DRG mains, is it time to worry?

What the title says.

A new interview on Famitsu gave us this nugget of knowledge on what the FFXIV job changes for DRG are about:

"Regarding the planned changes to Dragoon and Astrologian, the changes shouldn't be simply compared to Summoner. Instead he mentions Ninja, the changes to that job during 5.X were considered a major overhaul by the devs though the play feel was still similiar. Regarding Dragoon, the discussions have been about reducing the number of actions that need to be used by merging actions, though he says he would like to avoid changing what Dragoon has to do as much as possible... (etc)"

Does this actually mean? Pruning or...?

Not trying to cause panic, just imagining what could be stacked on a single button that makes sense, without removing abilities. I'm hoping someone can help me on that front, I've only recently just returned to DRG.

Geirskogul is already stacked, Jump becomes Mirage Dive. Aside from the combos, I can't imagine what else could be merged without being a little weird. the After the frankly unnecessary and unhealthy focus on oversimplifying classes, I'm worried DRG will lose its luster like many others. Especially because it's such an active class with so much weaving.

Please help me understand, I just got DRG to 90 after trying 6.1 SAM and throwing up uncontrollably so I don't want to switch AGAIN.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...on_main_story/

They're talking about reducing the number of actions, so indeed they want to remove actions, not just merge two on the same button like they did for Mirage Dive.
So indeed they want to remove abilities. And I really can't undersand why, compared to other jobs it doens't have too many.

A to how they'll "merge", I imagine giving a single action the effect of two actions.

Doesn't really ease my concerns lol.

Most of the changes they've made for jobs in general from 5.0 onwards have been mediocre if not a net negative for the game. I'd have low expectations if I were you because considering their recent design trends you're more likely to be disappointed if you care at all about how your job plays.

If you love it, do enjoy current DRG while you can! There's no time like the present, and worrying would be misusing your imagination.

Your job is about to get the Kaiten/Dark Arts Treatment.

I'm sorry

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Originally Posted by Hezhi

Most of the changes they've made for jobs in general from 5.0 onwards have been mediocre if not a net negative for the game. I'd have low expectations if I were you because considering their recent design trends you're more likely to be disappointed if you care at all about how your job plays.

If you love it, do enjoy current DRG while you can! There's no time like the present, and worrying would be misusing your imagination.

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Oh, I worry. Imagine gearing up just to get #@%! on. Nope!

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Your job is about to get the Kaiten/Dark Arts Treatment.

I'm sorry

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Me too, since my main was SAM since 4.0 until 6.1. It's exactly why I'm worried again.

Well, they are planning to have the game continue for another ten years and DRG, as it is now, is a pretty complete job. I'm pretty sure this rework is so the job can continue to grow in some way for future expansions.
While I'm not super excited for the potential change ups, I do see why they're doing them.
If anything, let's hope they give us an AOE attack BEFORE level 40. That's something, I feel, is long overdue.
But yeah, I get the worry. Hopefully they're giving more thought on how they're going to rework DRG to insure that it retains what makes that job fun to play while giving it new wiggle room to grow.

You'd like to think they are eyeballing like, I dunno, just making Dragonfire a combo action to something. But I bet it's actually removing either Life Surge or Lance Charge with no regard to the fact both are needed for the job to have any thought at all outside the precious 2 minute buffs.

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

Instead he mentions Ninja, the changes to that job during 5.X

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What were those again? Only rework I remember (though I don't remember when it happened) are GCD mudras so I suppose that would mean GCD Jumps then lol.

They really could just merge fang and claw/wheeling thrust, they do the same exact thing minus where you want to use them. Having two extra buttons for the same action is hilariously redundant.

That being said, yeah, be worried, keep your expectations low. You're not Yoshi P's favored child, so you're going to see nothing good come out of these reworks.

Aways is time to be worried when you see ''rework'' on any job.

DRG is a complete job now and what is SE gonna do when a job feels complete? Yes, rework, cut the job skills and add ''new'' stuff in the next expansions, so you are going to experience a nice job again in something like 2-6 years.

