Suggestion: Add a Survivability Ability to DRG?

I really Mean it..
If Dragoon Keeps Not having a Survive Ability we will be gimped in Future Fights For a long time..Since we will be having Garuda in 1.22 Unless SE decide to Fix it

The Suggestion is as follows:
Make Dread Spikes Drains Magical And Physical Attacks and Make it 1min recast if we had Life Surge or Power Surge on

Or

Make Elusive Jump Work like Super Jump in XI

Waiting for your response Devs

I did hope jump would mean you avoid attacks while you were in the air.

I hoped that as well in fact it should be :/
we have no means of defense against Bosses AoE

Jumps should definitely provide a "perfect dodge" effect while in air like they have in the past. If dread spike worked like the drk spell by nearly the same name it'd probably solve that, perhaps make it so that: for each level of "surge" you have it adds more hits absorbed. maybe: 2 + (floor(surge_count * 1.5) - 1); would give you: 1 hit, 2 hits, 3 hits, 5hits going from no surge to full surge.

I would just be okay with increasing the amount of HP recovery from Dread Spike; remember, classes are horizontally based to provide solo play (survivability), and jobs are SUPPOSED (except WAR lol) to be party-play based, needing a coordinated party to stay healthy and come out victorious.

Right now dragoon can get the job done but not well. You want superior damage and surivablity from melee range you play a monk. The fact that in order to do the damage we need to we spend half the time animation locked while having to dodge things like 100 ton swing or eruptions mechanics means you have to be very careful when you weapon skill. Power surge turns us into wet paper and we don't really have any reason to justify it. it would be one thing if you could out range aoe cleave weapon skills as a lancer but you can't. Jump being used as a perfect dodge would help for sure though. The best thing drag brings to the table right now is the burst damage from jump being an instant no tp weapon skill for killing things like the guards on ants and aoe stun/paralysis weapon skills but even then it sucks because you have to be in front to start the combo or miss an attack.

What really separates the men from the boys are the dragoons who can pull off 2 combo or 3 combos in between boss weapon skills while keeping 3 stacks of power surge. If you can pull that off you will do extremely good damage. At the end of the day its still high risk for low reward because blm, mnk can do the same much safer then drg and war dose a bit less single target about the same aoe and has the best durability of anyone one.

Which brings me to probably my number one pet peeve about the class is that since we are constantly expected to fire off ws they could at least help us out a little bit by making them from behind or better yet not positional. That would increase dragoon survival more then any ability they could give us. Since the safest place for melee is generally the back of the boss.

I mean all this could change if they designed more melee friendly bosses but mnk would probably still be on top.

I mean you might as well kill two birds with one stone with that as well and just make a mechanic where if not enough players are close enough to the boss he dose some super move and a shout that silences and dose damage players for a short duration while standing there. This would make melee useful but you would not want to stack either melee or ranged classes because there would be a weakness to both unless you used a combination of the two. Not to mention it would buff divine veil since people would actually be in range of the pld when he gets cured and get the regen effect.

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Originally Posted by Vire

Right now dragoon can get the job done but not well. You want superior damage and surivablity from melee range you play a monk. The fact that in order to do the damage we need to we spend half the time animation locked while having to dodge things like 100 ton swing or eruptions mechanics means you have to be very careful when you weapon skill. Power surge turns us into wet paper and we don't really have any reason to justify it. it would be one thing if you could out range aoe cleave weapon skills as a lancer but you can't. Jump being used as a perfect dodge would help for sure though. The best thing drag brings to the table right now is the burst damage from jump being an instant no tp weapon skill for killing things like the guards on ants and aoe stun/paralysis weapon skills but even then it sucks because you have to be in front to start the combo or miss an attack.

What really separates the men from the boys are the dragoons who can pull off 2 combo or 3 combos in between boss weapon skills while keeping 3 stacks of power surge. If you can pull that off you will do extremely good damage. At the end of the day its still high risk for low reward because blm, mnk can do the same much safer then drg and war dose a bit less single target about the same aoe and has the best durability of anyone one.

Which brings me to probably my number one pet peeve about the class is that since we are constantly expected to fire off ws they could at least help us out a little bit by making them from behind or better yet not positional. That would increase dragoon survival more then any ability they could give us. Since the safest place for melee is generally the back of the boss.

I mean all this could change if they designed more melee friendly bosses but mnk would probably still be on top.

