DRG Thread

As a DRG main i think the job is not bad right now but i think it can do so much better

Lance Charge
Right now Lance Charge feel like No Mercy on GNB. You just 1-2-3-4-5 for 1 min and click all your button in burst windows which is fine but that make me feed like Firstminds' Focus could have been 3 charges instead of 2 so you can delay Wyrmwind Thrust and do 2 on Lance Charge timing. Because right now Wyrmwind Thrust feel like just there to click whenever.

High Jump
DRG have been meme about this since forever now. But when yoshi-P said make skill feel move respond i though they gonner make High Jumb (or all jumb for that matter) Double weave-able. But right now i just hope SE let us DRG weave Mirage Dive and High Jumb

Let me know what you think!

I really don't like how cluttered it feels with so many oGCD. I hate that we have 2 10% buffs eliminate all impact outside of those buffs.

I dislike the way Dragon sight works. We should not need a macro to make an ability that requires you to target another, double weavable.

Life Surge feels like bloat .

2 spine shatter is just more animation lock

If you have any sort of lag say goodbye to doing any meaningful damage due to how much weaving there is.

Also in what world does Dragoon having the most positional make sense?

Dragoon just feels like so much work for less damage.

i like positionals, i would totally hate it if they would remove the three positionals... also... it has three positionals in a ten skill rotation. thats not much.

I think positionals can work too and i fine with it but the problem with DRG positionals is they too tight. Hitting 3 positionals one after another with animation lock is really bad design, especially when you cant Double weave

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2 spine shatter is just more animation lock

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i think Spine Shatter and Life Surge only bad with opener but after that you only use it every Lance Charge so the charges just be there so we dont feed bad when delay it

I'm not a fan of Mirage Dive
it really doesn't need its own button space it could easily sit over high jump or they just rework high jump to be a double hit OGCD.

i think they need to do something with dragonfire dive, i feel like this skill just there for no reason now.

back in HW this used to be the hardest hitter for jump skill, now its just... there, like average potency, 120 cooldown

i feel like someone in the dev forgot about this skill

I like so damn much DRG, it have the best evolution, they purposely keep some skills just for "lore".
If i want a change it would be "mirage dive" ! Beside that i'm all fine DRG is a blast for me more than RPR.

Concerning DRG i can greets the dev team ! Thanks you!

I think the two biggest issues with drg right now are not enough damage, especially when considering the effort you need to put in compared to something like reaper, which se apparently wants to balance around, and the complete lack of a defensive skill, all other melees have something, with the currently 2 best dps (monk and reaper) also having some impact for the rest of the party members.

I think the damage issue is the most pressing one, as dragoon is one of the jobs currently being filtered out by the harshest dps check in the game, p4 savage, meaning it gets dropped the moment dps is actually required.
If you look at the number of parses, drg is in the bottom 3 together with ninja and dancer for both bosses in p4, meaning that players clearing it mostly agree it is a suboptimal choice that is going to artificially make the fight harder for them :
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44#boss=81
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44#boss=82
Yes, obviously the job is still able to clear, but when it comes to challenging content, the path of least resistance is always the most attractive, and the fact that any player that got to p4s as drg can switch to reaper and perform better with less effort is just not good for the game. It should also be the relatively easier issue to fix, the 6.05 changes were in a good direction but just not enough, maybe try and be less conservative with buffs if nerfs to top performers are not going to happen.

The lack of a defensive skill is the other big issue in my opinion, life surge in theory heals you a tiny bit, but its such a small percentage, plus you are kind of forced to use it for damage, honestly having 2 charges of this also feels kinda bad, its not an exciting button to press, if its going to stay as it is id suggest making it a guaranteed critical direct hit on the next skill, so at least it gives the dopamine rush of the !!! numbers, its just filler otherwise. I personally would prefer if this became a different purely defensive skill and the potency it gave was baked into heaven's thrust to compensate. Whatever the case it feels bad to be the only melee without at least some way to help mitigate damage, if this is on purpose for class flavour reason there should be some upside somewhere else, i dont think its good flavour if its just one job not getting access to something.

