Dragoon's Piercing Talon: Remove or Rework

[Kabooa]

What if it took the place of a Combo step instead?

So it could be used at any step of the combo but at a relative potency penalty. (Like, -30%)

The animation is just too good to not make use of.

[Shurrikhan]

What if it took the place of a Combo step instead?

So it could be used at any step of the combo but at a relative potency penalty. (Like, -30%)

The animation is just too good to not make use of.

While undoubtedly simpler that way, I guess I just prefer to avoid this because I feel like working around melee downtime should be part of every melee's kit and core gameplay. I'd therefore prefer to give DRG more control by which to adjust for and around melee downtime rather than simply remove all necessity for such.

Oddly enough, though, this is exactly what I wanted for Jump back in the day. Rather than making it look weirdly fast, I wanted Jump to be an oGCD that would launch you up into the air (avoiding physical non-raidwide damage and forcing enemies targeting you to retarget) while your next GCD would have a unique Dive animation, dealing bonus damage/effect as you land... Doom Spike Jump was effectively Star-diver before there was a Star-diver, though at lower potency. oGCDs were usable even while within the air, and Power Surge was your Dragonfire Dive equivalent. Disembowel was Spineshatter. [/random-reminiscence]

[Kabooa]

While undoubtedly simpler that way, I guess I just prefer to avoid this because I feel like working around melee downtime should be part of every melee's kit and core gameplay. I'd therefore prefer to give DRG more control by which to adjust for and around melee downtime rather than simply remove all necessity for such.

Dragoon kind of suffers from "Extremely coherent design philosophy" syndrome that Paladins and Black Mages do. Piercing Talon just has no place currently, even as an uptime tool as the uptime counter-intuitively hurts your longterm uptime, and tooling a unique keypoint to it would probably require more indepth kit changes.

Like, I personally loved the Geirskogul / BotD resource dynamic in Heavensward. In the same way that Stormblood TK Monk had clear and crunchy feedback for progressively doing it better, maximizing Gierskogul was that.

My first thought was giving Piercing Talon -that- back. Non-combo breaking GCD that drains BOTD on use but has a suitably strong GCD. Not something you can use all the time but at the same time, BOTD maintenance is pretty...non-existent.

My second thought was also non-combo breaker, and have it be the middle action with a Charge action effect in a non-conventional combo. Backflip (Get out), Charged Piercing Talon (No combo break, higher potency, resets and boosts Spine Shatter), Spineshatter back in.

My third was make it emphasize Dragoon Mobility by making it a GCD gap closer, but someone already pointed out that having a kiting tool was useful.

Like, I dunno. I gotta play it more.

[Shurrikhan]

Dragoon kind of suffers from "Extremely coherent design philosophy" syndrome that Paladins and Black Mages do. Piercing Talon just has no place currently, even as an uptime tool as the uptime counter-intuitively hurts your longterm uptime, and tooling a unique keypoint to it would probably require more indepth kit changes.

I don't know if that's really a matter of "coherent" so much as "inflexible". A single separable DRG action (in terms of decisions and what could without loss be macro'ed if not for the game preventing macros from queuing), in 95% of single-target situations, lasts 10 GCDs, and has zero reason for variance to anything else. The remainder of actions are just traps that will, generally, only ever hurt those with physical disabilities.

Like, I personally loved the Geirskogul / BotD resource dynamic in Heavensward. In the same way that Stormblood TK Monk had clear and crunchy feedback for progressively doing it better, maximizing Gierskogul was that.

Same. Completely. I'd have liked for Dragoon's HW mechanic to have more control and not be locked in so late nor so punishing to drop, but damn it felt simple-yet-lowkey-genius. Same with late-SB TK Monk, even as bad as it made the high-SkS builds I love.

My first thought was giving Piercing Talon -that- back. Non-combo breaking GCD that drains BOTD on use but has a suitably strong GCD.

Enticing, though I'm not sure how interesting that would necessarily be. If the cost wasn't outright negligible, for instance, that would equally describe Reprise, which the community has mostly reacted to with various shades of "...okay?", "meh", and "ick" even after all its buffs.

Backflip (Get out), Charged Piercing Talon (No combo break, higher potency, resets and boosts Spine Shatter), Spineshatter back in.

This is the suggestion I've seen most -- an enhanced Enhanced Enpi if you will. My two issues with it are that unlike Yaten, (1) Elusive has a decently long cooldown and (2) seems slower to actually move your hitbox out of danger, seeming instead to absorb every AoE between its origin and destination. I'm not sure I want to entrust my downtime tool entirely to a 30s CD.

My third was make it emphasize Dragoon Mobility by making it a GCD gap closer, but someone already pointed out that having a kiting tool was useful.

Given how little enmity or damage it deals anyways, I'm not sure it's providing much of a kiting tool as is. Though... and uhh huge spitball warning here... thinking about the combination of the two is pretty interesting. For instance, what if we... turned it into a draconic Harpoon. You could, in the course of one dynamic button, create a gap-closer, a pull-in, a pull-with, and a taunt. Impale an enemy from up close a la 1.x Full Thrust ("Sparta-dive") animation, then dash off, pulling the enemy with you if they can be moved or leave a trail of draconic essence that you can use to then rush to the target for damage based on time spent charging (literally just downtime, but with a neat VFX aura and slight idle animation adjustments to make it look real deliberate).

