Why is DRG's design considered one of the best?

[ILikeTea]

I have been trying to get into this job lately and I just don't understand it.

I'm not here to disagree, but try to understand, because I love the aesthetic and the theme of the job, I think the animations look amazing and I wish I could play it well, but it just feels impossible to me.

The main two issues I've picked up on are:

The ridiculous amount of OGCD's that feel a little unnecessary, such as mirage dive, which feels like just pressing jump twice, when jump potency could just be buffed and trigger gauge by itself. Same principle with geirskogul/nastrond when life triggers.
It feels as if the optimal way to play the opener would be to triple weave abilities due to the ridiculous amount of ogcds and that's just silly.

Another major one being what feels like a gradual build-up burst rather than a bursty opener, as it takes quite a bit of time to get to gauge spenders, making drgs personal damage suffer as it doesn't perfectly line up with the 2m burst window meta.

That's just what it feels like to me, I could be playing it wrong, this is why I'm asking why dragoons mains find this job to be one of the most balanced/well designed, to learn something I may be missing.

[GhostZukin]

It isn't -- they've gone on record during a live letter as saying they want to rework it; likely coming out in 7.0

[CelestiCer]

Best designed DPS is probably BLM now, or even Job.

Blackmage is one of the oldest Jobs that hasn't gone through many changes that alters their identity nor its unique gameplay as far as I can recall. Rarely ever been in a bad spot regarding its performance and isn't shoved into the 2 min meta as egregiously as the rest of us. Perhaps a testament of it's " Good Design ". Compared to all other jobs who have been through way more homogenization, simplification, hollowing, changes, reworks, ups-and-downs-nerfs-and-buffs, deletion of iconic skills with the gameplay going thoughtlessly towards " look! a shiny button! go press it! ". And Square shows no sign of stopping there for every Job, except Blackmage.

If DRG players look at SMN as to what " rework" entails? it's no wonder some are not hopeful nor that excited for what's in store.

[Balmung_Griffin]

Best designed DPS is probably BLM now, or even Job.

Blackmage is one of the oldest Jobs that hasn't gone through many changes that alters their identity nor its unique gameplay as far as I can recall. Rarely ever been in a bad spot regarding its performance and isn't shoved into the 2 min meta as egregiously as the rest of us. Perhaps a testament of it's " Good Design ". Compared to all other jobs who have been through way more homogenization, simplification, hollowing, changes, reworks, ups-and-downs-nerfs-and-buffs, deletion of iconic skills with the gameplay going thoughtlessly towards " look! a shiny button! go press it! ". And Square shows no sign of stopping there for every Job, except Blackmage.

If DRG players look at SMN as to what " rework" entails? it's no wonder some are not hopeful nor that excited for what's in store.

Testament of being the main job of FFXIV Director XP

[VentVanitas]

I don't consider DRG to be the best, but its design has been consistent and that's why people have stuck to it.

[fulminating]

Dragoon is the oGCD dps, it's got a very consistent 9 gcd combo and the flexibility to let you choose when to enter burst. Combat design this expansion being utterly abysmal shouldn't detract from the job's design. It should also be mentioned that the slated redesign is not because it's bad, but because they don't feel they can iterate on it any more. Redesigning for this reason, and with their track record is about as advisable as juggling chainsaws.

[Ransu]

The ridiculous amount of OGCD's that feel a little unnecessary, such as mirage dive, which feels like just pressing jump twice, when jump potency could just be buffed and trigger gauge by itself. Same principle with geirskogul/nastrond when life triggers.
It feels as if the optimal way to play the opener would be to triple weave abilities due to the ridiculous amount of ogcds and that's just silly.

Why is it silly? If you don't like it then play a different job. DRG has already lost a lot of stuff over the years and I wish people would stop advocating for skills to be removed and jobs to be made easier. DRG's busy/difficult opener is what makes it fun.

It isn't -- they've gone on record during a live letter as saying they want to rework it; likely coming out in 7.0

Yes, the developers have, not the players. There was a massive thread pushing back on the redesign and after the the disaster of kaiten removal they opted to delay the redesign for drg till 7.0 because the devs knew they screwed up.

[therpgfanatic]

DRG has very excellent burst but I agree, playing it right now has way, way too many buttons to press. If I don't die to mechanics because a jump is locking me into place then I die because I am focusing too much on my hotbar that I can't pay attention to what is going on around me. SAM has this issue, too.

FFXIV has become the MMO king of ability bloat. Half of the abilities from every DPS job could be deleted and it would vastly improve the gameplay.

DRG jumps should grant temporary invincibility and delete at least one of the damage rotations. Job would be 200% better overnight.

People mention SMN, I don't know why they removed all the DoTs from it and then made the job much more complicated. While it's fun to actually summon different Primals during the damage rotation I wish they would have kept the core of SMN the same, so I do agree it seems Devs are trying to streamline DPS jobs to all basically be these enormous ability bloat chains with 4-5 different damage rotations to learn. It is become a game of pressing the right button for the combo instead of a game of fluid combat using an ability for the situation you are in.

[ZiraZ]

DRG doesn't have too many buttons please stop making stuff up, its in the lower middle for amount of keys between all melee.
DRG also doesn't have a bloat problem.

[ILikeTea]

Never claimed drg had too many buttons. What I said was that it had too many -ogcds- that essentially do the same thing, that have to be squeezed in together at the same time. I also didn't specify that it was a bloat problem, even though it technically is, as certain abilities don't seem to have a reason to be required to be used twice subsequently (jump/mirage dive, geirskogul/nastrond). If there is a consistent scenario in a fight where having them separated is a good thing, please tell me. As I said at the start, I am never claimed to be great at the job, and maybe I'm playing it wrong, but there has never been a situation during which; when I used geirskogul right after gauge triggers, I wouldn't use nastrond right away after. Why do I need to press the same button twice? how does this add to the skill expression of the job? how is this anything other than button bloat?