I think overall it’s good but I agree, it needs work. First, it has too many buttons. Life surge and dragon fire dive feel like button bloat to me. Removing animation lock from all jumps/dives and letting me weave during them would be a good start. “But it adds skill bc you have to plan when you jump!” Yeah, except in fights where that happens all the time and you end up just drifting your jumps outside of buff windows which feels terrible. Also, wyrmwind thrust feels so… out of place? It feels like the just threw ideas at the wall to see what stuck.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

I think overall it’s good but I agree, it needs work. First, it has too many buttons. Life surge and dragon fire dive feel like button bloat to me. Removing animation lock from all jumps/dives and letting me weave during them would be a good start. “But it adds skill bc you have to plan when you jump!” Yeah, except in fights where that happens all the time and you end up just drifting your jumps outside of buff windows which feels terrible. Also, wyrmwind thrust feels so… out of place? It feels like the just threw ideas at the wall to see what stuck.

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Playstyle wise i think its pretty good, but i also think its just a little busy during burst windows, having so many ogcds and being unable to double weave them without low ping is kinda painful, just getting rid of 1 or 2 should help a lot, and i think there are clearly ogcds that are less fun to press than others, namely life surge and spineshatter dive. I get what you mean and dragonfire dive doesnt really interact with the rest of the kit and its kinda just there, but at least the fire explosion animation feels good.
Having spineshatter dive deal damage also kinda defeats the purpose of giving it charges, since it means the optimal play is mostly holding them for buff windows, and its such a wimpy button press, the animation is slow, it only feels good when you use it to actually gap close, id like it better if it dealt no damage and it was just used to gap close, and then it could have no charges and perhaps a lower cooldown, and maybe give the 2 charges to dragonfire dive, which is a way more satisfying button press.

Honestly the main thing they need to do is change the level at which you get skills. Syncing down on dragoon is agonizing

with all the positionals DRG have i think the job should do more dps for the trade off. Not SAM level of dps but have to be close second

I'm a little bit of a dinosaur, I tend to think that the design of Heavensward was the best iteration of Dragoon.
But I've adapted to the changes of Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

Endwalker is the first time I've ever felt like they really did Dragoon a disservice, one that I felt strongly enough about to make a forum account.

Dragoon just doesn't feel good right now. I'll try to avoid any statistical comparisons and just focus on the feelings I have while playing. Numbers are an easy tweak, but I feel like this iteration of Dragoon needs to be slated for a revamp.

Level synced Dragoon kinda sucks. Sub 50 is sub 50. I won't hold that against Dragoon, sub 50 has almost always sucked. But 60 and lower is feeling really sparse right now. Turning BotD into a trait makes the class feel really passive. You don't upkeep BotD, its just a potency increase for Jump & Spineshatter between 50 and 60. You gain access to Wheeling and Fang & Claw, but with BotD being passive its just an extension to the combo now instead of a feature of this new stance you got at 54.

At 90, the class feels too busy, and commensurately unrewarding. I can't fit all of my oGCDs into my 2 minute burst window without double weaving jumps and delaying my GCD, it doesn't feel good.
The 2 minute burst window has: Geirskogul, 2xNastrond, Stardiver, High Jump, Mirage Dive, 2xLife Surge, 2xSpineshatter, Dragonfire Dive, and Wyrmwind Thrust. And you're trying to fit all of that in under Litany, B4B, and Eye. All while also moving to accomodate positionals. TO BE CLEAR. I don't want to get rid of positionals. I like positionals. They help the class feel interesting, even when level synced. But I have 5 jumps to weave into that burst window. 4 of the 5 jumps are going to pull me into minimum melee range (which isn't always safe) and sometimes the mechanics just flat out prevent you from using jumps (Zodiark) during your burst window.

