Dragoon's Piercing Talon: Remove or Rework

For a long time, Piercing Talon has been widely regarded as a useless skill with DRG, especially in the Savage Raid scene. This tier has proved to be challenging for melee, and even with forced down time, Piercing Talon still feels really bad to use. Let's compare.

SAM: 3 GCD combo
-Has the ability to Enhance Enpi with their back step, increase Enpi potency
-Enpi naturally gives Kenki as a DPS resource

NIN: 3 GCD combo
-Throwing Daggers naturally gives Ninki as a DPS resource
-3 Ninjitsu can be used at 15 yalms minimum for single target with high damage potency

MNK: 3 GCD combo
-Meditate allows gathering Chakra stacks that can convert to DPS
-Can maintain GL with Form Shift and Position their rotation on a stance they want to be in

DRG: 5 GCD combo
-Piercing Talon gains nothing

It is better to do a Doom Spike combo as Doom Spike (170) itself has a higher potency than Piercing Talon (150), and the combo refreshes Dragon Blood. The only thing Piercing Talon has is that it's range is 5 yalms longer than Doom Spike.

The other melees have a 3 GCD combo, therefore they can plan out when to start using their range abilities a bit easier. Because DRG has a 5 GCD combo AND Raiden Thrust naturally encourages to keep the combo rolling, it feels really bad to interrupt your long 5 GCD combo with Piercing Talon. You don't want to lose those high potency attacks and drop or potentially lose Raiden Thrust either. Interrupting a 5 GCD combo feels way more punishing than interrupting a 3 GCD combo.

What Do We Do With Piercing Talon?

-Get rid of this ability and switch in a useful ability
In the past devs have worked on getting rid of abilities with little to no use, or reworking abilities to have a viable use in the rotation. This ability desperately needs that. BUT if you plan to keep Piercing Talon then...

-Rework Piercing Talong
--Make this skill NOT interrupt combos. For a job that has the most GCD combos I don't think this is asking too much, especially when it has such a low potency

-Increase the potency or something to make it worth it. Doom Spike combo is way better when forced to move out of range, so there is no point in choosing a lower potency attack. The increased potency would have to be a value that surpasses using the whole Doom Spike combo over those 3 GCDs

-Maybe give DRG a ranged combo ability??? This would keep in theme with DRG having the longest combo or something. Not a fan of this idea myself.

-When using Piercing Talon, give it some form of DPS return. The other melee jobs gain some form of DPS return when forced to use their range attack. SAM gets kinki, NIN gets ninki, MNK gets chakra stacks, keeps GL, and they can place their combo where they want it. Why doesn't DRG get any return?
---And before you suggest "Piercing Talon should refresh Dragon Blood" that feels like a slap in the face. It's -really- easy to maintain Dragon Blood in SHB -and- one can just tap Dragon Blood again to refresh it back up to 30 seconds.
---Adding a Dragon Eye or Mirage Dive would mess up the alignment of how DRGs want to use their Dragon Life with their buffs.

I don't have all the answers, but I am begging the dev team to try and find a solution for this skill.
-It feels really bad to use (breaks your long string of combos)
-It has a lower potency than the Doom Spike combo

I'd rather not have them remove it. It's the only thing drg has to kite mobs around in deep dungeons

Monk isn't much better off than Dragoon in this regard. Meditate itself doesn't do damage at all unlike Enpi/Throwing dagger and each Chakra equates to a pittance of potency (74, half of a piercing Talon). Further the amount of Chakra you build during downtime is frequently inconsistent due to Chakra building randomly, so you'll frequently enter a boss jump or a disengage where you can only build 1-2 Chakra (Or half of to a single Piercing talon). Form Shift is also more akin to Blood of the Dragon (the action not the buff) for keeping up Greased Lightning than a ranged attack like Enpi or Throwing Dagger.

However in I'd agree that ranged skills shouldn't break combos in general.

It's really weird that DRG has the longest combos but is also punished more for disengaging than some other melees. Making Piercing Talon not interrupt combos would already help; it's not like DRGs will suddenly start spamming it with its low potency.
It's just so you have something to do to keep uptime that's not a dps loss.
Having a skill that's a dps loss in most scenarios over doing nothing is like a slap in the face.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

It's really weird that DRG has the longest combos but is also punished more for disengaging than some other melees. Making Piercing Talon not interrupt combos would already help; it's not like DRGs will suddenly start spamming it with its low potency.
It's just so you have something to do to keep uptime that's not a dps loss.
Having a skill that's a dps loss in most scenarios over doing nothing is like a slap in the face.

