Dragoon Rework

[Aco505]

I agree with ZiraZ, DRG doesn't need sweeping changes of any kind. That said, there are things that could be improved or changed. Here are some ideas:


- Actual interaction for Spineshatter Dive and Dragonfire Dive so that their purpose is not only to be pressed on CD during burst. DFD in particular, as a 120s cooldown, needs a boost of some kind, not necessarily potency-wise.
Do not make DFD the "AoE jump" that shares cooldown with HJ or SSD.

- Tune GSK in some way so that it doesn't drift. There's a specific amount of drift that the ability has no matter what and it's the only one in our kit to do so due to the inability to queue it during LotD. This should be fixed.

- The ability to have a maximum of 3 scales while keeping the Wyrmwind Thrust cost at 2 for more flexibility. Also reduce the cooldown of WWT, it makes no sense for it to be 10s.

- If the Dragon Sight tether is not going to come back, make DS a direct upgrade to Lance Charge. Let's say 15% damage up with a 60s cooldown, numbers can be adjusted as needed for any loss in the 120s burst (LC + DS together with Power Surge gives us a 23% damage increase without counting PS, and I'm not including the DS partner damage). While merging LC and DS might reduce optimization options in fights where the two abilities desync, I don't mind that tradeoff if we get other interesting things in return.

Also I personally dislike the DNC partner idea. While it will stop reliance on a macro, the issue will then move into having to change targets mid fight if needed, thus forcing an extra bind that isn't really required. I'd rather just make macros more responsive instead.

- Make Battle Litany last 20s for the DRG at least (party stays at 15s) to make drifting and weaving in 120s bursts less tight. Also increase its radius (and all buffs') to 20y just like BRD's.

- Having Life of the Dragon windows interact or change GCDs or oGCDs in some way.

- Keep Stardiver's animation lock but increase the potency slightly (not too much, we don't wanna be reliant on critical chance) to account for it being a single weave. Between 700 or 800 potency should be a good compromise.

- Allow the 4th and 5th positional to be used in any order.

- Make the positional in the 5th GCD to have a new animation and perhaps spice up the rotation by for instance providing a gauge like MNK nadi that you have to stack in a certain order to unlock or buff an attack. If WT gives us gauge X and FnC gauge Y, then we could have three combinations such as XX, YY, XY (and perhaps a fourth YX if order mattered although that's probably a lot).

- More opportunities for Life Surge usage so that it can be applied to more GCDs such as making it work with Chaotic Spring in some way or changing the ability into a weaponskill that direct crits and is on its own GCD like Soul Slice/Sonic Break. It could also give us a scale so that it interacts with other parts of our kit.

Note: removing Life Surge entirely is a bad idea despite what many people say as it's the only ability in our kit besides WWT that requires some thought and is not pressed on strict cooldown, even if the gains are often not that substantial (such as when using it on the 5th positional under all buffs) and its use is easily mapped in full uptime scenarios.

- A defensive of some kind, at least a passive 5% damage reduction with a heal popping when low HP or something.

- Reducing the CD of Elusive Jump to 20s baseline, no need for it to be a lvl 96 trait or something of the sort. BLM shouldn't be the only job getting QoL at lower levels.

- Slightly increase the width of line attacks, and increase the range of GSK, NAS, WWT and MD to 20y to match our jumps'. Also, GSK should always put us in LotD even if it doesn't deal damage or fix the problem of line attacks missing moving targets.

- Make Piercing Talon not useless.

- Return the blue Blood of the Dragon aura when we have one or more dragon eyes.

- Upgrade Vorpal Thrust's animation.

- Make Raiden Thrust and Draconian Fury a direct upgrade to True Thrust and Doom Spike. Scales will be granted only by those weaponskills under the effect of Draconian Fire. Basically it all stays the same but we shouldn't keep two weaponskills that we never use after the opener or long periods of downtime.

- Make low level action learning less painful. We shouldn't get our first AoE weaponskill at level 40 and we certainly shouldn't get Power Surge in AoE at 62. That said, I don't dislike this kind of jankiness myself. It's just part of the little quirks the job has. Also, we should be able to use three NAS at level 70. Having an LotD timer of 20s feels really bad.


Any amount of ideas from this list would be good. The job has room to grow yet without being pruned.

What I don't want is to copy systems like Enshroud, something often suggested in these forums. We don't need LotD to become a carbon copy of it with three charge-based uses of NAS and STD ending the Life state. I'd rather keep DRG as unique to itself as possible.