The Melee DPS Paradigm and why DRG needs some attention

[Heatkrieg]

Considering that Yoshi P and the development team have asked of for feedback on the current state of things before Deltascape Savage is launched, I figured I'd take the time to type out my thoughts in hopes - no matter how unlikely - that someone on the team would go through them and perhaps consider them while readjusting some of the balance in the game.

This isn't a thread calling for a nerf on any of the currently "overpowered" jobs in the game. It is however, calling for a buff for the overshadowed ones at the moment.

DRG:

As stated by Yoshi P in his post and noted by many players out there I am sure, there are many who are crying over the ridiculous damage that SAM brings outclassing all DPS in the game, putting the other melee in a precarious position particularly the weakest of them all, dragoons. The argument held by Yoshi states that DRG brings raid utility that compensates for its lack of damage compared to SAM and that in principle is a fair enough argument to make.In Heavensward, DRGs did almost as much damage as MNKs but brought Disembowel, and Battle Litany to the table making them a far more valuable pick than MNKs. In fact, Heavensward was when a rise in DRG players was noticed after being shunned for quite sometime during the ARR era where their positionals, animation locks, and subpar damage made them disfavored even though their disembowel buffed the damage of bards at the time. Even in Heavensward though, DRGs were plagued with quite a few issues. Many people complained about DRG's TP sustain in extended fights, particularly ones that required you AoE heavily like A2S and later A9S if your group's DPS was not high enough. There were also complaints about punishing it was for you to drop Blood of the Dragon (BotD) particularly when Geirskogul ate away from your BotD. Fortunately both issues have been addressed, although with the latter, I'm personally of the opinion that it hurt dragoons more than it helped them.

Putting Geirskogul on a 35 second counter that does not sap away from your BotD is good in theory but really weak in practice. Dragoons went from being able to theoretically squeeze in 9 Geirskoguls in a 3 minute window to only 5. What's worse though, is that with Lance Mastery and the reduced cooldown on BotD now, your BotD is practically sitting at 25-30 seconds for the entire fight and there's nothing you can do with it. For someone new to the class, this is all good and dandy but for someone like me who has played the class for years, it's jarring and borderline aggravating. I'm sure there will be people who will jump at me and say NINs get huton and MNKs get greased lightning that they don't get to expend in the form of damage, why should DRGs? The answer to that is simple, it's because it's part of their identity as a high risk high reward DPS and while I get that the development team is trying to change that to make the class more accessible to people, I feel like in the process of making it simpler to play, they made it unplayable in favor of the other classes in the game (Also monks can technically expend their greased lightning in the form of Tornado Kick but that's another discussion for a different time). The expendable resource you get in the form of Life of the Dragon (LotD) comes in the form of a buff that takes far too long to build up for it to be useful. In fact, on a fight like Susanoo EX with a group that knows what they're doing DPS-wise, you'll likely find yourself incapable of building up 4 eyes before the phase transition happens and the sword drops. Considering that LotD and Nastrond spam is a huge part of their DPS, being unable to use them in the same time frame that the other DPS take to build up their damage makes them lag significantly behind.

Then there's the so-called "utility". I feel like I stand in strong opposition to the development team and Yoshi P on this one. DRGs don't bring enough to justify their presence in a party over any other DPS. SAM brings huge damage, NIN brings trick attack, better damage, the slashing debuff, shadewalker and smokescreen (they're the real utility melee DPS), and MNK brings better damage, Brotherhood and Mantra. Meanwhile, Battle Litany is a 15% crit boost for the entire party that sits on a 3 minute cooldown and is active for only 20 seconds at a time. This means it has an effective down time of 160 seconds, which pales in comparison to chain strategem on SCH or trick attack or even brotherhood which many monks will tell you is somewhat underwhelming. Disembowel is now a 5% boost in piercing damage, down from the previous 10% it was in Heavensward. This is arguably the worst offender on the list. Not only does this effectively lower the damage of DRGs, it also hampers the damage of BRDs, MCHs and the RDM off global cooldowns. Because it's down to 5% though, many groups, mine included have decided to forsake the need for a BRD or MCH (particularly when the latter is a pile of hot garbage), and instead opt for a double caster (RDM/SMN), double melee (SAM/NIN) composition where the casters act as the mana batteries with their new role action Mana Shift and the melee provide TP if needed in the form of Goad. Meanwhile, the slashing debuff is still a 10% damage increase and while one can argue that disembowel only benefits a handful of classes (4 to be exact) compared to the slashing debuff that benefits all three tanks and two melees (so 5), it really isn't enough to warrant that nerf. This is particularly true when you consider just how far behind BRDs and MCHs are in terms of damage compared to the other DPS. And then there's Dragon Sight, which is possibly the most unfortunate ability in the game. Not because you can't use it solo but because of the fact that you lose its benefits if your tethered partner runs out of your range, which in the case of a mechanic occurring will almost certainly happen since neither of you want to get hit but still want to keep your up-time on the target. In theory, it sounded great; even I was excited about it but when put in practice, it's underwhelming. This coupled with the fact that it's a 10% boost in your damage that you once had in blood for blood but is now lost to the changes and sits on a 2 minute cooldown makes it far less useful than what I think it was originally intended to be.