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*Looks at Monk*

*Sees Fists of Earth, Fists of Fire, Tornado Kick, and Six Sided Star*

Yeah I know that feeling.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

*Looks at Monk*

*Sees Fists of Earth, Fists of Fire, Tornado Kick, and Six Sided Star*

Yeah I know that feeling.

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They at least have a skill that lets them hit from a distance *looks at MNK's kit never having anything of the sort*

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

They at least have a skill that lets them hit from a distance *looks at MNK's kit never having anything of the sort*

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You effectively do though. Meditation. It makes no difference whether you hit the enemy with that 123.3 ppgcd, or a relative 172.67 ppgcd, now or later when back in range of the boss.

Sure, Chakra can cap, but Dragoon likewise has only 1 GCD in 10 where it's not a damage loss to use Piercing Talon at all over a single GCD of downtime. At least Meditation doesn't break combos.

Heck, Meditation was by far and away the best ranged skill among melee back in Heavensward, before TFC faced relative nerfs to make room for Deep Meditation alongside the much-increased threat of resource-capping.

It's a far less a "Monk doesn't have a Ranged skill" problem (it does, and it was the highest relative ppGCD of them despite not even breaking combos, though now SAM takes that mantle). It's a matter of Monk having a poorly thought-out gauge and all other ranged skills among melee needing a serious rework.

On topic: Maybe upgrade Piercing Talon baseline and then again, later, into Dragonkiller at level 64 or so when having progressed a combo. Dragonkiller would then deal additional potency based on your current combo progress and count as if having used True Thrust or Doom Spike. This would, moreover, allow for a forking rotation by putting the potency of having used Dragonkiller to end a combo early and more quickly advance the next situationally equal to or, in cases of CT misalignment, even greater than continuing your combo as normal.

I feel like there should be a cost for not timing your combos around melee-downtime, but unlike Samurai who can swap around Yukikaze vs Gekko/Kasha and its Iaijutsu casts, Dragoon can't... realign anything. Arguably Fuma, Raiton, and Hyosho probably ought to have a larger impact on pacing to allow for a knowledgeable NIN to complete a combo just before melee downtime as well, but even then it likely needs to regain the rotational flexibility it had when Shadow Fang wasn't merely a CD in order to regain control over timing/pacing for melee-downtime.

There should be GCDs which, when aligned to through good use of one's kit, the ranged skill is purely free damage, but all other GCDs should have some manner of cost, some even exceeding that of merely waiting for up to 1.5 GCDs to attack again. And, personally, I like that the Doom Spike combo might see use in single-target.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

They at least have a skill that lets them hit from a distance *looks at MNK's kit never having anything of the sort*

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You completely missed the point of the thread. It may not be a ranged skill, but MNKs do have Meditate that does not break combos and builds up to damage that is significant to their dps. You can always take a chance and make a thread asking the devs to give MNK Chi Blast or something. The whole point is to make Piercing Talon useful, because in its current state it feels like a bad skill.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And, personally, I like that the Doom Spike combo might see use in single-target.

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I've used Doom Spike combo when I am forced out of melee range for a very long period of time (Shiva Savage Icelit), it's just further annoys me how we're given Piercing Talon, but there's no point when Doom Spike combo is way better. It'll break my rotation combo sure, but it eclipses Piercing Talon.

What if it took the place of a Combo step instead?

So it could be used at any step of the combo but at a relative potency penalty. (Like, -30%)

The animation is just too good to not make use of.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

What if it took the place of a Combo step instead?

So it could be used at any step of the combo but at a relative potency penalty. (Like, -30%)

The animation is just too good to not make use of.

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While undoubtedly simpler that way, I guess I just prefer to avoid this because I feel like working around melee downtime should be part of every melee's kit and core gameplay. I'd therefore prefer to give DRG more control by which to adjust for and around melee downtime rather than simply remove all necessity for such.

