The Melee DPS Paradigm and why DRG needs some attention

Considering that Yoshi P and the development team have asked of for feedback on the current state of things before Deltascape Savage is launched, I figured I'd take the time to type out my thoughts in hopes - no matter how unlikely - that someone on the team would go through them and perhaps consider them while readjusting some of the balance in the game.

This isn't a thread calling for a nerf on any of the currently "overpowered" jobs in the game. It is however, calling for a buff for the overshadowed ones at the moment.

DRG:

As stated by Yoshi P in his post and noted by many players out there I am sure, there are many who are crying over the ridiculous damage that SAM brings outclassing all DPS in the game, putting the other melee in a precarious position particularly the weakest of them all, dragoons. The argument held by Yoshi states that DRG brings raid utility that compensates for its lack of damage compared to SAM and that in principle is a fair enough argument to make.In Heavensward, DRGs did almost as much damage as MNKs but brought Disembowel, and Battle Litany to the table making them a far more valuable pick than MNKs. In fact, Heavensward was when a rise in DRG players was noticed after being shunned for quite sometime during the ARR era where their positionals, animation locks, and subpar damage made them disfavored even though their disembowel buffed the damage of bards at the time. Even in Heavensward though, DRGs were plagued with quite a few issues. Many people complained about DRG's TP sustain in extended fights, particularly ones that required you AoE heavily like A2S and later A9S if your group's DPS was not high enough. There were also complaints about punishing it was for you to drop Blood of the Dragon (BotD) particularly when Geirskogul ate away from your BotD. Fortunately both issues have been addressed, although with the latter, I'm personally of the opinion that it hurt dragoons more than it helped them.

Putting Geirskogul on a 35 second counter that does not sap away from your BotD is good in theory but really weak in practice. Dragoons went from being able to theoretically squeeze in 9 Geirskoguls in a 3 minute window to only 5. What's worse though, is that with Lance Mastery and the reduced cooldown on BotD now, your BotD is practically sitting at 25-30 seconds for the entire fight and there's nothing you can do with it. For someone new to the class, this is all good and dandy but for someone like me who has played the class for years, it's jarring and borderline aggravating. I'm sure there will be people who will jump at me and say NINs get huton and MNKs get greased lightning that they don't get to expend in the form of damage, why should DRGs? The answer to that is simple, it's because it's part of their identity as a high risk high reward DPS and while I get that the development team is trying to change that to make the class more accessible to people, I feel like in the process of making it simpler to play, they made it unplayable in favor of the other classes in the game (Also monks can technically expend their greased lightning in the form of Tornado Kick but that's another discussion for a different time). The expendable resource you get in the form of Life of the Dragon (LotD) comes in the form of a buff that takes far too long to build up for it to be useful. In fact, on a fight like Susanoo EX with a group that knows what they're doing DPS-wise, you'll likely find yourself incapable of building up 4 eyes before the phase transition happens and the sword drops. Considering that LotD and Nastrond spam is a huge part of their DPS, being unable to use them in the same time frame that the other DPS take to build up their damage makes them lag significantly behind.

Then there's the so-called "utility". I feel like I stand in strong opposition to the development team and Yoshi P on this one. DRGs don't bring enough to justify their presence in a party over any other DPS. SAM brings huge damage, NIN brings trick attack, better damage, the slashing debuff, shadewalker and smokescreen (they're the real utility melee DPS), and MNK brings better damage, Brotherhood and Mantra. Meanwhile, Battle Litany is a 15% crit boost for the entire party that sits on a 3 minute cooldown and is active for only 20 seconds at a time. This means it has an effective down time of 160 seconds, which pales in comparison to chain strategem on SCH or trick attack or even brotherhood which many monks will tell you is somewhat underwhelming. Disembowel is now a 5% boost in piercing damage, down from the previous 10% it was in Heavensward. This is arguably the worst offender on the list. Not only does this effectively lower the damage of DRGs, it also hampers the damage of BRDs, MCHs and the RDM off global cooldowns. Because it's down to 5% though, many groups, mine included have decided to forsake the need for a BRD or MCH (particularly when the latter is a pile of hot garbage), and instead opt for a double caster (RDM/SMN), double melee (SAM/NIN) composition where the casters act as the mana batteries with their new role action Mana Shift and the melee provide TP if needed in the form of Goad. Meanwhile, the slashing debuff is still a 10% damage increase and while one can argue that disembowel only benefits a handful of classes (4 to be exact) compared to the slashing debuff that benefits all three tanks and two melees (so 5), it really isn't enough to warrant that nerf. This is particularly true when you consider just how far behind BRDs and MCHs are in terms of damage compared to the other DPS. And then there's Dragon Sight, which is possibly the most unfortunate ability in the game. Not because you can't use it solo but because of the fact that you lose its benefits if your tethered partner runs out of your range, which in the case of a mechanic occurring will almost certainly happen since neither of you want to get hit but still want to keep your up-time on the target. In theory, it sounded great; even I was excited about it but when put in practice, it's underwhelming. This coupled with the fact that it's a 10% boost in your damage that you once had in blood for blood but is now lost to the changes and sits on a 2 minute cooldown makes it far less useful than what I think it was originally intended to be.

