Dragoon Feedback: No dopamine allowed?

[Awarewolf]

I don’t play Dragoon much, but isn’t Stardiver AoE, ranges, and off the GCD? How in the world can you compare that to your third melee combo, which is ST, melee range, and on the GCD?

I can see what you’re asking for, and I agree I find Dragoon a little boring. But that’s the gameplay — you do damage spread out over all your GCD and oGCDs, the latter of which you have MANY. It’s a busy job with a straight forward rotation. You play the class if you like weaving.

[ZiraZ]

I will never understand how people equate individual abilities' potencies with "fun". As long as it all works in relation so the rotation makes sense and the overall damage isn't weirdly off-balance with other jobs it's who cares.

It's not really a big potency = fun thing, it's more of a you've got this ability you can only use once per minute but it's not just a timer, you need to build for it and delay it's premature use so you can sync all your cooldowns(or just LC) so that it lands inside your incredibly busy 20 seconds (15 with litany) damage ups window and on top of all that you can't even single weave next to that ability because the animation is 2 hours long so it's technically much weaker than Heaven's Thrust which can easily accommodate dual weaving during your most crucial part of the rotation that is so busy you can't even get all your oGCDs out if you pool 2 spineshatter dives unless you have extremely low ping and can dual weave jumps.

To compare it with GNB's double down, which I'm still laughing a tank gets such an ability just like that which can be used at the mere cost of 2 cartridges on cd.
Imagine if double down was instead at the end of your Gnashing Fang combo, and once used you were incapable of weaving anything with it because animation reasons, and then on top of that, instead of doing 1200 potency, it did just 600, basically just a tad bit higher than Wicked Talon and on top of that it can only be unlocked after your 2nd Gnashing Fang combo, so it can never be used in the opener, you have to wait 1 minute into the fight to unlock it.

That's stardiver, DRG's amazing ultimate ability.

[Throrface]

I don’t play Dragoon much, but isn’t Stardiver AoE, ranges, and off the GCD? How in the world can you compare that to your third melee combo, which is ST, melee range, and on the GCD?

I can see what you’re asking for, and I agree I find Dragoon a little boring. But that’s the gameplay — you do damage spread out over all your GCD and oGCDs, the latter of which you have MANY. It’s a busy job with a straight forward rotation. You play the class if you like weaving.

I compared Stardiver and Heaven's Trust in terms of how good they feel to push, to me. I also disclosed those parameters in my opening post. Within my set of parameters the abilities are perfectly comparable.

I think you can perfectly preserve the Dragoon gameplay style while also making one of the abilities feel particularly satisfying by just shifting a few numbers around. I am not suggesting any adjustments to gameplay style here.

It's not really a big potency = fun thing, it's more of a you've got this ability you can only use once per minute but it's not just a timer, you need to build for it and delay it's premature use so you can sync all your cooldowns(or just LC) so that it lands inside your incredibly busy 20 seconds (15 with litany) damage ups window and on top of all that you can't even single weave next to that ability because the animation is 2 hours long so it's technically much weaker than Heaven's Thrust which can easily accommodate dual weaving during your most crucial part of the rotation that is so busy you can't even get all your oGCDs out if you pool 2 spineshatter dives unless you have extremely low ping and can dual weave jumps.

To compare it with GNB's double down, which I'm still laughing a tank gets such an ability just like that which can be used at the mere cost of 2 cartridges on cd.
Imagine if double down was instead at the end of your Gnashing Fang combo, and once used you were incapable of weaving anything with it because animation reasons, and then on top of that, instead of doing 1200 potency, it did just 600, basically just a tad bit higher than Wicked Talon and on top of that it can only be unlocked after your 2nd Gnashing Fang combo, so it can never be used in the opener, you have to wait 1 minute into the fight to unlock it.

That's stardiver, DRG's amazing ultimate ability.

Yeah, I agree.

One argument I have made that I consider quite important is that Dragoon does have abilities that create the illusion of great power, but when compared to their other abilities they really don't have it. When you have an ability that LOOKS like you are a literal nuke dropping from the sky but the ability delivers measly damage, it feels bad, unsatisfying, deceiving. When you had to work to it through a resource system, that feeling is amplified.

[Azuri]

God no! We have enough jobs with spikey damage profile where critting or not critting your big button every two minutes defines how well you perform.

And the point of GCD vs oGCD is entirely valid. I invite you to show me oGCDs with potency similar to Stardiver. Comparing it to GCD nukes of other melee jobs that come with opportunity cost of another 300-500 potency GCD is disingenuous at best.

[Kolsykol]

The audio of the sound effect on Wyrmwind Thrust really needs to be increased imo.
I can't even rly hear it unless I am paying attention to it deliberately and am actively trying to hear it.
It makes it feel rly lackluster.

[Scuoll]

The audio of the sound effect on Wyrmwind Thrust really needs to be increased imo.
I can't even rly hear it unless I am paying attention to it deliberately and am actively trying to hear it.
It makes it feel rly lackluster.

I totally agree, and also feel like the sfx on heavens thrust is kinda lackluster, especially compared to full thrust's jet engine sound, the animation is much flashier but the actual sounf effect doesnt really match it.
Although yeah wyrmwind thrust sfx is the main thing, i swear it sounds better in the job action trailer.

[Myon88]

I actually kinda agree. It's an issue of verisimilitude, and it takes you out of it when damage values or rotation pacing aren't fully in tune with the gameplay.

Funny, you'd think dragoon would be the last job to suffer from this since they've traditionally been burst damage specialists in both job fantasy and past gameplay. They liked stardiver enough to render it in their cinematic trailer, but it certainly doesn't feel the part from a numbers standpoint.

Maybe it's because jobs with stable designs are only iterated on in small increments from expansion to expansion. When you need to integrate successive expansions' worth of new skills without ripping out the baseline, things get smeared out a little. Notice how brand new, or newly revamped jobs rarely suffer from this? It's harder to fall into that trap when you start from scratch and design from first principles.

The matter of burst vs sustained damage isn't just an issue of preference too, it has real ramifications on performance. Assuming the same total damage done over time, it is always better to deliver it in as bursty and irregular a manner as possible. This makes you better at exploiting buff windows, as well as moving your damage around to best suit openings in a fight. And it's just plain fun, it should be a clear win for everyone. It's unfortunate but I'm not sure what you can do except hope they realize this.

[Kolsykol]

Normally I don't have a problem with animation locks, but the shere volume of ogcd's makes it a bit painful with DRG especially since a lot of it can't be double weaved.
I wish the jumps all felt as responsive as High Jump.

[ZiraZ]

Normally I don't have a problem with animation locks, but the shere volume of ogcd's makes it a bit painful with DRG especially since a lot of it can't be double weaved.
I wish the jumps all felt as responsive as High Jump.

That's actually a bigger problem than what most people think, you can double weave most jumps but you need very low ping and external help so the people capable of doing this can double dip on their advantage of having low ping already and then on double weaving jumps which helps the very busy damage up windows, so they just hurt the average player.
I understand they don't want to make weaving cancel out a jump animation because it would look really bad and dumb but can they really not just give animations hierarchies so a lesser ability can't cancel out an "important" animation like a drg jump?
We already have tons of abilities that look dumb when you're moving like the new Chaotic spring makes you hover in air for like 2 seconds and makes it look like your character is levitating so I doubt removing the jump locks would change much.

[Kahnom]

I wish they remove dmg from spineshatter dive.