Given the choice Dragoon is the melee I’d play. But I’m currently playing Reaper. Why is that? Because it has the same gear, a lot looser of a rotation allowing positionals to be more loosely done and planned. It takes a lot less effort to do the same or more damage, and on top of that it also currently doesn’t have as many animation locks to work around with.

The problem isn’t “does it feel good to play or not” it’s “is the effort I’m putting in worth it?” And right now the answer, at least for me, is no. And unless they want dragoon to become the top DPS I highly doubt the current number of buttons will be it for a lot of people. Now if it gave more damage than reaper, but not as much as Samurai, then for me that would be worth the effort. However, on the topic of button bloat, the biggest problem isn’t “do we need the ability in our rotation currently” it’s “is this redundant?” And DRG right now has several redundant abilities in my eyes. Like I know you can hold Wyrmwind thrust for buffs but if it procs off Raiden Thrust why have a separate button?

I actually disagree with the Mirage Dive thing I’ve been seeing people parrot actually. Because in order for that to work they’d need to change it to a single dive activating Life of the Dragon. Otherwise Dragoon’s bursts become weird and stuff. If anything Nastrond should be buffed like 50 potency or something and you shouldn’t have to hit Geiskogul first to reduce the redundancies.

And in terms of redundancies, yes I think Spineshatter should be replaced by Dragonfire Dive at higher levels. I think these skills are redundant in that one doesn’t feel very strong for its animation and the other now locks us in place twice. I know that they’re reducing jump animation lock but regardless it would be nice to just have DFD be the one to reduce the number of buttons pressed to increase flexibility of the burst window and weaves for skills like Feint. Which, might I remind everyone, that’s one of the big reasons that you should actually be for reducing the amount of weaves Dragoon does right now. Dragoon needs more space to weave stuff like Feint to help the party and not just for DPS simplification.