Dragoon, jump locks and "job identity"

[WantlessYoYo]

To give some context of myself i started to play and main DRG on i think was 6.1, shortly after the locks on all their jumps got removed, so i don't have context gameplay wise before it, hence the post

With this new LL has been said that DRG jump and high jump will no longer be stopped when binded, wich i saw this as, hey, cool, but interestingly enough saw as well a lot of, complaints?

Had already seen some pov from a very few content creators on how the removal of jump lock animations took the "fun" out of Dragoon, how knowing when to use your jumps was what made it "challenging" and how this change and now even more the binded one keeps "ruining it"
As i said before, i lack the context of DRG gameplay pre jump lock removal, so i would like to know either from more experienced players what's the thought on this and to try to comprehend this point of view, since to me these are but QOL changes that just improves the experience but again, never got to play locked animation DRG.

Have understood a similar change was made for NIN at the beginning of EW where Ryujin was as well locked when binding so they got another version of it to compensate

[Aco505]

This new change to High Jump is mostly to avoid situations in fights like the first EW trial or Mount Ordeals where you are forced to be bound for several seconds. In such cases, you cannot use any of your jumps and usually we can work around that but you cannot use HJ either and that's the ability we need to be pressing on CD so that we can keep the LotD windows going.

People in the JP forums were complaining about this when Mount Ordeals was released and is a common topic any time a long bind shows up. It's a good change because we won't be affected so negatively by that specific condition. Other jobs don't suffer that much from that as we do.

As for the animation lock reduction, it was a needed change because DRG is a job with a lot of double weaves with several of them being jumps that have a longer animation lock. People with very low ping could already weave a jump oGCD with a normal one before the reduction so the change made the playing field even.

Now, some believe that jumps feel "less heavy" that way, but the design of EW DRG requires machine-gunning double weaves for like 8 GCDs in a row during 120s bursts (which personally I think is one of the reasons that it's the best it's ever been), with the exception of Stardiver. And speaking of STD, I'd rather it didn't have its animation lock reduced but got a potency boost to compensate for it always being a single weave.

[Ransu]

Its a good change that content creators are making a pointless stink about for the clickbait.

[Valence]

This is an unavoidable change since the changes they're adding server side necessitate the locks from bind to be nullified. Since the jumps will not move the position of the character anymore (just only visually), then a bind will technically not apply or prevent anything since for the server there is nothing moving. Obviously, they could also adjust the bind effect so that it disables certain abilities no matter what, but they're not doing it. That's for the technical aspect.

Personally I get both sides of the argument anyway. Maybe it's not fun to not be able to execute jumps when something binds you, but was it also fun or unfun when a mechanic asked you to disconnect from the boss as a melee on older hitboxes? Was it fun or unfun when a boss got away mid burst and you had to adjust the rotation? Because in essence it always boils down to this: some people don't find it fun to adjust around boss mechanics for certain things, while others think it's skill play.

( but ultimately i'm always weary of such arguments in favor of making things easier, because it's what has lead the game so far to make gigantic hitboxes, to remove party resource support, to remove enmity control, to remove kaiten, to remove... a lot of things, all in the sake of "it's annoying" )

[Aco505]

Maybe it's not fun to not be able to execute jumps when something binds you, but was it also fun or unfun when a mechanic asked you to disconnect from the boss as a melee on older hitboxes? Was it fun or unfun when a boss got away mid burst and you had to adjust the rotation? Because in essence it always boils down to this: some people don't find it fun to adjust around boss mechanics for certain things, while others think it's skill play.

( but ultimately i'm always weary of such arguments in favor of making things easier, because it's what has lead the game so far to make gigantic hitboxes, to remove party resource support, to remove enmity control, to remove kaiten, to remove... a lot of things, all in the sake of "it's annoying" )

I don't believe this is similar to the hitbox size or the melee uptime situation. No other job is crippled as much as DRG when bound for so long. Our main gauge generator and five of our oGCD presses are stopped completely.

Imagine if a certain mechanic arbitrarily silenced the entire raid for several seconds, thus forcing casters to do nothing; or if a boss silenced tanks, Paladins would then be affected just because they are the only ones actively using spells in their single target rotations.

In the fights where binds happened, we could adapt but sometimes you cannot adjust everything. In Mount Ordeals, even if you played perfectly your HJ couldn't be used for several seconds because of the specific moments when you were bound, whereas you could keep the rest of the rotation aligned.

It's a situation in which you had no control even if you tried your best to adapt to it. Binds will still prevent you from using the other four jumps, it's mostly so that the gauge generation is not interrupted.

That said, I'm a bit wary about it. I still want my character to do the HJ and not some kind of projection or shade and I still want it to be able to cancel knockbacks (something that you can use on purpose like once every 100 duties but hey). Basically, I hope everything's exactly the same but that the position of the character is not moved for the server. We'll see but I fear I will be disappointed.

