Dawntrail Dragoon Feedback

[Carighan]

Carighan you're right but haven't gone far enough; let us extend the gcd to, say, 120s and further increase the potency of weaponskills accordingly. As you say, nothing's lost when removing oGCDs and what are GCDs between burst if not cut from the same cloth?

Nah I meant the opposite, so if anything the GCD should cycle faster, and in return there's no oGCDs to weave (I feel that's where Monk was supposed to go a long time ago, before it was lost to the tides of homogenization). That's kinda the thing though: Moving between pressing extra oGCDs as weaves and pressing more GCDs on a faster timer has exactly no meaningful difference. Since in the end you just produce X potency per minute damage, with a profile that's either a tad more bursty or not depending on job, but ultimately even those are all super-similar.

There's no... differentiation.

There's for example no:

* Job that's always AoE.
* Always in motion or it can't deal damage (Dragoon could be this if we actually had a lot of jumps and many of our GCDs were jumps and some of those jumps in fact jumped backwards and we could not stand still, constantly jumping away and back in).
* DoT-only jobs.
* No-AoE job.
* Pet-does-all-the-damage jobs.

Etc etc etc. All current damage jobs are, in a lot of ways, the exact same thing. And melee vs ranged has also been washed out nearly entirely, as has caster as a more staticy job. It's all just "press this fixed rotation and weave these abilities between animations as they are off CD" with incredibly minor exceptions. What I said above was merely meant to highlight how little all this identity of dragoon matters the moment one zooms out from dragoon to even "the melee DPS role". No damage job has any identity, if we're being honest.

[CidHeiral]

This thread is about the Dragoon job and its Dawntrail design. Let's keep the thread on topic, please.

[Reginald_Cain]

Give us back piercing resistance down so phys ranged can take more than one slot and my bard gf and I can be more of a power couple again

[Carighan]

Give us back piercing resistance down so phys ranged can take more than one slot and my bard gf and I can be more of a power couple again

Wouldn't that automatically imply that without a Dragoon, nobody would ever take a Ninja/Bard/Machinist?

[Reginald_Cain]

No it implies if nobody takes dragoon then only bring one phys ranged and ninjas not doing to bad just weaker than the other melees in but still gives dokumori

[fulminating]

I’m curious as to the impact of these changes on dragoon population size. Anecdotally, I feel like I’ve been seeing fewer and fewer as the expansion has continued, but I don’t leave my home data centre. A quick glance at fflog’s jeuno results makes it look as if it’s slightly lower in 7.2 compared with 7.1, but pictomancer completely collapsing and jeuno being last tier’s ilvl probably muddies the waters too much for real conclusions. Comparison with endwalker is tricky too since ninja is significantly less popular and those players must have gone somewhere - assuming there’s no exodus of any one specific job.

Edit for clarity: since number of people playing the job appears to be the metric SE use for judging success.

[CidHeiral]

I’m curious as to the impact of these changes on dragoon population size. Anecdotally, I feel like I’ve been seeing fewer and fewer as the expansion has continued, but I don’t leave my home data centre. A quick glance at fflog’s jeuno results makes it look as if it’s slightly lower in 7.2 compared with 7.1, but pictomancer completely collapsing and jeuno being last tier’s ilvl probably muddies the waters too much for real conclusions. Comparison with endwalker is tricky too since ninja is significantly less popular and those players must have gone somewhere - assuming there’s no exodus of any one specific job.

Edit for clarity: since number of people playing the job appears to be the metric SE use for judging success.

I think that's part of what the devs are missing with these job reworks.

Say you have three jobs: Job A, Job B, and Job C. Keeping in mind you can play every job on the same character, Job A is played by 50% of players, Job B by 40%, and Job C by 20%. The devs look at those numbers and think "Job C is so unpopular, let's redesign it to be like Job A and Job B." They do so and sure enough Job C is now played by 50% of players as well. However, that increase in player count is mainly comprised of people who like the design of Job A and B and are now playing the reworked job as well. People who liked the old design of Job C now have nothing to play so they're driven away from the game. All you've ultimately accomplished is alienating that 20% of people — it's a net negative in player count.

From my own experience, the only reason I didn't quit the game over the DRG changes already is because I care so much about my FC. It feels weird to main anything other than DRG so I've continued to play it begrudgingly, like an old person refusing to move off their land even after corporate greed has destroyed it.

[bundythenoob]

The camera movement of ARRJump was always my favourite little detail about Dragoon. It gave the skill a hefty feel to it, and the camera movement really sold you on the power behind your staple ability.
When I first got Spineshatter, I tried embarassingly hard to incorporate Elusive into my rotation for the sheer sake of style points. Elusive-Dragonfire still feels good, but it only happened so often compared to Elusive-Spineshatter
I remember meeting other DRGs while out and about, and using BotD next to them, to which they would often use it back. Shoutout to fellow 'goons in other Alliance raids too! it was our battlecry
its these dumb little things I miss the most about old DRG


also, I've been wondering for awhile now... if the devs can program Geirskogul to transform into Nastrond,
could they program BotD back in, and make it transform into Geirskogul, and into Nastrond again like back then?

[angelar_]

This isn't exactly new in Dawntrail but the way they keep making cynical changes to the speed and movement of Jump is just absurd. This skill doesn't feel anything like it ought to anymore. It's just not a fun button. I understand the practical considerations for "Jump is clunky as hell," but if I wanted to not be clunky, I'd just play a different damn class. They went way too far in the other direction.

[Carighan]

This isn't exactly new in Dawntrail but the way they keep making cynical changes to the speed and movement of Jump is just absurd. This skill doesn't feel anything like it ought to anymore. It's just not a fun button. I understand the practical considerations for "Jump is clunky as hell," but if I wanted to not be clunky, I'd just play a different damn class. They went way too far in the other direction.

Fully agreed. If the "jump" doesn't actually jump, there's no point calling it a jump. And if the "jump" class no longer constantly jumps and this has the very real downside of, well, jumping to the enemy, there's no point even having it around.