Thread: Dragoon 6.2 Civil discussion thread

The 2 only things I can see changed about Dragoon is eye of the Dragon being reworked/removed and Spineshatter dive having its potency removed.
The job is amazing and Shadowbringer fixed the biggest issues.

It's among the most well designed job and it's been the case since a very long time, for multiple expansions in a row.

Don't touch what works, especially when it works really, really well.

As a DRG main, I'm concerned about these "huge sweeping changes" because the job does not need such. It should be treated as BLM, adding new QoL stuff that increases the skill ceiling and lowers the floor to make it appeal to both veterans and new players. I've seen a not-so-small amount of people arguing for this rework on the basis of how "old" the job feels. If BLM can stay fresh despite the fact that its core hasn't changed in several expansions, surely DRG can be so, too?

The job feels at its best in EW, it flows and it's smooth, but of course it can still be better, since it'd be good having more optimization options for veterans as well as being less punishing for newcomers.

Some of the points I'll make here were already mentioned in the different posts I've written in several threads such as the following, although I'll be adding or changing a few things here and there:

- https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...d-button-bloat
- https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5885718
- https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...48#post5956248
- https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ent-%286.11%29

Crit (anti)synergies

This problem would stop existing immediately if direct hit/crit chance buffs increased the damage of automatic (direct) crit attacks and behaved normally otherwise. Basically, if an attack has 100% chance to crit under the effect of, for example, Battle Litany (BL), it should deal 5% more damage. Numbers can always be adjusted if needed. With this, anti-synergies between jobs disappear since they all benefit from the buff in a relatively equal way.

See here for more details: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5880390.

Life Surge

It is often argued that LS should disappear because it gives nothing special to the DRG's toolkit. I think that despite its flaws, LS is one of the more interesting abilities of the job precisely because it's one of the few where you don't follow the "always press on cooldown" rule and due to its interaction with our GCDs. The issue with LS is that despite this, there's not much variation for it: you use it on a buffed Heaven's Thrust (HT) if possible, with Coerthan Torment (CoT) in AoE, and with a 5th positional GCD in 2-target scenarios or in single target very rarely.

If crits worked the way I explained above, 5th GCD positionals under BL and crit buffs would be more desirable to use LS on, since the extra 5% damage would give it an extra boost over an unbuffed HT. If LS could be used with other GCDs, it would be more appealing, but it's not a bad ability per se.

They could keep and/or they could remove it to give way to a new weaponskill in 7.0 with two charges a la Soul Slice/Sonic Break that dealt high damage and gave us a scale.

Wyrmwind Thrust

A great addition to our arsenal due to providing a new interaction between GCDs and oGCDs that is often overshadowed by the fact that we cannot store it for long. It's meant to be a flexible action, but it becomes a bit rigid when there's only a window of 5 GCDs to use it. We should have, at least, the ability to store three scales while keeping a cost of two to reduce the rigidity of the ability (skill floor) and allow it to be pooled to use under buffs (skill ceiling).

Buffs and buff windows

The core aspect of DRG in terms of its gameplay is the fact that it's an oGCD-focused job, and the only melee DPS to be this way. This means that the #1 rule for the job is to press everything exactly on cooldown, particularly Geirskogul (GSK) and High Jump (HJ), as otherwise our Life of the Dragon (LotD) windows start drifting out of our buffs.

One of the reasons this can be punishing is due to BL's duration. 15s is a tight window to fit all of our oGCDs, but it's mostly so because of the fact that we need to fit two Nastronds (NAS) under it, meaning that the first NAS must come out asap, reducing flexibility.

Allowing BL to last 20s for the DRG would help alleviate this problem. However, another perhaps-not-so-known problem is that the GSK action can't be queued when exiting LotD. Therefore, the action will inevitably drift slowly over time as we exit life windows, meaning that not even with a GCD speed of 2.5 will all our GSK be in the exact same place after some minutes into the fight. Hopefully, this will be addressed on its own if they fix the way actions are queued for everyone (see this post and thread https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5955253).

On another note, all offensive buffs should have a radius of 20y, in the same way that BRD's are.

As for Lance Charge (LC) and Dragon Sight (DS), the removal of the tether made the latter lose most of its flavor. Either make DS a personal 15-20% 60s cooldown buff that is an upgrade to the former, or fix it: it shouldn't disappear on the DRG if the partner dies, it should buff pets, macros with DS should queue like normal oGCDs, etc. The first solution is better as it combined with a 20s Litany would give us more room for weaving and error while also saving up a button.

