The Current State of Dragoon (Feedback)
With the release of Stormblood, Dragoon, like many other classes, got a heavy makeover. We got a new mechanic in the form of Life of the Dragon and new utility in the form of Dragon Sight. However, these new toys don't come without there problems. In this post, I will attempt to critique some of the problems I've encountered while playing Dragoon at an average to above average level.
The Damage Debate: Dragoon vs. Ninja
I will not be covering this part extensively, since my main criticism of Dragoon lies in its playstyle, not the raw numbers it can put out. However, I do feel like this is a point worth addressing. While it is perfectly fine for a job to deal a lower amount of personal damage in exchange for utility, Ninja can output a fair amount of more damage than Dragoon, while providing similar levels of utility, which, in turn, makes Dragoon less competitive as a job.
Life of the Dragon and the Dragon Eyes
Life of the Dragon is Dragoon's new mechanic. It focuses on building up "Eyes" or stacks through your jumps and a new off-GCD called Mirage Dive to enter a burst phase. This mechanic has two major problems however, the first of which is transitions. The stacks you build up during your rotation while fall off if you let Blood of the Dragon fall off, meaning you need to start building towards your burst phase from the beginning again, which is a problem that is rather unique to Dragoon. This also brings me to my second point, which is that it takes a long time to enter your burst phase, making it so the moment you use your burst skills will almost never line up with utility buffs brought by other jobs in the party. Another, more minor, criticism of Life of the Dragon is that it copies the remaining timer of Blood of the Dragon, meaning that if you want to use Nastrond three times in one Life of the Dragon window, which, ideally, you would, you need to activate it with your Blood of the Dragon timer at 25 seconds or higher, causing you to sometimes have to delay entering Life of the Dragon until you've gotten an additional Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust off. All these things combined can often make it feel frustrating to use the new Life of the Dragon mechanic and hurt the overall enjoyment of playing the job.
More Eyes: Dragon Sight
Dragon Sight is an interesting skill. It buffs your own damage, while simultaneously providing utility by raising the damage of a party member. The range is tiny however, at only 6 yalms, making it so you have to stay very close to your partner in order to be able to make use of the skill at all. This can often be a problem in dungeons where the other DPS is a ranged, and on larger bosses, where it is hard to stay close to another melee class while doing positionals. Another problem is the targeting. It is rather difficult to focus another party member, activate the skill, and target the enemy again. You can macro the skill to make it more usable, but even these macros are still a bit finicky at times. My main critique of this skill is that is often just feels clunky to use.
Solution? Fixes? Buffs?
While I am no game designer, and I'm sure that any fixes the battle designers, hopefully, come up with will end up working out much better, I will nonetheless try and suggest some potential fixes to the problems mentioned earlier.
Dragon Sight's range need to be increased, to 9 or maybe even 12 yalms, to make it easier to keep active during combat. A larger overhaul of the skill could consist of keeping the original range, but making it an AoE skill like Battle Litany, in which the damage buff would apply to everybody close enough. Such a big change is probably a lot of work though, as well as most likely being unnecessary.
Life of the Dragon's problems require more extensive solutions. A good start would be to separate the Eyes from the Blood of the Dragon timer, like Monk's Chakra and Greased Lightning gauges. As for smoothing out the mechanic itself, I've heard many different suggestions, too many to list here. Some of the suggestions I've heard are: Changing the required amount of Eyes to three and making Dragonfire Dive also give an Eye, making Blood of the Dragon give two Eyes upon application, like in the job action trailer, changing it so Blood of the Dragon instead of Geirskogul makes you enter Life of the Dragon at four Eyes, and many, many others.
Conclusion
All in all, I'm still having fun with Dragoon. The animations are gorgeous, the sounds effects satisfying, and it just feels good to have Nastrond go off. The job has some problems, though, which I tried to outline it this post. I've written this critique purely out of love for the job and I have faith that Square Enix will be able to give it some of the love it needs right now. If you disagree with any of my statements in this post or notice any mistakes I've made, please feel free to point them out to me in a comment.