Is it too late or is the damage done

[Fyrebrand]

The truth is that many players need "lolSomething" to laugh at to make themselves feel better.

most of those same players are simply blindly repeating what they hear on teh internetz without actually looking into what they are repeating for themselves.

it is almost always easier to pin-point the bad players from the amazing ones. No one see's a good DPS when they are doing their job.

every class, in every MMORPG is going to end up getting some stereotype attached to them, and no matter how much the class evolves, it simply won't change.

I thought very similar things, myself. Although I haven't played Dragoon or know much about it, I really wonder if every MMORPG has that one class that serves as a popular whipping boy. In Guild Wars 2, it's usually Rangers who get unfairly dumped on. But not because they are bad -- mostly just because it's visually obvious. You don't need to know anything about the class to identify the stereotypical "bad" Ranger. Plus, once it becomes a popular meme, it spreads like wildfire, and you won't ever get called out for insulting the class on forums/reddit/elsewhere. Every time you see one, you remember if they played poorly. Just like, every time you see a Dragoon on the floor, you remember it. But you forget all the other classes you've seen wipe, because they don't seem noteworthy, and don't conform to the pattern you're already looking for. I believe it's called "confirmation bias."

[Aunkah]

The real problem here is everyone wanted to be a dragoon at launch and that included a lot of really bad players who made everyone else suffer and giving dragoons a bad name.

[gamesmart]

rip 1000 character limit

I pay attention to almost every DPS job I see, and I know when someone's doing it wrong even if I'm not a master of the class (castbars for BLM, debuffs for pretty much everyone else)...and I've still seen a disturbingly large number of DRGs not even using half their rotation compared to other jobs not playing correctly (though I have seen some MNKs who were completely unable to maintain - or even GAIN - GL3, it baffles the mind). I honestly don't think it's confirmation bias at this point.

[HakuroDK]

Like all things, time will heal all wounds.

The whole "Loldrg" thing will probably be gone, like, a year after 2.45, tops.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

The real problem here is everyone wanted to be a dragoon at launch and that included a lot of really bad players who made everyone else suffer and giving dragoons a bad name.

Kinda like how it is with Ninjas now?

[CUTS3R]

or you can kill a Snurbble in their place. Their population has grown unchecked since the Calamity.

Don't worry the army of spiritbinding bots is working on it 24/7.

[HakuroDK]

The real problem here is everyone wanted to be a dragoon at launch and that included a lot of really bad players who made everyone else suffer and giving dragoons a bad name.

From what I saw at launch first-hand, everyone wanted to be an Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar at launch, not a Dragoon. There were so many carbuncles in Limsa during the first month of 2.0, it was insane.

Though I'm sure many who couldn't handle ACN's playstyle went over to LNC/DRG.

[CGMidlander]

Like all things, time will heal all wounds.

The whole "Loldrg" thing will probably be gone, like, a year after 2.45, tops.

It's never going to completely go away since there will always be real loldrgs.
There's a staggering amount of DRGs who never use their DoTs and/or have poor Heavy Thrust upkeep.

[Evangela]

Dragoons are not as bad as people make jokes out of them. they can do very high single target damage and can easily kill healers in Frontlines.

[Bishop81]

I wouldn't worry too much about it - assuming they ever fix DRG survivability problems. People have shockingly short memories.

Look at WoW. Shamans were PVP Gods in vanilla WoW - WoW before expansions. Now the vast majority don't remembers a thing about it and don't care.