[Valence]

No other job is crippled as much as BLM/RDM on ultra mobile fights like Barbariccia. No other job is crippled as much as a lot of melees when you get bad patterns on Red Girl (almost always) and you have to stay disconnected for eons. I don't even remember why in P5S I had to delay my 2min burst because some jobs couldn't handle the disconnect there so I had to overcap gauge to make them happy... The list goes on and on. It's what makes the spice of adjusting to fights and not just have dummy fights (don't get me wrong I love uninterrupted dummy fights as well, they're chill).

What you're unhappy about is not the job toolkit, it's the encounter design not taking this into account. Several seconds is nothing. I am not sure if it is the more modern players that feel like this or more of a general thing, but I can't say I can relate with that concern. This is exactly what has lead the game into stuff like 2min burst patterns because some jobs were screwed with burst alignment for certain fights, while some other jobs had problems with other fights.

Several seconds is nothing.

Now though, as I said I can see both sides of such arguments even though I don't agree with this specific one on DRG uptime, and if you remove something specific for a job for a valid reason, I expect to add something else in counterpart. And that's what worries me because every time SE removes something and deletes it from the face of earth, we get nothing new or as intricate in return.

[Aco505]

No other job is crippled as much as BLM/RDM on ultra mobile fights like Barbariccia.

Those jobs are not prevented from attacking or using their kit, they just have to learn how to handle their resources for the specific encounter.

You misunderstand me if you think I only want full uptime dummy fights, I don't. I personally prefer fights with downtime and funny timers like E11S, P3S, P5S, P8-2S or ultimates.

However, one obvious thing is that the devs don't have a record of testing fights as DRG, and it shows. The biggest offender was E6S and even then we could adjust to it without trouble. I posted several things the job could get in another thread and allowing HJ to be used while bound was not one of them.

I personally don't care that much but I welcome the change since we have to use HJ on hard CD because that's how the job works: everything must be used on strict cooldown. If a mechanic forces a delay, then this delay cannot affect GSK and HJ: you still press them and enter LotD but you try buffing the 2nd and 3rd NAS instead, that is, you buff later in the window. In fact, in a fight like P5S we even have to do an unbuffed LotD window unless buffs are delayed in the opener and all of it is done just so that GSK and HJ are kept on cooldown.

Several seconds is nothing. I am not sure if it is the more modern players that feel like this or more of a general thing, but I can't say I can relate with that concern. This is exactly what has lead the game into stuff like 2min burst patterns because some jobs were screwed with burst alignment for certain fights, while some other jobs had problems with other fights.

Several seconds can mean the difference to get an extra eye for DRG or not, which in turn can mean an extra LotD window. That's 1700 oGCD potency so "nothing" is not a word I'd use for this case in particular. Ultimates are filled with 31-32s duration uptime phases and getting that second HJ + MD there is huge for us.

Also, complaints about the 2-min meta make no sense to me. Which jobs were the strongest in ShB? Precisely those whose burst happened every 120s: DNC, NIN, SAM... So the solution was either to remove most buffs or have them be on the same timer. At some point in the future, we'll get the former I'm sure.

[Keichi]

I want to try the jump now by a place , where you can fall (like, by the thunder god).
Want to see, if im falling again then^^

[Wyssahtyn]

devs removing what little skill expression remains in the game because of their shit job or encounter design? say it ain't so.

[Ransu]

No other job is crippled as much as BLM/RDM on ultra mobile fights like Barbariccia. No other job is crippled as much as a lot of melees when you get bad patterns on Red Girl (almost always) and you have to stay disconnected for eons. I don't even remember why in P5S I had to delay my 2min burst because some jobs couldn't handle the disconnect there so I had to overcap gauge to make them happy... The list goes on and on. It's what makes the spice of adjusting to fights and not just have dummy fights (don't get me wrong I love uninterrupted dummy fights as well, they're chill).

What you're unhappy about is not the job toolkit, it's the encounter design not taking this into account. Several seconds is nothing. I am not sure if it is the more modern players that feel like this or more of a general thing, but I can't say I can relate with that concern. This is exactly what has lead the game into stuff like 2min burst patterns because some jobs were screwed with burst alignment for certain fights, while some other jobs had problems with other fights.

Several seconds is nothing.

Now though, as I said I can see both sides of such arguments even though I don't agree with this specific one on DRG uptime, and if you remove something specific for a job for a valid reason, I expect to add something else in counterpart. And that's what worries me because every time SE removes something and deletes it from the face of earth, we get nothing new or as intricate in return.

I can't comment on RDM, but honestly once I got the mechanics down, doing barbariccia on BLM was pretty easy.