Dragoon rotation... Really?

So when I first started playing one of my early characters was lancer because at the time rogue wasn't a thing and we didn't have a sword-wielding dps, and I thought it was fun... But Heavensward came out and it got even more mechanics to it's rotation that honestly felt inconvenient time-wise that and still having to deal with Heavy Thrust... Why do we even need Heavy Thrust, it's potency is terrible just like literally any of dragoons moves and you have players that scream at people for not using it... Chill 10% bonus to strength is not even worth keeping it up seeing as how with most bosses a dragoon would most likely be hitting for 1% of boss Max hp and if you're lucky maybe 1.5% so that Heavy Thrust bonus is going to bump you up to a measly 1.1% with a possible max of 1.65% and so I think it just needs to be done away with so players aren't yelled at for failing to keep it up or at the very least just meld it with Impulse Drive and make them the same attack thus reducing the amount of buttons to be pressed to keep up what is easily a sub par damage output (sorry but at this rate 300 potency for an attack that requires Blood of the Dragon is honestly a joke).

Heavy Thrust is personal damage increase which is nothing up scoff at, as no matter whether the damage appears worthless or not it's still something you have compete control over, rather than relying on others to boost your damage. Also there are several other jobs with their own damage buffs as well that form part of their rotation, Hotshot (MCH) Jinpu (SAM) Greased Lightning (MNK), I mean the list kinda goes on so it's not just a DRG thing.

I mean in the end if you choose to use certain part of your toolkit is completely up to you, but you'll find it much more useful to take advantage of everything at you disposal. Not to mention in raid environments, not playing optimally can often attract scorn from others hoping to get high output from all party members.

Heavy Thrust is a 10% damage increase— say your average damage per second is 5,500 DPS. If you dropped Heavy Thrust, that would be -550 damage, which is nothing to scoff at. It’s not about the potency of the skill alone, but what the self-buff gives you long-term. You mention NIN, but they also have a buff that they have to constantly upkeep (Huton). A lot of jobs in this game have similar buffs—Kurando named a few, but to add a couple more: BRD (Straight Shot— +10% critical hit, which crit is everything to that job), DRK (Darkside— +15% personal damage, plus access to certain skills, though this one is a joke in terms of upkeep with SB’s launch), and BLM (Enochian— +5% damage, plus access to Fire IV/Blizzard IV/Umbral Hearts trait, etc.).

This is one of the most basic button of the dragoon linear rotation that you get on the first level.
The minimum is expected. And sitting on 10% of you overall damage for no reason is a good reason for being yelled at.
10% on a 8min fight or more is a huge loss of damage.

at level 70 Dragoon basically plays itself
id rather the job get a bit more depth then just removing heavy thrust and giving us another potency buff

We can use the example numbers provided here(5500 DPS, 8 min fight) to put this into context. Lowering your DPS by 10% because you couldnt be bothered to press 1 extra button would reduce your contribution to the example fight by more then a quarter million damage. If you stood still and did nothing for the first 45 seconds of the fight and then contributed at the full 5500 level you would be doing roughly 17k more damage over the course of 8 mins then by skipping that one buff. Or to put it another way, a full party who all felt the same way about skipping out on a 10% bonus would increase the length of the fight by 90-120 seconds. Thats a LOT of time for something to go wrong or to hit an enrage timer and cause everyone to fail.

And someone correct me if im wrong, but isnt the 'goon rotation fairly well timed? Dont you end up refreshing HT every 2 or 3 combos with no real hassle? Or is my understanding out of date?

dunno, for me drg is harder than mnk and sam.. (ok, harder than sam dont mean much)

just the clunkyness of mnk to keep GL up during phase changes or fast dying adds can be annoying.., mnk get punished faster and harder thsn drg.., but that aside, optimised rota on a boss feels harder fior drg than mnk

@Frizze - DRG rotation is straight forward at the most basic level, and HT is refreshed after every second combo:

Heavy Thrust > Chaos Thrust combo + 4th+5th finishers > Full Thrust combo + 4th+5th finishers > time to refresh HT again. All that's left is weaving oGCDs and other optimization things, but the basic GCD rotation is the same.

0/10

plustenchar

Heavy Thrust isnt hard to place into the rota imo..., after doing the "basic" rota thru the 50s and 60s, it should start to feel less hard

imo Drg is overall "harder" than mnk imo, due to optimizing the offGC and the lv 70 move with buffs

the most complicated thing about dragoon rotation realistically is managing your raid buffs and using them optimally, because really.. weaving your ogcds in between skills isn't that hard.. i mean the only ogcds you are really weaving, life surge (should only be used with full thrust.. if im remembering correctly.)and your jumps, which we've been doing... since level 30 when you unlock the job. Just as life surge when up gets paired with full thrust, heavy thrust always starts out your chaos thrust combo. Now if you're argument is simply these skills not really being necessary and could be folded over to another skill or trait. sure there's a section of the community that feels that way. On certain jobs even I feel that way ((-coughcoughMCHcoughcough-)) but dragoon's timing and rotation flow really from what i've noticed isn't that bad.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

@Frizze - DRG rotation is straight forward at the most basic level, and HT is refreshed after every second combo:

Heavy Thrust > Chaos Thrust combo + 4th+5th finishers > Full Thrust combo + 4th+5th finishers > time to refresh HT again. All that's left is weaving oGCDs and other optimization things, but the basic GCD rotation is the same.

