Should I keep staying with Dragoon or swap to another melee?

[Fatshine]

Just keep trying OP, with practice you'll get it down easy. You can also try other melee jobs and see which ultimately you prefer.

[Dante_V]

It's not too bad when you get used to it. Just practice and stick with it. IMO its the easiest of the melee dps jobs. But even so you can always switch again if you don;t like it. I would say go with whatever you are best at playing and is most fun for you.

[m3eansean]

Listen to Dervy OP - he knows what he is talking about.

Too many new players get locked into the idea of "rotation" and try to memorize a series of 64 skills or something ridiculous.

Every dps class in this game is a priority system, some more, some less - but the melee dps are very much so a priority system. It all boils down to keeping your buff attacks up (Heavy Thrust for you) in addition to all your dots. Once those priorities are met, you do your 1,2,3 dps filler rotation until you have to refresh a dot or buff (these long rotation guides are describing this actually, just in a very long way).

[Renryuu]

Ah, alright, I'll keep persisting with Dragoon then since I really do love the theme of Dragoon and the look of it's skills as well. Thank you all, I'll keep practicing and using Dragoon.

[Crescent_Dusk]

Nothing can replace muscle memory. It's the only way to get good, you can read all the guides you want but you won't start excelling until you actually play the class for enough time that pressing buttons immediately on global cooldowns is secondary nature instead of having pauses in decision making that nerf your DPS.

You can switch to whatever class you want, you'll still be deficient in all of them if you don't devote enough time to playing one. People are not good overnight. Especially if you're a fresh 50 because the truth is leveling teaches you nothing about your job on real content, in fact it often creates bad habits I wish they'd get rid of that archaic mechanic in MMO's but oh well MMO developers seems fond of the very bad idea of introducing content to an MMO that is quickly made obsolete.

[JimboTCB]

Really, it's a fairly simple priority system, it's just that two of the slots in that priority system are 3-skill mini-rotations. Otherwise it's just a matter of dropping your off-GCD abilities in when you can (which generally means as soon as possible, unless you're delaying them to line up with a specific boss mechanic) and hitting a couple of positionals. It's far less complicated than monk (which ha a LOT more positionals to deal with) or ninja (which has the "delightful" mudra system that hates anyone who doesn't live next door to the data centre).

[Craiger]

I recommend you try to find some very basic patterns for any job you want to play on.

Mastering the basic part of your "rotation" or rather how to prioritize your abilities, comes much longer than trying to master everything and failing...

There are a lot of abilities to remember for DRG, but just focus on the GCD abilities to start with.

Go to a striking dummy and train on this basic rotation that Dervy said:

H IDC P TTT
H TTT P IDC
H TTT P TTT

It won't always be like that in a fight, because of mechanics and other things, but I always recommend learning the perfect scenario rotation enough to be able to do it in your sleep. Don't bother with buffs and other oGCD abilities to start with.

Once you can do that easily without having to think about it too much (that will kill you during a boss battle, or lower your DPS), you can then start to including some of the oGCD abilities.

Eventually it will be very easy, trust me.

[DSaint]

http://i.imgur.com/hJFTfLf.png

This image pretty much simplify drg rotation, putting it like a priority system. Hope it helps.
Just remember to do yours oGCD between GCD and use buffs.

Credits for user Ayvar ('Dragoon: A rotation reborn' thread)

[DxWings]

Two players already note the full rotation of DRGs.
For example: HT IDC Phle TTT
Think of IDC and TTT as purely separate combos in the rotation and use Phlebotomize as your bridge to connect the two. HT, treat it as your opener to the next set of combos.
So basically, what two others have posted:
HT IDC Phle TTT
HT TTT Phle IDC
HT TTT Phle TTT

And loop back.

[SpookyGhost]

1 button: HT / Phleb
3 button: IDC / TTT

Before every 3 button combo, do a 1 button move.

1 button move rotation: HT -> Phleb
3 button rotation: IDC -> TTT -> TTT

That's how I remember it rotation-wise, at least. If you're more of a priority guy: HT > IDC > Phleb > TTT.

DRG's main difficulty isn't actually the rotation, but maximizing your oGCD CDs/abilities. Could just be me, but I find MNK significantly easier to play because I don't have to keep an eye on 500 CDs/abilities at once. D;