Thread: Dragoon is a pretty complete Job. What could productively change in 6.20 (or beyond)?

Possible changes for 6.20 — What could still be productively adjusted on Dragoon?

———————

First of all — what aspects of Dragoon are currently working well?

I personally feel like Dragoon, while I would definitely not call it "perfect", is currently one of the most comfortable and clean Job designs in FFXIV. For the most part, it just... works.

For example, I can't personally say that I see any reason to modify any of these aspects of Dragoon:

• The core 10-GCD combo cycle. This feels distinct to Dragoon, and I think it's fun/cool.
• The core OGCD functionality, aesthetics, and design. These "just work", they're fun to press, they feel good.
• The core rotational loop of Build—Buff—Life—Dump. It's mostly-intuitive, accessible, and mostly feels good/fun to execute.

Any drastic adjustments to the fundamental ideas of Dragoon's current rotational flow seem unnecessary — although it could still be implemented more cleanly, or adjusted and "modernized" a bit.

This leads me to the opinion that Dragoon, in its current state, really only needs "Quality of Life" tweaks, and/or "polishing", "cleaning up rough edges", etc.

——————

Then... what current aspects of Dragoon could reasonably benefit from adjustment or improvement?

Dragon Sight

The details of why Dragon Sight has sunk to a miserable state at this point have been discussed ad-nauseum by now, so I'll skip "lancing a dead drake", so to speak.

But, basically, "Dragon Sight" in its current form not only remains a logistical nuisance to activate, but also now has little better identity than "I'm an Astrologian Card with a 2-minute cooldown and no graphic".

This poor thing... needs help. Or some polite euthanasia.

Blood for Blood / "Lance Charge" / Blood of the Dragon

This one might seem like a peculiar thing to even bring up, but honestly, I — and at least some other friends that I've talked to about this — feel like the casting animation and swirling blue aura of "Blood of the Dragon" was really an iconic part of Dragoon, stretching all the way back to Heavensward, and the "Blood" theming in the names also had good "lore resonance", so to speak.

Likewise, I think that "Lance Charge", albeit fitting for Lancers, is... very underwhelming as an action title for Dragoons.

There is no objective gameplay issue here, I just feel like it's undermining the "aesthetics" and "flavor" of the Job. And while they don't take top priority in design debates for practical reasons, these aspects of a Job's fantasy do matter for the player experience!

Movement

Dragoon has a bit of "That One Meme with The Cat Watching The Dog Be Hugged" going on with Melee Mobility in EW. Especially in spite of Dragoon usually being the FF franchise's "Super Jumpy Job" that is traditionally depicted as swooping all over the place like Batman.

Elusive Jump is cool, and of course, makes players feel Very Clever™ when used "creatively" to move around. But realistically, it's still awkward and unintutive, and not always an 'accessible' technique, either, due to all the camera-wobbling required. And frankly, it's also just weird, in a kinda-not-really-good way, that Dragoons have been conditioned to move themselves around like a panicking lobster.

And as for Spineshatter Dive... compared to freely-available tools like Monk "Thunderclap", Ninja "Shukuchi", and Reaper "Egress", or DPS-neutral short-CD tools like Samurai "Gyoten"... Dragoon's Potency-important Spineshatter Dive just does not function on-par — not even with charges, because in FFXIV players's minds, "charges" just means "Hold even more uses for burst windows?? Okay!!"

Life Surge

Due to Life Surge pressuring Dragoon to try to consume it with a very specific GCD, Life Surge has very little leeway for "when" it is activated.

Even with charges, this can lead to uncomfortable clashes between Life Surge and other actions that have strict cooldowns and must not be delayed.

The problem is that Life Surge's charges do not address the fact that Dragoon's very long combo cycle takes a long time to loop back around to a point that Life Surge wants to be used at.

So while Life Surge cooldown itself might not be "lost" by delaying it in favor of a more urgent OGCD, the "effectiveness" will still be drifted disappointingly. This can cause uncomfortable dilemmas during burst windows — sometimes, things can really get tangled, and so you skip Heavens Thrust and think "I'll use it on Fifth Hit", but then it clashes again...

I think that this is not a huge issue, and the times it clashes so badly is rare, but if we're talking about "cleaning up" Dragoon, I guess this is an out-standing aspect of awkwardness.

Spineshatter and Dragonfire Dives

Some players feel that having a large variety of Jumps makes Dragoon "Dragoon-like", and I can understand that perspective, but I'm not sure that I personally agree.

In a lot of FF games, Dragoon just has one universal Jump, and it still feels distinctly "Dragoon-like". So I feel like High Jump, and its very frequent usage, already captures that "Dragoon-like" quality cleanly enough on its own.

Therefore, I see Spineshatter Dive — especially with 2 charges — as mostly just key-clutter and weave-clutter. It no longer Stuns. It no longer generates Eyes. It just doesn't seem to have much personality anymore... it's like "High Jump's less popular cousin".

So I think that Dragoon could consolidate key space, and free up room for other actions — or even just weave-space for things like Feint — by viewing the current state of Spineshatter as being a disposable action.

Dragon Gauge / Life of the Dragon

Despite being so core to Dragoon's playstyle, I think that the Gauge and Life design is actually one of the most awkward current parts of Dragoon.

The reasons that I think this are:

• Dragon Gauge / Life feels weird, in that it's on a strange "timer" system that doesn't really sync up with how most Job Gauges function.

• The weird mix of a Timer, but also the 10s CD on Nastrond, leads to a strange and vaguely-unintuitive Gauge/Burst design.

• That one weird "hangnail" Nastrond that always ends up outside burst windows, which feels like the rotational equivalent of finding an unused firecracker in your garage, 1 week after the actual holiday event ended.

• The, honestly, clunky and awkard "stutter" portion of Life, where Geirskogul turns into Nastrond, but has a separate CD timer, so the entry of Life needs to be "double-tapped" Geirskogul+Nastrond, while the exit of Life ends up with a "Jump Scare" style Geirskogul that suddenly pops up after Nastrond disappears... and if you don't anticipate and weave it immediately, the entire cycle drifts problematically.

• The awkward way that Mirage Dive has to be manipulated in situations where Dragoon does not want to enter Life at the wrong time. This stems from Geirskogul's strict CD demanding immediate use every time it refreshes, while also holding the dual purpose of entering Life... all of which means that generating Eyes in the wrong order can push a Dragoon into a "no-win" corner rotationally and Potency-wise.

I don't personally feel that the core style of the Dragoon gameplay loop needs drastic changes, but I can still see how the current Life design feels somewhat inelegant, awkward, unclean, dated, etc.

So I think that Dragon Gauge / Life could be cleaned up and modernized a bit.

I think that this would also have the additional benefit of allowing Dragoon to have more room to grow in the future, since the current Life system seems to struggle to add any new or interesting details.