Again, I get and wholly support the whole "more utility = less DPS" mentality but as it stands right now it's "average utility = lowest DPS". As it currently stands however, SAM wins the damage department with its lowest group utility and NIN wins the utility department with its highest group utility and excellent damage. DRGs are in that sorry state of not being able to DPS hard enough or provide enough utility to the group. Really at this point, the only point you'd ever want to bring a DRG in your party is when you want to boost someone's damage on any of the competitive log sites.

So how can all of this be fixed? There have been a number of ideas floating around. Some better than others naturally but instead of dictating the developers with a word for word solution, I feel like its more valuable to point out what needs to be fixed and let them choose the most appropriate way of fixing it. So to recap:

1- The build up to Life of the Dragon is way too long. 70 seconds to burst is just terrible for any DRG player.
2- The upkeep of Life of the Dragon is arguably the worst in the game. If for any reason you lose BotD with your eye stacks built up due to a fight transition, you're stuck with having to rebuild it all over again meaning another 70 seconds at the least to get back to where you started.
3- The weakened state of disembowel trivializes DRG, BRD and MCH damage (Not so much on RDM to be honest so I didn't include it here). The latter of which is in dire need of help and is something that I suspect will require some serious rework in the near future. To give you an understanding on how bad BRD and MCH damage can be with the weakened disembowel, ranged physical DPS can barely do more damage than tanks equipped with 270 STR accessories.

Most self-respecting DRGs I know, myself included, have made the transition to SAM because of how dull and weak the class has become. Don't get me wrong though, many of the changes to DRG were welcome. The 5 tiered combo makes it so that you don't clip your chaos thrust as badly as you did during the Heavensward days. However, I feel this is a classic case of where the bad outweighs the good, and DRGs become no longer viable in a party.

Feel free to agree/disagree with me on any of these points. Naturally, we can't all be of the same opinion here but the numbers on DRG performances, buffs and "raid utility" don't lie.

Honestly, apart from the well documented mechanical issues with the class that we've brought up for years now, this community by and large wants loldrg to exist.

The refrain now of "SAM has no utility so must be top DPS" was virtually never extended to DRG in 2.0. And the minute that video came out years ago with the 16-bit Titan, the devs tacitly endorsed it. Be that as it may, HW was so great for the class and I became attached to it. I always play Roguey, thief style jobs in MMOs and absent a true one at launch I sort of just landed on DRG.

I did Susano EX with my group last night (we had 2 SAMs and a RDM besides) and it was pretty demoralizing, frankly.

My main issue with DRG is it just isn't fun anymore for me. It was already on the rigid side to begin with but we at least had a bit of wiggle room and worst case scenario I didn't feel like my fight was completely over after making a single mistake. Now I'm playing this clunky pile of not-very-fun mechanics and being punished so heavily not for PLAYING poorly but for not having phase changes memorized to a second and that just isn't fun for me. Dragon Sight being so miserable to use that I have to resort to a macro for the first time ever is just icing on the cake. Honestly even if DRG was at the top of the charts it wouldn't be enough to make it fun enough to stick with at this point most likely. That said this is a preliminary judgement based on a very short time at 70 so I'm still giving it a chance but I'll almost certainly be switching to another job.

Just a few points:

LoTD isn't a significant amount of damage, this is currently the problem. It only gives us access to 1 ability: Nastrond which isn't even 5% of our damage (I do understand that we have a lot of abilities so 5% isn't actually as small as it sounds, but it is still small even within DRGs kit) and despite this it is pretty much what DRG is fuctioning around because as you said, we have a saturation of BotD now. It is completely useless and pretty much just serves to fuck us over when we lose it. How is this remotely in line with their design philosophy?

