Buffs to dragoon

[KalinOrthos]

The only buff to Dragoon I want

is to finally give Dragoon a Freya glamour. Please.

[Shurrikhan]

Here are some, admittedly more ambitious, changes I'd like to see (spitball for now):

• Jump now allows for a degree of movement during its animation, allowing you to change where you land on the enemy, within the bounds of its hitbox, while moving in, and allowing you to rapidly change your return position when returning (landing further forward from, left of, right of, or back from your starting position). While in transit, your hitbox is shrunk to <an infinitesimally small size>.
• All dives likewise allow you to change where you land on the enemy, within the bounds of its hitbox, while moving in, and allow, during the time you spend stuck in place briefly, to influence in which direction and how far thereafter you will "spring" back from the target, making them feel more fluid and responsive.
  
  
• Blood of the Dragon is now a trait. The timer component of Blood of the Dragon itself has been removed, while the timing of Life of the Dragon is now more flexible. Blood of the Dragon now houses up to 5 charges, each generated by Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, Mirage Dive, Fang and Claw, Wheeling Thrust, Sonic Thrust, or Coerthan Tempest. Gierskogul no longer has a cooldown, but instead consumes 2 of these charges at a time to generate 10 seconds of Life of the Dragon each. There are no "Eyes", only Life of the Dragon duration, which can be raised as high as 40 seconds long. The button previously given to Blood of the Dragon is now called Dragonsoul, which causes you to enter Life of the Dragon and for its timer to start ticking down. You want to get off as many Nastronds (improved Geirskoguls) as possible during that duration, and thus should time it towards the end of combos and around your Dives, but the flexible duration should better allow you to rush or hold it.
  
  
• "Sharpened Fang and Claw" and "Enhanced Wheeling Thrust" traits are now just called "Fang and Claw" and "Wheeling Thrust" respectively. Both of these "Dragon" weaponskills no longer interrupt your combos, thus allowing you to string together, say, TT-Db-CT-TT-VT-WT-F&C-FT-F&C-WT. This allows for more timing control over DRG's burstier GCDs.
  
  
• Life Surge gets a second charge, or its cooldown is further reduced (not so much as to be used on an earlier Full Thrust in constant rotation, but enough to help in cases of desync).
  
  
• Piercing Talon buffed to 20 meters' range and 250 potency. At level 54, Dragoon gains the Dragonkiller trait, causing Piercing Talon to upgrade to Dragonkiller while any normal combo is in progress. Dragonkiller deals 380 potency, with the same range.

All this is obviously subject to tuning and simulation.

I specifically did not grant a Disembowel extension buff to AoE because I prefer having to meaningfully weave in single-target damage and effects, especially now that Gierskogul is already tied to GCDs*, and AoE already thereby holds a higher Geirskogul generation efficiency (1 per 3 GCDs, up from 1 per 5). (* Yes, that will have huge tuning consequences. Alternatively the rate may be slowed, e.g. to 3 charges per Geirskogul.)

I'd prefer a bit more gameplay refinement, but this direction (not necessarily this exact implementation) seems all that is necessary to reduce DRG's melee-downtime costs and timing issues to what is reasonable.

[Shurrikhan]

My post-sub forum privileges will soon run out, so I'll just (re)post my final 'wants' summary. I understand that some of it may be excessive. This is a bit spitball. I'm just assuming I'll be kicked off any minute, so /shrug.

"Reasonable" :