I mean you might as well kill two birds with one stone with that as well and just make a mechanic where if not enough players are close enough to the boss he dose some super move and a shout that silences and dose damage players for a short duration while standing there. This would make melee useful but you would not want to stack either melee or ranged classes because there would be a weakness to both unless you used a combination of the two. Not to mention it would buff divine veil since people would actually be in range of the pld when he gets cured and get the regen effect.

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True but Dread Spike Need to be Adjusted to absorb Magical Damage such as Hell Fire since we no longer have Sentinel
i can dodge 100 tonze by activating Dread spikes but still i cant dodge Ifrit Hellfire or any next Primal Astral Flow
i'm pulling great Combos on bosses such as Princess and coin-counter not just 2 or 3 sometimes 4 and 5 with Keen Flurry but still my back is opened since i have low Def and low HP
Atm DRG reminds me of how DRK was in XI and how he was a pain to WHMs when he activates soul eater and gets real low HP

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Jumps should definitely provide a "perfect dodge" effect while in air like they have in the past. If dread spike worked like the drk spell by nearly the same name it'd probably solve that, perhaps make it so that: for each level of "surge" you have it adds more hits absorbed. maybe: 2 + (floor(surge_count * 1.5) - 1); would give you: 1 hit, 2 hits, 3 hits, 5hits going from no surge to full surge.

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i would love to see that

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Originally Posted by Vire

Which brings me to probably my number one pet peeve about the class is that since we are constantly expected to fire off ws they could at least help us out a little bit by making them from behind or better yet not positional. That would increase dragoon survival more then any ability they could give us. Since the safest place for melee is generally the back of the boss.

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They could change the requirements of some of lancer's/Dragoon's combos to positioning at max/near max auto attack range like how archers have to be so far away from the target to combo.

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Originally Posted by Raubahn

True but Dread Spike Need to be Adjusted to absorb Magical Damage such as Hell Fire since we no longer have Sentinel
i can dodge 100 tonze by activating Dread spikes but still i cant dodge Ifrit Hellfire or any next Primal Astral Flow
i'm pulling great Combos on bosses such as Princess and coin-counter not just 2 or 3 sometimes 4 and 5 with Keen Flurry but still my back is opened since i have low Def and low HP
Atm DRG reminds me of how DRK was in XI and how he was a pain to WHMs when he activates soul eater and gets real low HP

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No I agree completely with what your saying right now Dread spike serves one function in the game and its to wipe your 3 stacks of power surge before hellfire so you don't have the damage penalty on when it lands. Its a one minute cooldown with a high cost because normally your losing 1500 tp for using and a long ramp up time. It should be very powerful for that sort of investment. Also at least drk's could debuff bosses with absorbs and do insanely strong burst damage that if you subbed thf would go onto the tank. Right now we don't even have that. Drg in this game is like a weird mix of drg, drk and sam.

Also using dread spikes to survive 100 ton can be very risky because if your tank moved out so that he would fall down and you stay in and live he is going to run over to the tank and then turn around and eye lazer beam the heck out of the rest of your group. I have found it just to be safe and run out every time if you can but yeah there are times when you know you are screwed and can't get out range in time because you where finishing off an animation at the start of the charge and there is that one to two second moment of dread where you just know your going to die and dread spikes can help there.

I don't understand. Dragoon is awesome. Survivability? Imo Dragoon is a job that requires a lot of skill. Take to much damage from small aoe? Attack from full range of your weapon. You want a jump that evades? That's elusive jump, you can use it for more then one purpose. Keeping life/power surge up can be a pain sure, but again if you're skillful enough it can be done. I have no problem with keeping up the dps. I like the fact Dragoon is a busy job and requires skill. I suspect in this case it's not so much the Dragoon but the player that's lacking. Step up your game or find an easier job to enjoy playing I would say. Learn to dodge, learn how to make the most of your abilities and stop blaming the job.

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Originally Posted by Gokubuu

I don't understand. Dragoon is awesome. Survivability? Imo Dragoon is a job that requires a lot of skill. Take to much damage from small aoe? Attack from full range of your weapon. You want a jump that evades? That's elusive jump, you can use it for more then one purpose. Keeping life/power surge up can be a pain sure, but again if you're skillful enough it can be done. I have no problem with keeping up the dps. I like the fact Dragoon is a busy job and requires skill. I suspect in this case it's not so much the Dragoon but the player that's lacking. Step up your game or find an easier job to enjoy playing I would say. Learn to dodge, learn how to make the most of your abilities and stop blaming the job.

