Why in the world did they change Jump > Mirage Dive?

[Aco505]

I have the feeling that Mirage Dive will disappear in 7.0 so that Jump (itself) may trigger Nastrond

Many think that MD will disappear and HJ will give the eye directly.

This causes issues with Life though. In order for it to work, Jump and HJ would need to have 2 charges so that you can control when to get eyes and when to enter, and GSK would have to have no cooldown but be only activated when you get 2 eyes.

However, this would allow us to have a LotD in the opener, which has its good and not so good sides: you can have your full kit in the opener, but re-openers or openers with 2 eyes become less relevant. DRG gains a ton by starting a fight with full resources, and we'd have to be nerfed to compensate that if we could start fights with life. In a sense, it'd make us less unique, even if it "sucks" to have a weak opener.

Also, with this idea GSK's purpose would be just to enter LotD, which would force potency adjustments since it won't be used on cooldown anymore.

There's also the case about buffs. If Battle Litany still lasts 15s, it becomes hard to get two NAS under it with this process because, if my calculation is correct, you get your 2nd eye right after you use buffs in every burst window. Meaning that you'd always kind of want to do HJ > GSK in those so that the next GCD is NAS directly, whereas now the first NAS tends to be used on the GCD that comes after BL is pressed. They could easily fix it by making BL last 20s (which in turn makes bursts less strict).

Even so, having this system could still cause issues in specific encounters because changing eye management can drastically modify how the job works. We'll see what we get in the dreaded 7.0 rework I suppose, but I'm not too sure how they'll manage to deal with eyes if they remove MD's function to grant them.

[MellowMink]

Supposedly this was because of “player feedback”; the developers won’t cite which specific feedback or include any general data to back up that broad reason, but that’s their claim.

[RyuuZero]

well again.. I had Jump > Mirage Dive in a macro years before made that change official and I disliked how they did it, which is why I was happy that I still could use independently because I had the Skill on my Hotbar before the change xD"

[Tlamila]

Yeah it was a problem for double-weaving. And now AST has the same problem with Minor Arcana, so it's beyond me why they made this change for AST after seeing the same change was a problem on DRG and reverted it.

[ThorneDynasty]

"But this one part in DSR where DRG is still one of the strongest DPS to bing you might miss a single jump in a buff window because of the timing! So it's totally absolutely unacceptable you have to be conscious of what you can weave and when, for a job that has it's identity built around animation locking".

Seriously, you don't ever have to double weave jump+mirage. The job is already about being conscious about weave-clipping with certain skills, asking you not to mindlessly spam the same one in a row isn't some huge DPS design faux pas.

[Aco505]

"But this one part in DSR where DRG is still one of the strongest DPS to bing you might miss a single jump in a buff window because of the timing! So it's totally absolutely unacceptable you have to be conscious of what you can weave and when, for a job that has it's identity built around animation locking".

Seriously, you don't ever have to double weave jump+mirage. The job is already about being conscious about weave-clipping with certain skills, asking you not to mindlessly spam the same one in a row isn't some huge DPS design faux pas.

It's okay if it doesn't affect you, but returning MD as it was before brings flexibility. Considering DRG is one of the most strict jobs, that's good.

Plus it's not about losing a HJ under buffs, it's about gaining as many eyes as possible, which is huge for the job. This change makes it easier for everyone to allow HJ + MD to be weaved together whenever desirable, which is a situation that can happen more than you may think, and could be very hard before unless your ping was almost perfect.

The DSR example is just one of many, but let's not lose sight of the fact that more flexibility allows for higher skill ceiling without harming the floor: a win-win situation.

[ThorneDynasty]

It's okay if it doesn't affect you, but returning MD as it was before brings flexibility. Considering DRG is one of the most strict jobs, that's good.

You speak like slotting it in the same window as jump was some amazing trick. It was not, it's basically arbitrary how soon you use it as long as it is in a buff window. Any real flexibility comes precisely from being able to hold it for so long.

Plus it's not about losing a HJ under buffs, it's about gaining as many eyes as possible, which is huge for the job. This change makes it easier for everyone to allow HJ + MD to be weaved together whenever desirable, which is a situation that can happen more than you may think, and could be very hard before unless your ping was almost perfect.

How many eyes you accumulate? What do you mean? There's no drift with mirage dive, it's a proc. And what are these situations exactly, where it isn't simply a skill issue?

The DSR example is just one of many, but let's not lose sight of the fact that more flexibility allows for higher skill ceiling without harming the floor: a win-win situation.

Please, do point me where in the statistics there's half a blip in DRG viability when they patched in the mirage delay.

And no, being able to freestyle weaves without loss clearly does lower the ceiling. There's nothing to learn there. Taking a tiny loss because you slightly clip GCDs does not raise the floor though - that level of optimization has no impact at all to clearing normal content. It's not the biggest deal in the kit either way, but let's not pretend making oGCD slotting completely arbitrary isn't a form of dumbing down in the scheme of things. I just hope they don't now axe something more important for sake of button bloat, because apparently swapping around a couple weaves different from how they were used to was too hard for people.