Life of the Dragon

LotD's rigidity stems from the fact that we must use everything on exact cooldown to avoid drifting. I find this a good thing because it's one of the core aspects of the jobs that needs to be mastered: learning to plan or know when you can or cannot use your abilities, especially jumps, so that you never have to delay them.

Mirage Dive (MD) should go back to being its own button. While the change was done with good intentions, it's created more problems than solutions: it's become too rigid in its use, as it's very tight to double weave with HJ, which can often cause the loss of an eye and thus an entire LotD window. Dragonsong's Reprise has proven this much with those 32~ second phases.

While it's true that in hypothetical full uptime scenarios, it's safe to use GSK > HJ, there's plenty of situations or encounters in which we want to go the HJ > GSK route. One thing is clear to me, MD can never be removed because taking it away and making HJ give the eye directly would remove all flexibility in regards to choosing when to enter a LotD window.

The only way I could see this happening was if GSK's cooldown was removed, but it could only be used with two eyes, thus giving us a button to enter LotD at will. If going with this route, GSK should always put us into LotD when cast: right now GSK needs to damage the target in order to enter LotD. And even then, it's not so uncommon to be in a situation in which we have two eyes and a MD proc ready to use. This change would mean overcapping and thus less flexibility.

Finally, players often mention that they'd like to be able to use LotD in the opener. I don't mind not having the ability to do so, because if we were allowed to start fights with LotD, we'd be nerfed or have our potencies adjusted. Having full resources in an opener (see P3S after adds, P4-2S if not resetting after P4-1 or basically any dungeon or alliance raid boss) gives us an enormous amount of oGCD potency (2120 to be precise) under all buffs except for the 3rd NAS. We deal 33% more damage during even minute bursts, which greatly boosts this damage.

I like being a job that thrives with full resources in these special cases. It feels really good to be able to unleash everything in such an (re)opener, so making it happen all the time would take some flavor out of it for me and would undoubtedly require balancing, which would also reduce its relevance.

GCDs and oGCDs

DRG needs more interaction between oGCDs and GCDs, both within and between each category.

A prime candidate for this is Dragonfire Dive (DFD). The ability feels good to use aesthetically, but its potency is too low for a 120s cooldown. Make it hit harder and/or give us resources or enable a new damaging action in 7.0 like Ikishoten or Bunshin do.

Entering LotD could for example buff our GCDs in different ways and/or change their animations.

The 5th positional GCD could be upgraded in 7.0 to have two versions just like HT and Chaotic Spring (CS). Let's say that Wheeling Thrust (WT) upgrades to Drachenlance and Fang and Claw (FnC) to Gnash and Lash when they're in the 5th position and that these actions gave us some kind of resource. We could even choose which one to use and they'd still exist on their normal form when they're in 4th position.

Job identity and "streamlining"

It is often said that DRG feels "old" because of its "outdated" fixed 5-GCD string combo and that it should be similar to jobs like SAM or RPR. However, do we want yet another job to have a 1-2-3 spam of some kind? What is wrong with DRG keeping its unique combo string as long as it was made more interesting?

DRG can be very hectic during even burst windows, but is otherwise fine APM-wise in odd minute windows and between bursts. There's always something to do, but it's not overwhelming. The hectic part happens every 120s and is not different than that of other jobs like NIN, DRK or GNB. I see no issue with this. If DRG is that busy, then shouldn't all busy jobs be changed? Definitely not. There's a job for everyone and DRG is more than fine being the way it is.

Turning Spineshatter Dive (SSD) into a non-damaging gapcloser with a cooldown of 30s while keeping Elusive Jump (EJ) could be a solution, sure, but I'd rather have the former get updated visuals and role in 7.0 than turning it into a situational (yet very useful) ability. If they went with this route, we'd only have 3 jumps and so I'd then ask for a 4th one in 7.0.

My preference would be for us to get a brand new gapcloser on a 30s cooldown to complement EJ.

With the animation lock changes, EJ feels great now and does the job it's supposed to. It needs either a lower cooldown or a 2nd charge though to make it better.

DRG is one of the few jobs whose all abilities work for both ST and AoE scenarios, with the main difference being the weaponskill string employed.

For the sake of job identity, please do not turn DFD into the AoE HJ/SSD. Don't banish abilities to be used solely in dungeons. This will create real button bloat problems in the future that plague other jobs now and will become apparent if they add new buttons in 7.0.

We're also the only melee without a defensive. Since DRG centers around dragon powers, we should get some kind of "hardened scales" trait that reduces all the damage we take by, let's say, 5% and heals us automatically after falling below a specific threshold or allows us to increase the reduction to 10-15% with a button.