Oddly enough, though, this is exactly what I wanted for Jump back in the day. Rather than making it look weirdly fast, I wanted Jump to be an oGCD that would launch you up into the air (avoiding physical non-raidwide damage and forcing enemies targeting you to retarget) while your next GCD would have a unique Dive animation, dealing bonus damage/effect as you land... Doom Spike Jump was effectively Star-diver before there was a Star-diver, though at lower potency. oGCDs were usable even while within the air, and Power Surge was your Dragonfire Dive equivalent. Disembowel was Spineshatter. [/random-reminiscence]

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

While undoubtedly simpler that way, I guess I just prefer to avoid this because I feel like working around melee downtime should be part of every melee's kit and core gameplay. I'd therefore prefer to give DRG more control by which to adjust for and around melee downtime rather than simply remove all necessity for such.

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Dragoon kind of suffers from "Extremely coherent design philosophy" syndrome that Paladins and Black Mages do. Piercing Talon just has no place currently, even as an uptime tool as the uptime counter-intuitively hurts your longterm uptime, and tooling a unique keypoint to it would probably require more indepth kit changes.

Like, I personally loved the Geirskogul / BotD resource dynamic in Heavensward. In the same way that Stormblood TK Monk had clear and crunchy feedback for progressively doing it better, maximizing Gierskogul was that.

My first thought was giving Piercing Talon -that- back. Non-combo breaking GCD that drains BOTD on use but has a suitably strong GCD. Not something you can use all the time but at the same time, BOTD maintenance is pretty...non-existent.

My second thought was also non-combo breaker, and have it be the middle action with a Charge action effect in a non-conventional combo. Backflip (Get out), Charged Piercing Talon (No combo break, higher potency, resets and boosts Spine Shatter), Spineshatter back in.

My third was make it emphasize Dragoon Mobility by making it a GCD gap closer, but someone already pointed out that having a kiting tool was useful.

Like, I dunno. I gotta play it more.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Dragoon kind of suffers from "Extremely coherent design philosophy" syndrome that Paladins and Black Mages do. Piercing Talon just has no place currently, even as an uptime tool as the uptime counter-intuitively hurts your longterm uptime, and tooling a unique keypoint to it would probably require more indepth kit changes.

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I don't know if that's really a matter of "coherent" so much as "inflexible". A single separable DRG action (in terms of decisions and what could without loss be macro'ed if not for the game preventing macros from queuing), in 95% of single-target situations, lasts 10 GCDs, and has zero reason for variance to anything else. The remainder of actions are just traps that will, generally, only ever hurt those with physical disabilities.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Like, I personally loved the Geirskogul / BotD resource dynamic in Heavensward. In the same way that Stormblood TK Monk had clear and crunchy feedback for progressively doing it better, maximizing Gierskogul was that.

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Same. Completely. I'd have liked for Dragoon's HW mechanic to have more control and not be locked in so late nor so punishing to drop, but damn it felt simple-yet-lowkey-genius. Same with late-SB TK Monk, even as bad as it made the high-SkS builds I love.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

My first thought was giving Piercing Talon -that- back. Non-combo breaking GCD that drains BOTD on use but has a suitably strong GCD.

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Enticing, though I'm not sure how interesting that would necessarily be. If the cost wasn't outright negligible, for instance, that would equally describe Reprise, which the community has mostly reacted to with various shades of "...okay?", "meh", and "ick" even after all its buffs.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Backflip (Get out), Charged Piercing Talon (No combo break, higher potency, resets and boosts Spine Shatter), Spineshatter back in.

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This is the suggestion I've seen most -- an enhanced Enhanced Enpi if you will. My two issues with it are that unlike Yaten, (1) Elusive has a decently long cooldown and (2) seems slower to actually move your hitbox out of danger, seeming instead to absorb every AoE between its origin and destination. I'm not sure I want to entrust my downtime tool entirely to a 30s CD.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

My third was make it emphasize Dragoon Mobility by making it a GCD gap closer, but someone already pointed out that having a kiting tool was useful.

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Given how little enmity or damage it deals anyways, I'm not sure it's providing much of a kiting tool as is. Though... and uhh huge spitball warning here... thinking about the combination of the two is pretty interesting. For instance, what if we... turned it into a draconic Harpoon. You could, in the course of one dynamic button, create a gap-closer, a pull-in, a pull-with, and a taunt. Impale an enemy from up close a la 1.x Full Thrust ("Sparta-dive") animation, then dash off, pulling the enemy with you if they can be moved or leave a trail of draconic essence that you can use to then rush to the target for damage based on time spent charging (literally just downtime, but with a neat VFX aura and slight idle animation adjustments to make it look real deliberate).