While more utility = less personal dps is fine in theory, this should never be applied to melee dps especially DRG considering how notoriously inflexible the class is. Is this gonna be the new trend? They are just gonna say fuck it lets completely change the paradigm and make casters the support, melee the stationary and ranged have positionals? I realise this is hyperbolic but why did they change DRG from a reasonable powerful dps (3rd/7) with slightly better-than-average utility to pretty much a support dps (7th/9) and nerfed some of said utility? It's not even a lenient class unlike the other 2 'support dps' which are ranged dps that have complete free reign.

You wanna know why? Well Yoshi himself said that in the teams considerations for what dps should be where, things like ability to avoid mechanics and amount of ranged attacks. If I am honest, this annoyed me quite a bit. Not only is this flawed, as melee DPS never want to be at range and if they are, I'm pretty sure they don't want to cancel their combos using their 1 shitty potency ranged attacks when they can return to range in a few seconds, or in the more likely case they will figure out the most optimal way to minimise downtime (max melee range, just eat the damage, use time to build resource), DRG is also terrible at ranged combat at least compared to NIN. If you are away from the boss, chances are you reaaaaallly won't want to use an attack that places you back there even if its for a split second. The other jumps don't even put you back to where you started, so now you are stuck in melee range so they aren't viable ranged attacks either. That only leaves GSK and mirage dive. Mirage dive is only useable after said attacks that put you in a precarious situation anyway, and GSK is on a 35 second CD. So no, DRG is still shit at ranged fighting and don't even have anything to do during downtime.

My main point is, they should have never tacked on the 'utility' tag onto DRG, it had no place being there. NIN is more appropriate due to the fair lenient nature of its playstyle and the fact that it has always been that class so you go to play NIN expecting it to be that way. DRG should theoretically be where NIN is and vise versa because even if NIN had DRGs dps, they would STILL most likely be more wanted than DRG but at least at that point, it would be somewhat of a competition. Right now DRG isn't even a consideration for most serious setups even if they can clear with no problem.

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Originally Posted by Heatkrieg

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This guy... he totally gets it. Thanks for putting all of that down here so I didn't have to! :)

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Originally Posted by HoLoFoNo

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She also gets it and has my thanks for explaining the problem here! Thanks!

It's so disheartening to have to level another dps instead of the one you formerly enjoyed because they more or less ruined your class. I'm not leveling Samurai due to how crappy DRG plays now. And their arguments don't have the numbers to back it up, but it's your word vs word of God, so unfortunately I don't know if we'll get anywhere with this.

I've begrudgingly quit as well for many of the above reasons. Dragoon was always iconic to me playing Final Fantasy as a kid. I've been a class purist, and enjoyed the idea and playstyle of Dragoon previously, though I thought geirskogul was not in a direction that favored the classes theme. I had a blast in heavensward despite this, and never cared about being top dps because I could play at an optimal level and not be a hindrance to my team.

That's gone now. I am a hindrance, and no static would look for a dragoon to fill a position unless they were desperate or very casual. I love progression raiding. I like clearing the hardest content... and for once, I will not be able to do that on Dragoon. I believe they have lost sight of the classes origin and history. Dragoons are notorious for jumps and we haven't got a new one in 2 expansions now. (Mirage dive definitely doesn't count despite the animation lock). I don't think anyone maining Dragoon asked for 'more utility' or 'less damage' for that matter. I think most of us had settled in as content behind Monk and above Nin for the melee spots. I don't want Ninja to be nerfed, even though with Trick Attack their spot will never be questioned, but I would like a chance at -a- melee spot. More than 2 is rarely practical for progression, though I fully expect people to roll Nin, Monk, Sam, Rdm for the new meta.

We would need as much utility or more than Ninja in order to have a chance at a melee spot and currently we do less damage and have much less utility when it comes down to overall composition.

I'd rather be a single target glass cannon focusing everything around buffing jumps (RIP Power Surge) then a muddled, melee support, which feels completely contradictory to the theme of the class. I'll be dropping Dragoon until 5.0 unless this is fixed at 4.05, if I even bother continuing to play this game.

I still think Nastrond should have changed Jump's appearance and potency rather than upgrading an aoe skill that was already fine. You're telling me there's another Dragoon out there that gets a new Life of the Dragon jump capable of destroying a gigantic cannon and it's not me? Face slap

I'll be honest, Disembowel, like all other forms of 'resistance down' needs to be removed from the game. It won't be fine until that happens. That being said, as a DRG since 2.0, I think Disembowel was extremely powerful in particular, due to the fact that DRG remains the only source of piercing.

