What are the devs going to change about dragoon??

So in the patch notes reading Yoshi P mentioned they were thinking about making “major” changes to dragoon in 6.2. I’ve done savage on dragoon and I honestly can’t think of anything to change about it. At least not anything that would qualify as “major”. A few changes I’d like to see that are somewhat minor:

- Able to hold three stacks of first mind’s focus
- Raiden thrust procing from landing positionals again.

I can’t think of anything on the job they’d want to change. I’d love the old buff timers to come back. Delaying the first life of the dragon felt like a good bit of skill expression but I doubt they’d do that before 7.0. What do you guys think they’ll do?

They probably want to either remove or change DFD so that it becomes an AoE version of Spineshatter Dive, as well as perhaps remove Lance Charge and make Dragon Sight the 60s personal buff. They might also want to rework the job completely like they did with MNK. In any case, it's concerning because they will undoubtedly remove the uniqueness of the job.

There's an ongoin discussion about this in this thread (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...d-button-bloat) if you're interested.

Dragoon is the last melee DPS that really interests me. I strongly dislike all of the NIN changes since EW, not a fan of current MNK, RPR looks cool but is boring to play, and SAM is dead to me with the 6.1 changes.

So yeah, I'm not optimistic for 6.2.

They merged Mirage Dive and Jump / High Jump, no more delaying life windows, suuuuuper rigid now.
Editing to clarify I can't read lol this is actually a great change.

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Originally Posted by Edweena

They merged Mirage Dive and Jump / High Jump, no more delaying life windows, suuuuuper rigid now.

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You can still delay windows as normal. Mirage Dive just appears after you use HJ. It hasn't been deleted, only the button was consolidated like Bunshin and Phantom Kamaitachi.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

You can still delay windows as normal. Mirage Dive just appears after you use HJ. It hasn't been deleted, only the button was consolidated like Bunshin and Phantom Kamaitachi.

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Apologies I read it wrong!

Would be awesome if they added a wyvern pet to the job but in the form of like DRKs living shadow

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Originally Posted by Swisher_Sweet

Would be awesome if they added a wyvern pet to the job but in the form of like DRKs living shadow

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While I get the point of the idea, pets like Living Shadow are mostly what people call "glorified DoTs" that you fire and forget. Adding stuff like this to any job needs to be accompanied by some kind of interaction between pet and master, and since the pet AI of the game is funky... it'd be better if they concentrated on fixing this and making a creative use of our kit than giving us a pet.

They're gonna take notes from the successful SAM rework. Say goodbye to Life Surge and Spineshatter (they took up too much space in the action bar). Also all your jumps become guaranteed crit now, but their potencies are cut in half. Please look forward to it!

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Originally Posted by Hezhi

They're gonna take notes from the successful SAM rework. Say goodbye to Life Surge and Spineshatter (they took up too much space in the action bar). Also all your jumps become guaranteed crit now, but their potencies are cut in half. Please look forward to it!

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Autocrit stardivers, wooooooooooooooo~!

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Originally Posted by Swisher_Sweet

Would be awesome if they added a wyvern pet to the job but in the form of like DRKs living shadow

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No, I can't say I feel like it would be. A fire-and-forget pet would be way too underwhelming and making it more involved would just be another case of fixing a job that's not broken. Besides just because there's a dragon theme, turning Dragoon into a dragon-summoner isn't at all what the job fantasy is about for me.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

No, I can't say I feel like it would be. A fire-and-forget pet would be way too underwhelming and making it more involved would just be another case of fixing a job that's not broken. Besides just because there's a dragon theme, turning Dragoon into a dragon-summoner isn't at all what the job fantasy is about for me.

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Perhaps an idea to include a dragon friend would be an action, that can for example activate after using Dragonfire Dive, which summons Vrtra or Tiamat to do a fire breath line attack.

Yeah, but I just feel like this more ESO influence or whatever it was that had a dragon mage class seeping into something that's not that. FF dragoon isn't a mage/pet job. It's the most established melee in the game and while it's gotten a lot flashier over time, they've consistently stuck the theme of you still doing physical actions for all the dragonic-enhanced moves. You stab, jump and throw. The only exception there is Mirage Dive.

Also I'm kind of iffy on using very plot-specific characters like Tiamat or Vrtra as gameplay mechanics. It's just going to create a ton of continuity nonsense. At most it should be something like Midgardsormr's spirit force (which admittedly would be a neat upgrade to LB3 if they ever spruce up the animations), not something silly like you texting Vrtra to teleport to the moon every 2 minutes or wherever.