Finally, the positional dancing that the job has gives it another layer of complexity for veteran players and allows the job to not feel stale between bursts, so in my opinion they shouldn't be removed. If anything, they could be a bit more flexible: allow us to choose which one to use first after HT/CS.

Miscellaneous things

Raiden Thrust (RT) and Draconian Fury (DF) are only used once in the whole fight unless there's disconnects that last for a certain amount of time. Make True Thrust and Doom Spike permanently upgrade to RT and DF when the appropriate trait is learned and just have Draconian Fire give us a scale when these weaponskills are used, in a similar way to MNK's Leaden Fist. This does not impact the job in any negative way and allows us to always use the pretty-looking attacks while also indirectly affecting content like Bozja in a positive way: Lost Assassination/Slash wouldn't break Draconian Fire.

Allow the blue glow of Blood of the Dragon to be active any time we have one or two eyes just like DRK's Darkside or WAR's Beast Gauge. Provide an option to hide for those who'd rather not see it.

Levelling experience

As it happens with several ARR and HW jobs, DRG needs an overhaul in the way actions are learned.

Our AoE weaponskills should be learned earlier: Doom Spike should be learned around level 20, and Sonic Thrust before 50.

GSK should be learned at level 50, and we should be able to enter a 20s LotD at 60 while having 30s a one at 70. This way, our core mechanics are learned earlier and the job would feel very similar to its level 90 state as early as HW.

TL; DR

Tune and polish the existing kit. Find new ways of making the job interesting. Build the new actions around the current ones and the job's identity. All jobs should have the BLM treatment. This doesn't mean there can't be changes, but something should not be changed from the upside down unless there were some serious issues with a particular job, and DRG is not in that state. If something must be removed, do so at the end of an expansion or at the beginning of one in order to give something back or otherwise the jobs feel skeletal.

Originally Posted by Aco505

What is wrong with DRG keeping its unique combo string as long as it was made more interesting?

This is a good question. However, the longer a combo string, the fewer opportunities the kit has by which to add options within and around rotational play.


That's especially if we continue with the XIV take on combos (single actions across multiple buttons that merely punish fat-fingering rather than offering any choice between combo fork and finisher).

Ideally, imo, we'd have XIV reimagine what a combo ought to be --such that they can actually be combinations of real skills rather than just a skill each across n GCDs-- and have DRG have longer, though still modular, commitments across those more organic combos.

LotD's rigidity stems from the fact that we must use everything on exact cooldown to avoid drifting. I find this a good thing because it's one of the core aspects of the jobs that needs to be mastered: learning to plan or know when you can or cannot use your abilities, especially jumps, so that you never have to delay them.

That also is what arguably keeps DRG relatively brainless, though. Since everything can and should be used immediately now (apart from SSD effectively being a hit-twice 2-minute CD), in the same order each cycle, there's no value to be had from the bankability DRG houses (via things like Mirage Dive or Wyrmwind Thrust).

Wyrmind Thrust
A great addition to our arsenal due to providing a new interaction between GCDs and oGCDs that is often overshadowed by the fact that we cannot store it for long. It's meant to be a flexible action, but it becomes a bit rigid when there's only a window of 5 GCDs to use it.

Note also, though, that 5 GCDs is already 12.5 seconds pre-Haste (or, 11.9 after animation lock). Doubling that by adding an extra scale before cap would push that to ~24 seconds pre-Haste would deny Wyrmwind any urgency.

Make True Thrust and Doom Spike permanently upgrade to RT and DF when the appropriate trait is learned and just have Draconian Fire give us a scale when these weaponskills are used.

This would push our first Wyrmwind up by 3 to 5 GCDs (in AoE and ST, respectively), but I'd rather have each feel more an earned reward than merely replace the baseline.

Technically, you could also have only every other Doom Spike / True Thrust turn into Draconian Fury / Raiden Thrust and remove the scales (with every DF proc permitting Wyrmwind) and you'd:

1. Have DF/RT feel (faintly) more like a reward,
2. Have your first Wyrmwind become available 4 GCDs earlier, and
3. Give Wyrmwind 10 GCDs of banking, up from its current 5.

Allowing BL to last 20s for the DRG would help alleviate this problem. However, another perhaps-not-so-known problem is that the GSK action can't be queued when exiting LotD.

Given LotD's current behavior, I don't think we'd lose anything to have the a proccing Geirskogul itself turn into a Nostrand (complete with 10s CD), the first of which would trigger LotD (offering 2 more uses within the next 30 seconds), and increasing Nostrands' potency by a third of a Geirskogul per hit to make up for the skipped cast.