It's particularly touchy balance. The stronger it is, the more likely you get 2 automatically locked slots in a party (DRG+ranged). Slashing is more balanced by default because it's primary beneficiaries are the Tanks, which'll always be in the party one way or the other. It's still a great debuff, and whoever brings it, is bringing a lot. However, again, it doesn't lock any of the slashing Jobs by default like DRG could lock a ranged or vice versa.

I think DRG at 60 was more fun due to the fact that all of the abilities were integral to the rotation, constantly being used. I remember the first time I saw BoTD, I thought to myself that I'd be disappointed if it, and it's benefits, only lasted 30 seconds. Then I was super happy to figure out that I could keep it up with a little work. I hated the 3 GK per minute aspect, but all of the abilities were so fun to use together. Seems like 70 DRG takes the opposite approach, telling you that your new abilities are only supposed to be used sparsely, sans Mirage Dive (the one ability I think they got right).

I like that they're making DRG the highest combo melee as well, but it seems kind of lame that the damage on the 4th hit, and 5th hits are lower than the 3rd. I get why, but it just isn't satisfying to peak at Full-Thrust, to go back down with Wheeling and F+C. Guess it's at least strong when it comes to the Chaos Thrust combo.

The problem with slashing, as you said, is that it kept the same amount yet piercing got nerfed. Why does SAM have access to this "utility" which is more powerful on top of their disgusting numbers?

You also hit exactly what I've been harping: NIN's 1 big utility move is FAR better than anything we bring, yet they also pull higher numbers. I honestly don't think they looked at numbers at all as his "DRG greatly buffs party damage" can't compete with Trick Attack at all.

I don't mind being a semi-support as most of our skills buff us, but isn't it a bit strange how the 2 classes with much more utility (BRD/NIN) can usually do better?

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Originally Posted by Frowny

The problem with slashing, as you said, is that it kept the same amount yet piercing got nerfed. Why does SAM have access to this "utility" which is more powerful on top of their disgusting numbers?

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Follow me here. Slashing is inherently more balanced than Piercing. Though they shouldn't exist at all, as there's better ways to encourage 'synergy', and it has such a tight hold on balancing party comps.

Slashing would not be balanced if it was only NIN, or only SAM or only WAR that brought it. However, 3 sources of Slashing exist, and each Job that has access is required to put it up for themselves. If you're forced to provide it for yourself, and you are, the only beneficiaries are those who can't naturally put it up. PLD, and DRK. Therefore, Slashing, at it's best, is only benefiting Tank damage, which is naturally lower. It's also never attributed to any one source of Slashing in a party, unless there is only one source in the party. I could see them taking it away from SAM, but if they do that, I could also see them upping their damage even more to compensate for having literally 0 sources of any benefit in a party.

Piercing, by comparison, buffs DPS (as opposed to Tanks). And since the beneficiaries (MCH/BRD/RDM) can't provide it, isn't a part of their rotation, AND can be stacked for further benefit (as we saw in Creator Savage), it escalates quickly. Disembowel has the potential to lock meta in a way no other skill in the game does. With Disembowel alone, you could argue at least 2 slots, if not 3, become easy 'best' choices. Any buff to it, is a buff to at least 2 slots in your party, 3 if it's too powerful. If it was at 10% right now, and we rounded out MCH at 4000 damage, double ranged would be roughly 700-800 rDPS benefit, not counting DRG's other utility. Any buff to the physical ranged also buffs DRG. It's too much. Which is why it shouldn't exist at all, OR should be given to one or both physical ranged.

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Originally Posted by HoLoFoNo

Just a few points:

LoTD isn't a significant amount of damage, this is currently the problem.

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This is the entire problem. I worry that even if there are "fixes" in 4.05 all it's going to be are potency increases and making eyes not fall off of the gauge. That is NOT going to fix the issue. Simply ensuring that it's guaranteed that after over a minute you can get to a buff that gives you this one stupidly-designed AoE - An AoE that is currently ONLY reliably up in party content against a SINGLE TARGET - is not going to make the class any more fun to play, or put it level with any of the other melee dps.

LotD either needs to be able to be refreshed throughout the fight once it's up like BotD, or provide serious bonuses to other abilities...

...or BotD itself needs to be amended to match with the fraudulent video they put out pre-release, and only require two eyes to transition. :P

The OP pretty much sums up a lot of the issues quite well. TBH I been playing DRG since 2.0 as a main and though I did level it to 70 once SB hit I have since stopped playing it entirely and have moved onto other DD classes.

