposes. 'Monster is extremely vulnerable to wind wyvern abilities' ie wind breath. I am drg/sam so i can ws more then once in a row. I use smiting breath, and my wyvern uses fire breath, i ws, and my wyvern uses fire breath, i take off any 'breath' gear for my wyvern, thinking the mob might be weak to fire and that's why he is using fire, ws again, ice breath, use tp wing, lightning breath, jumps + meditate nets me fire breath. By this time my wyvern is at 50% hp from the aoe spams on the NM, so i back off and heal him up while the party is continuously telling me wyvern wind abilities. I begin the process again and get the same results, he never once used wind breath. This is incredibly frustrating, pup, through various usages of manuevers can more or less tell their automaton what to do, bst can tell every pet exactly what ws they want them to do and when they want them to do it, as can smn, as long as the restricting factors are met in the respective jobs. Bottom line: It is nearly impossible, and entirely luck based to get a wyvern breath proc on any NM in voidwatch.

Solution(s): Solution 1 > Limit the breaths which can stagger to the highest available to the wyvern, ie making it so you have to have extra gear slots to get this proc with some consistency, or some such. Alternately, change the proc system so that any element of breath will stagger the monster. This would not make staggering drastically easier for the following reasons: getting a wyvern elemental breath proc in the first place is not common in the scheme of things, wyverns without outside assistance (ws's from the master) will only use their breath every 1 min IF the player has told them to since the only AI on the wyvern is set to 'attack what and when the master does'. And you have to keep the wyvern alive long enough to actually get him to breath attack. Solution 2 > Take out the 'elemental' factor all together, and leave it at 'wyvern breath attacks' so any element, fire breath, earth breath etc will stagger the monster. Solution 3 > Make only Breaths triggered by "Smiting Breath" stagger the enemy, this would be contingent upon taking out the elemental part of the stagger first, otherwise it would be making it harder not easier to stagger with breath attacks. Solution 4 > I saw this one in a previous thread and thought it was a very good and doable idea. Keep everything as is with staggers and such, and give the master the ability to specify which breath they would like to have their pet use, much like Pup's Maneuver list. Example(Used with the current smiting breath lvl):

Command tree would read something like Abilities > Pet Commands > Smiting Breath > Element of breath attack as pictured below.

90 Earth Breath
90 Fire Breath
90 Ice Breath
90 Lightning Breath
90 Water Breath
90 Wind Breath

This would be no different then Bsts 'Ready' command tree. It would be even less complex because it will always be a wyvern not one of 50+ options depending on the jug pet.

Or, you could just take out the breath stagger all together and make angon and polearm ws the staggers for drg, but that is not really 'fair' or 'balanced'.

A Last foot note: You did it with beast, you can do it with dragoon.

Thank you for reading and hopefully considering these suggestions.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Your brd is supposed to be using the apropriate threnody so your dragon will use the correct breath attack. In leu of that, the corrisponding ninjitsu san will work as well.

[Shadowsong]

Why would you be doing Voidwatch less than a level 99? All your "we get these abilties late" arguments are not very valid. Agree with everything else.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Some jobs, I mean I started VW on cor at 86. It's all you need to be a regain ho'.

[Kavik]

Why would you be doing Voidwatch less than a level 99? All your "we get these abilties late" arguments are not very valid. Agree with everything else.

Voidwatch is not the only content in the game where you might need to heal yourself as something other then /mage, when all the other 'pet' jobs get the ability to heal themselves at a much lower level. Which was the true point I was trying to make, why is it that drg has to wait till 90? Also, drg gets most of the polearm ws and angon long before 90 so you could easily do voidwatch as less then 99. I myself did voidwatch for 2 weeks as my 94 sch, you only have to be 75 to participate.

[Silkavenger]

Breath procs in VW are anything but random. However, I don't think any job other than drg relies on other players (brd nin and blm) to be able effectively proc. a little communication and cooperation solve this problem, but communication isn't always at its best in a pick up group. When water wyvern breath HV comes up I just say "water wyvern 3. (water threnody) (Katon) (please)" and wait to see if it happens. Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't.

I like the idea of working together to proc, but I doubt many non-drg are even aware that a wyvern breath proc is essentially a brd (or Nin) proc before it is a drg proc. if even the OP (who is obviously hype about drg) thinks breaths are random, I don't think it's fair to assume a brd or Nin would realize how much a breath proc is as much their responsibility as it is ours. No other job depends on others to hit procs, so perhaps the best solution is to "barance" the playing field and make drg independent in VW as well.

If they do replace "elemental breath" with just "breath" I would like them to still weight the probability at 6. I mean, the element non-specific breath proc should still come up as often as all 6 current elemental breath procs combined.

[Malphius]

The development team has already stated that they will not be adjusting breaths or reducing the timer on Call Wyvern.

What they have stated is that they don't want to give players full control over "Pets". I assume they mean specifically wyverns since many other jobs have far greater and almost total control over their pets.

When you look at how the pet jobs are balanced, DRG is the strongest on the player side of DD, with BST and PUP in the middle and SMN at the opposite spectrum which is entirely dependent on their pet for damage. This is why SE will not be giving DRG such control over their pet. It's to maintain BALANCE across the job classes. The more DRG focus's on commands for their wyvern the more their own damage will suffer anyways.

What we do ALL agree on however is that it's difficult to keep a wyvern alive during VwNM where very often the only way we survive is by spamming temps. They have added Healing Salves for our pets, added the Steady Wing command and then we have Spirit Link. Still all these methods fail at times especially when proc's start to slow down.

My suggestion is simple and I made it in another thread which i'm not surprised is getting over looked due to it's ludicrous nature. The only thing our wyvern's need is a "Stay" command. This will keep them on the field of battle but out of the direct line of fire. In this way, they will still be subjected to the dangers of random AoE's, but not to every one that the Dragoon him/herself will take on the front line. They can be strategically called in and placed back as needed.

From this point you could get creative with a bonus to player stats, aura's, or new breaths when in "stay" mode but I think it's best just to keep it simple and on message. What ever the bonus would be, it would have to not be greater than the benefit of keeping the wyvern engaged in battle. We want our wyvern's fighting along side us and I have the feeling the development team does as well.

[Ophannus]

1) They increased HP evasion and parrying so we wouldn't need to rely AS much on healing breath or /mage because that takes away from our damage.
2) DRG is a DD/Pet hybrid not a Pet main. The Wyvern is an ally, we have little control over it. We don't charm or bribe our Wyvern with broths, we don't sacrifice our life energy as a pact to summon it, we don't control it with an animator. The Wyvern comes because storyline-wise it wants to, it's a mutual bond. We can't 'command' the wyvern how other jobs command their pets, the wyvern is meant to copy and imitate us. When we WS it uses breath, when we auto attack, it auto attacks, when we super jump, he climbs.

The only things I'd like to see for the wyvern are Elemental Breath II's and a pet command that increases wyvern's damage taken but restricts breaths. This will make the wyvern even more durable and let us steal its TP every 90 seconds with Spirit Link(most people forget Spirit Link takes 50% of the Wyvern's TP but often goes ignored since we WS so often that the wyvern never has time to accumulate much TP, when you restrict the breath, the DRG can sap 100+% TP every 90 seconds from the wyvern like a free instant meditate.)

[cidbahamut]

The development team has already stated that they will not be adjusting breaths or reducing the timer on Call Wyvern.

The development team needs to get over themselves.

Call Wyvern should have been on a five minute timer from day one.