Jumps are unique, interesting, and fun. But there are too many in this burst window.
Dragonfire Dive is a 300 potency AoE on a 120s cooldown. Why do we still have this? Stardiver is 500 potency on a primary target, and 350 potency (30% reduced) on all remaining targets. It has a functional cooldown of a minute. Why hasn't Dragonfire Dive upgraded to be Stardiver? (admittedly, the animation for Dragonfire is better in my humble opinion. I'd prefer them to upgrade from Stardiver to DFD)

Why do we even have a timer on Life of the Dragon? You are automatically set to 30 seconds of LotD, thats 3 casts of Nastrond. Full Stop. Why not just give us stacks instead?
Wyrmwind doesn't feel good to use. There are two reasons I feel this way. Wyrmwind is an escalation of Geirskogul and Nastrond. But its not an upgrade, and it doesn't interact with GSK or Nastrond. Its a higher potency non-upgrade which does the same thing. Why not make it interact with GSK and NSTD instead? Why must this be its own separate tacked on thing?
And lastly: Why does Wyrmwind thrust have a cost of 2, and we can only accumulate 2 maximum scales? We can't delay this to sync with burst windows, and we can't use it in our opener. Why not give it a max scale count of 3, with a cost of 2 instead?

My penultimate request: please do something different with Spineshatter Dive. Its a legacy move, it doesn't really have a place in level 90 anymore. We don't use it for gap closing, its just a single target 250 potency attack which doesn't stun enemies anymore. How about upgrading Spineshatter to Dragonfire Dive?

And my ultimate request: please get rid of Eye. Dragon Sight sucks to use. Just roll the damage increase into Lance Charge. Make Lance Charge like 15% or something, add a little potency to one attack, and get rid of this skill. We don't need it. It doesn't serve a purpose.


Hoping you guys can take a look at EW Dragoon and give us a little more love.
-Thanks

ShB DRG was the best, it was fun to play even I’m no main DRG.
Everything clicks together and line up beautifully, It was arguably that the job has “evolved”.
But DRG feel weird to play in END, that’s for sure.
The job encouraged double weave more than before but I can live with that. The main problem is the 2nd charge spineshatter dive.

My ping is high and I can’t double weave the animation lock ogcd such as Star diver and Dragon fire jump but I can make it work in ShB but now with 2 charges of SSD, it got a lot worse.
I’ve got tons of gcd clipping to the point that when I have to apply Chaotic spring, the buff always run out when I was doing Disembowel, sometimes even prior to that.
This problem will be gone if they just remove dmg from SSD. Make it like MNK’s thunderclap.

DRG was in the full—bloom state in ShB but I can’t see the clear direction they want to take DRG in END tbh.

I like the busyness of DRG EW, but yes there is too much "Spineshatter dive", "Mirage Dive" <= near to become useless, "Dragon Sight" <= is a huge pain to use on a partner, double "Lance Charge" <= is a pain and useless.
Beside that DRG is fine (for me).

1. Allow for Wheeling Thrust and Fang & Claw to be performed in either order, offering some of the positional adaptiveness available to all Melee but Monk (since the removal of Touch/Fracture or GCD speed manipulation a la old Tornado Kick).
2. Have Life Surge's CD scale with GCD speed.
3. Consolidate Mirage Dive to the same button as (High) Jump, but do not allow it to be queued until the prior's animation has resolved. (This would still allow you to spam it through but wouldn't cause clipping for high packet-loss players who need to spam their keys and would therefore accidentally queue Mirage Dive atop Jump.)
4. Make Dragon Sight a bit more interesting, such as via increased Crit damage/healing bonus, and have Dragon Sight's secondary (ally-targetable) buff should simply remain on the DRG itself if no other allied target is selected. Additionally, put it back at a 90s cooldown so it doesn't just feel like a bloated addition to Battle Litany. Or just get rid of Dragon Sight.