Again, I get and wholly support the whole "more utility = less DPS" mentality but as it stands right now it's "average utility = lowest DPS". As it currently stands however, SAM wins the damage department with its lowest group utility and NIN wins the utility department with its highest group utility and excellent damage. DRGs are in that sorry state of not being able to DPS hard enough or provide enough utility to the group. Really at this point, the only point you'd ever want to bring a DRG in your party is when you want to boost someone's damage on any of the competitive log sites.

So how can all of this be fixed? There have been a number of ideas floating around. Some better than others naturally but instead of dictating the developers with a word for word solution, I feel like its more valuable to point out what needs to be fixed and let them choose the most appropriate way of fixing it. So to recap:

1- The build up to Life of the Dragon is way too long. 70 seconds to burst is just terrible for any DRG player.
2- The upkeep of Life of the Dragon is arguably the worst in the game. If for any reason you lose BotD with your eye stacks built up due to a fight transition, you're stuck with having to rebuild it all over again meaning another 70 seconds at the least to get back to where you started.
3- The weakened state of disembowel trivializes DRG, BRD and MCH damage (Not so much on RDM to be honest so I didn't include it here). The latter of which is in dire need of help and is something that I suspect will require some serious rework in the near future. To give you an understanding on how bad BRD and MCH damage can be with the weakened disembowel, ranged physical DPS can barely do more damage than tanks equipped with 270 STR accessories.

Most self-respecting DRGs I know, myself included, have made the transition to SAM because of how dull and weak the class has become. Don't get me wrong though, many of the changes to DRG were welcome. The 5 tiered combo makes it so that you don't clip your chaos thrust as badly as you did during the Heavensward days. However, I feel this is a classic case of where the bad outweighs the good, and DRGs become no longer viable in a party.

Feel free to agree/disagree with me on any of these points. Naturally, we can't all be of the same opinion here but the numbers on DRG performances, buffs and "raid utility" don't lie.

[BlackThought]

Honestly, apart from the well documented mechanical issues with the class that we've brought up for years now, this community by and large wants loldrg to exist.

The refrain now of "SAM has no utility so must be top DPS" was virtually never extended to DRG in 2.0. And the minute that video came out years ago with the 16-bit Titan, the devs tacitly endorsed it. Be that as it may, HW was so great for the class and I became attached to it. I always play Roguey, thief style jobs in MMOs and absent a true one at launch I sort of just landed on DRG.

I did Susano EX with my group last night (we had 2 SAMs and a RDM besides) and it was pretty demoralizing, frankly.

[misterwuggles]

My main issue with DRG is it just isn't fun anymore for me. It was already on the rigid side to begin with but we at least had a bit of wiggle room and worst case scenario I didn't feel like my fight was completely over after making a single mistake. Now I'm playing this clunky pile of not-very-fun mechanics and being punished so heavily not for PLAYING poorly but for not having phase changes memorized to a second and that just isn't fun for me. Dragon Sight being so miserable to use that I have to resort to a macro for the first time ever is just icing on the cake. Honestly even if DRG was at the top of the charts it wouldn't be enough to make it fun enough to stick with at this point most likely. That said this is a preliminary judgement based on a very short time at 70 so I'm still giving it a chance but I'll almost certainly be switching to another job.

[HoLoFoNo]

Just a few points:

LoTD isn't a significant amount of damage, this is currently the problem. It only gives us access to 1 ability: Nastrond which isn't even 5% of our damage (I do understand that we have a lot of abilities so 5% isn't actually as small as it sounds, but it is still small even within DRGs kit) and despite this it is pretty much what DRG is fuctioning around because as you said, we have a saturation of BotD now. It is completely useless and pretty much just serves to fuck us over when we lose it. How is this remotely in line with their design philosophy?

While more utility = less personal dps is fine in theory, this should never be applied to melee dps especially DRG considering how notoriously inflexible the class is. Is this gonna be the new trend? They are just gonna say fuck it lets completely change the paradigm and make casters the support, melee the stationary and ranged have positionals? I realise this is hyperbolic but why did they change DRG from a reasonable powerful dps (3rd/7) with slightly better-than-average utility to pretty much a support dps (7th/9) and nerfed some of said utility? It's not even a lenient class unlike the other 2 'support dps' which are ranged dps that have complete free reign.

You wanna know why? Well Yoshi himself said that in the teams considerations for what dps should be where, things like ability to avoid mechanics and amount of ranged attacks. If I am honest, this annoyed me quite a bit. Not only is this flawed, as melee DPS never want to be at range and if they are, I'm pretty sure they don't want to cancel their combos using their 1 shitty potency ranged attacks when they can return to range in a few seconds, or in the more likely case they will figure out the most optimal way to minimise downtime (max melee range, just eat the damage, use time to build resource), DRG is also terrible at ranged combat at least compared to NIN. If you are away from the boss, chances are you reaaaaallly won't want to use an attack that places you back there even if its for a split second. The other jumps don't even put you back to where you started, so now you are stuck in melee range so they aren't viable ranged attacks either. That only leaves GSK and mirage dive. Mirage dive is only useable after said attacks that put you in a precarious situation anyway, and GSK is on a 35 second CD. So no, DRG is still shit at ranged fighting and don't even have anything to do during downtime.