BLM is excluded from this because someone on the dev team really plays the job :)

Yeah, heard its apparently something along the lines of nin changes, merge some skills and make some of its buffs easier to deloy.

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Originally Posted by AluneTempest

Aways is time to be worried when you see ''rework'' on any job.

DRG is a complete job now and what is SE gonna do when a job feels complete? Yes, rework, cut the job skills and add ''new'' stuff in the next expansions, so you are going to experience a nice job again in something like 2-6 years.

BLM is excluded from this because someone on the dev team really plays the job :)

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I've seen this sentiment fly around. Is it just me, or is it not absolutely insane to neuter a job so it feels incomplete and can be expanded upon while at the very start of a new expansion? After the players have already experienced a complete job they're satisfied with and happy to be playing?

Who in their right mind thinks it's cool to just castrate a class and be like "oh if you enjoyed it, you might again in about 2 years."?

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

Who in their right mind thinks it's cool to just castrate a class and be like "oh if you enjoyed it, you might again in about 2 years."?

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New Summoner "mains"

sounds like im getting one of the things that I wanted, a GCD jump

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Originally Posted by Selvokaz

sounds like im getting one of the things that I wanted, a GCD jump

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What about the stated "reducing button bloat" mission gives you this impression?

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Originally Posted by Selvokaz

sounds like im getting one of the things that I wanted, a GCD jump

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May I ask why? I played DRG from 2.0 to 4.0, never thought about getting a GDC jump so I'd like to know why this is something some people wish for. Is it just to reduce weaving?

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

May I ask why? I played DRG from 2.0 to 4.0, never thought about getting a GDC jump so I'd like to know why this is something some people wish for. Is it just to reduce weaving?

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I say it is more of a Jump obsession.

Cannot call yourself a Dragoon in FF series without having a Jump for every occasion.

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

though he says he would like to avoid changing what Dragoon has to do as much as possible... (etc)"

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That one part scares me the most. SE hasn't been killing it with job design and now they are going to "avoid changing it as much as possible", meaning they are going to change its core to some extent, hopefully not to my doom and gloom extent though.

I'm not terribly worried, but then I don't main drg. I use it as my best-in-role for melee dps (same with ast, actually) and I consider it and ast to be quite good but a bit flawed so I'm still cautiously optimistic about the rework.

I think combining fang and claw/wheeling thrust is the low-hanging fruit here, though I'd be a bit sad to see it go because I actually think the 5-button rotation is the most fun part of the job.

Personally I think the regular jump is redundant (if we wanted to return to our original spot we have elusive jump, right?) so I'd have no problem with every jump being a gap closer and just adding stacks to spineshatter dive. I think they'll try to do something of this sort just to reduce that redundancy. I really want them to make elusive jump go in whatever direction you're pressing so it can be yet another gap closer, but I doubt they want to touch that one. The tricky part of removing the regular jump or removing its return-to-start effect is that it requires changing how mirage dive works...but that may be exactly what they're after.

Looking at the two things I have the most trouble with: trying to target and weave dragon sight is a bit of a pain with the short duration; unlike dnc you can't just hit it at the beginning of a dungeon and stop worrying about it. Given that drg already has a party-wide buff maybe they just cut it, though that seems drastic.

The biggest thing that I have trouble with is that the whole gierskogul / mirage dive / nastrond thing seems a bit awkward the way it is, so if you're trying to find cuts to worry about I'd look there. If they consolidate jumps we might see mirage dive get removed entirely. Based on their design philosophy I'd be willing to bet they get rid of the Life of the Dragon gauge and make it a stacked buff with a generous time limit like they did with Berserk. But between cultural differences and just having a lot of people it can be pretty hard to predict exactly what they're going to do, which is why I'm not worrying about it ahead of time. It's interesting to ponder though, knowing that I have a high chance of being wrong.

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Originally Posted by NotEvilBen

I'm not terribly worried, but then I don't main drg. I use it as my best-in-role for melee dps (same with ast, actually) and I consider it and ast to be quite good but a bit flawed so I'm still cautiously optimistic about the rework.