That said, I could as easily imagine Doom Thrust being given a charge-up function to enhance its range and use it as a enemy-crosser (closing the gap and then getting up to the far edge of its hitbox with remaining range, with its pathing blocked by any AoE zones, hidden or not, persistent or not)...

The Backflip was more the 'get out after the last GCD'. The Piercing Talon enhancement would be a Charged Action effect, where it's available all the time, but the bonuses it provides are on a cooldown.

Charge-Up abilities I want to avoid until we see a working example that doesn't feel awful. Consider that a 'Charge Up' ability is like a Cast Time ability but not back-ended. our primary example of this is Flamethrower, and it feels awful.

I think context-sensitive abilities can work, where Piercing Talon causes True Thrust and Doom Spike to alter functionality without breaking the combo string.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The Backflip was more the 'get out after the last GCD'. The Piercing Talon enhancement would be a Charged Action effect, where it's available all the time, but the bonuses it provides are on a cooldown.

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CDs within abilities, as opposed to merely on abilities, are something I'd really like to see, too, though for anything not typically a tremendous loss it usually seems to run the risk of "but did I really want that bonus right now?" At least we here have the perfect case for it here.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Charge-Up abilities I want to avoid until we see a working example that doesn't feel awful. Consider that a 'Charge Up' ability is like a Cast Time ability but not back-ended. our primary example of this is Flamethrower, and it feels awful.

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It probably doesn't help that while WoW has something like 50hz update ticks for just about everything, XIV seems to run on at less than 10hz for detecting our position and periodic tick effects are checked only once per 1, 2, (most often) 3, or 4 seconds as just a "buff exists y/n?" check. Yeah, we would need an example of something responsive, or at least of measured client-trust that isn't so broadly exploitable as to be worth hacking to significant effect, before that'd we worth using. But given how lucrative the concept could be, I'd like to see it worked towards.

What if Piercing Talon reduced the CD of High Jump by, say, 1.5sec? Or had maybe a 10% chance to give Dive Ready? Or extended Chaos Thrust's duration by 3 sec?

Some low boon so it doesn't replace the main combo but still is better than tossing AoE in single-target.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

What if Piercing Talon reduced the CD of High Jump by, say, 1.5sec? Or had maybe a 10% chance to give Dive Ready? Or extended Chaos Thrust's duration by 3 sec?

Some low boon so it doesn't replace the main combo but still is better than idling.

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Any of those, given sufficient tuning, could push it into being useful for maybe a second GCD out of 10, but consider -- what benefit over simple increased potency is there to, say, desyncing your High Jump or rolling the dice on RNG or making CT likely guarantee that a DoT tick will now be clipped, etc? Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Any of those, given sufficient tuning, could push it into being useful for maybe a second GCD out of 10, but consider -- what benefit over simple increased potency is there to, say, desyncing your High Jump or rolling the dice on RNG or making CT likely guarantee that a DoT tick will now be clipped, etc? Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?

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Well, Dragoon has only one secondary resource to worry about, the Dragon Gauge. It doesn't use MP or Ninki, Kenki, Mana, or any other type of %-based Gauge to allow for a more gradual increase. If it affected the Dragon Gauge directly in a reliable way, it would quickly become part of the main combo, which would affect the balance of the entire job.

So your options to make it more engaging while still being a secondary skill purely for distance are all going to either affect timers -- Blood/Life of the Dragon, Chaos Thrust, cooldowns -- or require a complete rework of the job. Considering Blood of the Dragon lasts for as long as its cooldown now, affecting that timer further would be largely redundant. Affecting any timer that would require you to be in melee to receive mileage would, I feel, also defeat the purpose of attaching it to a ranged skill.

Now, while I could think of ways to add on to the job in future expansions, that would still leave Piercing Talon in the same position until then.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Well, Dragoon has only one secondary resource to worry about, the Dragon Gauge. It doesn't use MP or Ninki, Kenki, Mana, or any other type of %-based Gauge to allow for a more gradual increase. If it affected the Dragon Gauge directly in a reliable way, it would quickly become part of the main combo, which would affect the balance of the entire job.

