Dragoon | Bring back 3 Stacks of Nastrond

I was enjoying the Dawntrail changes for Dragoon until this, and I'm sure others feel the same. 1 stack of Nastrond probably has its benefits but it feels so lame now. Less fun.

Also I'm not sure what the reasoning was. If I had to guess, it would be due to the job having a lot of weaves in its burst at level 100? But even with 3 stacks of Nastrond it did not feel overwhelming or bad to manage at all, especially with the shortened recast time to allow double weaving. It was just more fun IMO.

If anyone reads this, I'd like to read your input. Do you agree/disagree? And thanks.

Probably because the Job was to busy, i mean you really needed to nearly double weave everything in it

The patch notes mention "To reduce the number of actions executed during damage burst phases", which iirc it was actually a problem when you needed to weave any of the role actions during the 2m burst.


imo any needs to weave True North could've at least been avoided had Life of the Dragon or Litany given the same effect like Dragon Sight used to, and Feint if they didn't expect everyone to participate in mitigation.

Honestly I still prefer EW DRG over either DT version though.

At the moment the job guide says “ To reduce the number of actions executed during damage burst phases, players will no longer gain multiple stacks of Nastrond Ready” in the adjustments overview. The devs said similar things when changing the gap closers for DRK and GNB when Dawntrail released.

The only time I raided as DRG was when doing TEA with it during 6.5, but I really liked doing lots of weaves. I wanted to get back to it and learn to play it better but the changes throughout Dawntrail have taken away some of the appeal so I haven’t bothered yet. So I’d prefer the three charges of Nastrond as well.

It would be great they could cut/rework Life Surge, and bring back triple Nastrond.

nah removing dragon sight was what ruined it for me.

But yeah I dunno these changes assured me that I won't be playing dragoon even more now.

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Originally Posted by Kaen_Yume

I was enjoying the Dawntrail changes for Dragoon until this, and I'm sure others feel the same.

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I wasn't enjoying the Dawntrail changes for Dragoon at all. :(

The DT and 7.1 changes for DRG have created a lot of feedback against them. You can find such threads here or here.

Sadly, I don't think we'll get any closer to the feel of EW DRG until 8.0, if anything, but plenty of ideas and feedback have been given by players both in and outside the forums.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

It would be great they could cut/rework Life Surge, and bring back triple Nastrond.

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Life Surge doesn't need to be removed but instead repurposed. I'd personally prefer if they made it a floating GCD with charges a la Soul Slice with a similar functionality as of now, that of a (direct) crit with lifesteal that could perhaps also provide a scale on use so that we can have some actual gauge interaction after the loss of eyes.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

The patch notes mention "To reduce the number of actions executed during damage burst phases", which iirc it was actually a problem when you needed to weave any of the role actions during the 2m burst.

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Imagine having to adjust to circumstances and context... What has this game come to I don't know anymore.

Of course, a far easier solution would have been to simply make the CDs unable to align with the 120s burst window, and adjust potencies to compensate.

Like, make High Jump 35 seconds CD. Maybe Star Diver can only be done after Life of the Dragon ends. Simple stuff, this prevents everything always cramming into the same 2 GCDs automatically. And get rid of that stupid 120s meta job by job if it can't be done all-at-once! -.-

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Originally Posted by Valence

Imagine having to adjust to circumstances and context... What has this game come to I don't know anymore.

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it could've meant losing a use of Nastrond altogether since it's only available during Life of the Dragon, or letting some oGCDs fall out of the buff window, which is a problem they introduced with 7.0 replacing Spineshatter Dive with Starcross/Rise of the Dragon/1 extra Nastrond (also partly due to 6.0 shortening Life to 20s)

everything around DT DRG seems like a failed experiment to me

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Originally Posted by Valence

Imagine having to adjust to circumstances and context... What has this game come to I don't know anymore.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

it could've meant losing a use of Nastrond altogether since it's only available during Life of the Dragon, or letting some oGCDs fall out of the buff window, which is a problem they introduced with 7.0 replacing Spineshatter Dive with Starcross/Rise of the Dragon/1 extra Nastrond (also partly due to 6.0 shortening Life to 20s)

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It feels like a lot of adjustments to rotations these days are for making them perform as consistently as possible. Like now Life of the Dragon can’t be “done wrong” by messing up your stacks, it’s just on a one minute cooldown now. Similarly it’s harder now to not have enough carts to do your burst as GNB.