1. F&C and WT "combo" availability timers extended to 15 seconds.
2. BotD removed as a timer. There's just no need for it. It does nothing of any gameplay value now that its timer does not involve actionable resource.
3. Blood of the Dragon's button has been replaced by Dragonsoul, which causes you to enter Life of the Dragon. It is given at level 70 and has a 15-second cooldown.
4. Mirage Dive is again castable from Spineshatter Dive. However, Jump and Spineshatter each have their own activation; they will not replace the others "Mirage Dive Ready". Their buffs icons are now shown as a sort of Mirage-Dive-themed version of Jump and Spineshatter Dive, respectively.
5. Mirage Dive replaces Jump and Spineshatter Dive while each is on CD. A semi-transparent radial dial will appear over Mirage Dive, indicating the Mirage Dive Ready buff remaining more handily than the status bar alone would. As Jump will always be ready 15, and Spineshatter 45, further seconds thereafter, this is sufficient for tracking each in the interim.
6. You can now hold up to 3 Eyes. LotD, too, no longer acts as a timer; instead, it simply converts Geirskogul to Nastrond for as many casts as you have Eyes to consume. You cannot exit LotD except by having consumed all Eyes. Stardiver no longer requires that you be in LotD; it is merely activated for 30 seconds at potency based on how many Eyes were available upon that activation. It too makes use of the above semi-transparent radial timer and its remaining activation duration will appear on your status bar.
7. Nastrond has a charge capacity of 2. This allows you even further banking control.
8. Doom Spike, Sonic Thrust, and Coerthan Tempest range extended to 13 yalms.
9. Battle Litany range extended to 20 yalms.
10. Piercing Talon range extended to 20 yalms. Potency increased to 250. Upgrades to the 380*-potency Dragonkiller whenever a combo is in progress. (* Exact value TBD.)
11. Dragon Sight streamlined. With no target selected, it will now automatically the highest DPS-role Enmity within range -- highest Enmity if none.
12. Reduced animation locks for certain skills.
13. Mid-animation movement control added for Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, and Stardiver.

My Ideal Dragoon (Crazy-talk):

• General change: ground-targeting skills can now be queued. Upon GCD refresh or end of the prior animation lock, they will be cast automatically. Yes, in some cases this can faintly extend their maximum range (by up to 500 ms' worth of movement).
• General change: Everyone uses MP to some degree. Lucid Dreaming, as bloat, is gone and replaced but MP has only become more integral as a result. MP again varies in value, rather than holding a fixed 10000 MP. Moreover, its maximum can now be increased by certain job effects. Dragoon, for instance makes use of this due to its Jump skills consuming a % of total MP for further damage. Most jobs have something similar, thus making MP an eventual power concern.
  
  
• Open combos. Any first step of a combo can combo into any second step, and any second step into a third, and any third into Dragon Skills. They now just use four buttons collectively (1 for each combo series and then another for WT/F&C). Impulse Drive is back.
• [Tentative] Disembowel is again target-specific (its buff showing only to the Dragoon who applied it), and adds both flat and percentile damage, and its duration is reduced by a second with each weaponskill dealt against the target. This makes its use a bit more frequent, varied, and integral, now that it's no longer coupled to Chaos Thrust specifically.
• Fang & Claw and Wheeling Thrust effects now vary with the combo sequence that built them (including each other, after acquiring Lance Mastery). AoEs, for instance, will add an increasing linear AoE component to each strike of Fang & Claw or a self-centered AoE component to Wheeling Thrust. Doom-Disembowel-Chaos-Wheeling is now a conventional AoE starter, as it would spread.
  
  
• Jump, Spineshatter Dive, and Dragonfire Dive simplified. Jump literally now just sends you up into the air, causing you to evade most attacks. While "mid-jump", your weaponskills are replaced with Jump variants, costing varying amounts of %MP with a certain minimum MP cost. These each carry certain effects which can stack and synergize with those of normal rotation... or just get you where you need to go. Btw, Dragonfire Dive is, naturally, the jump variant of Chaos Thrust.
• Blood of the Dragon, now a mere trait, merely causes relative potency dealt to generate MP and extend your maximum MP, thus causing your Jump frequency and/or power to scale more iconically with uptime. Jump skills acquired after level 50 generally cost more that 100% of your base MP, thus requiring significant time spent in Blood of the Dragon. A later trait will improve the MP generation efficiency. This allows DRG to be very flexibly bursty.
• Geirskogul acts as an AoE magic/"Dragon" Disembowel, synergizing well with the bonus damage from BotD on your jump skills, while also increasing your Attack Speed by 7.5% for 12 seconds. This stacks, with stacks falling off individually. In short, it makes DRG even more flexibly bursty.
• Life of the Dragon, now likewise a trait, causes a portion of MP spent to be separately stored for later burst use, essentially dipping into that resource twice for free. You burst, blow a bunch of MP, burst again later, blow a bunch of shit, and by then you have enough stored to burst your unique aspects again for free or augment the third mini-burst to devastating effect. This, too, makes DRG even more flexibly bursty.
  
