7.1 Dragoon Changes Complaints

[HikariKurosawa]

Having played around it with a bit now, I also don't really see a downside.

I don't like the current Dragoon design. At all. But 3 Nastrond -> 1 Nastrond seems positive, tbh. There's no need for the extra-RSI of pressing Nastrond 3 times, mentally you're not doing much more than going through rote button motions anyways. Might as well cut that down, give your hands a better time, and have exactly as 0 brain engagement as before.

Does Dragoon need a rework? For sure. But this change doesn't hurt it. There's nothing left to hurt anyways. :P

I don't think it really does need too much of a rework though.

I think they should take away life surge, make scales come from high jump/boost jump, change lance mastery 3 to make it so that true thrust and doom spike are just outright upgraded into raiden thrust and draconian fury. Then add the followup boost jump+red mirage dive combo into LotD.

Then next expansion, lance mastery 5 upgrades sonic thrust into new dragon themed thrust, also upgrades wheeling thrust + fang and claw into modern animations. New capstone ability being a followup for nastrond with maybe a white animation themed after hraesvelgr. This ties into the artistic direction of starcross being white themed.

If life surge was removed, then it would not be too overwhelming to manage all of this. Maybe they would have to give us a trait to have LotD last longer too, but if we were able to fit everything in with both life surge charges and 3 nastronds, it would be doable this way too. It's the same amount of oGCD as pre-7.1 dragoon but they're all flexible oGCDs and don't have to be lined up with heaven's thrust or drakesbane, plus the timing for WWT would be consistent and non-variable. You would always have a WWT for your burst windows.

This leans the job's identity completely in the direction of being oGCD heavy during burst windows, and also gives us further red/blue theme with the red mirage dive(boost jump could also have a red animation, and maybe they could call it dragonblood dive), while also giving us a cool hraesvelgr themed nastrond followup.

After that though? What can you really do to advance the job? It would be completely streamlined. Every animation would be modernized, the burst window would be as full as it should realistically be(I find it overwhelmingly packed as is, but life surge and WWT make it more complicated than it would be in this idea), and everything would flow naturally. I guess they could make additions to our combat outside of burst, but it's a delicate balance.

[Carighan]

After that though? What can you really do to advance the job? It would be completely streamlined. Every animation would be modernized, the burst window would be as full as it should realistically be(I find it overwhelmingly packed as is, but life surge and WWT make it more complicated than it would be in this idea), and everything would flow naturally. I guess they could make additions to our combat outside of burst, but it's a delicate balance.

Oh I'd mostly want jobs to break away from the "all the exact same combat design with visual differences"-mold. Meaning I'd want reworks for all combat jobs that heavily heterogenize them.

My big idea for Dragoon would be to make many GCDs "jumps" of 1.5x-2.0x GCD timer, and while airborne you get a targetting cursor akin to the PvP LB, and while airborne you're invulnerable. Center the job around jumps and airtime, 105%!

[HikariKurosawa]

Oh I'd mostly want jobs to break away from the "all the exact same combat design with visual differences"-mold. Meaning I'd want reworks for all combat jobs that heavily heterogenize them.

My big idea for Dragoon would be to make many GCDs "jumps" of 1.5x-2.0x GCD timer, and while airborne you get a targetting cursor akin to the PvP LB, and while airborne you're invulnerable. Center the job around jumps and airtime, 105%!

Hmm lol, maybe they could do that for pvp but I would prefer to keep pve dragoon similar to how it already is. I really like how it plays and it is extremely satisfying, I just wish it was a little bit cleaner and more streamlined.

Or maybe the future of job design should be "limited mode" versions of the existing jobs, where they really go wild with the ability designs. They could have really in depth job quests that way like the blue mage does and it would give them a ton of creative freedom over how the jobs play, since they wouldn't have to balance them around the main battle content.

Since the jobs are already pretty much full and approaching a dead end of development, it's either 1) rework entirely and scrap nearly everything, 2) focus on overhauling the low level experience, or 3) give each job a limited version that is really unique.