Maybe we’re being babied and the devs want to take away the potential to make mistakes, and it feels annoying (I definitely feel that way a lot). On the other hand maybe it’s so that our favourite jobs hopefully don’t underperform in Ultimates. When a job has conditions that need to be met to deal damage properly, and needs uptime to make these conditions be met, then maybe the devs are worried about how it’ll perform in encounters with lots of downtime and also dps checks that need to be passed. If that’s the case then maybe job design and ultimate design are at odds with each other, and jobs are just getting band aid fixes in the form of simplification and changes to resource management. It would probably be why so many jobs have 1 minute or 2 minute cooldowns that are either just giving you resources for “free” or giving you a buff that lets you use resource-costing attacks for free.

wouldn't generally mind if it got bumped up to 2 stacks rather than one stack. but i think when it came to how things was in 7.0, we had a similar amount of weaves from EW (minus 1 from eye, and follow ups replaced both spine shatter) but we also had 10 less seconds of the burst due to all buffing actions being set to 20s in 7.0 which also included life. for people at a more lower/moderate skill level, the weaves needed would not be amazing especially if people are playing on higher ping to the point where they are unable to double weave reliably in the first place.

not to mention from 4.x onwards till 7.0, the Nastronds were spaced out naturally by a 10s cooldown which helped space them out, which were removed in favor of the stacked buff that is present now.

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Originally Posted by Voryn

It feels like a lot of adjustments to rotations these days are for making them perform as consistently as possible. Like now Life of the Dragon can’t be “done wrong” by messing up your stacks, it’s just on a one minute cooldown now. Similarly it’s harder now to not have enough carts to do your burst as GNB.

Maybe we’re being babied and the devs want to take away the potential to make mistakes, and it feels annoying (I definitely feel that way a lot). On the other hand maybe it’s so that our favourite jobs hopefully don’t underperform in Ultimates. When a job has conditions that need to be met to deal damage properly, and needs uptime to make these conditions be met, then maybe the devs are worried about how it’ll perform in encounters with lots of downtime and also dps checks that need to be passed. If that’s the case then maybe job design and ultimate design are at odds with each other, and jobs are just getting band aid fixes in the form of simplification and changes to resource management. It would probably be why so many jobs have 1 minute or 2 minute cooldowns that are either just giving you resources for “free” or giving you a buff that lets you use resource-costing attacks for free.

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YoshiP's mentioned the idea around adding new skills behind burst buttons was to reduce the need to build up resources for 2m buff windows in the Famitsu media tour interview for DT, which they do kinda accomplish, but what that really did was make the filler phase even more dull since that really just meant removing more skill interactions and decision making with nothing to replace them.

As for them bending jobs to their fight design, I actually had a thread about that not too long ago

I like auto-combos, and if the net result is wanting to keep my big hit for the 120s burst window, they might as well make it a 1->2 combo skill from my 120s buff, tbh.

I loathe fake complexity. All the tons of hotbar buttons on most jobs with exactly 0 gameplay depth, the plethora of oGCDs to go through on CD instead of a single one with meaningful damage that gets to be used more often, damage->damage->damage combos being on different buttons as if them having separate animations warrants not being a single auto-combo, extra oGCDs to press after other stuff just so we can pretend the job has more abilities than it actuall has despite them all just dealing "some amount of damage", that kinda stuff.

Most DPS jobs in this game might as well be a single button you press repeatedly. That's how fake their gameplay depth is. There's nothing you do. There's a single, designed, decided, sequence in which to press your buttons, and that's it. Autohotkey can play your job optimally, congrats, much gameplay, so depth, many skill.

Minimal variations seem big because of how rare they are, see Red Mage sometimes pressing a different Jolt button because of a proc. They still cast a Jolt, it's just called different now and deals a tad more damage. At least it marginally messes with the energy generation but because the proc chance is so high, the overall gameplay is static as can be, anyways. The only ray of light is Dancer in some regards, as they can find themselves in situations where multiple resources (CD, fans, gauge) are competing for being used first lest you overcap and "waste" damage, and the solution isn't always trivial as it depends on the context of a specific fight. Too small to inject actual depth into the gameplay, but the best we get kinda.

