A DRG's thoughts on the Impulse Rush and Weapon throw nerfs

[Petite]

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This post addresses the effects of these changes in Feast contexts solely


Impulse Rush and Enliven:
I can kind of understand the crit rate % nerf to dragoon's Impulse Rush. However I strongly disapprove of SE taking away its positional nullifying trait to share it with NIN and MNK through Enliven without giving DRG anything in return. Here's what it implies to each job:

Dragoon: Basically, they split the old Impulse Rush in two abilities and nerfed its crit rate %. When DRGs will want to burst, they'll have to pop both Impulse Rush and Enliven instead of just Impulse Rush. Not the end of the world right? The real problem lies with how much NIN and MNK gain from now also being able to wave positionals.

Monk: The new Enliven is simply a straight buff to the very positional dependent monks who were already and arguably the easiest melee dps to carry with.

Ninja: Not only is the Enliven change a straight buff for them too, Enliven will greatly synergize with their abilities, giving them the biggest boon of all. Being able to wave off their positional requirements means they will never miss Trick Attack and they’ll be able to Duality-Aeolian Edge safely while vulnerability is still up for a huge combo. Pray they don’t DWAD right afterwards.

Weapon Throw:
One might think DRG has the best mobility out of the three jobs and they’d be right, provided you’re not constantly fighting and have a moment’s respite between fights. In a Feast context, where you’re constantly fighting and need your abilities on demand as much as possible, the Weapon Throw removal will affect dragoons the most.

Monks have Shoulder Tackle on a 30s cooldown and can use Fists of Wind to passively gap close. Ninjas have Overwhelm on a 40s cooldown, Shukuchi on a 60s cooldown, Hyoton (bind) and can turn off Kiss to gain their passive movement speed increase.

Dragoons have Spineshatter Dive on a 1min cooldown, Dragonfire Dive on a 2min cooldown and Elusive Jump every 3min. One minute is a long time to wait if you use SD to gap close and get pushed back, stunned, slowed, slept right after using it. If SD is down, we can fall back on DD, but that means we'll almost always hold off on its bursty 250 potency just in case we need it to gap close. Elusive Jump being on a 3min CD is nothing short of a joke as it is more often than not already on cooldown because we used it to break from a Bind or Heavy.

Conclusions:
Before 3.35, my personal score rating for each melee dps’s effectiveness in Feast's solo queue looked like this:

MNK: 50pts
DRG: 46pts
NIN: 43pts

After 3.35, it now looks like this:

MNK: 52pts (straight buff)
NIN: 49pts (straight buff and synergy)
DRG: 44pts (straight nerf)

I’m a SCH main in PVE, but I swear by DRG in pvp. It just feels right to me to weave 2 OGCDs per GCD. With all these weird PVP ability changes from SE, I think I might just drop the job and pick something else. I didn't think SE could disappoint me as much as right now.....

[Cynric]

To be fair most jobs can weave two ogcd between skills. I wouldn't exactly say that's a specific to drg playstyle. Its probably more seen on the ranged jobs actually.. Ninja needed enliven but monk didnt

[Petite]

To be fair most jobs can weave two ogcd between skills. I wouldn't exactly say that's a specific to drg playstyle. Its probably more seen on the ranged jobs actually.. Ninja needed enliven but monk didnt

I know. I just wanted to let ppl know why I'm attached to DRG. I'd like to hear feedback on the post's contents though.

[Chaelyn]

Petiteeeee I miss you. ; ^ ;

I do think that DRG burst definitely needed to be nerfed. The burst was ridiculously absurd if you actually used your abilities correctly. I'm half and half on the Weapon Throw nerf. In terms of catching up to ranged, tanks literally have nothing, DRKs have a gap closer and a heavy and that's it, add to that the fact that they're probably the weakest job in PvP atm providing little for the team. Ranged jobs literally had no counter play to melee once they pop Fetterward. It made it worse that you couldn't even escape from them with WT on top of all of their gap closers.

15 seeconds of removal for positionals, that's at max 2 abilities (Rotations?) for NIN and every ability for MNK. I think the Enliven for MNKs make them too crazy. They already have a 6 second AoE pacify, 20% AoE Healing steroid, on top of crazy splash damage and pretty decent burst. On top of that as you mentioned a 30s gap closer.

I really hoped that NIN was going to get some more buffs during this patch cause personally NIN feels the weakest out of the 3 and I have played all 3 a pretty decent amount.

