Dragoon 7.1 Changes Feedback

I was initially very excited reading through DRG's job changes for patch 7.1, seeing the potency buffs as well as Piercing Talon finally receiving some much-needed love.

But then I saw it. Nastrond charges were reduced from 3 to 1.
Just, why?

Dragoon has been my main since I started playing the game in Stormblood. I could go on about how the job's busy nature and double weaving is one of its appeals, but the bottom line is this: Nastrond is a fun and satisfying button to press.
Taking that away is like being forced to play the job as if it's still level 60. Life of the Dragon is going to feel too empty without having those two oGCD to spend near the end of the buff duration.

If the aim of this change was to reduce the amount of buttons to press, I ask that you direct your attention to Life Surge instead. If it were to be removed and make Heavens' Thrust and/or Drakesbane a guaranteed crit like SAM's Midare Setsugekka, DRG mains everywhere would rejoice.

Watering down such a core ability to the job is frankly a very disappointing thing to see. And while it won't ruin my enjoyment of the job (I don't think anything can), it'll definitely put a damper on my enjoyment of all the new high-end raids that are releasing this patch.

Please, just keep 3 charges on Nastrond!

+1

Exactly this

So true--
the fun on drg comes from the extremely burst like burst(?) so it feels kinda like :<

Gimme more buttons to clickkkkk

This smells like groundwork for 8.0 DRG, if they are planning to give the job 2-3 new oGCDs in the next expac then its possible that 3 Nastronds along with all the oGCDs might be a lot especially if some of the new ones are tied with LOTD

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Originally Posted by EponaTBHSMH

This smells like groundwork for 8.0 DRG, if they are planning to give the job 2-3 new oGCDs in the next expac then its possible that 3 Nastronds along with all the oGCDs might be a lot especially if some of the new ones are tied with LOTD

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I feel like we've heard the "groundwork" excuse for years now. Even if that was the goal with the current dragoon changes, why is it nastrond that goes. Why not life surge.

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Originally Posted by EponaTBHSMH

This smells like groundwork for 8.0 DRG, if they are planning to give the job 2-3 new oGCDs in the next expac then its possible that 3 Nastronds along with all the oGCDs might be a lot especially if some of the new ones are tied with LOTD

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People said the same thing about the Summoner rework and not only did it get nothing new of substance in Dawntrail but 7.1 removes one of the only parts of it that took any thought. When it comes to job design dumbing things down is a one way street for SE.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I feel like we've heard the "groundwork" excuse for years now. Even if that was the goal with the current dragoon changes, why is it nastrond that goes. Why not life surge.

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Life Surge is prolly next in line, I don't doubt that they're gonna make Heavenly Thrust just auto crit at some point. One thing is sure though, they've always been worried about bloat for the past 2 or 3 expansions, so they will always trim stuff, they prolly have a hard cap on how many oGCDs DRG should have

BUT I do believe 7.1 is way too early for this and they should let people enjoy the class during the expansion and leave this kind of stuff for like 7.4

Reducing the number of Nastronds just seem like such bad taste. Like if they want to declutter DRG's burst, remove Life Surge or something.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Reducing the number of Nastronds just seem like such bad taste. Like if they want to declutter DRG's burst, remove Life Surge or something.

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Honestly I rather life surge be removed rather then only having 1 Nastrond. This feels like the wrong sort of change

Could even rework Life surge into a defensive for dragoon... wild idea I know.

If they wanted to reduce weaves, something that shouldn't be done since having tons of oGCDs is a thing DRGs do, they could've simply turned Life Surge into a weaponskill that dealt a (direct) critical hit and perhaps provide a scale. Mirage Dive should've been given the ability to provide a scale, as well, instead of just raising the potency.

Instead, burst windows become more boring and they're literally all the job has. The filler is hollow and uninteresting right now.

Looks like a new low for the job's design.
People who weren't playing the job before won't play it now.
Having all those OGCDs made it fun. The devs refused to learn from the way they ruined Dark knight.

Yeah, I hate the Nastrond change. DRG burst feels fun with the three charges, I don't understand why they thought that gutting the burst would feel good.