Our utility is fine. We get Disembowel, Battle Litany, and Dragon Sight. Litany is one of the most powerful buffs in the game, Dragon Sight is still a free 5% and it's up pretty often. Disembowel still helps MCH and BRD but they're now less reliant on it. These make DRG a better utility DPS than Monk, which only has Brotherhood.

My main issue with drg currently, is that were basically beta testign this job and gonna hope it gets better. Dragoon was never the best or worst dps in the game, but was always very solid, and right now, its basically a bard that picked up a spear and decided he wanted to be more helpful, rather than poke the enemies. This is not what I want,, and like OP, I've moved on to other jobs. If this isn't fixed come savage, were going to be burying dragoon in ishgard. It'll be like how heavensward was for paladin, a shit show where every patch is a buff, but not enough to change the job to actually be anything good...

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

My main issue with drg currently, is that were basically beta testign this job and gonna hope it gets better. Dragoon was never the best or worst dps in the game, but was always very solid, and right now, its basically a bard that picked up a spear and decided he wanted to be more helpful, rather than poke the enemies. This is not what I want,, and like OP, I've moved on to other jobs. If this isn't fixed come savage, were going to be burying dragoon in ishgard. It'll be like how heavensward was for paladin, a shit show where every patch is a buff, but not enough to change the job to actually be anything good...

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I think that is a little unfair to BRDs. They are in a significantly better state.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Litany is one of the most powerful buffs in the game, Dragon Sight is still a free 5% and it's up pretty often...

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No, it is not. Litany is an RNG based buff, meaning that despite your crit chance going up by 15%, there's still a chance that you might not crit. Any DRG out here who has played DRG in HW could tell you the pain of using both Litany and Internal Release in your opener and still not being able to crit anything outside of the occasional auto attack or true thrust. Litany is also a 180 second cooldown, which compared to Chain Strategem, a SCH debuff that operates more or less the same, takes a minute longer to come off cooldown. Dragon Sight is also very weak for a utility. For 20 seconds you tether someone to you who you know WILL run out of the tether's range to get their positionals or avoid a mechanic. That ability needs a rework in the way it's both applied and the length of the tether.

Finally, disembowel, and I left this for last to address an issue that someone else brought up:

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Originally Posted by Nominous

Follow me here. Slashing is inherently more balanced than Piercing. Though they shouldn't exist at all, as there's better ways to encourage 'synergy', and it has such a tight hold on balancing party comps.

Slashing would not be balanced if it was only NIN, or only SAM or only WAR that brought it. However, 3 sources of Slashing exist, and each Job that has access is required to put it up for themselves. If you're forced to provide it for yourself, and you are, the only beneficiaries are those who can't naturally put it up. PLD, and DRK. Therefore, Slashing, at it's best, is only benefiting Tank damage, which is naturally lower. It's also never attributed to any one source of Slashing in a party, unless there is only one source in the party. I could see them taking it away from SAM, but if they do that, I could also see them upping their damage even more to compensate for having literally 0 sources of any benefit in a party.

Piercing, by comparison, buffs DPS (as opposed to Tanks). And since the beneficiaries (MCH/BRD/RDM) can't provide it, isn't a part of their rotation, AND can be stacked for further benefit (as we saw in Creator Savage), it escalates quickly. Disembowel has the potential to lock meta in a way no other skill in the game does. With Disembowel alone, you could argue at least 2 slots, if not 3, become easy 'best' choices. Any buff to it, is a buff to at least 2 slots in your party, 3 if it's too powerful. If it was at 10% right now, and we rounded out MCH at 4000 damage, double ranged would be roughly 700-800 rDPS benefit, not counting DRG's other utility. Any buff to the physical ranged also buffs DRG. It's too much. Which is why it shouldn't exist at all, OR should be given to one or both physical ranged.

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In principle I don't disagree with you, however, that 5% loss in damage butchered the damage potential of at least 3 classes in the game. Yes, the nerf in disembowel makes DRGs less of a must pick but right now, no BRD let alone MCH can cross the 3.5k barrier without being incredibly lucky on crit/direct hits. Meanwhile, RDMs and SMNs are prancing around the battlefield with their mobility, much more lenient rotations and higher damage potential. Now, don't get me wrong, MCHs and BRDs need to do less damage if they're to stick to the more utility = less DPS creed, otherwise we risk going back to Alexander Creator Savage days where BRD/MCH comps were meta but as it currently stands, MCHs and BRDs are fairly discouraged into going into raid environments with their nerfed damage potential which is to say nothing of how DRGs are fairing.