More on the pipedream end of things... Stardiver aside, our jumps and dives just haven't increased enough in their 'cool factor' between 50 and 90.

I really like the current Dragoon gameplay and hope they dont change it much, would like to see a dmg buff for us due to "busy" and "most positionals" Reaper and Monk are crazy with close to same buff value .

What we really need is a defensive cooldown jumps are fine and the animation lock doesnt bother me really much if planned well even during busy 2m buff window during savage prog
I agree that Dragon Sight is not playable without mouse over macro, i need to keep my partner on focus target for easy use wich kinda sucks

Imo I hate when people complain constantly about positionals, DRG is an exception I can see tho because of how many animation locks there are.
Positionals and animation locks don't go well together.

I also think that Dragon Sight should go to the closest DPS automatically if you have no target.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Imo I hate when people complain constantly about positionals, DRG is an exception I can see tho because of how many animation locks there are.
Positionals and animation locks don't go well together.

I also think that Dragon Sight should go to the closest DPS automatically if you have no target.

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Agreed. I'm not against positional but with 5 animation locks in each burst window. No... just no.... that's not good gameplay, just bad design.

I would disagree with your Dragon Sight change only because there would be no way to really optimize that. I would just prefer they get rid of it. The skill has never felt good.

Lance Charge used to be a 25% damage buff then they nerfed it just to give us Dragon Sight and basically make it annoying and called it a new ability.

Its just clunky and doesn't work well with Dragoon

Jumps are unique being the only oGCD that you can't double-weave. I think it's being intentionally kept that way as it adds emphasize to the animation and feel. Almost like a SAM's and RPR's casted big hits, but in an oGCD form.

Given it doesn't produce quite as big numbers, but we get to do much more of it as a trade off. I would hate to see Jumps being cancelled by another animation in the same GCD window. Even with locks and positonals while progging on savage content, DRG's rotation is mostly set, don't find it too troublesome to play the job properly. Maybe consolidate one or two oGCDs like Mirage, but not too much. oGCD is our entire job identity.

Surprised no one mentioning our LotD delay in optimal rotation (from 30sec to 1min). Not very intuitive for players learning DRG, holding on and not going into LotD asap. But again, delaying is also shared by MNKs and a few other jobs, and devs have said it's intentional for balance reasons.

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Originally Posted by foehnweisz

Jumps are unique being the only oGCD that you can't double-weave. I think it's being intentionally kept that way as it adds emphasize to the animation and feel. Almost like a SAM's and RPR's casted big hits, but in an oGCD form.

Given it doesn't produce quite as big numbers, but we get to do much more of it as a trade off. I would hate to see Jumps being cancelled by another animation in the same GCD window. Even with locks and positonals while progging on savage content, DRG's rotation is mostly set, don't find it too troublesome to play the job properly. Maybe consolidate one or two oGCDs like Mirage, but not too much. oGCD is our entire job identity.

Surprised no one mentioning our LotD delay in optimal rotation (from 30sec to 1min). Not very intuitive for players learning DRG, holding on and not going into LotD asap. But again, delaying is also shared by MNKs and a few other jobs, and devs have said it's intentional for balance reasons.

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You can actually double weave all jumps besides stardiver if your ping is low enough, which is a little unfair because you are already gaining the benefit of low ping but now you are also able to make the damage windows much more comfier by requiring less time or being able to fit 2 spineshatters and 2 life surges if you pooled them for whatever reason.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

You can actually double weave all jumps besides stardiver if your ping is low enough, which is a little unfair because you are already gaining the benefit of low ping but now you are also able to make the damage windows much more comfier by requiring less time or being able to fit 2 spineshatters and 2 life surges if you pooled them for whatever reason.

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I'm sure the devs had taken that into account. Unless you live next to the servers, I think it's reasonable to assume the majority of players won't double weave Jump without minor/additive clipping.

