I need a current and informed opinion on Dragoon

[JackFross]

Oh really, do tell me how someone 'didnt handle it well' when they get hit by random mechanics like titan gaol?

A4S has the absolute worst mechanic in relevant content that impacts Blood of the Dragon - Quarantine. I've heard people complain about losing Blood due to being randomly picked for Quarantine, but 90% of the skill of the class comes from managing Blood properly and maintaining it through mechanics.

Every fight in the game is scripted. If you're losing your Blood due to a "random" mechanic that always activates at that time on a random dps player, you mis-managed your resources. It's not a fault of the class, it's user error.

A great example of this goes back to what I referenced - Quarantine. The first Quarantine in A4S comes right after your second Full Thrust combo, sometimes before, sometimes after the subsequent FaC/WT hit, depending on the timing of the first stun. If you hit Geirskogul during those two combos (The FT combo, where you'd normally wanna hit it), you will absolutely lose Blood of the Dragon during Quarantine if you're picked. If you hold it until after the Quarantine people are chosen, not only will you maintain Blood, but you also still get 3 geirskoguls on Leg 1 regardless whether or not you are chosen for Quarantine. (Technically, if you ARE chosen, the third Geirskogul hits the Manipulator, but that's neither here nor there.)

So, while I hear your complaints about the class, they stem from a "I suck at this job therefore it sucks" mentality, rather than an objective view of the Job and its mechanics, and your opinion, therefore, is suspect as hell.


That said, on-topic!

I find Dragoon incredibly fun. The additional mechanics from 52-60 add a lot of dynamic elements to a class that was static and, frankly, kinda boring at the end of the 2.x cycle. The rotation seems strict, at first, but if you view it as 4 "chunks" (Heavy Thrust / Phlebotomize / Chaos Thrust Combo / Full Thrust Combo) and consider a priority system of HT>CT>P>FT, you'll find that it's pretty malleable depending on the fight.

Managing Blood makes fights fun and interesting for me in a way level 50 Dragoon never did, and I mained it back then, too!