My main point is, they should have never tacked on the 'utility' tag onto DRG, it had no place being there. NIN is more appropriate due to the fair lenient nature of its playstyle and the fact that it has always been that class so you go to play NIN expecting it to be that way. DRG should theoretically be where NIN is and vise versa because even if NIN had DRGs dps, they would STILL most likely be more wanted than DRG but at least at that point, it would be somewhat of a competition. Right now DRG isn't even a consideration for most serious setups even if they can clear with no problem.

[Thandronen]

Stuff

This guy... he totally gets it. Thanks for putting all of that down here so I didn't have to!

[Thandronen]

Other stuff

She also gets it and has my thanks for explaining the problem here! Thanks!

[Noxotic]

It's so disheartening to have to level another dps instead of the one you formerly enjoyed because they more or less ruined your class. I'm not leveling Samurai due to how crappy DRG plays now. And their arguments don't have the numbers to back it up, but it's your word vs word of God, so unfortunately I don't know if we'll get anywhere with this.

[Vincent_Mateus]

I've begrudgingly quit as well for many of the above reasons. Dragoon was always iconic to me playing Final Fantasy as a kid. I've been a class purist, and enjoyed the idea and playstyle of Dragoon previously, though I thought geirskogul was not in a direction that favored the classes theme. I had a blast in heavensward despite this, and never cared about being top dps because I could play at an optimal level and not be a hindrance to my team.

That's gone now. I am a hindrance, and no static would look for a dragoon to fill a position unless they were desperate or very casual. I love progression raiding. I like clearing the hardest content... and for once, I will not be able to do that on Dragoon. I believe they have lost sight of the classes origin and history. Dragoons are notorious for jumps and we haven't got a new one in 2 expansions now. (Mirage dive definitely doesn't count despite the animation lock). I don't think anyone maining Dragoon asked for 'more utility' or 'less damage' for that matter. I think most of us had settled in as content behind Monk and above Nin for the melee spots. I don't want Ninja to be nerfed, even though with Trick Attack their spot will never be questioned, but I would like a chance at -a- melee spot. More than 2 is rarely practical for progression, though I fully expect people to roll Nin, Monk, Sam, Rdm for the new meta.

We would need as much utility or more than Ninja in order to have a chance at a melee spot and currently we do less damage and have much less utility when it comes down to overall composition.

I'd rather be a single target glass cannon focusing everything around buffing jumps (RIP Power Surge) then a muddled, melee support, which feels completely contradictory to the theme of the class. I'll be dropping Dragoon until 5.0 unless this is fixed at 4.05, if I even bother continuing to play this game.

I still think Nastrond should have changed Jump's appearance and potency rather than upgrading an aoe skill that was already fine. You're telling me there's another Dragoon out there that gets a new Life of the Dragon jump capable of destroying a gigantic cannon and it's not me? Face slap

[Nominous]

I'll be honest, Disembowel, like all other forms of 'resistance down' needs to be removed from the game. It won't be fine until that happens. That being said, as a DRG since 2.0, I think Disembowel was extremely powerful in particular, due to the fact that DRG remains the only source of piercing.

It's particularly touchy balance. The stronger it is, the more likely you get 2 automatically locked slots in a party (DRG+ranged). Slashing is more balanced by default because it's primary beneficiaries are the Tanks, which'll always be in the party one way or the other. It's still a great debuff, and whoever brings it, is bringing a lot. However, again, it doesn't lock any of the slashing Jobs by default like DRG could lock a ranged or vice versa.

I think DRG at 60 was more fun due to the fact that all of the abilities were integral to the rotation, constantly being used. I remember the first time I saw BoTD, I thought to myself that I'd be disappointed if it, and it's benefits, only lasted 30 seconds. Then I was super happy to figure out that I could keep it up with a little work. I hated the 3 GK per minute aspect, but all of the abilities were so fun to use together. Seems like 70 DRG takes the opposite approach, telling you that your new abilities are only supposed to be used sparsely, sans Mirage Dive (the one ability I think they got right).

I like that they're making DRG the highest combo melee as well, but it seems kind of lame that the damage on the 4th hit, and 5th hits are lower than the 3rd. I get why, but it just isn't satisfying to peak at Full-Thrust, to go back down with Wheeling and F+C. Guess it's at least strong when it comes to the Chaos Thrust combo.

[Frowny]

The problem with slashing, as you said, is that it kept the same amount yet piercing got nerfed. Why does SAM have access to this "utility" which is more powerful on top of their disgusting numbers?

You also hit exactly what I've been harping: NIN's 1 big utility move is FAR better than anything we bring, yet they also pull higher numbers. I honestly don't think they looked at numbers at all as his "DRG greatly buffs party damage" can't compete with Trick Attack at all.

I don't mind being a semi-support as most of our skills buff us, but isn't it a bit strange how the 2 classes with much more utility (BRD/NIN) can usually do better?