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I know that dragoon requires alot of skill i know that well
but what i'm suggesting that in the near future we will see More Primal Fights and since you are a drg you know as well how our HP is low and without having an abillty that makes us survive ppl will dump us for sure since we will become sacrificial lamps.

I'm Good at pulling of Power Surge 3 and keeping it up but the issue is our low HP vs Astral flows. Which atm Instantly Kills us.

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Originally Posted by Vire

No I agree completely with what your saying right now Dread spike serves one function in the game and its to wipe your 3 stacks of power surge before hellfire so you don't have the damage penalty on when it lands. Its a one minute cooldown with a high cost because normally your losing 1500 tp for using and a long ramp up time. It should be very powerful for that sort of investment. Also at least drk's could debuff bosses with absorbs and do insanely strong burst damage that if you subbed thf would go onto the tank. Right now we don't even have that. Drg in this game is like a weird mix of drg, drk and sam.

Also using dread spikes to survive 100 ton can be very risky because if your tank moved out so that he would fall down and you stay in and live he is going to run over to the tank and then turn around and eye lazer beam the heck out of the rest of your group. I have found it just to be safe and run out every time if you can but yeah there are times when you know you are screwed and can't get out range in time because you where finishing off an animation at the start of the charge and there is that one to two second moment of dread where you just know your going to die and dread spikes can help there.

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I only Trigger Dread spikes if am locked in animation (Example: Chaos thrust) and when i know am screwed for sure

Drg is a glass cannon, adding survivability would break the balance of jobs, don'tcha think? If you find you're way too squishy to survive then stay on lnc. You trade your survivability for ramped up DPS just like some other jobs trade survivability for other benefits.

What dose pug trade for monk? And the e-tough guy who says its the players not the class has a really stupid attitude. Right now any party wide magic attack dragoon and monk can do nothing about it. Monks are crushing everyone in the parses right now. Its not about being skilled its about flawed design.

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Originally Posted by Vire

What dose pug trade for monk? And the e-tough guy who says its the players not the class has a really stupid attitude. Right now any party wide magic attack dragoon and monk can do nothing about it. Monks are crushing everyone in the parses right now. Its not about being skilled its about flawed design.

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Big ones off the top of my head? Sentinel, bloodbath, rampart, sanguine rite, stoneskin are a few things Pug gives up to move onto Mnk... those were never important for survival though...... /sigh

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Originally Posted by Peptaru

Big ones off the top of my head? Sentinel, bloodbath, rampart, sanguine rite, stoneskin are a few things Pug gives up to move onto Mnk... those were never important for survival though...... /sigh

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They Might be not Important for survival but can you imagine Ifrit Fight as a MNK or DRG (Focus on DRG i Repeat Focus on DRG) without Sentinel at least? its Really a pain not having at least one Abilty at least Agains High Damage Magic based AoE even with SS from WHM and Protect.

And if you were saying thous were never important for survival how come we needed thous in ifrit fight pre 1.21?
you know everyone was asked if they have sentinel for example and if they don't /oust

Dragoon and Monk Backs are currently Exposed against Magic Attacks such as Astral flows
and i know that When Garuda comes out ppl will not use MNK or DRG because of his Astral flow Damage.

Saying they weren't needed for survival was sarcasm in response to Vire asking what was lost going from pug to mnk, guess i needed to type /sarcasm after all. if you have melee in ifrit there is no excuse for not breaking all the nails. All nails broken + generic AoE stoneskin from a mage = lolhellfire. Yes, you're squishy, that's the price to pay for your extra abilities and dmg.

i think its a bit harsh that dread spike reset surge's.

this is one of the reasons i dont bother with surges, i mean dread spike still negates an attack even with no surges stacked..

and what am i supposed to do.. go through the trouble of keeping power surge stacked at III just to have it reset because i need to use dread spike? which like i said works allmost as good w/o surge.

and on top of that im not convinced that power surge will out parse non powersurge- what with the extra tp which can give alot more weaponskill oppurtunities and the extra weapon skills themselves give more TP- even doing an auto attack instead of power surge will give you an extra ws over the course of a battle.

so while the disadvantages of power surge are very clear, the advantages are abstract to say the least.

but i digress, on the topic, i think being able to dodge damage especially via jumps is kind of the dragoons trademark and it would be nice to see this.

