DRG has been broken for far too long. Fix it SE

[Itseotle]

wait, overlap? so you have a spot where you can stay still and not move when executing skills that need rear/back? that's called "dumbing down".

I REALLY don't think that's what the devs were going for when they designed some skills to be more efficient from the flank and some from the beck. They MEANT for players to have to move constantly to maximize their dmg output.

Kind of in agreement here. Your "current" graphic also shows dead zones. There are no dead zones atm, you are either front, flank, or rear.

[beowulf81]

21 pages later, countless discussion and not even a

"Please look forward to it"
-Yoshi P

There's even a 83 page thread in the Japanese DPS forums right now about Dragoon and its need to be buffed. That was started on 11/7/2014 and not a single response.

And they almost always respond on the Japanese forums.

I feel like the developers and community reps are simply ignoring us here...

Are there any forums in particular that the devs/community reps actively read and post in?

[Seoki]

Are there any forums in particular that the devs/community reps actively read and post in?

English forums wise, General Discussion seems to be the place that the english devs and english community reps post the most.

For japanese devs/english community they seem to post everywhere on the japanese forums.

[beowulf81]

The lack of a response is …. pathetic.

Ignoring this disgusting imbalance and not addressing it will not make it go away. It will only make it worse, people will become more vitriolic and bitter and the community will suffer as a result.

Is this the precedent you are setting then? If there is found to be further imbalance in the future, will you simply ignore it as well? Or is it just Dragoons that get this unfair treatment? Paying customers would like to know.

You've ignored it and fobbed it off for too long, Yoshida. Man up and correct your mistake.

[abzoluut]

Whenever it's about jobs, it takes very long for a response. It has been the case in FFXI and also now in FFXIV. Remember when we mentioned how WAR 2.0 was broken (actually, it didn't scale with content, but they chose the easy way out and gave us mitigation just like PLD, hooray for the poor 1.0 class remnant)?

Yoshi-P himself said several times that they want to look into the current class/job system. Maybe even a huge change to avoid attribute gimping and limited options because of cross class abilities, in short: to get rid of the 1.0 remnant. I have yet to read an official comment about it. The only thing official is that DRK will not need a base class. Maybe it will start in 3.0?

[Velhart]

Can't give a solution to your DPS, but most parties would overlook it if DRG's magic defense was not so abysmal.

Its simple, decrease DRG's HP, give same defense/magic defense as MNK/NIN. SE pulls out the balance card, but why exactly does DRG need to be heavy armored stat wise? This is something that needs a serious fixing for DRG.

[PeachyTiger]

There does need to be consideration made into balancing of dragoon dps with that of mnk/nin. They have two really strong melee and one average, which seems like a flawed design in an RPG. Its fair to ask for buffs, when it allows the playing field to be at the same level. At the moment it seems more beneficial to all people to play Ninja or Monk, rather than Dragoon.

I do hope that Square Enix is looking at a way to balance Dragoon to make it a viable class that can compete with the other two in melee damage throughout a raid.

[Aana]

Such as this:

which strikes me as somewhat disingenuous.

There is no mechanic in this game that prevents flank/rear unless it locks you in place (eg bind in T8), forces a specific movement (eg shriek in T7), or stops you all together (gaols/conflags etc). As for T11, most strats I see have tanks teathered in front obviously, and, lets say tanks are north or 12 oclock, other 2 groups on the flank/rear split around 8 and 4. That places non-tanks essentically on the line of flank/rear which is the exact place mnks and drgs want to be. If your group is forcing you to stand off to the side 90 degrees at 3 or 6 and never move then work with your group. Its doable.

Umm... this just shows how bad you are or your rotation is. One missed HT or ID costs a lot. It is just not apply it later. Type of thing. Because an optimal DRG rotations is highly fixed (esp if comparing to other melee classes) since there are quite a lot of timers that need to be managed:
HT, DIS, CHAOS, PHENO, BFB, IR, LS, PS (did i forget any?) so that's 8 timers that need to be aligned to get the max out of the class.....(etc)

A drg rotation is essentially broken into 3, 20 second blocks before repeating. Each 20 second block is 8 moves. If done perfectly HT is on when you actually re-use HT, Dis is still up when you acutally use your next Dis, you clip CT by 1 GCD all because we stopped using fracture when drg got buffed way back when. This means if you miss HT 1 time, you will only delay by <2.5 sec meaning that the worst thing that happens is HT falls off right before you do your new HT, but is still on for everything else. Same with Dis. 1 whiff actually prevents the 1 tic CT clip. The worst thing that happens is a single GCD (the reapplication of HT or DIS) will not have the effect on the actual HT or DIS, but it will be up for everything else. Unless you miss 2+ in which case it falls off 1 GCD earlier for each whiff and then might start to fall off on your TT or whatever. Again the avg pot per GCD is about 260. Whif=100. with possible loss of either Dis or HT on the next Dis or HT. If its HT you loose 20% of 170. 17. if its Dis you loose 11.11111% of 220. ~25. 260-100+17+25=202. I stand corrected. it isnt under 200 its basically is 200 (unless its the opening one where you have no buffs up in which case its closer to 180). Again, more numbers less 'feeling' about how much it hurts you. You dont like what i say? Provide a better calculation. Dont just blindly parrot "buffs fall off and thats a lot of damage you loose". SHOW me how much damage you loose.

As for the offensive buffs, they get used on cooldown 99% of the time unless you save for a specific burn phase (or not using it during a phase like B4B during AOE damage), or its the opening salvo. Beyond those 2 singular exceptions you should hit them on CD. Whiffing a HT mid fight has zero correlation with holding buffs. Messing up with buffs up always sucks. Ever bunny a kassatsu raiton with B4B up? Man that feels horrible. Just wasted your best CDs for nothing and delayed your GCDs performing it.

