Dragoon's Piercing Talon: Remove or Rework

[Kabooa]

What if it took the place of a Combo step instead?

So it could be used at any step of the combo but at a relative potency penalty. (Like, -30%)

The animation is just too good to not make use of.

[Shurrikhan]

What if it took the place of a Combo step instead?

So it could be used at any step of the combo but at a relative potency penalty. (Like, -30%)

The animation is just too good to not make use of.

While undoubtedly simpler that way, I guess I just prefer to avoid this because I feel like working around melee downtime should be part of every melee's kit and core gameplay. I'd therefore prefer to give DRG more control by which to adjust for and around melee downtime rather than simply remove all necessity for such.

Oddly enough, though, this is exactly what I wanted for Jump back in the day. Rather than making it look weirdly fast, I wanted Jump to be an oGCD that would launch you up into the air (avoiding physical non-raidwide damage and forcing enemies targeting you to retarget) while your next GCD would have a unique Dive animation, dealing bonus damage/effect as you land... Doom Spike Jump was effectively Star-diver before there was a Star-diver, though at lower potency. oGCDs were usable even while within the air, and Power Surge was your Dragonfire Dive equivalent. Disembowel was Spineshatter. [/random-reminiscence]

[Kabooa]

While undoubtedly simpler that way, I guess I just prefer to avoid this because I feel like working around melee downtime should be part of every melee's kit and core gameplay. I'd therefore prefer to give DRG more control by which to adjust for and around melee downtime rather than simply remove all necessity for such.

Dragoon kind of suffers from "Extremely coherent design philosophy" syndrome that Paladins and Black Mages do. Piercing Talon just has no place currently, even as an uptime tool as the uptime counter-intuitively hurts your longterm uptime, and tooling a unique keypoint to it would probably require more indepth kit changes.

Like, I personally loved the Geirskogul / BotD resource dynamic in Heavensward. In the same way that Stormblood TK Monk had clear and crunchy feedback for progressively doing it better, maximizing Gierskogul was that.

My first thought was giving Piercing Talon -that- back. Non-combo breaking GCD that drains BOTD on use but has a suitably strong GCD. Not something you can use all the time but at the same time, BOTD maintenance is pretty...non-existent.

My second thought was also non-combo breaker, and have it be the middle action with a Charge action effect in a non-conventional combo. Backflip (Get out), Charged Piercing Talon (No combo break, higher potency, resets and boosts Spine Shatter), Spineshatter back in.

My third was make it emphasize Dragoon Mobility by making it a GCD gap closer, but someone already pointed out that having a kiting tool was useful.

Like, I dunno. I gotta play it more.

[Shurrikhan]

Dragoon kind of suffers from "Extremely coherent design philosophy" syndrome that Paladins and Black Mages do. Piercing Talon just has no place currently, even as an uptime tool as the uptime counter-intuitively hurts your longterm uptime, and tooling a unique keypoint to it would probably require more indepth kit changes.

I don't know if that's really a matter of "coherent" so much as "inflexible". A single separable DRG action (in terms of decisions and what could without loss be macro'ed if not for the game preventing macros from queuing), in 95% of single-target situations, lasts 10 GCDs, and has zero reason for variance to anything else. The remainder of actions are just traps that will, generally, only ever hurt those with physical disabilities.

Like, I personally loved the Geirskogul / BotD resource dynamic in Heavensward. In the same way that Stormblood TK Monk had clear and crunchy feedback for progressively doing it better, maximizing Gierskogul was that.

Same. Completely. I'd have liked for Dragoon's HW mechanic to have more control and not be locked in so late nor so punishing to drop, but damn it felt simple-yet-lowkey-genius. Same with late-SB TK Monk, even as bad as it made the high-SkS builds I love.

My first thought was giving Piercing Talon -that- back. Non-combo breaking GCD that drains BOTD on use but has a suitably strong GCD.

Enticing, though I'm not sure how interesting that would necessarily be. If the cost wasn't outright negligible, for instance, that would equally describe Reprise, which the community has mostly reacted to with various shades of "...okay?", "meh", and "ick" even after all its buffs.

Backflip (Get out), Charged Piercing Talon (No combo break, higher potency, resets and boosts Spine Shatter), Spineshatter back in.

This is the suggestion I've seen most -- an enhanced Enhanced Enpi if you will. My two issues with it are that unlike Yaten, (1) Elusive has a decently long cooldown and (2) seems slower to actually move your hitbox out of danger, seeming instead to absorb every AoE between its origin and destination. I'm not sure I want to entrust my downtime tool entirely to a 30s CD.

My third was make it emphasize Dragoon Mobility by making it a GCD gap closer, but someone already pointed out that having a kiting tool was useful.

Given how little enmity or damage it deals anyways, I'm not sure it's providing much of a kiting tool as is. Though... and uhh huge spitball warning here... thinking about the combination of the two is pretty interesting. For instance, what if we... turned it into a draconic Harpoon. You could, in the course of one dynamic button, create a gap-closer, a pull-in, a pull-with, and a taunt. Impale an enemy from up close a la 1.x Full Thrust ("Sparta-dive") animation, then dash off, pulling the enemy with you if they can be moved or leave a trail of draconic essence that you can use to then rush to the target for damage based on time spent charging (literally just downtime, but with a neat VFX aura and slight idle animation adjustments to make it look real deliberate).

That said, I could as easily imagine Doom Thrust being given a charge-up function to enhance its range and use it as a enemy-crosser (closing the gap and then getting up to the far edge of its hitbox with remaining range, with its pathing blocked by any AoE zones, hidden or not, persistent or not)...