I think combining fang and claw/wheeling thrust is the low-hanging fruit here, though I'd be a bit sad to see it go because I actually think the 5-button rotation is the most fun part of the job.

Personally I think the regular jump is redundant (if we wanted to return to our original spot we have elusive jump, right?) so I'd have no problem with every jump being a gap closer and just adding stacks to spineshatter dive. I think they'll try to do something of this sort just to reduce that redundancy. I really want them to make elusive jump go in whatever direction you're pressing so it can be yet another gap closer, but I doubt they want to touch that one. The tricky part of removing the regular jump or removing its return-to-start effect is that it requires changing how mirage dive works...but that may be exactly what they're after.

Looking at the two things I have the most trouble with: trying to target and weave dragon sight is a bit of a pain with the short duration; unlike dnc you can't just hit it at the beginning of a dungeon and stop worrying about it. Given that drg already has a party-wide buff maybe they just cut it, though that seems drastic.

The biggest thing that I have trouble with is that the whole gierskogul / mirage dive / nastrond thing seems a bit awkward the way it is, so if you're trying to find cuts to worry about I'd look there. If they consolidate jumps we might see mirage dive get removed entirely. Based on their design philosophy I'd be willing to bet they get rid of the Life of the Dragon gauge and make it a stacked buff with a generous time limit like they did with Berserk. But between cultural differences and just having a lot of people it can be pretty hard to predict exactly what they're going to do, which is why I'm not worrying about it ahead of time. It's interesting to ponder though, knowing that I have a high chance of being wrong.

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What an atrocious list. If you want to play with RPR's braindead rotation you can just... Play Reaper.

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Originally Posted by AluneTempest

Aways is time to be worried when you see ''rework'' on any job.

DRG is a complete job now and what is SE gonna do when a job feels complete? Yes, rework, cut the job skills and add ''new'' stuff in the next expansions, so you are going to experience a nice job again in something like 2-6 years.

BLM is excluded from this because someone on the dev team really plays the job :)

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I'm still laughing over how other classes got buffed in pvp with like....a single potency buff, then they went and buffed every single BLM skill, then made a defensive post about it saying there is no class favoritism.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I'm still laughing over how other classes got buffed in pvp with like....a single potency buff, then they went and buffed every single BLM skill, then made a defensive post about it saying there is no class favoritism.

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Prior to the buff BLM was pretty awful....They went overkill with it, but the job absolutely needed help.

Square and good job design post stormblood, don't go together.

So yes, its absolutely valid to fear what godafwul changes they have up their sleeves that quite literaly nobody asked for.
Another job for the graveyard, alongside MCH, Healers, Tanks, SAM, and SMN.

i know it will get boring at some point. but wouldnt it be an option to keep jobs as they are when they are at a good spot? i mean you can change jobs at any point if you get bored and change back later in time.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i know it will get boring at some point. but wouldnt it be an option to keep jobs as they are when they are at a good spot? i mean you can change jobs at any point if you get bored and change back later in time.

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I'm of the same mind, but sadly most people, and especially developpers, tend to think that continous change is necessary, even if negative.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i know it will get boring at some point. but wouldnt it be an option to keep jobs as they are when they are at a good spot? i mean you can change jobs at any point if you get bored and change back later in time.

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This should be what other jobs are for, in addition to providing a range of playstyles so everyone can find something that really clicks with them.

Instead every time they take all identity and/or complexity away we get told to "stop, complaining, there's 18 other jobs to choose from".

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Originally Posted by Azuri

What an atrocious list. If you want to play with RPR's braindead rotation you can just... Play Reaper.

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its all braindead til you realise RPR has some of the worst skill drift in the game

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i know it will get boring at some point. but wouldnt it be an option to keep jobs as they are when they are at a good spot? i mean you can change jobs at any point if you get bored and change back later in time.