I wouldnt be surprised to see Dragoon get the Samurai/Ninja treatment in 6.2

My most pessimistic idea is cutting Mirage Dive and making Life of the Dragon a 60 second CD.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Yeah, but I just feel like this more ESO influence or whatever it was that had a dragon mage class seeping into something that's not that. FF dragoon isn't a mage/pet job.

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DRG actually had a Wyvern pet in FFXI which is likely what they're referring to, and I believe it's where the "lolDRG" memes originally came from because if the Wyvern died there was a 2 hour recast timer and DRG basically did nothing for damage without it. Regardless of that though, we don't need more flashy "DoT pet" abilities that are fire and forget and we also don't need DRG becoming a pet job after 5 expacs of being purely melee.

My predictions (note I may or may not agree with these, but it's just what I think will happen)

Life Surge Removed.
Dragon Sight reworked into a personal buff only.
Positionals removed from some skills. Chaotic Spring at least, maybe Wheeling Thrust / Fang and Claw.
One or multiple abilities made into auto crits, probably heaven's thrust to make up for the removal of life surge.

This would fit with their overall theme of making classes idiot proof.

Whatever they did to Samurai, they need to not do it to Dragoon either. Having Samurai friends quit sucks already. Having Dragoon friends quit would be extra sucky... not in that way. Don't ruin other jobs, don't ruin Dragoon either, it does nothing to help this game... don't....

i hope they make the skills flow more smoothly together. It feels slow and cumbersome to me, then again I only leveled it to 70 before I came back to it before endwalker, and its changed since Stormblood and I don't much remember it being much fun for me since ARR. The combo system for Dragoon could definitely use some reworking. I feel like it shouldn't need more than 4 buttons to do either of the two combos. The Wheel and Fang thing too needs to be consolidated into a more natural flowing skill order. I kind of hope they start mixing Dragoon with Dragon in that you for whatever reason start to become a combination of Dragon and Dragoon, obtaining a breath weapon cone AOE as part of your AOE rotation, whether you breathe it yourself or emulate it with some kind of lance/ether skill would be cool. Hate to say it but Jumps feel unrewarding. in the traditional sense Jumps rewarded your sacrificing a turn of combat for a turn of invincibility and double or triple damage upon landing. Jumps don't feel like Dragoon's big payoff abilities in 14. Maybe incorporate some of the old delayed invincibility back into the class for really walloping damage upon landing could help make those jumps feel special and rewarding.

So yeah shorten the 2 combos they have to 4 buttons, same starter, then you pick the middle combo you want to use, and based on which middle combo you pick the finisher button changes.
Make Fang and Wheel flow into the above combo better, like make one AOE and one Single Target or something and you gain something when using either of them.
Make Jumps more impactful. I wouldn't mind if you had maybe a 2.5-second delay before you landed in did your damage if it meant when you landed you were invulnerable for the same 2.5 seconds while dealing some ridiculous heavy damage. Maybe jumps have a slightly longer recast time after these changes, I don't know. I feel like using a Jump ability should be like a major event like a samurai whos about to use Midare, or a Monk who's about to unleash a Blitz. In both cases you did several things to build up to this and now the big payoff is a huge DPS spike.
And more Dragon Hybrid abilities. Breath Weapons fit in my opinion given all the other Dragon themed things Dragoon's use.

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Originally Posted by Hezhi

Say goodbye to Life Surge and Spineshatter!

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Honestly, of any of the skills, I'd least miss... our pogostick attack, (High) Jump.

I'd love to see it reworked, for instance, to be a versatile skill whereby you just jump up (avoiding all non-raidwide untargeted damage and taking reduced raidwide damage) and your next GCD is augmented into a sort of Dive variant. Granted, that'd mean at least a few extra animations would need to be budget in.



Aside from that, I just want to see more of interest among Mirage Dive and Dragon Sight, and for Dragon Sight to be less frustrating.

Reducing the dragoon combo by two would mean you’d have to adjust the potency and duration of disembowel and chaos thrust. As it currently stands, dragoon has the smoothest rotation, adding unnecessary clunk to it would not help. Dragoon also has pretty solid levelling experience once you realise that from arr through stormblood the number of full thrusts relative to chaos thrusts reduces by one until parity.

I don’t think jumps can be allowed to grant invulnerability and high damage in the current combat system, they’d just be immediately used to cheese mechanics. The closest you’re likely to get to a proper dragoon jump is the pvp limit break. In addition dragoons currently have most of their burst damage split across buffs and ogcds, not every job needs to be the same.

Breath attacks could be fun, but I can’t see how they’d be done without channeling or the animation immediately being overwritten by the next button.

