Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Not at all. It's just a matter of how finely we want to balance its losses across various GCDs in rotation (effectively allowing it an addition 2-4 GCDs per DRG's 10). We have two options: (1) Additional Effect on Piercing Talon or conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller or (2) conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller AND giving Dragonkiller an Additional Effect..
I'm not sure what this Dragonkiller you're mentioning is.

Additional Effect: Deals an additional X potency when Full Thrust, Chaos Thrust, or Coerthan Tempest are readied.
That's exactly my concern, though. If your timing on the combo is off when being pushed out of range -- for instance, you're on literally any other step out of the other 8 -- you lose out on the bonus.
I know I'm nitpicking the exact wording of an example, but as I said before, thanks to the branching combo system alone it complicates coding such an ability, let alone the practicality of multiple steps or having multiple abilities outside of the combo (F&C, WT).

By all means, I'd prefer that DRG's every opener was chargeable; that it could advance any of its combos into each other; could use its dragon skills, once unlocked, at any time within 10 seconds to allow them more unique effects and flexibility; that its Jump simply launched it skyward as a dodge and then augmented its next weaponskill; that Full Thrust could toss enemies skyward and Fang & Claw did a fine job of juggling them and Wheeling Thrust of smiting them; that BotD simply unlocked gravity manipulation for your movement to make you look and feel like a Dissidia-esque Dragoon and master of aerial juggling; so on and so forth... but this is just about either making PT worthwhile or getting rid of it. So long as Dragoon gets something for forced melee downtime comparable to the other melee, I'm cool with either one, honestly. And that doesn't even have to be a GCD skill. Heck, we could give CT some more surplus duration, turn Geirskogul into a GCD that doesn't break combos, perhaps move Life of the Dragon activation to Blood of the Dragon, and allow BotD's passive effects by default and that would probably be sufficient for DRG's melee downtime.
That's uh.

That's a whole rework. Bit high-brow for a thread like this.

But my point is, earlier you asked "Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?" So far the effects you've suggested are purely adding damage to the skill based on serendipitous timing affected by the main rotation, rather than actually having any impact on the main rotation.