Mirage Dive can never be removed because taking it away and making HJ give the eye directly would remove all flexibility in regards to choosing when to enter a LotD window.

This doesn't quite make sense, though, seeing as we neither need nor want to make use of such flexibility. GSK should always be used before J/HJ anyways, and we want Jump's damage itself to fall under raid buffs, so there's actually no value in keeping those two effects separate.

That's not to say that we should consolidate them, ofc. Rather, we should be adding more damage windows such that DRG again has some actual use for its banking.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That also is what arguably keeps DRG relatively brainless, though. Since everything can and should be used immediately now (apart from SSD effectively being a hit-twice 2-minute CD), in the same order each cycle, there's no value to be had from the bankability DRG houses (via things like Mirage Dive or Wyrmwind Thrust).

You can have specific parts of the kit to be rigid and other parts of the kit to be more flexible. One doesn't take out the other. DRG is not the only job that needs to use specific attacks on hard CD so calling it brainless simply because there's a number of actions (perhaps there should be less) that are used on CD is misunderstanding the job imho. NIN is very similar to DRG in this sense, yet it's not considered brainless despite the fact that it has low positional thought, for instance.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This would push our first Wyrmwind up by 3 to 5 GCDs (in AoE and ST, respectively), but I'd rather have each feel more an earned reward than merely replace the baseline.

No, it wouldn't push anything. Draconian Fire is still granted by the 5th GCD positional, this is purely an aesthetic change because I hate the animations of True Thrust and Doom Spike and because they are used only once in a fight. They're "dying" actions after level 76 and 82 respectively and it makes no sense to keep them when you can just give them the Leaden Fist treatment. In the opener, for instance, you'd get your first scale after the FnC, and then the 2nd one after the following WT just like usual. In fact, with a 3rd scale you could make it so that the scale is given directly by the 5th instead of the RT/DF. While this'd put the WWT under buffs in the opener, it may reduce flexibility down the timeline to put them under buffs though so it's probably better for scales to be granted by RT/DF.

The only change is that you gain 50 potency for every True Thrust you'd have used, so basically once in the opener and then one per downtime longer than X seconds.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Technically, you could also have only every other Doom Spike / True Thrust turn into Draconian Fury / Raiden Thrust and remove the scales (with every DF proc permitting Wyrmwind) and you'd:

1. Have DF/RT feel (faintly) more like a reward,
2. Have your first Wyrmwind become available 4 GCDs earlier, and
3. Give Wyrmwind 10 GCDs of banking, up from its current 5.

You achieve the same thing by increasing the scale cap. If we want rewarding gameplay, then they should implement it in some way, but TT and DoS are old, outdated actions that should just be permanently replaced. We're already rewarded by our positionals due to how often they happen, but this doesn't mean other actions can't help with this. Being able to keep everything in strict CD is rewarding on its own as well.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Given LotD's current behavior, I don't think we'd lose anything to have the a proccing Geirskogul itself turn into a Nostrand (complete with 10s CD), the first of which would trigger LotD (offering 2 more uses within the next 30 seconds), and increasing Nostrands' potency by a third of a Geirskogul per hit to make up for the skipped cast.

This would save one oGCD, but other than that I don't see the benefit. My gripe with GSK is the fact that it can't be queued after Life, so LotD would have to either last 25s (but then it becomes more rigid to use your three NAS) or GSK to be a separate action, but then you wonder what's the point of it. I suppose that the best solution is to have GSK have no cooldown and an eye cost of two. However, MD must stay for increased flexibility or this change wouldn't really fix anything, but the opposite.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This doesn't quite make sense, though, seeing as we neither need nor want to make use of such flexibility. GSK should always be used before J/HJ anyways, and we want Jump's damage itself to fall under raid buffs, so there's actually no value in keeping those two effects separate.

That's not to say that we should consolidate them, ofc. Rather, we should be adding more damage windows such that DRG again has some actual use for its banking.

The fact that in full uptime scenarios you can just GSK > HJ and everything fits under buffs doesn't mean you always want to do it. There's plenty of encounters and situations in which you want to do HJ > GSK:

In P3S before adds, you do this to get an extra 1k potency on the boss with a double life before it leaves for the add phase.

In DSR, there's several phases in which you must do HJ asap or you'll lose an eye.

In P2S, you want to enter LotD before Kampeos and you switch the GSK/HJ order after the first arrows to make entering LotD more flexible for the rest of the fight due to the way buffs and HJ/GSK are unsynced from one another.

In dungeons, you want to do HJ > GSK so as to get as many eyes as possible and thus Life windows.

