Just got wheeling thrust.... Can someone explain the point of it to me?

[JackFross]

It's pretty worthless in both cost and effectiveness and really the same could be said for Ring of thorns. Both have very limited situations to actually be useful, like the first link pull on Fractal. No one looks to Dragoon for AOE damage outside of the occasional DFD or GK, which are the only ones that have any effect, and even DFD is on such a long cooldown that it still can't really be counted on for much. You want AOE, look to the ranged classes. It's more often than not a waste of both time and TP for a Dragoon to try filling that role. Nine out of ten times it's more effective to focus things down and actually kill something instead of getting five plus targets down a third of health before running out of TP and being worthless entirely and having to use invigorate on something stupid.

You vastly underestimate the effectiveness of Dragoon AoE and are probably doing it wrong, like 90% of pug!DRGs I run into. I regularly out-parse everyone but the top BLMs and SMNs in AoE pulls in either of the two expert dungeons. I pull 2000-2500 on any pull of 5 or more mobs if I use my buffs for it. 160 potency AoE that's spammable is the strongest single AoE skill in the game that's on the global cooldown and not owned by a caster. Anything more than 3 mobs, you should be Doom Spiking.

Now, if you're referring to A2, then yeah. Doom Spike is dumb there, where you should just be doing HT>CT>CT with gsk mixed in as your main AoE damage. And yeah, Dragoons are firmly in bracket 3, beaten out by [SMN] and [BLM/MNK] for overall dps in that turn, but they slot in right there with [BRD/MCH/DRG] before [NIN] picks up the rear.

Stop your logic train right there and ask "how does leveling up to 58 and completing this job quest --ADD-- to the job? No other job completes a job quest and gains an ability that not only doesn't ADD anything, but it makes previous mechanics MORE ANNOYING.

BAD.

Since I've gone into this at length multiple times in this thread and pointed to everything you've raised here as a counter argument, I'll just address each of those skills you mentioned.

Ferocity - Life Surge, but shitty.
Trammel - gimmicky move that will never be used. See: Freeze and/or Feint.
Moonrise - Enemies don't do TP regen. What would this do? Impact boss recast times? Let's make Dragoons even MORE attractive for raid groups.
Speed Surge - Basically Bloodbath, which is worthless. I'd rather not have another of those.
Twisting Vice - See: Moonrise.

Battle Regmen was a gameplay system which has no place in the meta of 3.0.


My main argument against giving Dragoons a "fifth" skill (since we already get 5...) is that we're ALREADY one of the highest DPS classes in the game AND we bring Battle Litany to the field, which is a huge gain for the party, believe it or not. If you gave us something else, it's gonna fall into one of these categories:
1. Messes with the current *beautiful* rotation, making things wonky and gross.
2. New utility move that makes Dragoons more attractive than they already are (90% of raid groups run one because BL+BRD/MCH buff).
3. New worthless skill like Feint that will *never* be used outside of certain situations which would actually still end up falling under 2 if it's *useful*.
4. New oGCD skill to boost our dps by a marginal amount we don't need to be boosted by while forcing us to squeeze YET ANOTHER skill into the first 24s of the fight.

None of those options are good. I want none of that.

Give me a legitimate thing we as Dragoons would WANT TO SEE as a fifth skill, and I'll maybe say your argument has merit. Every suggestion you made is either worthless or has no place in current meta. Sure they could be reworked for the current system, as I KNOW you'll argue, but how? Give me an idea that doesn't fall into one of the four shitty categories above and I'll listen.

[RiceisNice]

Stop your logic train right there and ask "how does leveling up to 58 and completing this job quest --ADD-- to the job? No other job completes a job quest and gains an ability that not only doesn't ADD anything, but it makes previous mechanics MORE ANNOYING.

BAD.

The other 12 jobs got 5 abilities/spells from 50-60, each unique and each adding potential to the job.

Wanderer's Minuet says hi.

[Zeviand]

1. Messes with the current *beautiful* rotation, making things wonky and gross.

What beautiful rotation? The one that clips CT every rotation? I for one would welcome some sort of 5th move that triggers the GCD that isnt complete crap and doesn't destroy our TP so our dots tick longer. I personally am not a big fan of how they assigned fang and w.thrust to 2 different levels. My biggest gripe is clipping my DoTs and the simplicity of our rotation compared to 2.0. After playing vanilla for so long, i kind of expected our rotation to be as challenging as before. Feels like its missing something. I still enjoy the heck out of DRG though so I won't complain too much.

[JackFross]

What beautiful rotation? The one that clips CT every rotation?