I don't have dragoon, so I will not speak on how to play them. I do play White Mage as a main and you shouldn't be dying on primal fights. When I heal, I know the dragoon, and few other jobs, are glass cannons. I know I need to keep regen and stoneskin on them, and I do, to make sure they don't get one shotted. There is no reason for anyone to die on HF for ifrit, not even the dragoon. All four nails should be taken down, which is cake if you bring jobs, and your white mage should be keeping you at full life for the fight.

Sadly and happily, jobs require players to play with teamwork. If the White Mage slacks on his job, the dragoon suffers for it.

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Originally Posted by Klive

I don't have dragoon, so I will not speak on how to play them. I do play White Mage as a main and you shouldn't be dying on primal fights. When I heal, I know the dragoon, and few other jobs, are glass cannons. I know I need to keep regen and stoneskin on them, and I do, to make sure they don't get one shotted. There is no reason for anyone to die on HF for ifrit, not even the dragoon. All four nails should be taken down, which is cake if you bring jobs, and your white mage should be keeping you at full life for the fight.

Sadly and happily, jobs require players to play with teamwork. If the White Mage slacks on his job, the dragoon suffers for it.

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Most of the groups I've ran Ifrit with actually can't bring all four nails down. Also, whenever I play DRG (or LNC) at Ifrit I find it very difficult to put out much damage to the nails because you can't tell which way they're facing and thus can't combo.

Still, DRG can survive Hellfire just fine if you're topped up with HP and Stoneskin and even more so if you gather for Sanguine Rite. Yet I find the benefits of going DRG to be rather marginal and only worth it if your group is very comfortable with the fight. LNC brings better survivability and Raise, which help a lot if your victories are somewhat shaky.

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Originally Posted by Frein

Most of the groups I've ran Ifrit with actually can't bring all four nails down. Also, whenever I play DRG (or LNC) at Ifrit I find it very difficult to put out much damage to the nails because you can't tell which way they're facing and thus can't combo.

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That could be party the WHMs failing too. I nuke the nails as a WHM. The melee start with the rear nails, and the other WHM and I get the front nails about 1/2 dead before they get to them. The combo of regen and stoneskin really free up my mana and time in the ifrit fight, so i can afford to assist. I've noticed, running ifrit not as a healer, other WHMs don't do this.

Like I said, I don't have a dragoon yet, so I wont' comment on what thy need. I will say, the dragoon keeping up paralyze does decrease my need to heal the tank on most fights. This is just my outside view though.

Really what dragoon can and can't do on ifrit isn't a great measuring stick for the class you can 5 man ifrit right now. You need to look at content that requires 8 to succeed like for example vale/cc speed runs to see how dragoon is stacking up right now.

You referenced 100T and eruptions in your first post in this thread Vire. If you love drg find ways to make it work. If you just want to play the easiest DPS then do that. That's usually what these threads boil down to.

I don't mind that its harder but as it stands right now its harder to do less damage that is what I have a problem with. If dragoons in a perfect world could safely do the same damage a monk could then I would probably have no complaints with the class at all.

A monk with fist of wind will be able to get out of a ws range faster then a dragoon while having a fire and forget ability. Dragoons who are stacking power surges to 3 are animation locked every time they add a stack and take extra damage on top of that and If im not mistaken monk will still out parse a well played dragoon on that fight. Then you have a melee friendly fight like miser where monks do double damage to him since it is weak to elemental fire and can pull about the same damage a dragoon can on that fight auto attacking (Using Hyperbole here). And to top this all off you have chimera which dragoons have no way of breaking the tail so you have to constantly dodge it where monk can just break the tail and then stand behind him for the rest of the fight. They are about evenly matched I would say on princess.

In a perfect world dragoon should be able to match the monk for damage out put if both are played by skilled players disregarding utility but they simply can't. So monk wins in utility and damage for 75% of the current content and the last 25% they tie you think that is ok?

There is a reason they stack monks for speed runs and not drg right now. Its the same problem that pld vs war is facing right now. You have two classes that perform the same exact role in the party and one is better except not a severe as pld vs war since dragoon can still preform its job and get it done. I am sure some one out there has figured out a way to do the speed runs with a dragoon but why should we be satisfied being "that" class again.

When Drg came out in FFXI it suffered similar problems in that there where just classes that did the same thing dragoon did and did it better. I will admit it did get better over time in FFXI but do we really need to sit through two games of that?

Power Surge On/Off - Impulse Drive Acc. up and i'll be happy