Exactly how hard is Dragoon?

[Imora]

Husband is again attempting to play DRG. I'm thinking of leveling it just to help him out. I've never played it but I'll likely get a grip on it before he does.

He's a terrible player. Has no concept of a rotation, hits buttons randomly, and really doesn't care to get it perfect. He's also got spacial awareness issues but I can work with that,btoo lol.

I just want to know what he's getting into. There isn't a class with less buttons available right now either. I peeked at the opener and it makes even my head hurt. I'm not great but I know the concept of a rotation and can for the most part follow one.

Help appreciated. He's dead set on this job.

[Mikey_R]

I would suggest not looking at a level 80 rotation if you are just getting started. Dragoon is a relatively simple job to level as everything just builds on what you already know, so it just comes down to incorporating the new things.

The main thing to get down is the GCD rotation. For level 50, you have 2 combos, True Thrust > Disembowel > Chaos Thrust and True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust. The idea is you want to have Disembowel up all the time, but you don't want to clip your Chaos Thrust early. You fill the gap with the Full Thrust combo. So, you have Chaos > Fullx3 repeat.

This changes once you hit 56/58. You need to have 'Blood of the Dragon' up to have access to Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust which combo off of Chaos Thrust and Full Thrust respectively. You combo then changed to only having 2 Full Thrust combos between each Chaos Thrust Combo.

The last change is at 64, where you can use Fangd and Claw after Wheeling Thrust and vice versa. At this point, you alternate the combos, so your full GCD rotation will be:

True Thrust > Disembowel > Chaos Thrust > Wheeling Thrust > Fang and Claw > True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust > Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust repeat

For oGCDs for the most part, just use them when they come off of cooldown. I would recommend saving Life Surge for Full Thrust, try and get Chaos Thrust into Lance Charge and, when you hit 70, only use Gierskogul to activate Life of the Dragon to have access to Nastrod, which you can get 3 on a LotD timer and remember to use Stardiver.

AoE combo is really simple, Doom Spike > Sonic Thrust > Coerthan Torment repeat. You can still build up and use LotD as well as it is very strong in AoE situations.

Since, by the sound of it, you are not going for harder content, I would not stress over doing the perfect rotation or using your oGCDs perfectly. The main thing to get right is your GCD combo as that is where the majority of your damage is going to come from. It is also worth noting that there is a benefit to hitting the positional for Wheeling Thrust / Fang and Claw at the end of your combos once you hit level 76 as it will give you access to Raiden Thrust, which just replaces True Thrust. If you get it, good, if you don't, then don't worry too much. Just continue as normal.

[Imora]

Excellent. Thank you.

I don't plan on investing heavy in endgame at the moment and my husband certainly won't. I just want to be able to help him out when he has troubles and guide him to better DPS. He doesn't read guides.

[Nafreyu]

Truthfully? I say this as a player of both games, but get him to play Necromancer in GW2. Full pet build. He could literally auto attack something to death.

I understand we all have strengths, weaknesses or limitations. But I would ask, for the sake of doing something together that's supposed to be a special bonding thing, to not go down the path of frustration where it's plain to see from your post while you love him, you're genuinely not looking forward to it.

He may be the greatest baker, for all I know. So not speaking negatively as a whole. But I would whole heartedly encourage him to try something else instead.

.... Or.... actually... maybe Bard. Why I like it, it's proc based. So long as he hits the glowing button, he'll do an approximation of damage. There are 3 buffs to maintain, that have a 30 second uptime each, but that's a future Imora problem. Don't even worry about it.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Has no concept of a rotation, hits buttons randomly, and really doesn't care to get it perfect.

Nothing is hard if you don't care.

[Coletergeist]

Warn him about jumping and locked animations.
Though I'm sure he's probably already aware of those issues DRG faces.

Even level 80; I had to rezz a dragoon 6x for one boss fight because of locked animations (jumps for the most part).

It's playing a 'timing game' when you play DRG, I think. I don't main that job, so I'm not the most helpful here. I just know as a healer main that they die often to that because I watch them like a hawk.

[Dracian]

DRG at 80 was easier than I expected. At first, it was a bit daunting because I paid for a level boost to check it out at higher levels, so I pretty much missed everything from 20-70. But once I got into Bozja and set up my crossbars it was surprisingly straightforward. The main combos are 5 abilities long, which is longer than most, but the benefit is that each button lights up so you know what is next, which makes it simple for newer players to follow along. The only part that actually requires some management is High Jump + Mirage Dive and Geirskogal to go into Life of the Dragon, but even then it's a very simple thing to keep track of. You basically need to use Mirage Dive 2x and then use Geirskogal to go into Life. If you use Geirskogal before Mirage dive you'll delay going into Life, which is actually preferable sometimes (but not required for casual content).

The good part of the job is that once you memorize the rotation, it stays pretty static throughout. There's almost no variation other than some downtime in a fight. But if someone can memorize the rotation they can just keep repeating it over and over without too many issues.

[Imora]

He won't play bard. Doesn't like ranged, thought DRG looks cool.

He wants to play the story but he's terrible at video games and has a self esteem issue preventing him from getting better at it, so I'm trying to do the footwork and figure it out so i can show him. He'll never be perfect at it, but if i can get him through the story i consider it a success. He also does *every* quest, so he's like 21 and has to do Sastasha still...

And it's not like i dislike playing with him, it's that I know someone is gonna rail into him for standing in stuff. He won't handle that well.

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[ty_taurus]

I recommend suggesting he swap to Samurai once reaching level 50. I'm not much of a melee player, but as I've been leveling all jobs and as I finish up melee, I find that Samurai is incredibly forgiving despite how powerful it is, not to mention it's also very easy to follow even when first unlocking the job and having to sort through all your abilities from 1-50 at once. It barely needs to worry about positionals at all and doesn't even have them until you unlock the kenki gauge. Things get a little busier once you get into the 60s and 70s.

On the flipside, Dragoon's combos are fairly straightforward, but they get a pretty large list of buffs and off global abilities that have all different durations that can very easily desych. Some refresh every 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, and 120 seconds. It's a much steeper learning curve in my opinion.

[Imora]

It's a much steeper learning curve in my opinion.

This is my concern, even for my own learning.

I don't even think it's possible here, but in other games if there's something that doesn't trigger the GCD, I'd macro it to another ability to auto fire it on CD. That's how much I dislike having to deal with them. I can't reach anything past 6 on my keyboard easily, and I can't use an MMO mouse. So I'm limited to about 12 hotkeys unless I figure something out.