That said, I could as easily imagine Doom Thrust being given a charge-up function to enhance its range and use it as a enemy-crosser (closing the gap and then getting up to the far edge of its hitbox with remaining range, with its pathing blocked by any AoE zones, hidden or not, persistent or not)...

[Kabooa]

The Backflip was more the 'get out after the last GCD'. The Piercing Talon enhancement would be a Charged Action effect, where it's available all the time, but the bonuses it provides are on a cooldown.

Charge-Up abilities I want to avoid until we see a working example that doesn't feel awful. Consider that a 'Charge Up' ability is like a Cast Time ability but not back-ended. our primary example of this is Flamethrower, and it feels awful.

I think context-sensitive abilities can work, where Piercing Talon causes True Thrust and Doom Spike to alter functionality without breaking the combo string.

[Shurrikhan]

The Backflip was more the 'get out after the last GCD'. The Piercing Talon enhancement would be a Charged Action effect, where it's available all the time, but the bonuses it provides are on a cooldown.

CDs within abilities, as opposed to merely on abilities, are something I'd really like to see, too, though for anything not typically a tremendous loss it usually seems to run the risk of "but did I really want that bonus right now?" At least we here have the perfect case for it here.

Charge-Up abilities I want to avoid until we see a working example that doesn't feel awful. Consider that a 'Charge Up' ability is like a Cast Time ability but not back-ended. our primary example of this is Flamethrower, and it feels awful.

It probably doesn't help that while WoW has something like 50hz update ticks for just about everything, XIV seems to run on at less than 10hz for detecting our position and periodic tick effects are checked only once per 1, 2, (most often) 3, or 4 seconds as just a "buff exists y/n?" check. Yeah, we would need an example of something responsive, or at least of measured client-trust that isn't so broadly exploitable as to be worth hacking to significant effect, before that'd we worth using. But given how lucrative the concept could be, I'd like to see it worked towards.

[Archwizard]

What if Piercing Talon reduced the CD of High Jump by, say, 1.5sec? Or had maybe a 10% chance to give Dive Ready? Or extended Chaos Thrust's duration by 3 sec?

Some low boon so it doesn't replace the main combo but still is better than tossing AoE in single-target.

[Shurrikhan]

What if Piercing Talon reduced the CD of High Jump by, say, 1.5sec? Or had maybe a 10% chance to give Dive Ready? Or extended Chaos Thrust's duration by 3 sec?

Some low boon so it doesn't replace the main combo but still is better than idling.

Any of those, given sufficient tuning, could push it into being useful for maybe a second GCD out of 10, but consider -- what benefit over simple increased potency is there to, say, desyncing your High Jump or rolling the dice on RNG or making CT likely guarantee that a DoT tick will now be clipped, etc? Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?

[Archwizard]

Any of those, given sufficient tuning, could push it into being useful for maybe a second GCD out of 10, but consider -- what benefit over simple increased potency is there to, say, desyncing your High Jump or rolling the dice on RNG or making CT likely guarantee that a DoT tick will now be clipped, etc? Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?

Well, Dragoon has only one secondary resource to worry about, the Dragon Gauge. It doesn't use MP or Ninki, Kenki, Mana, or any other type of %-based Gauge to allow for a more gradual increase. If it affected the Dragon Gauge directly in a reliable way, it would quickly become part of the main combo, which would affect the balance of the entire job.

So your options to make it more engaging while still being a secondary skill purely for distance are all going to either affect timers -- Blood/Life of the Dragon, Chaos Thrust, cooldowns -- or require a complete rework of the job. Considering Blood of the Dragon lasts for as long as its cooldown now, affecting that timer further would be largely redundant. Affecting any timer that would require you to be in melee to receive mileage would, I feel, also defeat the purpose of attaching it to a ranged skill.

Now, while I could think of ways to add on to the job in future expansions, that would still leave Piercing Talon in the same position until then.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, Dragoon has only one secondary resource to worry about, the Dragon Gauge. It doesn't use MP or Ninki, Kenki, Mana, or any other type of %-based Gauge to allow for a more gradual increase. If it affected the Dragon Gauge directly in a reliable way, it would quickly become part of the main combo, which would affect the balance of the entire job.

So your options to make it more engaging while still being a secondary skill purely for distance are all going to either affect timers -- Blood/Life of the Dragon, Chaos Thrust, cooldowns -- or require a complete rework of the job. Considering Blood of the Dragon lasts for as long as its cooldown now, affecting that timer further would be largely redundant. Affecting any timer that would require you to be in melee to receive mileage would, I feel, also defeat the purpose of attaching it to a ranged skill.

Now, while I could think of ways to add on to the job in future expansions, that would still leave Piercing Talon in the same position until then.

My point was merely that you don't have to do something so integral with distant systems like Jump to make it engaging, let alone functional. It just has to have a greater range of GCDs across DRG's 10-step rotation under which it using it comes out ahead of not using it. You take the potency lost from restarting the combo (and from delayed or clipped CT ticks in the adjusted rotation) and try to give that 2-4 extra GCDs per 10 in which that cost is minimal (in the range of SAM's 20 to 65ish, assuming an unlucky lost CT tick).

Give Piercing Talon (1) a higher base damage, have it (2) upgrade to a skill which takes advantage of, and/or gives back some amount of, Combo progress, and (3) add it to the list of skills buffed by Lance Mastery II, and voila, it no longer forces itself into obsolescence.