They've already made efforts in minimizing the lock while maintaining Jump's no-double-weave status. That 2.5/4th of a GCD sweetspot. Our 'standing still' moments is already a fraction of others with melee cast, we just have more instances of it.

If all Jumps were to feel like Mirage Dive (shooting out a clone/dragon of yourself out), sure guaranteed double weave, but I'd take the current feel of stardiver/high jump over MD any day.

Whole another discussion if you feel like we have too many oGCDs to cram. Maybe start with killing Dragon Sight first. Don't understand which part of DRG fantasy inclines us to be a supportive DPS.

Something that would go a long way to adding some QoL would be to increase Dragon Sight tether range to 20 yalms. DS has several really awkward moments in P1S, P2S and P3S that would be much smoother if the range was just longer. Mouseover and party position macros are janky but in lieu of fundamentally changing the skill, the range would help a lot.

Similarly, Battle Litany gaining more range would help a lot too for obvious reasons.

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Originally Posted by foehnweisz

I'm sure the devs had taken that into account. Unless you live next to the servers, I think it's reasonable to assume the majority of players won't double weave Jump without minor/additive clipping.

They've already made efforts in minimizing the lock while maintaining Jump's no-double-weave status. That 2.5/4th of a GCD sweetspot. Our 'standing still' moments is already a fraction of others with melee cast, we just have more instances of it.

If all Jumps were to feel like Mirage Dive (shooting out a clone/dragon of yourself out), sure guaranteed double weave, but I'd take the current feel of stardiver/high jump over MD any day.

Whole another discussion if you feel like we have too many oGCDs to cram. Maybe start with killing Dragon Sight first. Don't understand which part of DRG fantasy inclines us to be a supportive DPS.

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Having so many jumps is a hindrance in our current state. That being said my initial suggestion would not be to remove the jumps, but instead, remove dragon sight, mirage dive, life surge, and maybe remove the extra charge of Spineshatter.

I agree the impact of jump feels really good, but the issue this time around is all the clutter built around it. So cut the fat make the jumps and the gierskogul feel really good and trim all the bloated oGCDs

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Originally Posted by Tobalito

Having so many jumps is a hindrance in our current state. That being said my initial suggestion would not be to remove the jumps, but instead, remove dragon sight, mirage dive, life surge, and maybe remove the extra charge of Spineshatter.

I agree the impact of jump feels really good, but the issue this time around is all the clutter built around it. So cut the fat make the jumps and the gierskogul feel really good and trim all the bloated oGCDs

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I think life surge is pretty cool. Combining it with our AoE combo move in dungeons for a guaranteed crit on everything while healing yourself and hearing all the "ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding" sounds is fun.

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Originally Posted by Tobalito

Having so many jumps is a hindrance in our current state. That being said my initial suggestion would not be to remove the jumps, but instead, remove dragon sight, mirage dive, life surge, and maybe remove the extra charge of Spineshatter.

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Removing the extra charge of Spineshatter, unless highly dependent on your 2-minute buffs, would just remove the ability to use Spineshatter Dive as a gap-closer. Mirage Dive, likewise, adds up to a 15s further degree of flexibility to when you enter Life of the Dragon and keeps in theme with Dragoon's general preference to bank oGCD damage (currently Nostrand, Stardiver, and Mirage Dive) without losing casts over the fight.

I'd rather not lose those. If we feel bloated, I think the most notable source of that problem would be (High) Jump and failure to consolidate buttons that obviously could and should be consolidated. For instance, I wouldn't mind if we just upgraded per Geirskogul (and then upon entering Life of the Dragon) from Spineshatter Dive to Dragonfire Dive to Stardiver, etc., with none of the jumps acting merely like a ranged-attack-with-lengthy-movement-lock.

