The Melee DPS Paradigm and why DRG needs some attention

[Nominous]

The problem with slashing, as you said, is that it kept the same amount yet piercing got nerfed. Why does SAM have access to this "utility" which is more powerful on top of their disgusting numbers?

Follow me here. Slashing is inherently more balanced than Piercing. Though they shouldn't exist at all, as there's better ways to encourage 'synergy', and it has such a tight hold on balancing party comps.

Slashing would not be balanced if it was only NIN, or only SAM or only WAR that brought it. However, 3 sources of Slashing exist, and each Job that has access is required to put it up for themselves. If you're forced to provide it for yourself, and you are, the only beneficiaries are those who can't naturally put it up. PLD, and DRK. Therefore, Slashing, at it's best, is only benefiting Tank damage, which is naturally lower. It's also never attributed to any one source of Slashing in a party, unless there is only one source in the party. I could see them taking it away from SAM, but if they do that, I could also see them upping their damage even more to compensate for having literally 0 sources of any benefit in a party.

Piercing, by comparison, buffs DPS (as opposed to Tanks). And since the beneficiaries (MCH/BRD/RDM) can't provide it, isn't a part of their rotation, AND can be stacked for further benefit (as we saw in Creator Savage), it escalates quickly. Disembowel has the potential to lock meta in a way no other skill in the game does. With Disembowel alone, you could argue at least 2 slots, if not 3, become easy 'best' choices. Any buff to it, is a buff to at least 2 slots in your party, 3 if it's too powerful. If it was at 10% right now, and we rounded out MCH at 4000 damage, double ranged would be roughly 700-800 rDPS benefit, not counting DRG's other utility. Any buff to the physical ranged also buffs DRG. It's too much. Which is why it shouldn't exist at all, OR should be given to one or both physical ranged.

[Ralen]

Just a few points:

LoTD isn't a significant amount of damage, this is currently the problem.

Also, stuff.

This is the entire problem. I worry that even if there are "fixes" in 4.05 all it's going to be are potency increases and making eyes not fall off of the gauge. That is NOT going to fix the issue. Simply ensuring that it's guaranteed that after over a minute you can get to a buff that gives you this one stupidly-designed AoE - An AoE that is currently ONLY reliably up in party content against a SINGLE TARGET - is not going to make the class any more fun to play, or put it level with any of the other melee dps.

LotD either needs to be able to be refreshed throughout the fight once it's up like BotD, or provide serious bonuses to other abilities...

...or BotD itself needs to be amended to match with the fraudulent video they put out pre-release, and only require two eyes to transition. :P

[caponesavage]

The OP pretty much sums up a lot of the issues quite well. TBH I been playing DRG since 2.0 as a main and though I did level it to 70 once SB hit I have since stopped playing it entirely and have moved onto other DD classes.

[Jonnycbad]

Our utility is fine. We get Disembowel, Battle Litany, and Dragon Sight. Litany is one of the most powerful buffs in the game, Dragon Sight is still a free 5% and it's up pretty often. Disembowel still helps MCH and BRD but they're now less reliant on it. These make DRG a better utility DPS than Monk, which only has Brotherhood.

[Heatkrieg]

Litany is one of the most powerful buffs in the game, Dragon Sight is still a free 5% and it's up pretty often...

No, it is not. Litany is an RNG based buff, meaning that despite your crit chance going up by 15%, there's still a chance that you might not crit. Any DRG out here who has played DRG in HW could tell you the pain of using both Litany and Internal Release in your opener and still not being able to crit anything outside of the occasional auto attack or true thrust. Litany is also a 180 second cooldown, which compared to Chain Strategem, a SCH debuff that operates more or less the same, takes a minute longer to come off cooldown. Dragon Sight is also very weak for a utility. For 20 seconds you tether someone to you who you know WILL run out of the tether's range to get their positionals or avoid a mechanic. That ability needs a rework in the way it's both applied and the length of the tether.

Finally, disembowel, and I left this for last to address an issue that someone else brought up:

Follow me here. Slashing is inherently more balanced than Piercing. Though they shouldn't exist at all, as there's better ways to encourage 'synergy', and it has such a tight hold on balancing party comps.

Slashing would not be balanced if it was only NIN, or only SAM or only WAR that brought it. However, 3 sources of Slashing exist, and each Job that has access is required to put it up for themselves. If you're forced to provide it for yourself, and you are, the only beneficiaries are those who can't naturally put it up. PLD, and DRK. Therefore, Slashing, at it's best, is only benefiting Tank damage, which is naturally lower. It's also never attributed to any one source of Slashing in a party, unless there is only one source in the party. I could see them taking it away from SAM, but if they do that, I could also see them upping their damage even more to compensate for having literally 0 sources of any benefit in a party.

Piercing, by comparison, buffs DPS (as opposed to Tanks). And since the beneficiaries (MCH/BRD/RDM) can't provide it, isn't a part of their rotation, AND can be stacked for further benefit (as we saw in Creator Savage), it escalates quickly. Disembowel has the potential to lock meta in a way no other skill in the game does. With Disembowel alone, you could argue at least 2 slots, if not 3, become easy 'best' choices. Any buff to it, is a buff to at least 2 slots in your party, 3 if it's too powerful. If it was at 10% right now, and we rounded out MCH at 4000 damage, double ranged would be roughly 700-800 rDPS benefit, not counting DRG's other utility. Any buff to the physical ranged also buffs DRG. It's too much. Which is why it shouldn't exist at all, OR should be given to one or both physical ranged.

