Dragoons and thier world

[Ariesknight]

This post is really to ask about DRG's and the world they live in. By that I mean what purpose do DRG's serve. My aim is to aspire to be one, and I've a great deal about them off forums, just wanting to see how they work in aprties/solo, abilities, skills, etc. Also is the Wyvern healer combo any good, being able to hael the whole PT must be pretty cool.

Below is a picture of my current armour.
The Aries armour an Ex. Rare. Armour. i haerd a rumour there's one for all 12 Zodiac Signs, if there's Aries there must be more right? I cant be bothered to put stats up but they very good. each piece becomes a part of armour, eg head =helmet, legs+arms= gloves+gauntlets+leg armour, body=chest,etc.

[Stanislav]

dragoons are high dmg dealers
spears are also one of the most chained WS

Dragoon and THF do a lot of dmg in skillchains

[riceburner4540]

dammit stan! ur not 65....yet

he's right though...dragoons do very nice damage and are often used in conjunction with thieves...but they're very well rounded overall, they can skillchain with most of the other jobs very easily early on to do distortion, a very popular chain

[Stanislav]

i will be 65 on monday lol

[TMPikachu]

ooo, Saint Seiya, nice taste.

Dragoons... do damage, pretty much

like dark knights and warriors with great big axes

[Ariesknight]

OThanks for all the replies. But, however, I've been foiled. Yes it is Saint Seiya, nice work people. BTW Aries rules. As do dragoons.
Anyone else know saint seiya?

[Elusivellama]

When you become DRG, your tanking days are over (with exception of mandragora in Kazham). If you try to tank like you used to, you'll get beat down pretty fast. Do NOT let the pt pressure you into tanking just because you look like a WAR. I'm 32DRG/16WAR right now, still doing Yhoator Mandragoras (till 34) and I can tank them if necessary, but if a WAR or PLD is available, then I turn on berserk and start dishing out the true pain that is mine to give.

I'm positive the game will change when I hit a certain level, but for now, I can safely say I know what I'm doing, and am LOVING every minute of it. It's just going to get better when I get my first lance at 34...watch the jump from the 34dmg spear to the 51 dmg lance, it'll be something to see ^^

[DarkHero]

there is no huge difference between the jobs that no meleer shoulnd't be able to tank below and around 30 =\

but once you reach near 40, then your tanking days are over.. But there were a few cases post 60 where i did play tank for a bit cuz me and some friends were desperate for some exp XD in that case, carapace if your friend

[Elusivellama]

Ya, but i dont want him to get into the mindset of tanking, even below 30, it could be misleading once he starts on stuff that hits alot harder than mandragoras.

[Ariesknight]

Gotcha thanks people. So DRG is the way to go, huh? WOw, a bunch of us here are on Siren, mayble I'll meet up with some of u some time.

[Weezingpipes]

Actually, DRG is questionably the way to go. Lately I've been finding some annoyance in playing a DRG. First off, the low skillchain versatility is a rather large penalty. DRG specific lances aren't more damaging than Scythes or Great Axes actually, and the only other weapon which isn't dreadfully low skill is staves - which are semi fast weapons but low damage and no real high damage WS. The upside to Staves is much higher skillchain versatility, so while the WS damage isn't good really except vs undead, its 1 compensation to the limited polearm chain selection. Realistically, the only chains you'll be doing with Polearms is Distortion, and REALLY rarely impaction because the WS damage of Raiden Thrust is never great. Compression and Transfixion chains are mostly crap with nothing good to burst with them, and the damage is mediocre most times at best. At higher levels Gravitation can be gone more commonly..I still haven't seen level 3 renkai but I wonder if it helps DRG much at all.

Anyway, DRG pay a lot of penalties. Lowest class DEF armor of all melees, we basically have the same armor as RNG without near the same damage output, very weak skillchain versatility which makes partying with other melee slightly limiting, but it isn't too bad, and the wyvern is a joke. Sorry, but it is. Its fine at low levels and adds ok damage then, but otherwise its not worth using once you get around level 40. The poor accuracy which isn't helped that much by AF gloves even + relatively low damage output, and since wyvern breath power is related to its HP, its not so hot when you fight monsters with damaging AE attacks (which is to say by the time you get level 40, about 80% of monsters have some AE damage attack).

On to Pentathrust, the biggest joke ever. Terrible skillchain versatility, and the accuracy and damage of it is quite sad on IT's - on most monsters that check low evasion and defense to me with +20 accuracy, on average 3 hits land, occasionally 4-5. Its seldom worth Penta spamming because the damage is literally that bad - even after Penta Thrust, its still better to just skillchain with another melee for a more useful chain which will more often than not be distortion. I find against VT's the damage on Penta Thrust isn't too bad (often 300-500 damage), but skillchains and bursts matter more than solo Penta damage. The other large downside to Penta Thrust I saw I finally figured out when I helped friends get coffer keys in Garlaige fighting weapons. 90% of the time I did Pentathrust the weapon fired off its AE stun attack within 5 seconds, which means multiple hit WS do affect when monsters do special abilities - guess they do have TP also, which translated into the DRK I was partied with being unable to skillchain due to stun, and if he ran out to avoid the stun, wouldn't be able to do a skillchain anyway. The accuracy of Jumps is as a rule very poor, everyone averages them landing about 60-70% of the time and given the reuse times that sucks. The AF boots make jump damage notably higher about 1/25 jumps, so hardly a reliable augmentation. In the end DRG end up being 3rd rate damage dealers who have hate mitigating jumps that they seldom have to use if the tank is decent.