+1 to the OP
Fewer Nastronds just feels worse.
I had wanted a slightly longer Nastrond window, like 25-30 seconds, since it was rare to miss it on the opening burst anyway.
That seemed the obvious direction, and I was really very much looking forward to it as a genuine possibility. After all, we had something like that in the past when practically no one was complaining about the job.



Now, I could have probably lived with 2 Nastronds instead 3 (with potency adjustments). But this is awful.



I don't give a damn that the DPS is roughly the same as it was, or slightly increased, it just feels worse to play now.


Haven't Dragoons suffered enough this expac? Why inflict this misery on us?


Please bring it back at least to two.


Mainly just stop taking away stuff! Starcross being usable anywhere is nice but it does not remotely make up for this.

Imagine the next thing to go is Jump and they replace it with some kinda low potency cartwheel crap.. heck, might as well remove the soul crystal cuz DRG is feeling more and more like a normal lancer at this rate.

Killing the Nastrond stack isn't even removing any oGCDs though, you're just getting one instead of three. My Nastrond phase feels decidedly worse as a result. It does suck when it falls off, but they could have easily just let the window be a bit longer, or maybe removed one Nastrond at the absolute most. This design choice does nothing to help with bloat, it's just hateful towards Dragoons.

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Originally Posted by DelSolstice

Killing the Nastrond stack isn't even removing any oGCDs though, you're just getting one instead of three.

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I believe their intention was to reduce the amount of oGCD presses because they have received feedback that it feels overwhelming so they have steered the dragoon design to address that.

I think they fail to realize that most DPS feels overwhelming when you are not used to their kits. They just have to acknowledge that when you jump into a DPS after not playing it for a while things are going to suck for a bit until you get used to it and that's okay.

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Originally Posted by Schan

I believe their intention was to reduce the amount of oGCD presses because they have received feedback that it feels overwhelming so they have steered the dragoon design to address that.

I think they fail to realize that most DPS feels overwhelming when you are not used to their kits. They just have to acknowledge that when you jump into a DPS after not playing it for a while things are going to suck for a bit until you get used to it and that's okay.

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Their attempts at making burst phases less busy have also been poorly thought out at best and tend to leave the burst phase and/or the periods outside of burst phases feeling incredibly lackluster. DRK is by far the best example of this, because the removal of Plunge and lack of an oGCD to replace it means that you are doing almost nothing outside of the basic 1-2-3 and mitigation between Deliriums.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Their attempts at making burst phases less busy have also been poorly thought out at best and tend to leave the burst phase and/or the periods outside of burst phases feeling incredibly lackluster. DRK is by far the best example of this, because the removal of Plunge and lack of an oGCD to replace it means that you are doing almost nothing outside of the basic 1-2-3 and mitigation between Deliriums.

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Oh, I fully agree.

However, one can acknowledge their intentions and still complain about how they've done it. Which is what I have been doing lately. I understand they want us to press less oGCDs during burst phase but removing Nastrond is not it.

Edit: And it's why I will vouch for DRKs bc they suffer from the same issue. I know they have buffed it to hell and back but I still feel like it's a bit bland... like a worse WAR on the fun scale.

It brings me to noticing that there seems a growing disconnect between how well a job performs and how fun it is to play. I wonder how much longer until GNB is in the chopping block.

I rarely ever post here, but this change has made me feel I need to. I've been playing Dragoon since the end of ARR into HW, and I've seen it go through so many different changes and identities. This is one of the single worst changes they have ever made to this job. Whether it was trying to get 3 Geirskogul/Nastrond casts off, or all 3 casts off under buffs, it's always been a big part of the job's fun and game play feel. And rolling all of it into a single cast now just makes crit RNG even more annoyingly important than it has been. But what confuses me most is they remove two casts of Nastrond, yet leave behind Mirage Dive? A completely pointless, vestigial skill that was part of a job mechanic that no longer exists? I'm usually not this critical of job changes, but this one just feels genuinely very bad. If they want to completely overhaul Dragoon for 8.0 that's fine, or at the very least wait until the end of Dawntrail to do something like this, but the job just feels worse now in 7.1.