On the topic of DRG being busy and button bloat.

[LauraAdalena]

My last one was kinda long, kinda drained me.

Edit: “I’ll keep it short” *goes longer*

All jumps are the same mechanically by the definition you propose, but they serve different purposes. The issue with DFD is that it's weak in its purpose, which is to be a 120s cooldown that adds strength to 2-min windows. Spineshatter Dive is like DRK's Shadowbringer: an oGCD with charges that you try to fit within as many buffs as possible, but without overcapping.

Then by that regard, why not just consolidate the two and give us room to slap a feint in? That way we get the charge of one and the strength, animation, and name, of another? It saves buttons (esp for controller players), and we already have a jump that does strengthen any time that Life is up. Also no, Jump doesn’t displace you and returns you to your original position and unlocks Mirage dive. It feels like you’re just being pedantic at this point because you just like the way the class plays. Which is fine, but you have to understand that just because something exists doesn’t mean it serves a purpose that actually adds to the job’s identity.



STD is tied to our gauge, happens once every minute, and is meant to be our hardest-hitting oGCD. DFD is a 120s cooldown meant to strengthen our 2-min windows. They are not the same even if they both do cleave damage, which is mostly relevant in dungeons.

How is it a tangent? GSK and NAS are both line attacks and your argument was pointing to the direction that SPD and DFD are the same, which they are not, so this is why I provided the GSK/NAS example. They are not meant to have the same role. You cannot unlink GSK from starting Life right now because it'd become a dead ability if so and because you'd lose casts of it if Life started directly after achieving two eyes, unless you made NAS have its own button or we had a button that allows us to start Life, but then... we run into button bloat issues.

It absolutely would not be a dead ability. There are a few situations where you need to his GSK to get a double LOTD phase for a burst which is why I don’t want the mirage dive change I see people tout. I just think having to hit one less button in the opener just hitting the same button twice during a weave could be fixed is all.

In regards to role actions, they can still be weaved with jumps right now only by those with low ping, and by hopefully most people in two days, so this won't be an issue anymore.

Until Tuesday we can’t say. As for the “low ping” I’ll just say that adds to my point of it being clunky and bad design.

Still, if we go with the argument that a job being more complex should output more damage with more effort, where's the problem? It may be easier for RPR to deal damage compared to DRG, but at optimal or higher levels of play, DRG deals more damage in general. I personally don't think a job being "easy" or "hard" should automatically guarantee higher or lower DPS, but from a design standpoint, it makes sense.

Not all jobs must be the same, and DRG's complexity is just explained by "pressing everything on CD", which is a simple statement that is not so simple in practice, I agree. Nonetheless, this is balanced by the fact that our GCD string is fixed and doesn't require a lot of thinking on our part.

I’d argue that most of RPR’s strict too, but in a different way. In an uptime way. But that’s beside the point. When it comes to difficulty it’s almost unanimously agreed that RPR’s rotation being loose AND tied to the GCD AND only having a handful of GCD skills with CS’s/tied to the gauge is exactly why it’s not hard.

I will admit I got a few things wrong there. Typing at work during a break didn’t allow me to do research because I was unable to notice that the job I was claiming was the weaker one was stronger. I still think Reaper’s ease-of-use is exactly why it will get more attention but I hold it. I also realize that my lack of playing DRG in a hot second due to being enamored with SAM suddenly (wow that timing was bad) shot me in the foot. It must have changed since I last played it.

It'd be different, because we'd need two more GCDs for our DoT and GCD rotation to be the same number (30 in this case). You need a GCD speed of 2.4 for the DoT to be reapplied instantly right now after it expires, but such GCD speed is detrimental to us as it forces drifts, particularly of HJ and GSK. CS applies its initial damage in about 0.5s and the DoT after another 0.5s, so you will never be in a situation in which it has 4-5 seconds left, unless you are in Delubrum Reginae Savage with full haste gear.

You at least agree on the GCD but but… what do you mean you’d need 2 extra GCDs? I’m not saying to just add 2 seconds and not adjust potency I’m just saying extend the dot to make it easier to apply and feel more satisfying. I can’t be the only one who finds it unsatisfying to let something drop and apply it with a gap in-between.

When did I say that jobs cannot be compared? While I get the comparison to RPR due to both jobs having a slow GCD and other factors, melees should be compared as a whole because of the role they share (melee DPS), not the gear. All this, though, taking into account the fact that RPR is GCD-focused while DRG is the opposite.

You said something of the sort that made it sound like that from my interpretation. If that’s not how you meant it I am sorry. However, let’s address the elephant in this statement. The “slow GCD” comment. I just want to point out that except for Monk, SAM and Ninja don’t like SKS too much so they barely count as “fast” because technically they don’t want SKS (I speak more for SAM than NIN. Point is that I’d say they’re still slow GCD but NIN with an asterisk because of Mudras.) the reason they can be considered the same niche isn’t just armor like I keep saying. It’s a melee DPS that’s got unique movement animations with locks that are not dependent on cursor or enemy location. And while you may disagree, they both have a heavy emphasis on the GCD (RPR keeping it going to make sure you don’t lose an ounce of gauge, RPR because of the endless combo.) They both are slightly tankier than the other melees so don’t have damage reduction skills. And on top of all of that both have a party damage buff that’s often popped very early. (Both for different reasons). You have to keep in mind when I say their roles are the most similar I mostly mean because of armor and minor details because the melees are all extremely distinct and it is one of the best roles, IMO, because of that.

[Iustitia-sama]

My only question is why are you going into a double life phase, in EW dragoon no longer needs to do that, just delay every time.

[Aco505]

To me Dragoon's sat in a similar space as Black Mage where they hit their core flow in Heavensward/Stormblood and have gotten QoL and downtime fillers to make that flow easier or shore up weak points. Their remark on Black Mage was "Job's basically perfect, no changes," so why's Dragoon being looked at? I've never seen it as a contested job in the ways many others are and it was especially odd to hear it mentioned alongside AST which is maybe the most contested.

I don't think DRG requires any fundamental design changes and can stay its course of refining the current build it has, that it is and has been in a comfortable place for a long time and it's concerning that they think it requires a rework without notable feedback urging one.

Yes, DRG is a very smooth job that only requires quality of life improvements and some tuning. These huge changes for 6.2 are concerning because they can easily break the job's identity, and a rework should be more suited for 7.0 than in the middle of the expansion.

DRG is all about oGCDs mechanically and jumps and dragon abilities (GSK, NAS, MD, WWT...) thematically. Removing or "streamlining" what a well-rounded job such as this one has to offer will likely strip it of its uniqueness.

My only question is why are you going into a double life phase, in EW dragoon no longer needs to do that, just delay every time.

While double life phases are less common, they are a tool available in our kit that can be used in some scenarios. If the boss will die before the next burst comes or if it phases out but we are able to get an extra eye before this happens, then we need to do a double life.

This is also why Mirage Dive cannot be removed, as it provides us with the flexibility to delay or enter life at will, even if in full uptime dummy fights we always delay life, this won't be the case in plenty of other encounters or scenarios.

We can find an example in P2S, where it is customary to switch the order of HJ and GSK after the first arrows in order to enter life just before Kampeos and put the two NAS at the end of the life window under buffs, to then keep delaying life by using MD after GSK.

Or in dungeons, where it's preferrable to use HJ first and as soon as possible to get as many eyes (and MD out) as possible before a pack of mobs dies.