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That should have been the basic concept of Jobs but like most MMOs, the developers working on the classes/jobs cannot decide where the Job wants to go. I know it is difficult to develop a game's class/job combat but the basic start should be settling with a gameplay path and focus on improving on it should have been more of the focus with class/job development over complete rework each expansion.


MCH, as a example and speaking as someone who main MCH since its release in 3.0, has been the obvious sign that the developers are having difficulty settling on the gameplay path and focus on improving given set gameplay path. However, it is probably the only Job in 6.0 that settled with the chosen gameplay path since they only focus on adding more things for MCH from its gameplay in 5.0.

A lot of jobs did not need any gameplay changes from their release and only needed to simply have things added on their existing gameplay path without drastically changing their set gameplay style into something new. Focusing on improving what they have and using those improvements to fix the flaws.

It would have also been a proper way to show how WoL is mastering their Jobs more, even in ways the trainers never considered mastering the Jobs, overtime since the jobs would starting having less flaws from how it started out and more improvements compared to how it started out.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

What an atrocious list. If you want to play with RPR\\'s braindead rotation you can just... Play Reaper.

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Oh, I'm not saying I want all of these changes, I'm just looking at what kinds of things seem most likely based on their past direction. Even if I'm right about this stuff there's no way they'll do all of these things.

Back when Monk lost the greased lightning gauge I was maining it and I thought it would lose all its job identity but all that happened was I stopped pushing the party to hurry up and get to the next pull before my buff fell off. That said, based on some comments I'm definitely a different kind of player than a lot of people posting here so what pleases me is likely not going to be the same as what some of you want in a job.

As far as why they make changes, that's easy: ever tried to design a game? You can plan all you want but until it's in the hands of a lot of players, you really don't know how it's going to go over. And then when you correct by making changes, you don't really know how those will go. Combine that with diverse tastes and you have a basically impossible problem.

Also I kind of hate rpr, just doesn't click for me, I like current drg more.

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Originally Posted by Avenheit

its all braindead til you realise RPR has some of the worst skill drift in the game

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Doesn't really change the fact that RPR is pretty simple to play. I did a handful of savage fights with it and I could basically shut my brain off and still do perfectly fine. Not to say other jobs are overly complex, but RPR in comparison is pretty....simple.

Life surge would probably gone, that’s for sure.
For the combo, they might remove the one of 2nd combo and make it like SAM instead.
No damage Spineshatter drive.
I feel like they could do more with Wheeling thrust and Fangs & Claws than just positional damage.

As of right now not a single job has been made better with a overhaul since the Bard changes in 4.0. Every job that was overhauls or lite reworked have been a exercise of reduction and simplification. Less actions doesn’t mean more simple but also doesn’t equate to a better job that’s stretched very thin from 1-90.

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Originally Posted by Kahnom

I feel like they could do more with Wheeling thrust and Fangs & Claws than just positional damage.

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Fang and claw needed to be removed back in Stormblood. Even in Heavensward, the fact that wheeling thrust/fang and claw was a thing annoyed me since it was a 4th (randomized) hit. Which it wasn't randomized at 56 when you got the first one but didn't get 58 for the second one. The two together added nothing to the gameplay at all. However, back in Heavensward, blood of the dragon used to be on a timer. Fang and claw/wheeling thrust added +15 seconds to it, geirskogul was -10 seconds. The idea was you push as many geirskoguls as you could and use the blood of the dragon button to refresh the buff.

In Stormblood, they just doubled down on the bad decision to keep fang and claw in with lance mastery 2. They're essentially the same thing but different positional and the 5th hit gets +100 potency on a fairly weak hit already. Like I've said before, the combo goes from a high crescendo to a low "meh" by the time you get to the 4th hit. And with blood of the dragon being removed and geirskogul being an activation skill for the life phase, it couldn't take away from the blood of the dragon buff. Life of the dragon is something else that is meh since it doesn't add much to the job otherwise.

That being said, I highly doubt this team of devs could even create a decent rework for dragoon at all. They've shown no aptitude for it with their reworks for other roles, so why would it be different here? Plus I mean, that rant about fang and claw existing at all when it really shouldn't. They've left it in for years.