Nah they are definitely going to have to change Full Thrust and Chaos Thrust, Fang and Wheeling are pretty much combo extenders as is.
Like I said, the easiest way for them to do it, is to make the middle part of the combo decide what the finisher and the extender are so as to relieve button bloat.
True Thrust into Disembowel or Vorpal Thrust will then change what the 3rd button is, if you hit Disembowel it'll change to Chaos Thrust, if you hit Vorpal Thrust it will change into Full Thrust. With the 4th button being either Fang or Wheeling based on whether or not you executed Full Thrust or Chaos Thrust. Alleviates at least 2 buttons from Bloat, and keeps controller players from having to switching between rows whenever they execute Fang or Wheeling, this would also mean they don't flow into the other either but sacrifices must be made, especially since it's not like those two abilities extend the dragon eye gauge like they used to back in Stormblood.

Jumping: So what if it does allow you to cheese certain mechanics, you can't cheese them all, if the floor drops away, or becomes an instant death zone oh well you die. Black Mages are expected to learn the timing of entire fights so as to best utilize their leylines, what's to keep dragoons from having to do something similar in order to plan their jumps?

Breath Weapon: Why would it need to be a long on going thing? It need only be an animation of you jumping up and then an arc of fire-spewing forward in a cone. Not asking for Flame thrower for Dragoon.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Reducing the dragoon combo by two would mean you’d have to adjust the potency and duration of disembowel and chaos thrust. As it currently stands, dragoon has the smoothest rotation, adding unnecessary clunk to it would not help. Dragoon also has pretty solid levelling experience once you realise that from arr through stormblood the number of full thrusts relative to chaos thrusts reduces by one until parity.

I don’t think jumps can be allowed to grant invulnerability and high damage in the current combat system, they’d just be immediately used to cheese mechanics. The closest you’re likely to get to a proper dragoon jump is the pvp limit break. In addition dragoons currently have most of their burst damage split across buffs and ogcds, not every job needs to be the same.

Breath attacks could be fun, but I can’t see how they’d be done without channeling or the animation immediately being overwritten by the next button.

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Precisely! DRG is in a pretty smooth state right now. It can be improved, but the 5-step combo is unique and should be tuned instead of pruned considering this job is not button-bloated. One thing they could do is make the 5th combo positional to upgrade to a new improved attack in 7.0 that provides some kind of resource or mechanical element to manage.

The issue with DRG leveling is mostly the point at which we learn some actions, though this is an overall problem many jobs share. We should learn Doom Spike early and Sonic Thrust before level 50 for a smoother AoE rotation in ARR content and beyond.

People have been throwing these suggestions about making jumps like Sky Shatter, where we disappear and hit after a delay. This kind of thing is extremely hard to balance and we do not want to have super big attacks to then be worried about it critting or not like those jobs with super big potency actions. Having an attack like this would mean that buff windows become tighter, too, which at the same time would make the bursts feel "empty" if we're to be idle in the air for a set amount of seconds.

DRG is the only oGCD-focused melee with a play style that makes it unique related to other jobs. I agree with you that this should be refined, tuned and expanded upon and not drastically changed, as it would remove its uniqueness imho.

A breath or roar action could become active after we use Dragonfire Dive, since this action is a bit lacking right now for a 120s CD.

you guys are setting yourselves up for the worst letdown. The 6 Step combo is unique but in a bad way (Don't forget Draconic Fire). I just did a macro chotbar work around and it still feels bad because of how Fang and Wheeling work, one hopping into the other. I'm telling you, they're going to make it Fang OR Wheeling, into Draconic Fire. I don't even know why any Dragoon would want it to stay that long of a combo since you barely have anything to weave in between GCD's as is. A buff here, maybe a jump if it's ready.

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Originally Posted by Selvokaz

you guys are setting yourselves up for the worst letdown. The 6 Step combo is unique but in a bad way (Don't forget Draconic Fire). I just did a macro chotbar work around and it still feels bad because of how Fang and Wheeling work, one hopping into the other. I'm telling you, they're going to make it Fang OR Wheeling, into Draconic Fire. I don't even know why any Dragoon would want it to stay that long of a combo since you barely have anything to weave in between GCD's as is. A buff here, maybe a jump if it's ready.

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Barely anything to weave in between? They want to adjust it precisely because they find it "too busy". Even burst windows have a hectic amount of weaving (which is great by the way).

The job doesn't feel boring at all due to the positional dancing and having HJ/GSK every 30s and WWT every 25s between burst windows.

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since you barely have anything to weave in between GCD's as is.

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How to spot a non-Dragoon player 101.

It's top 2 busiest classes in the game.

Anyway, I don't begrudge the pet idea except not for normal gameplay. I think they should just expand the companion system and some jobs get unique companions. Dragoon can get one, and it can stick outside the natural party balance and instanced zones. I think it'd be interesting and fun there.

Fantasies aside, this worries me. I like how busy my class is. And I'm worried they'll hurt the flavor.

