A Dragoon's doubts.

[CitizenKing]

When I first started playing Dragoon, I loved it. The fast action-paced style of the moves, the constant jumping about, it was just lots of fun. Yet, soon after getting my +1 relic, I started to get really frustrated by the class. The positional requirements specifically have been infuriating. Sometimes you'll get those parties where the Healer and the Tank just have a bad time of it and are bouncing the mobs between eachother, and it makes it practically impossible to land a correctly placed Heavy Strike+Impulse Drive.

Every time I miss one of these positional moves, I get this slight pang of regret. I'm starting to think it might just be better to swap to Black Mage so I can do just as much damage without worrying about what might happen if the tank randomly runs forward before I hit a key.

Is there anything you guys can tell me to assuage this doubt, and maybe help me get my confidence in this class back?

[Thorauku]

But.............. You only need to adjust position once every 20s (HT) and 30s (ID - Dis - CT combo).

[CitizenKing]

The problem isn't how often I have to use positioning moves, its the act of using them in the first place. With the Dragoon rotation, one slip up between Heavy Thrust and Impulse Drive causes a big mix up in the way that our moves flow together, and results in a significant lowering of dps. If the mobs were stationary, it wouldn't be much of an issue, but thats not the case. We're dealing with latency, random aggro drops, and battle mechanics that require boss movement on top of all of this, and the result is that it can get pretty frustrating just trying to get things to go through correctly.

[Peptaru]

If you'd rather be as lazy as possible, by all means, go play blm. This all stinks of you just not wanting to put forth effort to be awesome.

[ChaozK]

You have two options.

If you like melee, you could go MNK, where missing a flank/rear doesnt affect your rotation (buffs/debuffs/dots get applied despite missing, combo still progresses normally)
or if you want to stick to DRG you could go for 1-2-3/phlebotomize/fracture in those situations where properly landing a positional attack isnt possible. DRG has a non positional combo for a reason me thinks.

[megaman]

Don't play monk then. If you miss a position requirement sure the debuff/buff/DoT applies but it butchers your potency. And you have to do rear /flank requirements for the majority of the attacks, so yeah.. blm is fun but if you want to go full lazy go bard because your spells might get interrupted by movement and stuff. Bard can run and shoot while running the other way and be awesome %100 of the time lol.

[ChaozK]

Don't play monk then. If you miss a position requirement sure the debuff/buff/DoT applies but it butchers your potency.

I am going to assume you are not aware that the potency loss on a missed DRG position is roughly twice as high as on a MNK position (70-80 pot vs 40-50 pot) in addition to not applying your buffs and not progressing your combo.

I think the strong point that DRG has over MNK is that he has his basic 1-2-3 combo which has no positional requirement at all, where a MNK has to suck it and accept the lower potency on his attacks because he has position checks on almost all of them. The key is to anticipate such messy situations and quickly resorting to your non positional attacks instead of missing your heavy thrust/ID over and over again for a massive dps loss.

[VisRalis]

Chill out, relax. I know DRG can get high strung over rotations, DoT clipping and numbers but end of the day, you're only making yourself feel bad.
If MNKs can suck it up with potency loss, so can DRGs (with less QQ to boot).

[Warrlordd]

if you have ads bouncing around, stun it. You have 2 of them. if you cant stun it, start doing something else but i really doubt NOTHING is standing still for you to combo on. remember impulse drive is the only part of that combo which has a position requirement so hopping from one mob to the other to get you combos right isn't silly or hard.

BASICALLY if you thought melee dps was gonna be easy you thought wrong cuz it isn't easy. If you don't like it then just leave the pros at their work and you go roll a bard.

[BlueMage]

Don't play monk then. If you miss a position requirement sure the debuff/buff/DoT applies but it butchers your potency. And you have to do rear /flank requirements for the majority of the attacks, so yeah.. blm is fun but if you want to go full lazy go bard because your spells might get interrupted by movement and stuff. Bard can run and shoot while running the other way and be awesome %100 of the time lol.

As someone who actually plays all DPS, post-relic, I agree with 100% of this ^

If positionals stress you, and you're attached to melee, stick with DRG. You don't need to get them off often, and if you're in a fight where you cant get them off at all for whatever reason, or just a short fight, you can do fine without them, especially with the basic frontal combo getting a buff this patch.

If you dont want to worry about melee, go BLM, and if you dont want to worry about anything, go BRD.

I'd love to see a proc-based melee class in this game though. Something like BLM or BRD, but melee.