6.2 Dragoon potential changes/assessment of current (6.11)

[Aco505]

From what yoshida said, he alluded to two things with dragoon
1. reducing the amount of ogcd presses
2. A long term goal at getting rid of crit synergy which drg has in litany. So I'm expecting that will get the chop or a nasty nerf sadly.

Personally, I think what Dragoon needs is its nastrond phase to get something new. Currently dragoon's basically unchanged since stormblood. Shb and Ew was just aoe, qol and a repeat of level 30-50 with the exception of wyrmwind thrust in place of spineshatter. Its just one long rotation with little depth but very strict buff usage pattern in EW

They gave us extra charges in the expansion, yet suddenly oGCDs are a problem? We literally only press 2 more buttons in 2-min burst windows than in ShB: one Spineshatter Dive and one Wyrmwind Thrust. In some cases, we do have a Life Surge or an extra WWT, but it depends on how things line up, as the change to Heavens' Thrust's potency means that you almost never want to use LS on a 5th GCD positional.

Crit synergy would be easily addressed if they followed the suggestion laid out in this post (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5880390).

I don't think that the fact that the job hasn't changed too much is bad. If something's good and already works, then it doesn't have to necessarily change. Just polishing, extra tuning. This is what BLM has been getting every expansion: little additions to round up the kit. Why is it DRG that needs to be changed and not BLM or any other job? Big reworks should happen at the beginning of an expansion anyway...

For what it's worth, I believe that an oGCD like Life Surge is good for the job. Yes, right now it's a bit mindless in its use (there should be more instances in which you can use it, not only HT), but it's the only oGCD that interacts with our GCDs and that makes us think a little bit outside burst windows. While many people want it to disappear, it does add a layer that would require some kind of replacement if it was cut. The fact that our GCDs are strict is intended due to how DRG is all about managing oGCDs.

If they want to reduce our buffs from 3 to 2, I'm fine with that. It saves a bit of space. I'd rather not have these changes, but I can compromise. Removing abilities from the only melee that is oGCD-focused would strip it of its identity and make the game less interesting: not all jobs need to be the same, and there's other oGCD jobs out there (GNB or DRK to name a few), will they be changed too?

As for what I expect, Dragonsight will get axed and Battle Litany turned into a 5% damage buff. For oGCD pruning, they'll remove Life of the Dragon and make Nastrond a separate button that cost two eyes, and upgrades to Stardiver at 80.

As for what I want, nothing really. The job is fun as is, because it's fast and hectic. Maybe turn Dragonsight into a toggle that buffs our ally on Lance Charge or Battle Litany. It might be interesting if Dragonfire Dive added an eye so we could theoretically Life in the opener, but they're not going to do anything that makes the opener even busier.

Removing Life of the Dragon would be like removing Astral Fire for BLM, that's not going to happen.

DFD giving an eye requires careful consideration because while it'd allow for a Life window in the opener, it may mess eye management for the whole fight. For instance, we'd enter the first 2-min burst with 1 eye stored, and then get two more immediately through HJ and DFD. If our gauge could store three eyes, but Life only required two... then perhaps, but if that happened, how do you control when you enter or not with Geirskogul? It'd just enter if we have two eyes? And what if we wanted to delay a life with two eyes due to encounter timing?

Life would probably require a rework in the way we enter it if DFD was going to give an eye directly. Perhaps the most elegant solution to giving DRG a Life in the opener would just be to allow us to start duties with 2 eyes. However, the job is tuned with having no Life in the opener, and this becomes obvious in fights like P3S in the reopener after adds or P4-2S if going for a full resource run, when DRG can get insane amounts of potency due to having everything, which I might add is also extremely satisfying!