In principle I don't disagree with you, however, that 5% loss in damage butchered the damage potential of at least 3 classes in the game. Yes, the nerf in disembowel makes DRGs less of a must pick but right now, no BRD let alone MCH can cross the 3.5k barrier without being incredibly lucky on crit/direct hits. Meanwhile, RDMs and SMNs are prancing around the battlefield with their mobility, much more lenient rotations and higher damage potential. Now, don't get me wrong, MCHs and BRDs need to do less damage if they're to stick to the more utility = less DPS creed, otherwise we risk going back to Alexander Creator Savage days where BRD/MCH comps were meta but as it currently stands, MCHs and BRDs are fairly discouraged into going into raid environments with their nerfed damage potential which is to say nothing of how DRGs are fairing.

Let's for argument's sake say you took away the slashing debuff away from NIN and SAM. Do you think they'd be less desirable in a raid setting than they are now compared to DRG? No. SAM's damage potential provided you can actually play the class proficiently is so high, you'd have to be ill to pass on it. NIN's trick attack and aggro manipulation makes them superior to every single melee in the game. NINs are enablers of the tank DPS meta, which I understand that some people don't particularly like since it imposes certain expectations of tanks but it's a playstyle that I heavily endorse and support as do many of the mid-core and all of the semi-hardcore and hardcore players out there. Even MNK comes with better utility; people underestimate Mantra but it's effectively the reason why many world first groups in Gordias, Midas and Creator Savage picked up MNK instead of DRG for progression. With brotherhood, their utility got even better considering that it's not RNG-based like Litany and for every time we use Litany as DRGs, MNKs use Brotherhood twice.

[HoLoFoNo]

Our utility is fine. We get Disembowel, Battle Litany, and Dragon Sight. Litany is one of the most powerful buffs in the game, Dragon Sight is still a free 5% and it's up pretty often. Disembowel still helps MCH and BRD but they're now less reliant on it. These make DRG a better utility DPS than Monk, which only has Brotherhood.

This is a bit misinformed.


Litany is by nature, a RNG buff. It is also 15% Crit rate which means it is the stat itself not the %. So while it is true that it pretty much gets exponentially stronger as the expansion develops, at this point we are at the beginning of the expansion with the lowest max ilvl. Not only that but litany is a 3min CD which means it only gets used 2-3 times per fight, for 20 second uptime. This means it gets a total of 40 - 1 min uptime depending on how fast your group is. However I agree that litany is good, it's not amazing by any means especially not at this stage in the expansion and especially since crit was nerfed so most classes are stacking DHit now AND a lot of DPS lost internal release (and WAR).

Dragon Sight is just bad. Not only is its range bad, it will only contribute about 1% dps on ONE player in a fight. So even if that is a 5k samurai, they are only getting like 50 dps. It's more of a buff for the DRG to make up for the gimped BfB but it still doesn't equal what BfB used to and it has a worse timer.

Piercing is probably the most consistent of the buffs, however as it is now 5%, it isn't as useful as it once was. That isn't to say it isn't useful, but the 2 dps that benefit most from it are the 2 lowest dps. Now, BRD actually does pretty well in fights, better than DRG on average but BRD doesn't even benefit significantly as a large portion of their damage comes from dots. It also only buffs a small part of RDMs rotation.

All in all DRGs 3 'offensive utilites' is less consistent than trick attack, and DRG is like 200-300 dps weaker and cant manipulate agro which is especially important due to the current state of tanks.

[SunnyHirose]

Litany is by nature, a RNG buff. It is also 15% Crit rate which means it is the stat itself not the %.

Clarification: It is a +15% to the actual rate and not the stat (クリティカル発動率 in tooltip, stat is クリティカル. The English version did not change the name of the stat when the change was made in patch 3.0, but they must have changed their minds since then as it has changed from "Critical Hit Rate" to "Critical Hit" without notice in patch 4.0.). If it were to the stat, teams would've felt the where's-my-crits insult on most runs of Alexander; moreover, it would be reflected on your character sheet as with other stat-modifying buffs.

When Litany was added to DRG I mentally filed it under "not thrilling, but nice". Now it does less because crit damage is dialed back, BfB + DS does less than old BfB alone, and we are missing IR (as tiny as that was). I can easily ignore the expansion level reset effects because crits don't wow me that much; my concern is that one can hardly appreciate that these buffs are doing anything in the course of gameplay.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

My main issue with drg currently, is that were basically beta testign this job and gonna hope it gets better. Dragoon was never the best or worst dps in the game, but was always very solid, and right now, its basically a bard that picked up a spear and decided he wanted to be more helpful, rather than poke the enemies. This is not what I want,, and like OP, I've moved on to other jobs. If this isn't fixed come savage, were going to be burying dragoon in ishgard. It'll be like how heavensward was for paladin, a shit show where every patch is a buff, but not enough to change the job to actually be anything good...

[Riotpersona]

My main issue with drg currently, is that were basically beta testign this job and gonna hope it gets better. Dragoon was never the best or worst dps in the game, but was always very solid, and right now, its basically a bard that picked up a spear and decided he wanted to be more helpful, rather than poke the enemies. This is not what I want,, and like OP, I've moved on to other jobs. If this isn't fixed come savage, were going to be burying dragoon in ishgard. It'll be like how heavensward was for paladin, a shit show where every patch is a buff, but not enough to change the job to actually be anything good...

I think that is a little unfair to BRDs. They are in a significantly better state.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

I think that is a little unfair to BRDs. They are in a significantly better state.

Bard is in a better state because majority of its playstyle has changed. Its leauges better than bowmage, and not many people can disagree with that. My point still stands, it brings the literal most utility because it is THE utility job. TP/MP/Palisade/+% crit/foe req/troubadour/minne.