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Yeah, thats more or less how i remembered it. And 10 GCDs would put the refresh shortly before the point that HT is about to expire. Like i thought, well timed. If the OP really has issue with this, pretend that HT is the "true" first move of the chaos combo and there shouldnt be an issue. Or does he skip that too because the full thrust combo has higher potency attacks(while ignoring bonuses from disembowel and chaos)?

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Originally Posted by Duskane

at level 70 Dragoon basically plays itself
id rather the job get a bit more depth then just removing heavy thrust and giving us another potency buff

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Wait? How does it play itself? Not saying the job is hard compared to the others, since there is less weaving, but just curious what you meant?

DRG had a bit of depth in HW but people couldn't handle it.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

DRG had a bit of depth in HW but people couldn't handle it.

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Dragoon is the only job I can't get the basics down on in any iteration. Something about it just don't swing with me.

Theoretically I understand it.
Basic rotation of Heavy, Chaos, Full thrust.
Geirskogul > Jump > Spine since it lines up timers fine.
Life Surge on Full Thrust, but 5th combo is fine too if it comes up when you miss your FT window
Life of the Dragon at like 23+ seconds on Blood, spam Nastrond

But man

I just can't do it.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Dragoon is the only job I can't get the basics down on in any iteration. Something about it just don't swing with me.

Theoretically I understand it.
Basic rotation of Heavy, Chaos, Full thrust.
Geirskogul > Jump > Spine since it lines up timers fine.
Life Surge on Full Thrust, but 5th combo is fine too if it comes up when you miss your FT window
Life of the Dragon at like 23+ seconds on Blood, spam Nastrond

But man

I just can't do it.

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Can't help you. I laid down the Gae Bolg in A6S and left it lol

I spent a lot of time trying to optimize DRG back then, it paid off in one fight at least. A lot of people complained about the Wheeling/Fang RNG and SE caved to make them regular combos (I guess, my DRG still 60!), that's what I was referring to mostly.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

Wait? How does it play itself? Not saying the job is hard compared to the others, since there is less weaving, but just curious what you meant?

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You just keep heavy thrust and Pierce resist down/Dot up then use vorpal thrust combo while those are up
And use ogcd/Buffs accordingly.
Drg has alot of buttons but it has a set flow to it that is easy to get the hang of.

Hardest part of Drg is how jank dragon sight is (macro helps but its still tedious).

I didn't like how they removed Phlebotomize, because people said it was hard to keep all drgs stuff up and optimize then they made blood of the dragon easy to keep up anyway so wasnt much point.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

Drg has alot of buttons but it has a set flow to it that is easy to get the hang of.

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I'm not so sure how to really process that response, since, well, it describes EVERY JOB.

I think this boils down to more personal adaptability more than anything else. Kabooa stated that they understand the job theoretically, but found it difficult to understand in execution, ie playing. Now while I don't know what jobs they are good at, I can say for me I get Dragoon, am I the best at it, like top tier, probably not, cause I don't min/max, but Dragoon is fine for me. Ninja and Monk on the other hand. Ninja I get theoretically, but to execute it is rather difficult for me. As or Monk, I got it in HW, kinda, but this new Riddle system confuses me to no end.

So yeah, I don't think there is an issue with DRG, as you may think. I think your grasp on how to play it is just too firm. To you, playing DRG is like Playing RDM; since RDM is so basic it can get incredibly boring after some time. It's not seen as weaving between different sections of the same whole, it's viewed as doing the same thing with skills C&D instead of A&B.

this has to be bait, right?

I hope in the next expansion they remove Heavy Thrust and put the 10% potency buff on Vorpal Thrust. Also? Remove Impulse Drive and make True Thrust start both combos. Bam got rid of 2 buttons to make room for 2 new abilities while simplifying DRG rotation. You're welcome.

I think Dragoon might be one of those classes that plays better on pad.

The pad controls here are really well done. I switched from M+KB in July, and the game has felt a lot more comfortable to me.

I thought HW DRG was awkward after the opener -- and it hurt after a while -- but I wouldn't have thought that if I'd used pad.

24-32+ buttons immediately within reach without additional movement or having to split my thought process. That's the entire DRG rotation.

DRG is probably the only class with very linear combo/rotation, its downright easy.

start with heavy thrust to get buff, then do disembowel --> full thrust combo and end it fang&claw/wheeling thrust finisher, that's the basic of it.

the rest is just weave in skill, use jump, D.dive, life surge, etc between your combo and thats pretty much DRG combo/rotation.

Dragoon is absolutely fine on keyboard. If people are using the default setup it's the easiest job to bind for that, and the default setup is horrible.

The only problem DRG has atm is it's not really good to break up your combos. I'd like to see a single GCD Finisher that can be used at any point after your 1-2-3 combos, immediately after Heavy Thrust, or after Wheeling Thrust/Fang And Claw, and WT/F&C would both buff its potency the more you used them. The idea being you could trade your extended combo for this finisher depending on the fight, and tailor its usage based on your skill speed preferences.