After 57 levels, it feels like the following : the first 30, I hated my accuracy and my poor skillchain versatility. From 30-40, the wyvern became less and less useful, and all I did were Double Thrust -> something chains, other WS were simply not good. Then I got 49 and got Penta Thrust and was very excited...until I saw its lackluster accuracy and poor damage vs IT cons and its REALLY limited skillchain versatility. I keep waiting for the point when I feel like I'm not just outperformed by everybody. The job pays entirely too many penalties I assume for having the wyvern which I haven't used in a party in about the last 8 levels, and I don't forsee using it even when I get full AF because the regen on the BP cannot compensate for most monsters damaging AE attacks - basically it will prolong its 2 fight survivabitlity to maybe 5 fights.

All the while I cannot help but be baffled when they make DRK better at Great Axes so they have even better party utility than they already have (ie they have quite a bit already given good skillchain versatility and useful utility spells), and better melee damage per hit, and more damaging WS, and better DEF armor, and better equipment selection in general. I suppose I'd feel a lot better about being a Dragoon if the wyvern wasn't such a gimmick and I wasn't paying such substantial penalties for an ability that is 80% unusable.

Do any other DRG higher level feel this way? I want to know, does it really get better post 60?

[Sanguine]

Actually the above poster reveals some of my sentiments. Being a front line attacker is bad enough in this game where you are one of a multitude to be picked from, but being the worst of them isn't too far from the truth.

Seriously speaking, after 60 odd levels of being subpar, it kind of gets to you after a while. Sure, you can make your own PTs. For example, just last night I made the following PT:

BRD RDM WHM, PLD RNG DRG (Me)

So I'm all happy and say to my LS (My LS is Japanese and they're all level 75s right now) that I just made this super PT that I'm sure I'll get around 6000 exp per hour. So they ask me, what classes do I have? I let them know all the while displaying my glee.

Then there's a spam of about 10 LS messages that say "Boot the DRG." Then they all laugh >_> <_<
Well, I'm not laughing, why? Because they're right. If I was any of the other classes, I would boot myself too.

Put it this way, if you were to make the perfect PT with DRG, it still wouldn't be top notch simply because you're in it. This "cap" of being mediocre saddens me. Hopefully when I can be bothered one day to get to 65 I can try out the Light Level 3 Renkei which might add more versatility. Until then, I'll be soloing Robber Crabs in The Boyahda Tree.

[Elusivellama]

edit: see my post above...completely different tone of voice there, because I was 34. I've just now HIT that level where things change...

Right now, at level 38 in CN, I can say this:

My accuracy sucks on the nest beetles, even with that so called accuracy bonus. My wyvern is bonus damage, but if I could trade her for more accuracy, more damage and lower jump timers, I would gladly do it in a heartbeat. I dont know how I compare against a DRK, as I haven't played with them very much (yet).

My wishlist, at this moment:

1) Power up the wyvern so that it does more damage. Allow us to feed it to keep it healed, and to make it sit on its own to heal by itself.

2) MORE ACCURACY. Another accuracy bonus at 40 would be nice, or increase the accuracy given at the level 30 acc bonus trait. Either way, im sick of missing...miss miss miss. Missed 10x in a row once, and it sucks. It shouldn't be the case that we NEED a bard to do anything - having a Bard is great, but shouldn't be mandatory (like it seems to be now).

3) Lower jump timers, higher jump damage. I would say lower the first jump to 45 seconds, second jump down to 120 seconds. Dont know about super high jump, dont have it, but I think the timer on that should also be reduced by a minute...and also do some damage. It sheds the hate, but why not do some damage coming back down? Not like its going to pull the hate from the tank back to you.

Oh, and definitely more jump accuracy!

4) More job abilities. Not just jump jump jump, and an oh-so-useful Ancient Circle. How about a defense break skill, or a skill which makes the monster bleed (ie. lose hp over time)? Like Bleeding Stab, or something like that. I honestly dont have any ideas for new job ability, but I'm sure there is something that can be said for the few job abilities that DRG gets.


ps. anybody get the feeling that the new expansion jobs (Samurai, Dragoon, Ninja) got the short end of the stick?? I've heard that Samurai isnt too hot for dmg, Dragoon...well....you know what I think about it right now, and Ninja is only good for tanking with blinking?

[JexIntrepid]

*cries*....
All my dreams of eventually owning a powerful Drg/sam have been shattered by a (hopefully not) realistic view of Pentathrust!

Why oh why am I doomed to play a dmg dealer of low rank compared to others? Could they have done injustice to Drg as they have to Sam? It seems the accuracy problem seems to be less in Drgs than Sam or Drk, but Drks make up with their versatility and Sam as well cuz they can renkei with everyone.
Wyverns aren't so great cuz they can't grow.
And they die...pretty easily once you're past lvl 40. Everyone says that.
Damn. Might just sub Drg for its good accuracy boost, atk up, and jumps until S-E makes a change for its renkei weakness. Then i'll focus on it again.

I dunno, alot of my LS friends are going PLD, SAM, but fewer are going Drg. dunno if that's cuz they've been told of cases like this, but i sure hope i find Drg more fun once i get the hang of it. you have +20 acc? maybe you need to focus on +Dex to increase % criticals etc, and # of hits from Penta trhust?


I need an optimistic view of Dragoon now before i change my mind!

[Xephoid]

gear

i'm a DRK, and I don't even have an accuracy trait.

If you are missing 10x in a roll, something is very wrong. I rarely miss more than 2-3 times in a roll. The trick is to load up on + Acc and +dex gear.

I kept the Royal Squires muffler (+2 Acc) and Spike necklace +3 dex even when there are gears that offered better defense. Life belt as 48 (+10 acc) is a no brainer. Had 2 +2 dex rings.

At the peak, I had +11 on dex. Now I have +25 attack, + 18 acc and +7 dex. My attack hits ITs for 100 per normal swing, and I miss only once in while. All bow before the mighty DRK.