That said, my common complaint is the lack of defensive or unique feeling DRG has. Most classes have some oGCD so Jumps don't feel special. It's a damage weave button like anyone elses (basically). So I kind of would like a non-damaging jump that just sends us in the air to avoid damage. Non-damaging because if it did damage we'd be forced to waste it to increase dps. Dragonfire to go back to a ground target (especially if we can set it to GT if we have no target selected and to fire automatically if we do).

Keep Life Surge.
They could add Lancet, a couple DRGs in the series have it.
If they wanna idiot-proof, make Elusive not take us off ledges or in to death walls.
They can turn Dragon Sight in to 60 seconds, keep the ally buff and add Lance Charge's buff in to the personal buff to reduce button bloat and maintain same personal dps numbers. Raidwide technically goes up. Could always adjust if needed.

I'm not sure about positionals. A lot of the time it really is a hassle and can be a pain, but I'm also remiss to just dumb down my favorite job. I laugh when tanks tell me "True North" with no elaboration like I don't have enough weaving as it is. If I have to TN every time they don't want to adjust the boss properly I will lose positions to 0 TN charges, truthfully, because some bosses (like P3S) demand you use them when their positionals are not available.

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Originally Posted by BytorValefor

How to spot a non-Dragoon player 101.

It's top 2 busiest classes in the game.

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How "busy" a class appears won't be based only on their apm.

The timing and contexts/considerations of those actions also matters, including mandatory movement a la positionals (see pre-Endwalker Monk).

Dragoon is supposed to be a jumper, Dragoons in FF14 doesn't jump nearly at all.
Solution makes the 3 offensive jumps combo enders for the three-string combos. Ie they replace Chaos Trust, Full Throttle, and Coerthan Torment with their respective jumps adding whatever original effects and potency to the jumps instead. This would restore the jumping of Dragoon to lore-friendly levels in my opinion, and use the replaced skills for abilities that can be used during cooldowns or drop them altogether. Or that's what I would do at least

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Originally Posted by Selvokaz

Dragoon is supposed to be a jumper, Dragoons in FF14 doesn't jump nearly at all.
Solution...

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Is that really something that needs "solving", though? The aesthetics of jumping are hugely different between FFIV through IX's two-turn nukes that double as means of evasion or backline-favoring attacks and... real-time combat.

Do we really need to turn Dragoon into a pogo stick for it to feel agile, gravity-defying, and draconic / dracocidal?

Personally, High Jump seems to fit the Dragoon aesthetic far less than, say, Geirskogul or Wyrmwind Thrust. Stardiver is great and Dragonfire Dive is plenty good, but replacing Full Thrust, Chaos Thrust, and Coerthan Tempest with jumps isn't likely to be anything like either of those.

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Originally Posted by Hezhi

They're gonna take notes from the successful SAM rework. Say goodbye to Life Surge and Spineshatter (they took up too much space in the action bar). Also all your jumps become guaranteed crit now, but their potencies are cut in half. Please look forward to it!

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worst possible timeline

Been on DRG since beta (also DRG since 03 in XI) and I am already about 90% out the door and have been for awhile.

They might as well change the Job tbh.

Am I the only one thinking they'll probably remove Disembowel?

Anyway, any change will be a bad change for sure.

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Originally Posted by BytorValefor

How to spot a non-Dragoon player 101.

It's top 2 busiest classes in the game.

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As Shurrikhan said, there's a bit more context here than just APM altho not sure if that was what you meant exactly.
DRG exhausts their ogcd's much faster than MNK does when Brotherhood is up for example ( not to mention the more reactive gameplay with Chakras and crit ).

MNK's even burst windows definitely feels faster and more busy to me and I'd perhaps even say NIN even burst windows too or even GNB altho not a DPS.
MCH gets pretty crazy too.
With MNK it also escalates based on your crit and RNG, DRG is very predictable and methodical.

While yes DRG is ogcd heavy and has a window where a lot of it happens, it's exhausted relatively quickly and then that's it.
At least as someone who plays all melee and GNB very actively, DRG doesn't strike me as particularly busy.
I'd probably put it around the middle honestly.

Wasn't a fan of dragoon to begin with but with the changes, it will probably be worse, as has been their track record with job changes.
At this time, I barely log in to keep my house active. My play time has steadily decreased since the SAM changes and I just don't see myself seriously getting back into the game any time soon.

I think more than likely and, unfortunately; dfd’s ppm will be slapped into star diver, mirage dive will be removed and every time u high jump u will get an eye removing any control there, and for some reason I feel like either dragon sight or litany, will allow u enter life window so u can open with star diver and nastrond (RPR style), since they seem to love that opener/2 min synergy.