[Aco505]

You speak like slotting it in the same window as jump was some amazing trick. It was not, it's basically arbitrary how soon you use it as long as it is in a buff window. Any real flexibility comes precisely from being able to hold it for so long.

No, the flexibility comes from the ability to double weave HJ + MD when you need to do a double life or when you start an encounter/new phase with 1 eye. The case of DSR is a bit different, it's done so that you can get a 2nd eye by the end of a phase that lasts around 32 seconds. With the 1s recast, this was extremely tight to get if your ping wasn't low.

In this case you often lose the GSK, but that loss is manageable vs losing an eye, and thus having to reopen the next phase with 1 eye, which is going force a HJ + MD double weave regardless, and will delay the burst, thus not allowing you to get yet another 2nd HJ before the boss leaves if that phase's duration is also around 30+ seconds.

This creates a chain reaction in which you will always be delayed or drifted and it may or may not be fixed by downtime (since your CDs are still ticking).

How many eyes you accumulate? What do you mean? There's no drift with mirage dive, it's a proc. And what are these situations exactly, where it isn't simply a skill issue?

Sometimes 1s is enough to lose a use of HJ and thus an eye.

Another example can be found in the newest extreme trial. You must use HJ at least 1 GCD earlier than normal and not drift it by more than 1s or you'll end up drifting it for around 12s or more due to boss phasing, thus making the next parts annoying to deal with since you can get HJ back when you have to move away, or simply 'cuz having such a big difference between HJ and GSK can be problematic in order to keep life aligned with buffs. Again, a chain reaction that can't be fixed in this case because there's no more downtime and that can easily drift oGCDs out of buffs and/or make you lose a whole life window in the fight, which is catastrophic: 1700 oGCD potency not counting buffs.

Please, do point me where in the statistics there's half a blip in DRG viability when they patched in the mirage delay.

I can return you the question. When have I said anything about the job's viability? People have not started playing DRG en masse just because it got HJ + MD merged. Let's be clear, it's one of the jobs with the lowest amount of actions having to be bound in the hotbar, and HJ and MD have been separated for all of their history except for 3 months.

And no, being able to freestyle weaves without loss clearly does lower the ceiling. There's nothing to learn there. Taking a tiny loss because you slightly clip GCDs does not raise the floor though - that level of optimization has no impact at all to clearing normal content. It's not the biggest deal in the kit either way, but let's not pretend making oGCD slotting completely arbitrary isn't a form of dumbing down in the scheme of things. I just hope they don't now axe something more important for sake of button bloat, because apparently swapping around a couple weaves different from how they were used to was too hard for people.

Missing a potential eye that you could get due to clipping is not tiny loss, it's huge. Clipping in general can lead to huge losses, and it shouldn't exist on a job that has had its oGCDs' animation lock reduced precisely so that they can be double weaved.

Who said that you need to optimize to clear normal content? You can clear normal content with HJ + MD merged or not. That's beside the point.

Saying that having the ability to double weave most of our kit is dumbing it down makes no sense to me. We're a job that has a 2-min burst which requires us to do something like 8 GCDs with double weaves in every single one of them except Stardiver. The difficulty resides precisely in achieving this to perfection and putting all of those oGCDs within the 15s that Battle Litany lasts, making sure that we also get two NAS under it.

And in any case, removing the ability to double weave HJ + MD from most players unless your ping is low is, again, less flexibility. You shouldn't need to have low ping when you got to do this specific weave.

TL; DR. The HJ + MD brings flexibility and doesn't hurt anyone. The job has worked like that for all of its life except for 3 months. Button bloat concerns cannot be called in here when DRG has the least amount of actions requiring to be bound in the hotbars.

[zeth07]

Button bloat concerns cannot be called in here when DRG has the least amount of actions requiring to be bound in the hotbars.

I would love to see your math on this between the different jobs.

By all means.

[Quyn]

Button bloat concerns cannot be called in here when DRG has the least amount of actions requiring to be bound in the hotbars.

Woah. That one really surprises me. To me at lv 70+ DRG already felt like having as many, or more keys to regularly press, than nin, sam or monk.
I have had such a strong impression of this, that DRG felt like one of the busiest dps to me, due to having to spin so many different ogcds and buffs to align.

Perhaps this is because things line up more naturally on sam and nin, in neat 60sec/ 120 sec windows ?

Nastrong/ HJ/ MD every 30 secs.
Life surge every 45 secs.
lance charge every 60 secs.
another two different jumps on different cds.
Then stardiver and Wyrmwind on top of two very long combo chains.

I obviously dont main DRG but it felt somewhat disjointed to me in comparison to sam and nin, where most of my extra buttons need to be pressed in close sequence, every 60 to 120 seconds.
This in turn meant that on those classes, I need to "remind" myself less often of the spinning plates, freeing up attention for raid mechanics.
Im not very good at dividing my attention. I love the class fantasy but am too scatterbrained to properly main it.

My guess for DRG changes in store, would also be that SQ might elect to cut down on what they see as redundant ogcds.
Life surge and MD come to mind as likely choices perhaps ? perhaps also dragonfire dive ? Even Lance charge feels like a design mantra since left behind.

Whatever happens, I hope it will be in line with established DRG main wishes.