Let's for argument's sake say you took away the slashing debuff away from NIN and SAM. Do you think they'd be less desirable in a raid setting than they are now compared to DRG? No. SAM's damage potential provided you can actually play the class proficiently is so high, you'd have to be ill to pass on it. NIN's trick attack and aggro manipulation makes them superior to every single melee in the game. NINs are enablers of the tank DPS meta, which I understand that some people don't particularly like since it imposes certain expectations of tanks but it's a playstyle that I heavily endorse and support as do many of the mid-core and all of the semi-hardcore and hardcore players out there. Even MNK comes with better utility; people underestimate Mantra but it's effectively the reason why many world first groups in Gordias, Midas and Creator Savage picked up MNK instead of DRG for progression. With brotherhood, their utility got even better considering that it's not RNG-based like Litany and for every time we use Litany as DRGs, MNKs use Brotherhood twice.

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Originally Posted by Riotpersona

I think that is a little unfair to BRDs. They are in a significantly better state.

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Bard is in a better state because majority of its playstyle has changed. Its leauges better than bowmage, and not many people can disagree with that. My point still stands, it brings the literal most utility because it is THE utility job. TP/MP/Palisade/+% crit/foe req/troubadour/minne.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

Bard is in a better state because majority of its playstyle has changed. Its leauges better than bowmage, and not many people can disagree with that. My point still stands, it brings the literal most utility because it is THE utility job. TP/MP/Palisade/+% crit/foe req/troubadour/minne.

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My point was that in comparison to BRD as a sort of melee support, DRG doesn't even stand up. As the previous post outlined, our support and utility isn't even in a good spot let alone our dps.

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Originally Posted by Riotpersona

My point was that in comparison to BRD as a sort of melee support, DRG doesn't even stand up. As the previous post outlined, our support and utility isn't even in a good spot let alone our dps.

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So you were agreeing with my post then, since it didn't sound like it at first.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Our utility is fine. We get Disembowel, Battle Litany, and Dragon Sight. Litany is one of the most powerful buffs in the game, Dragon Sight is still a free 5% and it's up pretty often. Disembowel still helps MCH and BRD but they're now less reliant on it. These make DRG a better utility DPS than Monk, which only has Brotherhood.

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This is a bit misinformed.


Litany is by nature, a RNG buff. It is also 15% Crit rate which means it is the stat itself not the %. So while it is true that it pretty much gets exponentially stronger as the expansion develops, at this point we are at the beginning of the expansion with the lowest max ilvl. Not only that but litany is a 3min CD which means it only gets used 2-3 times per fight, for 20 second uptime. This means it gets a total of 40 - 1 min uptime depending on how fast your group is. However I agree that litany is good, it's not amazing by any means especially not at this stage in the expansion and especially since crit was nerfed so most classes are stacking DHit now AND a lot of DPS lost internal release (and WAR).

Dragon Sight is just bad. Not only is its range bad, it will only contribute about 1% dps on ONE player in a fight. So even if that is a 5k samurai, they are only getting like 50 dps. It's more of a buff for the DRG to make up for the gimped BfB but it still doesn't equal what BfB used to and it has a worse timer.

Piercing is probably the most consistent of the buffs, however as it is now 5%, it isn't as useful as it once was. That isn't to say it isn't useful, but the 2 dps that benefit most from it are the 2 lowest dps. Now, BRD actually does pretty well in fights, better than DRG on average but BRD doesn't even benefit significantly as a large portion of their damage comes from dots. It also only buffs a small part of RDMs rotation.

All in all DRGs 3 'offensive utilites' is less consistent than trick attack, and DRG is like 200-300 dps weaker and cant manipulate agro which is especially important due to the current state of tanks.

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No, it is not. Litany is an RNG based buff, meaning that despite your crit chance going up by 15%, there's still a chance that you might not crit. Any DRG out here who has played DRG in HW could tell you the pain of using both Litany and Internal Release in your opener and still not being able to crit anything outside of the occasional auto attack or true thrust. Litany is also a 180 second cooldown,

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You mustn't know how statistics work. On average, the benefit of the ability is still quite potent.


My argument stands, it's still one of the most potent buffs in the game, especially now that Foe's and Hypercharge have been nerfed.

1. Royal Road AoE Balance
2. Trick Attack
3. Battle Litany
4. Brotherhood

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Originally Posted by HoLoFoNo

Litany is by nature, a RNG buff. It is also 15% Crit rate which means it is the stat itself not the %.