I'm not saying DRG is terrible class. I still like to play it and i don't even mind missing stuff once in a while and loosing some deeps on it because as you said - eventually you can learn it some fights how to mitigate that and I don't mind the punishment since as you said everyone has that (let's not go into how mild or severe it is). The bottom line is that MNK and NIN do more deeps ( i think we can all agree to this) and bring more utility (and this).

Again, ill reiterate my stance that the complaint is lack of deeps and/or lack of utility. Im not opposed to a buff to address these issues. I AM opposed to positional easing because (as shown above) it doesnt drastically ramp up drg ST damage, and we all agree it doesnt do squat for utility. 5 Positionals a min are the the only thing drg has regarding gameplay mechanics that take any thought at all and i dont want to see it dumbed down when the removal does NOT address the actual gripes with drg.

Again: Show that positionals easing dramatically buffs Drg ST damage enough to 'fix' it (numbers Prz. Not rhetoric), or that they help utility. Otherwise There is no rational argument that easing positionals addresses the actual gripes about drg. Its just easier for the sake of easier without addressing the problems people have with drg. Everyone has already stated plainly that drg doesnt even do enough dummy damage when you DONT mess up positionals. There is a logical whiff connecting "Drg doesnt do enough damage on dummies when landing positionals vs mnk/nin" to "Drg needs easier positionals because its damage sucks to keep up with mnk/nin". It makes no sense. Buff utility /thunbs up. Buff damage /sure i guess. Nerf positionals..../wtf?

[HeavenlyArmed]

Okay, so for the most part, everyone agrees that DRG is in need of a buff. For those of you who don't understand why that is, it's really quite simple. A DRG doing its maximum damage potential will not be doing the same level of damage that a Monk or Ninja being played to its maximum potential will. In addition to that, our only utility is in the form of a piercing damage debuff we can place on mobs to buff damage done by ourselves and Bards, but even with the added damage that Bards get from this our effective DPS is lower than that of a Monk or Ninja. The only other utility abilities we really have access to are Feint, which due to being on the GCD is not viable in any endgame scenario even when by some miracle the mob being fought isn't resistant to Slow entirely, our stuns, which we use primarily for damage and when used as stuns are more of a hindrance than a help due to being so much less effective than tank stuns, and a weak cross-class Mantra from Pugilist for anyone who felt like leveling that all the way to 42. Compare that to a Ninja's Goad, Trick Attack, Jugulate which can both silence AND stun, and Dancing Edge, or a Monk's full Mantra, access to both a stun and a silence, and Dragon Kick's INT reduction, and you'll see why it is that DRGs are unhappy to be doing so much less damage with so much less utility.

There are a few ways this could be remedied. First, find some way to buff DRG utility. There was talk of making less-used skills more desirable back as far as 2.3, yet skills like Feint have still seen no change, despite clearly being offenders of this. The easiest solution I see here would be to make it an off-GCD skill, while leaving its damage and effect untouched. Alternatively, give DRGs a reason to use it in our standard rotation by buffing its damage, and reduce the effectiveness of the slow it applies in some way, or even change the additional effect entirely. I also think changing Spineshatter Dive from a stun to a silence would help boost our perceived utility, though I acknowledge that this would cause its name to make less sense.
Another option is to boost our damage output. One suggestion I've seen for this is to boost the Heavy Thrust buff from 15% to 25%. I personally don't like that idea, as it's essentially giving us Greased Lightning 3's damage output for a single skill, and not only that, but then the effect of that suddenly dropping is even more catastrophic to our DPS than it is right now. That said, while a lot of people seem to think removing the positional requirements for Heavy Thrust and Impulse Drive in some way would help balance things out, I disagree. Moving around is not only not an actual DPS loss (as in not part of the real problem), but it's part of the job's playstyle that makes it feel different from the other melee jobs. Spreading out the buff among different abilities makes more sense in my opinion. Boost potency of the Full Thrust combo a bit, buff damage on our jumps slightly, and most importantly boost the piercing debuff from Disembowel to at least 15%. Disembowel is currently our only real utility, and in buffing it we'd be receiving both a buff to our own damage potential as well as our utility.
The third buff we could receive is slightly different in nature, as it addresses a different problem we as a job have had for a long time, and as such should not be done instead of the other buffs mentioned, but in addition to them. Most people by now have likely realized I'm referring to our Magic Defense. Due to our naturally higher Physical Defense, I don't believe that our Magic Defense needs to be on the same level as the other jobs, but it definitely needs a buff to some degree. The fact that I as a DRG can die so much more easily to magical abilities, which make up a large portion of aoes in endgame content, that no other job struggles with, especially with our increased proneness to be hit by them due to animation locks like Jump's, is nearly insulting. Yes, Disciples of Magic have decreased physical defense in the same vein. However, unlike how DRGs are likely to get hit by magical damage, there's virtually no chance of, say, a BLM getting hit by a physical attack unless something else has gone seriously wrong in that fight. This has been an issue for far too long and needs addressed in some way as soon as possible.

[kyrios91]

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIVE DRG BUFF OR WE RIOT ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Seriously to solve this just make DRGs a true glass-cannon. Low DEF and MDEF which basically will screw you up if you get once or twice but +300 potency to all our GCD and off-GCD skills except for Mercy Stroke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoJJOrR4wj8 0:15 to 0:31 is the situation where DRGs are in right now lol.