Dragoon's Piercing Talon: Remove or Rework

[Archwizard]

Not at all. It's just a matter of how finely we want to balance its losses across various GCDs in rotation (effectively allowing it an addition 2-4 GCDs per DRG's 10). We have two options: (1) Additional Effect on Piercing Talon or conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller or (2) conditionally upgrading PT to Dragonkiller AND giving Dragonkiller an Additional Effect..

I'm not sure what this Dragonkiller you're mentioning is.

Additional Effect: Deals an additional X potency when Full Thrust, Chaos Thrust, or Coerthan Tempest are readied.

That's exactly my concern, though. If your timing on the combo is off when being pushed out of range -- for instance, you're on literally any other step out of the other 8 -- you lose out on the bonus.
I know I'm nitpicking the exact wording of an example, but as I said before, thanks to the branching combo system alone it complicates coding such an ability, let alone the practicality of multiple steps or having multiple abilities outside of the combo (F&C, WT).

By all means, I'd prefer that DRG's every opener was chargeable; that it could advance any of its combos into each other; could use its dragon skills, once unlocked, at any time within 10 seconds to allow them more unique effects and flexibility; that its Jump simply launched it skyward as a dodge and then augmented its next weaponskill; that Full Thrust could toss enemies skyward and Fang & Claw did a fine job of juggling them and Wheeling Thrust of smiting them; that BotD simply unlocked gravity manipulation for your movement to make you look and feel like a Dissidia-esque Dragoon and master of aerial juggling; so on and so forth... but this is just about either making PT worthwhile or getting rid of it. So long as Dragoon gets something for forced melee downtime comparable to the other melee, I'm cool with either one, honestly. And that doesn't even have to be a GCD skill. Heck, we could give CT some more surplus duration, turn Geirskogul into a GCD that doesn't break combos, perhaps move Life of the Dragon activation to Blood of the Dragon, and allow BotD's passive effects by default and that would probably be sufficient for DRG's melee downtime.

That's uh.

That's a whole rework. Bit high-brow for a thread like this.

But my point is, earlier you asked "Are there any integral effects we can add that would be cool and fun rather than merely intrusive and frustrating?" So far the effects you've suggested are purely adding damage to the skill based on serendipitous timing affected by the main rotation, rather than actually having any impact on the main rotation.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not sure what this Dragonkiller you're mentioning is.

It's literally in the quote above. It's a potency bonus for any readied combo. Rather than bloating a tooltip with X if A and Y if B, you just use the trait and then use a single Additional Effect. Now you can tune more finely.

That's exactly my concern, though. If your timing on the combo is off when being pushed out of range -- for instance, you're on literally any other step out of the other 8 -- you lose out on the bonus.

Losing F&C+WT has virtually no impact on your ppGCD (especially if you can replace with a spare FT combo or a CT on a new unit), simply because there are few steps left in the combo. Dropping on FT or CT are far, far worse. If we provided a single base bonus for having any combo readied, atop balancing the base potency for level 50 play, dropping before either dragon skill or after True Thrust (2 of 4 GCDs per combo across 58-63 play) would be fine. After gaining Lance Mastery, however, dropping on the 3rd or 5th GCD per combo would each be highly punishing, while the 2nd is made less relatively punishing but still not great. This can be fixed by buffing the effect specifically for the 3rd step and reducing the Lance Mastery bonus onto the second dragon weaponskill slightly (buffing potencies elsewhere). At that point you are punished most on the 2nd and 5th GCDs, less on the 1st, 3rd, and 4th, per combo, but all are within reason. This would leave Dragoon's ranged option as the most flexible and among the most integral, capable of creating different lengths of rotational strings by which to control combo progress at known times of forced melee-downtime.

That's a whole rework. Bit high-brow for a thread like this.

I already mentioned as much.

... but this is just about either making PT worthwhile or getting rid of it.

I said that specifically to point out that while I could certainly throw out ideas for how I think Dragoon's rotation could be more enjoyable, that's not the point of the thread. I gave you a functional Piercing Talon -- hell, one that does allow for a more interesting rotation, coincidentally in giving it pacing control.

If you want a Piercing Talon that somehow suddenly reinvigorates the job in and of itself, despite the thread asking only for a functional one... perhaps you could put forth a suggestion greater than just a chance of free damage or something that desyncs your CDs?