So your options to make it more engaging while still being a secondary skill purely for distance are all going to either affect timers -- Blood/Life of the Dragon, Chaos Thrust, cooldowns -- or require a complete rework of the job. Considering Blood of the Dragon lasts for as long as its cooldown now, affecting that timer further would be largely redundant. Affecting any timer that would require you to be in melee to receive mileage would, I feel, also defeat the purpose of attaching it to a ranged skill.

Now, while I could think of ways to add on to the job in future expansions, that would still leave Piercing Talon in the same position until then.

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My point was merely that you don't have to do something so integral with distant systems like Jump to make it engaging, let alone functional. It just has to have a greater range of GCDs across DRG's 10-step rotation under which it using it comes out ahead of not using it. You take the potency lost from restarting the combo (and from delayed or clipped CT ticks in the adjusted rotation) and try to give that 2-4 extra GCDs per 10 in which that cost is minimal (in the range of SAM's 20 to 65ish, assuming an unlucky lost CT tick).

Give Piercing Talon (1) a higher base damage, have it (2) upgrade to a skill which takes advantage of, and/or gives back some amount of, Combo progress, and (3) add it to the list of skills buffed by Lance Mastery II, and voila, it no longer forces itself into obsolescence.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Give Piercing Talon (1) a higher base damage, have it (2) upgrade to a skill which takes advantage of, and/or gives back some amount of, Combo progress, and (3) add it to the list of skills buffed by Lance Mastery II, and voila, it no longer forces itself into obsolescence.

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The problem is Step 2, however, which was exactly what I was attempting to highlight. Since Dragoon has no additional resources built by the combo, there's no conventional way to have it "take advantage of or give some amount of Combo progress", at least not in a way that parallels abilities like Throwing Dagger or Enpi. Dragoon's secondary resource is time; your reward for completing the conventional rotation is extending a timer to chain more periods of burst damage.

If we take timers off the table, I can only assume you're trying to imply the best way to affect that would be to have the skill directly substitute for one of the weaponskills in a combo for the purposes of advancing said combo -- for example, using True Thrust -> Piercing Talon -> Full Thrust in place of Vorpal Thrust -- but that carries too many logical faults in itself just in the coding stage that overcomplicate a solution (for instance, how it determines which branching combo it affects, or how many times it may substitute steps when used in sequence, or what specific abilities if any that it is limited to substituting which could be penalized if your rotation timing is off when you're forced out of range).

This is why I'm actually rather keen on the idea of having it extend the duration of Chaos Thrust for a few seconds, or possibly Disembowel (though it's already longer and slightly desynched from CT), or ideally even both if that's not too much of a stretch.
Yes, theoretically it could throw off the timing of your primary rotation or clip a DoT tick, but it could also prevent having to restart the 10-step process for a couple GCDs and allow you to go right back into a Full Thrust combo for maximum output when you can get back in melee. It won't throw it off much more than missing the reapplication entirely due to being pushed away.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

The problem is Step 2, however, which was exactly what I was attempting to highlight. Since Dragoon has no additional resources built by the combo, there's no conventional way to have it "take advantage of or give some amount of Combo progress".

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Why does it need to be conventional? You can literally append the effect to an Additional Effect on Piercing Talon / Dragonkiller rather than using a Combo Bonus. (Technically, not even a Combo Bonus on PT would be wholly unprecedented anymore, as multiple combo skills could be sourced by the same opener. The only problem is using multiple source skills, to allow PT to be used at any given time.

Moreover, one could just use an oGCD to convert a standard weaponskill to a thrown version at %reduced direct potency and effect duration. A bit of a grind for a kiting tool, but I'm honestly not that convinced the 5 extra yalm on PT relative to Doom/Sonic/Tempest helps whatsoever for kiting. If we're going to suddenly care about the early leveling experience again, let's care about a whole lot more than just PT.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Why does it need to be conventional?

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I didn't say it "needs to be" conventional. As I was saying, it's difficult to figure what kind of "additional effect" to pin to it, since Dragoon is a bit of an outlier.