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Clarification: It is a +15% to the actual rate and not the stat (クリティカル発動率 in tooltip, stat is クリティカル. The English version did not change the name of the stat when the change was made in patch 3.0, but they must have changed their minds since then as it has changed from "Critical Hit Rate" to "Critical Hit" without notice in patch 4.0.). If it were to the stat, teams would've felt the where's-my-crits insult on most runs of Alexander; moreover, it would be reflected on your character sheet as with other stat-modifying buffs.

When Litany was added to DRG I mentally filed it under "not thrilling, but nice". Now it does less because crit damage is dialed back, BfB + DS does less than old BfB alone, and we are missing IR (as tiny as that was). I can easily ignore the expansion level reset effects because crits don't wow me that much; my concern is that one can hardly appreciate that these buffs are doing anything in the course of gameplay.

Assume our base crit rate is 5% (it's not, it's probably ~11-13% at i315 with 1200ish Crit Rate), Litany adds a flat 15% to that. Crit gets better the more you have,so the jump from 5%->20% crit rate (or realistically ~11ish->31%) crit rate is HUGE. Later in the expansion, when our crit rate is closer to 22-25% with optimal melds, the jump from 25->40% crit rate will be really, really good. The hit to IR sucked, but I think they tried spreading that Crit% we lost by giving it to BRD's effects, and also giving us Direct Hit.


Also is DH+Crit=1.75 multiplier? Or is it 1.875?

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Originally Posted by HoLoFoNo

ability to avoid mechanics and amount of ranged attacks. .

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This bugged me to death too.
If we're talking things like how punishing it is for your job to do mechanics, and how much DPS you have access to at a range, then Ninja and SAM should be below Monk and DRG. They have absolutely punishing job mechanics that can kill your DPS flow if you leave the boss for too long. SEN and Kenki can't even be lost, and Huton might as well be a static buff at this point, you'd have to TRY to lose Huton.

So why is it that Ninja is right on top of Monk with loads of utility, less punishing job mechanics, and more ranged options, and why is DRG so low when they currently have the most punishing system out of every melee?


The only thing I can think of is they didn't playtest these jobs at all before sending them out.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

This bugged me to death too.
If we're talking things like how punishing it is for your job to do mechanics, and how much DPS you have access to at a range, then Ninja and SAM should be below Monk and DRG.

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You forgot he also said that raid utility is a factor. Which means that Samurai having absolutely zero raid utility should have world ending DPS to make up for it. Now Ninja, they are straight up busted with how much damage AND raid utility they get to do.

Some Suggestion for drg....
(change Giresgokul CD to 30 sec + able to open an eye) or simply (activate Life of the dragon with 2 unit instead of 4)

lance mastery, increase the 5th tier combo's pot by at least 80.

increase Life of the dragon duration to 40 sec. Increase Nastrond potency to 400+. or 320 with additional dot mechanic of reasonable value.

Grant Dragonfire Dive, "dive ready"

The most broken job in the game currently is NIN. Considering their utilities, they should be a clear step behind MNK, roughly equal to DRG. ...Maybe buff DS to be 15% on an ally as well.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Also is DH+Crit=1.75 multiplier? Or is it 1.875?

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1.40*1.25=1.75. So +75%

Overall, I'm okay with Dragoon. I'm only mildly sad that we're near the bottom of the dps pool. I have started to encounter people, whenever I mention that Dragoon could use some tweaking, tell me "You've had an entire expansion dedicated to you. It's now Samurai's turn (because it sure as hell ain't Monk's)! So go sit in the corner & be quiet, nobody cares!"

I will admit that Dragoon does have some issues, however. Mostly, I feel that Dragon Sight is too clunky to use. To have to target nearest (usually either tank or melee dps), then switch back to the target I'm attacking, all while staying within range of whomever I'm tethered to for us to benefit from Dragon Sight... Most of the time that simply has not been an option for me.

That being said, Dragoon is still going to be my main (at least until I can get Red Mage to 70, then that may change).

I want to say that I don't disagree that Dragoons could use a boost, but I feel I need to mention that not all raid utility is built equal. The slashing debuff is no longer quite as valuable as it once was. The reason being is that before Stormblood, for example, bringing a warrior was a massive DPS boost for a ninja since they got the slashing debuff without having to apply it themselves. Now, it's attached to the ninja's DOT, so they have to apply it to keep up maximum DPS. For Samurai, the slashing debuff is attached to one of their sen, so they also have to keep it up. There are really only two jobs in the game that can utilize the effect that can't apply it for themselves, paladin and dark knight. Contrast that with disembowel, and now you have three DPS jobs able to benefit from the effect who aren't able to apply it for themselves on top of you getting a benefit, and this bit of utility is vastly superior.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

/snipped Contrast that with disembowel, and now you have three DPS jobs able to benefit from the effect who aren't able to apply it for themselves on top of you getting a benefit, and this bit of utility is vastly superior.