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Originally Posted by Voryn

It feels like a lot of adjustments to rotations these days are for making them perform as consistently as possible. Like now Life of the Dragon can’t be “done wrong” by messing up your stacks, it’s just on a one minute cooldown now. Similarly it’s harder now to not have enough carts to do your burst as GNB.

Maybe we’re being babied and the devs want to take away the potential to make mistakes, and it feels annoying (I definitely feel that way a lot). On the other hand maybe it’s so that our favourite jobs hopefully don’t underperform in Ultimates. When a job has conditions that need to be met to deal damage properly, and needs uptime to make these conditions be met, then maybe the devs are worried about how it’ll perform in encounters with lots of downtime and also dps checks that need to be passed. If that’s the case then maybe job design and ultimate design are at odds with each other, and jobs are just getting band aid fixes in the form of simplification and changes to resource management. It would probably be why so many jobs have 1 minute or 2 minute cooldowns that are either just giving you resources for “free” or giving you a buff that lets you use resource-costing attacks for free.

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I do remember a time where playing MCH in O7S had you stand still during your opener for 5s of flamethrower (as you had to), and you had a 1 out of 7 chance to eat the first oneshot lazor line AoE if you were unlucky to get targeted by the boss while being unable to move. And guess what, it was FUN. Made people use their brains. Made people rely on the TEAM and not play solo DDR online. You got around this by asking the SCH/AST to preshield you, and not the devs to adjust the rotation...
Similarly, same fight at that, MCH and SMN had too low of a filler damage output to kill their plane adds on time at least at release. Guess what, you asked tanks to come and help you once they were done with their mechanics, and not the devs to fucking flatten the damage profile...

Edit: I know, in this case you can't exactly ask your team to generate weave slots out of thin air. But I'm still laughing heartily at the idea that not having a secondary ogcd in the burst window and losing that 50 effective potency is somehow crippling the job. No, the reason they're making that is because people throw a tantrum when they have to deviate from their parse brain rot. It's the same song every time you ask a melee to skip a GCD to disconnect from a boss those days.

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Originally Posted by Metricasc

but i think when it came to how things was in 7.0, we had a similar amount of weaves from EW (minus 1 from eye, and follow ups replaced both spine shatter) but we also had 10 less seconds of the burst due to all buffing actions being set to 20s in 7.0 which also included life.

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Spineshatter Dive had far less consequences for falling out of buff windows given its lower potency and being a readily available charge action. Its main function was to be a gapcloser and it's more just a bonus to be fitting it under buffs. Meanwhile it's pretty much just a mistake to be using Starcross/Rise of the Dragon outside buffs.

pretty much was the natural aspect for all potency based gap closers on basis. it doesn't really stop them from being used as extra damage under buffs when you don't have a need to use them for mobility. esp to ensure that they stay on cooldown.

The people complained in EW allready, that the drg was to busy. And official was the rework supposed to deal with it.
Instead, became the drg even more busy in DT. And the reducing of Nastrond make sense with that.
At last i had trouble to use all skills in the window, esspecialy when i had to move to, and forgot Nastrond 2 and 3 sometimes.

Its true that the drg is missing it in the lower lvl and a second stack could be a compromise. But, from the amount of skills whe have, make the current one most sense.

The only other compromise i would had in mind would be, that Star dive and cross would only be usable, if Litanei was used before Geirskogul was used. And in exchange is Nastrond only 1 time usable with higher power.
And, that whe could use Nastrond 3 times, but with lesser power, if whe use Geirskogul without Litanei (similary concept to some skills from reaper).
But, i dont know, if that would be makeable from the system.
The concept would only be, to have around the same numbers of button to press. But, it would give any advance and would make it only more complicated.

I mean if that's such a big problem they could even go the route that once you get it, you got 3 Nastrond charges, but future traits grant some other oGCD, in turn take a Nastrond charge and distributer its damage elsewhere to compensate?

Then it'd be the same as now at 100, but with more to do at lower levels?