Even in full uptime scenarios, you may want to do HJ > GSK to get a double life at the end of the fight before the boss dies depending on the killtime.

Using HJ > GSK should never have any of them outside of buffs, it just means that one comes out before the other, and it's mostly done to get extra eyes and therefore LotD windows. Making it GSK > HJ by default will strip the job of a lot of flexibility, even if it wouldn't affect full uptime ST scenarios too much (but it still will).

Originally Posted by Aco505

This would save one oGCD, but other than that I don't see the benefit. My gripe with GSK is the fact that it can't be queued after Life.

That too would be fixed by the aforementioned suggestion. By having the lead LotD-entering Geirskogul convert to a LotD-entering Nostrand that, via LotD, allows up to 2 more uses of Nostrand in the next 30 seconds (10s ICD retained), you'd drop out of LotD upon using the second (previously third) Nostrand, rather than only after 30 seconds, which then again allows you to queue Geirskogul that 30s after entering LotD, since it wouldn't be locked behind an unusable Nostrand key.

And, as Nostrand would be increased by a third of Geirskogul's potency, the consolidation would cost no potency per minute.

The only actual change, QoL aside, would be that a clipped / mostly wasted LotD would be slightly more punishing, as you'd previously be able to Geir-Nos for 620 of 1340 from Geir-Nosx3 (46% of total), whereas now you'd get only 447 of that (33.3%). Of course, to even reach that level of waste, one would need to enter LotD right before 30 seconds of continuous downtime.

In dungeons, you want to do HJ > GSK so as to get as many eyes as possible and thus Life windows.

That has more to do with Sprints and gathers (having not enough mobs in range of GSK for it to be worthwhile) than LotD windows. The LotD windows are determined by Mirage Dive, not HJ itself, and shuffling either among HJ and GSK by 0.6 seconds isn't going to give you more 60-second windows.

There is, even there, no reason to hit a third Mirage Dive before entering LotD. GSK before MD remains the way. Bare GSK, Bare GSK, (LotD readied after 30s) GSK-LotD; repeat.

Jump and MD, meanwhile, contribute more than double GSK's ST potency, so if you're going to maintain an alignment at cost of a skill not falling under raid buffs that weren't pushed back raid-wide, it will generally be GSK. Buffer death aside, that shouldn't happen regardless, but the way the skills work incentivize the most straightforward, repetitive, unnuanced option possible in virtually every case.

We can argue whether that's better overall, for the purpose of smoothness over depth, but DRG is rather unvaried and uncompromising now compared to, say, Stormblood.

No, it wouldn't push anything.

Currently you get your first Wyrmwind after the 11th GCD, and then every 10 GCDs thereafter, overcapping per 5.

With the given suggestion, you'd get your first Wyrmwind after the 6th GCD, and then every 10 GCDs thereafter, overcapping only per 10 GCDs.

That would indeed push the first WWT up by 5 GCDs (or 3 in AoE). Given larger contexts, though, your solution would not be able to do the same.

Here's why we can't merely entirely replace True Thrust and Doom Spike with Raiden Thrust and Draconian Fury without removing Scale generation from either ability itself (which would then no longer push up the time it takes to generate your first WWT):

Raiden Thrust itself deals 490 ppgcd (+105 AoE ppgcd) due to Scale generation. If you do not lock that behind the combo's completion, you won't have a combo anymore. You'd instead just do a 440 ppgcd mini-combo of RT-DB-CT (-150 direct potency, recouped in just over 3 GCDs), or a 370-ppgcd combo of RT-DB, per 30 seconds (-240, recouped in 5 GCDs). The rest of the time, you'd just spam RT.

Draconian Fire likewise deals 235 ppgcd given Scale generation (plus a further 105 ppgcd to a primary target), up from the rotated combo's 168.3. Unless you remove Draconian Fire's key effect from Draconian Fire, you won't have an AoE combo anymore.

To have RT and DF replace TT and DS, you'd have to have them function as no more than either skill it replaces, which means Scale generation would have to be granted on the GCD following combo completion, via a separate effect (that is now less marked by UI and animation), in which case the opening GCD could not have scale generation anyways.

There are more clunky/roundabout solutions we could apply, such as nerfing the shit out of WWT directly or indirectly, but ultimately, WWT needs to be limited to production per 10 GCDs, which is exactly what the current RT/DF design provides while granting 40% overcharge.

We could potentially add yet another gauge (especially if LotD just gets shown as a buff), whereby every GCD grants 10 DRG-Ki and WWT spends 50, so that RT and DF truly function as no more than TT and DS, respectively, but... why?