I'm less concerned about kiting during leveling or PotD, and more about instances where we're forced out of melee range for multiple GCDs, thanks to chain knockbacks, jumping/teleporting targets, hazard zones, etc. Considering most of our oGCDs are already ranged skills or buffs that would be unimpeded at a distance, I'd be concerned about having to apply another one between every hit for one of those periods with a reward of performing the exact same rotation.

If you're arguing making the rotation interesting, just doing the same chain of 10 GCDs for the entire fight even when presented with an opportunity to shake it up... isn't that.

Besides, I wouldn't even want to consider how such an oGCD might impact AoE, or how it's coded to interact with Flank/Rear skills (important to keep Raiden Thrust going).

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

I didn't say it "needs to be" conventional. As I was saying, it's difficult to figure what kind of "additional effect" to pin to it, since Dragoon is a bit of an outlier.

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Not at all. It's just a matter of how finely we want to balance its losses across various GCDs in rotation (effectively allowing it an addition 2-4 GCDs per DRG's 10). We have two options: (1) Additional Effect on Piercing Talon or conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller or (2) conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller AND giving Dragonkiller an Additional Effect.

1A.

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Additional Effect: Deals an additional X potency when any combo skill is readied.

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1B.

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Piercing Talon Mastery: When any combo skill is readied, Piercing Talon is upgraded instead to Dragonkiller.

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2.

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Additional Effect: Deals an additional X potency when Full Thrust, Chaos Thrust, or Coerthan Tempest are readied.

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Note that the extra potency in the Additional Effects can be replaced with providing the combo benefits of True Thrust (and perhaps Doomspike). The rest of the balance can be managed through baseline potency or, again, advancing the combo. Combo advance as the AE is better for varying rotation, as it gives you a separate extended rotation option for syncing CT.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

I'm less concerned about kiting during leveling or PotD, and more about instances where we're forced out of melee range for multiple GCDs, thanks to chain knockbacks, jumping/teleporting targets, hazard zones, etc. Considering most of our oGCDs are already ranged skills or buffs that would be unimpeded at a distance, I'd be concerned about having to apply another one between every hit for one of those periods with a reward of performing the exact same rotation.

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I've leveled DRG to 50 3 times, to 70 twice, and to 80 once. In all that time I've never needed to spam Piercing Talon. I've only ever needed to use it even just twice in a row if I screwed up. If our concern is simply in making Piercing Talon functional, I'd simply say we ought to give it a bit more range and make it interfere less

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

If you're arguing making the rotation interesting, just doing the same chain of 10 GCDs for the entire fight even when presented with an opportunity to shake it up... isn't that.

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Which is why I wasn't arguing for a Ranged-Mode oGCD, only pointing out that the times in which PT is ever needed are so far and few between that even an oGCD with a 15-30s CD against or alongside which to balance or pair Elusive Jump would be wholly sufficient to make PT a practical skill again, especially if it was given a bit more range.

By all means, I'd prefer that DRG's every opener was chargeable; that it could advance any of its combos into each other; could use its dragon skills, once unlocked, at any time within 10 seconds to allow them more unique effects and flexibility; that its Jump simply launched it skyward as a dodge and then augmented its next weaponskill; that Full Thrust could toss enemies skyward and Fang & Claw did a fine job of juggling them and Wheeling Thrust of smiting them; that BotD simply unlocked gravity manipulation for your movement to make you look and feel like a Dissidia-esque Dragoon and master of aerial juggling; so on and so forth... but this is just about either making PT worthwhile or getting rid of it. So long as Dragoon gets something for forced melee downtime comparable to the other melee, I'm cool with either one, honestly. And that doesn't even have to be a GCD skill. Heck, we could give CT some more surplus duration, turn Geirskogul into a GCD that doesn't break combos, perhaps move Life of the Dragon activation to Blood of the Dragon, and allow BotD's passive effects by default and that would probably be sufficient for DRG's melee downtime.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Besides, I wouldn't even want to consider how such an oGCD might impact AoE, or how it's coded to interact with Flank/Rear skills (important to keep Raiden Thrust going).