  
• Doom Spike, Sonic Thrust, and Coerthan Tempest no longer require targets, though they will snap their direction to one if the camera is not locked. Doom Spike's its damage-checking target detection has been slightly delayed but it now accelerates movement in the direction of attack during its animation if any enemies are detected within 15 yards before it, allowing the Dragoon the option of effectively sprinting through the enemies in front of them.
• Piercing Talon is the only GCD use of Jump that allows the DRG to stay airborne.
• [Tentative]The multi-strikes of certain skills (basically all but True Thrust and Full Thrust) now have synergy with Disembowel's flat potency-per-strike increase.
• Dragon Sight briefly duplicates your BotD mechanic in part and allows you to transfer its value to a target, regenerating their MP with your relative potency, while they in turn regenerate yours, based on proximity. In gameplay terms, the further you are from them, the more you keep for yourself and the less dependent you are on them, while the closer you are, assuming equal contribution, the greater the effect between the two of you. This allows a Dragoon to potentially aid burst healing, a tank's active mitigation, a Bard's AoE support or song flexibility, or a coDPS's burst, all via a simple, intuitive, granular resource.
  
  
• If TP were ever returned, the AoE skills would be given utility and initial-target potency enough to be worth using --sparingly-- in single-target combat.

[Renkei]

Thanks for the input was a good read. Lets keep the discourse up to this standard so we can get as many suggestions as we can It'll be great for the game and the community in the long run.

[MartaDemireux]

The way the lore is being built definitely seems like they're moving in the direction to give DRG a familiar that functions like DRK's shadow. Would love this, really. Have it pop out and do a breath attack after every combo finisher or during our jump animations as long as BotD is active or something.

[Kahnom]

All I want from Goon is increasing movement speed during red BotD.

[Jirah]

You want a buff? how about give them their AOE faster? spamming doom spike for 15+ levels is boring. Have Battle Litany and sonic thrust change postilions

[Renkei]

There's lots of things that are missing from the job outside of having quicker access to AoE. this is the fastest I've gotten bored of it out of every expansion, i wish they would of just kept the heavenward rotation and improved on it.

[Titancleaver]

There's lots of things that are missing from the job outside of having quicker access to AoE. this is the fastest I've gotten bored of it out of every expansion, i wish they would of just kept the heavenward rotation and improved on it.

One of us might be misremembering but my memory of DRG in HW is just a more clunky version of the current DRG with a few skills (Like new stardiver etc) missing. I really don't see it having changed that much. Don't get me wrong, the current one can absolutely be improved upon and I've seen several good suggestions in this thread. But are you sure you actually grew tired of Dragoon quickly because of how it's changed and you didn't just grow tired of Dragoon period?
Having played WoW side by side to this since 2.0, if there's something Square is generally good (which is not rly a high standard) at it's not completely reworking classes (and other systems) every expansions because there are some parts of them people dont enjoy.
I didn't play DRG in 2.0, only switch on HW release. So I don't rly know how from personal experience of DRG in 2.0 but I've heard the stories and I saw my fellas dying a lot haha. But from 3.0 and onwards I think they've mostly stayed true to what made it fun while mostly managing to add some QOL stuff and new cool abilities.

[Jandor]

I'm not sure if it's a dumb idea or not, but I kind of want a low potency GCD based jump skill. It's annoying when I have to move away from a boss while all my jumps are on cooldown, end up walking back into attack range like some kind of peasant.

Obviously said skill wouldn't break your combo, that would pretty much defeat the point of having it.