Personally, after reading these patch notes I might just go to MNK over DRG now, that one buff from Enliven is probably gonna make that job completely insane, I feel like that's around a 20-30% damage increase already.

[Kai_Lee]

I find this stupid, it was hard enough to catch a ninja running away, now its impossible Without weapon throw.

[Petite]

Petiteeeee I miss you. ; ^ ;

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15 seeconds of removal for positionals, that's at max 2 abilities (Rotations?) for NIN and every ability for MNK. I think the Enliven for MNKs make them too crazy. They already have a 6 second AoE pacify, 20% AoE Healing steroid, on top of crazy splash damage and pretty decent burst. On top of that as you mentioned a 30s gap closer.

Personally, after reading these patch notes I might just go to MNK over DRG now, that one buff from Enliven is probably gonna make that job completely insane, I feel like that's around a 20-30% damage increase already.

Miyuki! I miss you too ^^

My main goal in this post was to highlight the dynamic changes between the 3 melee dps and how I feel the Enliven change is such a buff to NIN and MNK that dragoon might very well now be much inferior to them in Feasts.

[Chaelyn]

Potentially, it still has more burst than MNK or NIN but I still think the Enliven for MNKs was unneeded for them. :c

[Petite]

Potentially, it still has more burst than MNK or NIN but I still think the Enliven for MNKs was unneeded for them. :c

DRGs can still burst well Miyu.

Like I said, to have the same effect as the old Impulse rush (minus the -10% crit rate), you'll just need to pop an extra OGCD; Enliven. Therefore DRG got a direct slight nerf.

The true nerf is an indirect one and it's the fact that MNK and NIN can now wave off positionals whereas DRG was the only one who could do it before. Also, it's not like DRG's burst was leagues better than MNK's and NIN's as those two still had great bursts. Now theirs will be much higher while DRG's will decrease slightly.

Aside from Disembowel's piercing debuff and Litany, I struggle to see what DRG brings to the table that's better than MNK and NIN. Compared to the other two jobs, DRG is now lackluster.

[Chaelyn]

The true nerf is an indirect one and it's the fact that MNK and NIN can now wave off positionals whereas DRG was the only one who could do it before. Also, it's not like DRG's burst was leagues better than MNK's and NIN's as those two still had great bursts. Now theirs will be much higher while DRG's will decrease slightly.

Honestly I think I play DRG differently from everyone else. o_O I never actually thought that the positionals for DRG made a difference to me. It literally only buffed my Chaos Trust. I have never once used Wheeling Thrust or Fang and Claw on a player once in PvP since I started playing DRG. BotD was a buff for my Jumps and a Geirskogul proc for me. I never kept it up unless I was on the Ice crystal thingies in Shatter. o_O

[Dimitrii]

I have never once used Wheeling Thrust or Fang and Claw on a player once in PvP since I started playing DRG. BotD was a buff for my Jumps and a Geirskogul proc for me.

That's a shame since Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw are pretty potent when combined with the old impulse rush (now enliven). I'm actually the opposite and would Wheeling Thrust/Fang and Claw to keep BotD up and would try to only Geirskogul when I was reasonably sure the move would kill or lead to a certain kill.

These changes are finally gonna force me to either stop PVP'ing or stop playing DRG in PVP even though its been pretty much the job I've been most synonymous with since I've started PVP'ing. I was fine with monk being superior to DRG before this patch (hell mnk is my main in PVE and has been since I started playing in 2.0 so I could have used that job at any point if I wanted to especially now with the constant streams of buffs it receives) as I enjoyed its playstyle, have never liked following the lambs with jumping to the latest flavor of the month in terms of jobs (i.e mnk, war, mch, brd), and liked that there were so few ppl using the job at one point relative to the other jobs. But now that the job is so much worse than monk its pretty much masochistic at this point to use it over monk. Case in point as great a DRG as link is for the primal data center its still no coincidence that not only is he the only DRG in the top 10 but he is also the melee with the lowest win rate in there as well with all the monks ahead of him (hilariously no nins in sight). Yet DRG gets hit with another nerf stick lol?

No idea what I'll use now in PVP as im loathed to use my BRD since i hate ranged (pvp wise I like to be in your face and on top of you when I kill you. not 15 yalms away attacking you where you may or may not notice me doing so), do not like the invincible feeling of being a WAR and do not find joining the faceless sea of MNKs already in the data center to be particularly appealing either.