The rotation flows incredibly nicely. The only change I'd ever want to see is an extension of Disembowel and Chaos Thrust by ~6 seconds to make it worthwhile to go back to the old days again. In fact, that would actually be an interesting change. If we got an alternative third hit to the FT combo which can only be used under BotD and extends the duration of Disembowel and Chaos Thrust by x seconds at a somewhat lower potency than FT - say 310-320 so it'd still be a gain over hitting a CT combo. THAT is an adjustment I could get behind, though it would make the rotation fairly boring/trite, and if FaC continues to be at 56 as a flank skill, the new one would wanna be Rear, which wouldn't change anything, anyway, aside from slotting neatly into section 4 of the gross things I'd rather not see list (as a GCD, rather than oGCD, but the concept is the same).

That said, the rotation isn't as gorgeous as it was pre-3.0, sure, but you're only clipping 1-2 (1.8-ish) ticks of Chaos Thrust on each re-application. I think that, with the added complexity of Geirskogul (which a good majority of Dragoons I encounter in DF AND PF groups still are woefully bad with), the simpler rotation *is* really nice. Adding a tenth hit under each HT would produce a dead zone during which HT and Phlebotomize both would fall off just before re-applying them, even in standstill, unless you boost your skill speed to ungodly levels to account for this. And that's the real reasoning behind me saying it would ruin the beautiful rotation we have currently. If your skill speed is already low enough that HT isn't buffed by HT, injecting a new skill would cause you to have two hits every HT that don't get the 15% buff. That, to me, would be ugly.

I used to be very whiny about CT being clipped by the new rotation, too, until I hit 60 and got Geirskogul. Now I just whine about how tiny the difference is between two Dragoons who do everything the same aside from Geirskogul use. D;

[seekified]

The old rotation was beautiful because everything came off cooldown exactly when you wanted to use it again and all the DoTs lined up beautifully. That said, it was unforgiving as hell when mechanics became a thing. Kinda miss having a BiS mindset of "if it has skillspeed, don't use it" as well. I do agree that DRG AoE is very respectable though, and Doomspike in particular is incredibly useful in large pulls.

[JackFross]

The old rotation was beautiful because everything came off cooldown exactly when you wanted to use it again and all the DoTs lined up beautifully. That said, it was unforgiving as hell when mechanics became a thing. Kinda miss having a BiS mindset of "if it has skillspeed, don't use it" as well. I do agree that DRG AoE is very respectable though, and Doomspike in particular is incredibly useful in large pulls.

The bolded is still true, though I assume you're mostly referring to that sexy old beast of Life Surge, always refilling just before a third hit~ Everything else you just use on cooldown these days, no matter what, so it's not really different in that regard.

[Souleater13]

I am late to the thread but just want to share ideas:

"What if" Wheeling thrust also had a chance to refresh Dive cooldown and Fang and claw had a chance to refresh jump cooldown.

or

the combos would activate Fang and Claw 100% and Fang and claw would activate the use of "Wheeling Dive" which would be another ogcd jump move that had a timer on its activation.

keep positionals on the skills and either idea would be adding more jump action which some say and I agree with needs a little more and would take away the boring that currently the skills are practically the same thing.

[Pluvia]

I am late to the thread but just want to share ideas:

"What if" Wheeling thrust also had a chance to refresh Dive cooldown and Fang and claw had a chance to refresh jump cooldown.

or

the combos would activate Fang and Claw 100% and Fang and claw would activate the use of "Wheeling Dive" which would be another ogcd jump move that had a timer on its activation.

keep positionals on the skills and either idea would be adding more jump action which some say and I agree with needs a little more and would take away the boring that currently the skills are practically the same thing.

Sure it could work but at the same point what would you like to give up to gain your new jump you can't just add something to dragoon right now without making it stronger then it already is and its already really strong in the dps department let alone utility

[EnumeratingWishes]

I am late to the thread but just want to share ideas:

"What if" Wheeling thrust also had a chance to refresh Dive cooldown and Fang and claw had a chance to refresh jump cooldown.

or

the combos would activate Fang and Claw 100% and Fang and claw would activate the use of "Wheeling Dive" which would be another ogcd jump move that had a timer on its activation.

keep positionals on the skills and either idea would be adding more jump action which some say and I agree with needs a little more and would take away the boring that currently the skills are practically the same thing.

Why put more rng into the equation? Easiest solution is to give us another jump. It's blasphemy that NONE of the post-50 skills were jumps.

[fm_fenrir]

Why put more rng into the equation? Easiest solution is to give us another jump. It's blasphemy that NONE of the post-50 skills were jumps.

One of the two fourth hit skills is a jumping attack animation, but I can't remember which one. I think it's Wheeling Thrust?