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This only makes sense in a world with DRG/MCH/BRD raids. And Stormblood seems to hate that configuration.

DRG, NIN, and MNK should be able to do the same amount of DPS or relatively close to one another. It should be a choice of utility (Piercing/Slash/Blunt + magic vulnerability via DK) and play style.
All 4 debuffs should go back to 10%
Battle lit should be a 60 sec recast if it last for 15. Or 120 sec recast if it lasts for 30.

SAM should not be able to put a slashing debuff. However, should keep the identity of highest melee dps.

After that there's no reason to add another melee dps. I mean it'll just complicate things and we'll end up like blizzard with how they buff and nerf every patch.

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Originally Posted by BlackThought

This only makes sense in a world with DRG/MCH/BRD raids. And Stormblood seems to hate that configuration.

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Just like WAR and NIN can put slashing, DRG and R. DPS should too.

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Originally Posted by BlackThought

This only makes sense in a world with DRG/MCH/BRD raids. And Stormblood seems to hate that configuration.

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Also, apparently, red mage. Though I haven't seen this confirmed outside an earlier post, but it was claimed that their physical moves to piercing damage. Not a massive improvement considering the bulk of their abilities are spells, but an improvement none the less.

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Originally Posted by Jhett_Magnum

DRG, NIN, and MNK should be able to do the same amount of DPS or relatively close to one another. It should be a choice of utility (Piercing/Slash/Blunt + magic vulnerability via DK) and play style.

SAM should not be able to put a slashing debuff. However, should keep the identity of highest melee dps.

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That argument assumes that all three melee jobs provide the same amount of raid utility, except they don't. Monks have mantra and blunt resistance down, which are both marginally useful, and brotherhood which becomes less useful the fewer physical DPS you have in your group, and as such should be able to put out higher damage than a ninja or dragoon, but less than a samurai.

i enjoy the class i find the timing on phase shifts on some bosses to be frustrating especially when botd falls off. Im torn between swapping to something else until dragoon gets some attention or just unsubbing until then.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

That argument assumes that all three melee jobs provide the same amount of raid utility, except they don't. Monks have mantra and blunt resistance down, which are both marginally useful, and brotherhood which becomes less useful the fewer physical DPS you have in your group, and as such should be able to put out higher damage than a ninja or dragoon, but less than a samurai.

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Assuming all 3 can do roughly the same amount of DPS..

Monks should be able to apply some sort of Foe Requiem skill.
DRG ties in physical Phys. Ranged DPS so I mean MNKs could tie in Magic DPS. (Slotted for 2 caster raid groups)

DK adds a magic vulnerability on top Blunt res
I think Monk is fine damage wise. I could be wrong.
Mantra is niche useful. But still good.
IDK to much about brotherhood, but tanks are always there so increase the radius?

TP is useless in this game.
So what's the point of purification?
They should rework that.

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Originally Posted by Nominous

I could see them taking it away from SAM, but if they do that, I could also see them upping their damage even more to compensate for having literally 0 sources of any benefit in a party.

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The sad thing is that I can totally see this happening in 4.05 and Squenix calling it balanced.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Assume our base crit rate is 5% (it's not, it's probably ~11-13% at i315 with 1200ish Crit Rate), Litany adds a flat 15% to that. Crit gets better the more you have,so the jump from 5%->20% crit rate (or realistically ~11ish->31%) crit rate is HUGE. Later in the expansion, when our crit rate is closer to 22-25% with optimal melds, the jump from 25->40% crit rate will be really, really good. The hit to IR sucked, but I think they tried spreading that Crit% we lost by giving it to BRD's effects, and also giving us Direct Hit.

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Because Litany doesn't give crit damage, 5% to 20% jump is ~5.8% DPS increase while 25% to 40% is ~6.6% for the duration. It's not that big of an increase with gear. And in fact for the people unaware, if crit didn't increase its' damage, crit and Litany would get marginally worse the more you had it. Using previous numbers, a 25% to 40% jump is a ~5.45% DPS increase, as 15% crit would always be +6% additive DPS. Adding 6 to 100 is better than adding 6 to 110.

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Also is DH+Crit=1.75 multiplier? Or is it 1.875?

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1.75 at base values. A straight critD*1.25.

Dragon Kick doesn't add magic vulnerability. It used to give INT down but they removed that with the launch of 4.0. Now it only does blunt down.