The Melee DPS Paradigm and why DRG needs some attention

[Heatkrieg]

Considering that Yoshi P and the development team have asked of for feedback on the current state of things before Deltascape Savage is launched, I figured I'd take the time to type out my thoughts in hopes - no matter how unlikely - that someone on the team would go through them and perhaps consider them while readjusting some of the balance in the game.

This isn't a thread calling for a nerf on any of the currently "overpowered" jobs in the game. It is however, calling for a buff for the overshadowed ones at the moment.

DRG:

As stated by Yoshi P in his post and noted by many players out there I am sure, there are many who are crying over the ridiculous damage that SAM brings outclassing all DPS in the game, putting the other melee in a precarious position particularly the weakest of them all, dragoons. The argument held by Yoshi states that DRG brings raid utility that compensates for its lack of damage compared to SAM and that in principle is a fair enough argument to make.In Heavensward, DRGs did almost as much damage as MNKs but brought Disembowel, and Battle Litany to the table making them a far more valuable pick than MNKs. In fact, Heavensward was when a rise in DRG players was noticed after being shunned for quite sometime during the ARR era where their positionals, animation locks, and subpar damage made them disfavored even though their disembowel buffed the damage of bards at the time. Even in Heavensward though, DRGs were plagued with quite a few issues. Many people complained about DRG's TP sustain in extended fights, particularly ones that required you AoE heavily like A2S and later A9S if your group's DPS was not high enough. There were also complaints about punishing it was for you to drop Blood of the Dragon (BotD) particularly when Geirskogul ate away from your BotD. Fortunately both issues have been addressed, although with the latter, I'm personally of the opinion that it hurt dragoons more than it helped them.

Putting Geirskogul on a 35 second counter that does not sap away from your BotD is good in theory but really weak in practice. Dragoons went from being able to theoretically squeeze in 9 Geirskoguls in a 3 minute window to only 5. What's worse though, is that with Lance Mastery and the reduced cooldown on BotD now, your BotD is practically sitting at 25-30 seconds for the entire fight and there's nothing you can do with it. For someone new to the class, this is all good and dandy but for someone like me who has played the class for years, it's jarring and borderline aggravating. I'm sure there will be people who will jump at me and say NINs get huton and MNKs get greased lightning that they don't get to expend in the form of damage, why should DRGs? The answer to that is simple, it's because it's part of their identity as a high risk high reward DPS and while I get that the development team is trying to change that to make the class more accessible to people, I feel like in the process of making it simpler to play, they made it unplayable in favor of the other classes in the game (Also monks can technically expend their greased lightning in the form of Tornado Kick but that's another discussion for a different time). The expendable resource you get in the form of Life of the Dragon (LotD) comes in the form of a buff that takes far too long to build up for it to be useful. In fact, on a fight like Susanoo EX with a group that knows what they're doing DPS-wise, you'll likely find yourself incapable of building up 4 eyes before the phase transition happens and the sword drops. Considering that LotD and Nastrond spam is a huge part of their DPS, being unable to use them in the same time frame that the other DPS take to build up their damage makes them lag significantly behind.

Then there's the so-called "utility". I feel like I stand in strong opposition to the development team and Yoshi P on this one. DRGs don't bring enough to justify their presence in a party over any other DPS. SAM brings huge damage, NIN brings trick attack, better damage, the slashing debuff, shadewalker and smokescreen (they're the real utility melee DPS), and MNK brings better damage, Brotherhood and Mantra. Meanwhile, Battle Litany is a 15% crit boost for the entire party that sits on a 3 minute cooldown and is active for only 20 seconds at a time. This means it has an effective down time of 160 seconds, which pales in comparison to chain strategem on SCH or trick attack or even brotherhood which many monks will tell you is somewhat underwhelming. Disembowel is now a 5% boost in piercing damage, down from the previous 10% it was in Heavensward. This is arguably the worst offender on the list. Not only does this effectively lower the damage of DRGs, it also hampers the damage of BRDs, MCHs and the RDM off global cooldowns. Because it's down to 5% though, many groups, mine included have decided to forsake the need for a BRD or MCH (particularly when the latter is a pile of hot garbage), and instead opt for a double caster (RDM/SMN), double melee (SAM/NIN) composition where the casters act as the mana batteries with their new role action Mana Shift and the melee provide TP if needed in the form of Goad. Meanwhile, the slashing debuff is still a 10% damage increase and while one can argue that disembowel only benefits a handful of classes (4 to be exact) compared to the slashing debuff that benefits all three tanks and two melees (so 5), it really isn't enough to warrant that nerf. This is particularly true when you consider just how far behind BRDs and MCHs are in terms of damage compared to the other DPS. And then there's Dragon Sight, which is possibly the most unfortunate ability in the game. Not because you can't use it solo but because of the fact that you lose its benefits if your tethered partner runs out of your range, which in the case of a mechanic occurring will almost certainly happen since neither of you want to get hit but still want to keep your up-time on the target. In theory, it sounded great; even I was excited about it but when put in practice, it's underwhelming. This coupled with the fact that it's a 10% boost in your damage that you once had in blood for blood but is now lost to the changes and sits on a 2 minute cooldown makes it far less useful than what I think it was originally intended to be.

Again, I get and wholly support the whole "more utility = less DPS" mentality but as it stands right now it's "average utility = lowest DPS". As it currently stands however, SAM wins the damage department with its lowest group utility and NIN wins the utility department with its highest group utility and excellent damage. DRGs are in that sorry state of not being able to DPS hard enough or provide enough utility to the group. Really at this point, the only point you'd ever want to bring a DRG in your party is when you want to boost someone's damage on any of the competitive log sites.

So how can all of this be fixed? There have been a number of ideas floating around. Some better than others naturally but instead of dictating the developers with a word for word solution, I feel like its more valuable to point out what needs to be fixed and let them choose the most appropriate way of fixing it. So to recap:

1- The build up to Life of the Dragon is way too long. 70 seconds to burst is just terrible for any DRG player.
2- The upkeep of Life of the Dragon is arguably the worst in the game. If for any reason you lose BotD with your eye stacks built up due to a fight transition, you're stuck with having to rebuild it all over again meaning another 70 seconds at the least to get back to where you started.
3- The weakened state of disembowel trivializes DRG, BRD and MCH damage (Not so much on RDM to be honest so I didn't include it here). The latter of which is in dire need of help and is something that I suspect will require some serious rework in the near future. To give you an understanding on how bad BRD and MCH damage can be with the weakened disembowel, ranged physical DPS can barely do more damage than tanks equipped with 270 STR accessories.

Most self-respecting DRGs I know, myself included, have made the transition to SAM because of how dull and weak the class has become. Don't get me wrong though, many of the changes to DRG were welcome. The 5 tiered combo makes it so that you don't clip your chaos thrust as badly as you did during the Heavensward days. However, I feel this is a classic case of where the bad outweighs the good, and DRGs become no longer viable in a party.

Feel free to agree/disagree with me on any of these points. Naturally, we can't all be of the same opinion here but the numbers on DRG performances, buffs and "raid utility" don't lie.