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You realize that this is the first expansion where any single-use buff has ever affected more than the first hit of an AoE? It's not that hard to simply put the limitation back as it had been for 3 prior iterations for this every Lifesurge/Powersurge/Reassemble/etc skill. For the rest, just keep the positional. It's not like staying behind the enemy 24/7 when physical Ranged wasn't already a thing when Accuracy was still a stat or we suddenly can't Elusive Jump out of a circular AoE in the direction our next attack would come from (in the same way we would when prepping to Dive back).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Not at all. It's just a matter of how finely we want to balance its losses across various GCDs in rotation (effectively allowing it an addition 2-4 GCDs per DRG's 10). We have two options: (1) Additional Effect on Piercing Talon or conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller or (2) conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller AND giving Dragonkiller an Additional Effect..

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I'm not sure what this Dragonkiller you're mentioning is.

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Additional Effect: Deals an additional X potency when Full Thrust, Chaos Thrust, or Coerthan Tempest are readied.

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That's exactly my concern, though. If your timing on the combo is off when being pushed out of range -- for instance, you're on literally any other step out of the other 8 -- you lose out on the bonus.
I know I'm nitpicking the exact wording of an example, but as I said before, thanks to the branching combo system alone it complicates coding such an ability, let alone the practicality of multiple steps or having multiple abilities outside of the combo (F&C, WT).

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By all means, I'd prefer that DRG's every opener was chargeable; that it could advance any of its combos into each other; could use its dragon skills, once unlocked, at any time within 10 seconds to allow them more unique effects and flexibility; that its Jump simply launched it skyward as a dodge and then augmented its next weaponskill; that Full Thrust could toss enemies skyward and Fang & Claw did a fine job of juggling them and Wheeling Thrust of smiting them; that BotD simply unlocked gravity manipulation for your movement to make you look and feel like a Dissidia-esque Dragoon and master of aerial juggling; so on and so forth... but this is just about either making PT worthwhile or getting rid of it. So long as Dragoon gets something for forced melee downtime comparable to the other melee, I'm cool with either one, honestly. And that doesn't even have to be a GCD skill. Heck, we could give CT some more surplus duration, turn Geirskogul into a GCD that doesn't break combos, perhaps move Life of the Dragon activation to Blood of the Dragon, and allow BotD's passive effects by default and that would probably be sufficient for DRG's melee downtime.

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That's uh.

That's a whole rework. Bit high-brow for a thread like this.

But my point is, earlier you asked "Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?" So far the effects you've suggested are purely adding damage to the skill based on serendipitous timing affected by the main rotation, rather than actually having any impact on the main rotation.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

I'm not sure what this Dragonkiller you're mentioning is.

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It's literally in the quote above. It's a potency bonus for any readied combo. Rather than bloating a tooltip with X if A and Y if B, you just use the trait and then use a single Additional Effect. Now you can tune more finely.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

That's exactly my concern, though. If your timing on the combo is off when being pushed out of range -- for instance, you're on literally any other step out of the other 8 -- you lose out on the bonus.

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Losing F&C+WT has virtually no impact on your ppGCD (especially if you can replace with a spare FT combo or a CT on a new unit), simply because there are few steps left in the combo. Dropping on FT or CT are far, far worse. If we provided a single base bonus for having any combo readied, atop balancing the base potency for level 50 play, dropping before either dragon skill or after True Thrust (2 of 4 GCDs per combo across 58-63 play) would be fine. After gaining Lance Mastery, however, dropping on the 3rd or 5th GCD per combo would each be highly punishing, while the 2nd is made less relatively punishing but still not great. This can be fixed by buffing the effect specifically for the 3rd step and reducing the Lance Mastery bonus onto the second dragon weaponskill slightly (buffing potencies elsewhere). At that point you are punished most on the 2nd and 5th GCDs, less on the 1st, 3rd, and 4th, per combo, but all are within reason. This would leave Dragoon's ranged option as the most flexible and among the most integral, capable of creating different lengths of rotational strings by which to control combo progress at known times of forced melee-downtime.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

That's a whole rework. Bit high-brow for a thread like this.

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I already mentioned as much.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

... but this is just about either making PT worthwhile or getting rid of it.

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I said that specifically to point out that while I could certainly throw out ideas for how I think Dragoon's rotation could be more enjoyable, that's not the point of the thread. I gave you a functional Piercing Talon -- hell, one that does allow for a more interesting rotation, coincidentally in giving it pacing control.

If you want a Piercing Talon that somehow suddenly reinvigorates the job in and of itself, despite the thread asking only for a functional one... perhaps you could put forth a suggestion greater than just a chance of free damage or something that desyncs your CDs?