Life Surge, meanwhile, I'd like to have heal for more and to see scale its CD with GCD speed (or just have its CD adjusted slightly), but I quite like that bit of extra healing and the bonus from syncing our lead direct-potency weaponskills (Heaven's Thrust / Coerthan Tempest) to it.

The two things I'd want for the job are:

1. Give High Jump two charges so you have even more control over when Life of the Dragon triggers and can actually participate in an encounter's opening burst window properly by triggering it immediately.

2. Give them some kind of survival/self-sustain ability that is not tied to a DPS cooldown. It's the weakest of the melee by a noticeable margin in that regard (With NIN being a runner up due to Shade Shift being strictly worse then everything the other melee/magic DPS have in terms of its mitigation/healing vs. cooldown).

The one thing I want for the job after today's update: divide Dragon Sight in two buttons.
1) Dragon Sight - make it work similarly to DNC's dance partner. So that I can select a party member to link with at any time during a fight without having to select one when starting a burst.
2) Add a skill that enables Right Eye/Left Eye on you and the person you share the Dragon Sight with.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

The one thing I want for the job after today's update: divide Dragon Sight in two buttons.
1) Dragon Sight - make it work similarly to DNC's dance partner. So that I can select a party member to link with at any time during a fight without having to select one when starting a burst.
2) Add a skill that enables Right Eye/Left Eye on you and the person you share the Dragon Sight with.

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That is a fantastic idea.

I don't know if we should make a new thread but I want to say I really hate how DRG has lost all of its visual splendor this expansion. All that's left now is Life of the Dragon. Losing our tether which was so fun to see fly up and down with our jumps or use in town when teaching someone where to go was really fun. Blood of the Dragon also made Areadbhar so cool when the two matched.

I think maybe if we had Blood's effect when one to two eyes open would be a great compromise. I get that the tether at the new distance would be distracting. But it's like yet another Ring of Thorns where DRG can't have any fun visuals. Actually while I'm talking about FX the Chaotic Spring SFX really sounds like it belongs on SAM not DRG.

While I generally agree about the loss of interesting visuals, DS's tether was always problematic. The game drills into our heads that tethers are bad and need to be broken ASAP but then is like "lol, not that one though." I can't even count the number of times I've given someone DS only for them to freak out and run away trying to break the tether (see also, Cover.)

At the very least I think the 1-2 eyes return of Blood of the Dragon would be an easy implementation.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

While I generally agree about the loss of interesting visuals, DS's tether was always problematic. The game drills into our heads that tethers are bad and need to be broken ASAP but then is like "lol, not that one though." I can't even count the number of times I've given someone DS only for them to freak out and run away trying to break the tether (see also, Cover.)

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I disagree, it barely takes a mediocum of thought and like 5 secs of dungeon play to know a drg teather is good. By this logic, all sparkly ground/circle effects are bad, yet healers have them as well as bosses...

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

I disagree, it barely takes a mediocum of thought and like 5 secs of dungeon play to know a drg teather is good. By this logic, all sparkly ground/circle effects are bad, yet healers have them as well as bosses...

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This. Just like when I first met DRKs I kept running out of their aoe because it looks like something bad, but it didn't take long to find out it's not the case.
Although I might say, considering how people tend to run out of asylum/ss/earthly star (try doing that now!)/doton/smn green aoe (sorry, I'm no summonologist), it seems many people can't understand the concept. But still, it's not a valid reason to remove any of that.

And PLD and SCH have a tether too. Enemy tethers look very different from any friendly ones and it doesn't take long to understand they're beneficial.

Besides the current DS range makes it so you can't run far enough to break it so...even less reason to remove the animation.

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

I disagree, it barely takes a mediocum of thought and like 5 secs of dungeon play to know a drg teather is good. By this logic, all sparkly ground/circle effects are bad, yet healers have them as well as bosses...

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I can absolutely see how unlimited Eye tether would completely obscure other tethers and make mechanics more complicated. It really wasn't a great idea. Practicality over visual fluff.