[Bmana]

okay long story short. A long time ago in the land of vandiel on the asura server lived a little dragoon called blackmana. only thing is its owner had to give up the game... since he didnt study as hard lol!... but now he has come back to vandiel and has a question, which is...

what has changed for dragoon?

Im talking to the members who were here before exspansion of blue mage and so on. i left at the same time so that's a couple of years ago 2-3 i think. so yeah a few questions like do i still rock at PvP? has penta thrust finally become a little unnerfed?. And most importantly can we still effectively /whm??

[Carynaira]

The only thing that hasn't changed is lolDRG. :3

[Bmana]

The only thing that hasn't changed is lolDRG. :3

lol awesome. i loved bein the under dog . well not so much the under dog as the misunderstood DD

[Agana]

okay long story short. A long time ago in the land of vandiel on the asura server lived a little dragoon called blackmana. only thing is its owner had to give up the game... since he didnt study as hard lol!... but now he has come back to vandiel and has a question, which is...

what has changed for dragoon?

Im talking to the members who were here before exspansion of blue mage and so on. i left at the same time so that's a couple of years ago 2-3 i think. so yeah a few questions like do i still rock at PvP? has penta thrust finally become a little unnerfed?. And most importantly can we still effectively /whm??

I've been a DRG since the beginning, will be to the end.

Since I started, DRG was a gimp job, 2 Hour was Call Wyvern, there was no 2 Hand update, and the best gear we could get was Barone.

There was a 2 Hand update a while back, it gave all 2 Hand weapon users a HUGE boost to damage, where before 2 STR = 1 Attack; Now its 2 STR = 1.5 Attack for 2 Handers. (Dex / Acc too)

DRG also got Call Wyvern moved into a 20 Minute timer, and replaced with a decent 2 Hour, Spirit Surge. It's not as strong as Hundred Fists or the others, but its a very good all around 2 Hour. DRG also got some of the best group 2 merit abilites, like Angon and Empathy, making us the only pet job able to buff our pets with party buffs, and giving mobs a nice 20% defense down, basically enforcing an "Always have at least 1 DRG" for any type of zerg scenario.

Just recently, a new weapon skill addition called Drakesbane, is now DRGs "go-to" ws, its a 4 hit crit ws that does perform very well, even on high leveled stuff.

Added with all of this, comes Homam/Ares's/Askar gear, which is our haven for good gear after always being unable to equip anything decent.

After all of this buffing for DRG, it is now a powerhouse DD compared to where it was.

Oh yes also, a few updates ago, there was a wyvern buff. Every time the DRG receives XP, the wyvern grows slightly stronger in all categories, including HP. So solo'ing will be even easier with higher heal breaths now, than before.

[Syco316]

Don't listen to the ass clown troll. Dragoon kicks all sorts of ass.

[Bmana]

i was in love with the job before. nothing really was gonna change my mind but thats pretty awesome that drg are now a respected party member. now i just gotta wait for the game to arrive a go crazy

[Dragonhope]

I guess I'm one of the few people who felt that the only part DRG was lacking in before was a decent set of gear selection for the endgame...never really felt it was gimped. I leveled it up even before they announced giving it a new 2-hour and all that but with proper funding, I never really found it lacking. Even for endgame, although we might not have been able to do huge e-peen damage, we were one of the 2 skillchain openers capable of doing more then 300 damage on our WS. And at that time (and some still do today), skillchaining and using magic bursts for damage wasn't a bad strategy. Only problem with that back then was that we had to trade off high DoT for slightly stronger burst WS in the endgame scene which many DRGs didn't like doing. I remember trying out a Kirin fight as DRG/THF back then and I actually put up some nice damage with my SA + Wheeling Thrusts with gimped +STR gear and was also able to get TP up to 100 at a somewhat recent rate.

Doesn't mean I don't like DRG where it's at now or anything or that it's lacking in areas which can be improved upon or anything though.

[Dragonhope]

Endgame (including merit pts), more often then not, yes. Party-wise for regular parties, not as much as people thought. Just that gear needed to be hunted for a lot and even then were rather expensive at the time. Also it wasn't really until after the 2-handed update that people actually noticed that Jumps didn't give TP to a mob...>.>

[Bmana]

so people have started to realise dragoons are worth it? like do you get included in hnm runs and other enggame stuff?

[Dragonhope]

I go to everything as a Dragoon unless we are short on BLMs for something where Melees shouldn't be fighting on. I currently take part in Sea, Limbus, Einherjar and Nyzul runs. Take that as what you may.

[Starr]

so people have started to realise dragoons are worth it? like do you get included in hnm runs and other enggame stuff?

No, DRG got fixed and accepted, they were not worth it before. The only person who comes DRG to anything in my shell is the leader and that's the only reason he gets away with it.

[Cadsuane]

It took the 2h update, angon, drakesbane, and a bunch of other shit to make drg a reasonable job choice to spend time 75'ing. Still suffers from the fact that it's just another fucking melee.

[Bmana]

of topic cadsuane is name from wheel of time? you a reader by any chance?

on topic could you describe what drakesbane, angon and all that other stuff actually are? i looked around and i think one of the two is a wepon skill and the other a job ability but i cant find out for sure?

[Dragonhope]

Drakesbane is pretty much our newest and strongest weaponskill. Came rather recently (around 4 months ago I think?). Angon is a meritable ability that lowers the defense of the mob by 20% for 30s, 45s, 60, etc depending on merited level. Not sure what the bunch of other shit he's talking about...o.o

[Cadsuane]

of topic cadsuane is name from wheel of time? you a reader by any chance?

I was when I made the toon in 2003.

Drakesbane is pretty much our newest and strongest weaponskill. Came rather recently (around 4 months ago I think?). Angon is a meritable ability that lowers the defense of the mob by 20% for 30s, 45s, 60, etc depending on merited level. Not sure what the bunch of other shit he's talking about...o.o

There's a little cited update that boosted the TP growth for high delay weapons. In the old days you'd only get ~10% TP a hit from 492 delay weapons, which made it pretty shitty to be a DRK/DRG/SAM. The wheeling thrust update (used to do 120 damage at the most), the tier 2 merit update, the /SAM update, the 2h update, the addition of accuracy bonus II, the boost to wyvern breaths with exp, and the addition of drakesbane. Of all the jobs in the game DRG has probably gotten the greatest number of benificiary updates.

People still like citing the multi hit nerf as the death knell of drg in 2004 that we're only climbing out of now, which is a bit foolish. Say it's early 2004, you're fighting Processionaires or toramas, sushi doesn't exist yet, and you're in AF gear. TP on your multi hits don't matter a goddamn, because the only reasonable justification for your existence is to make SCs for the BLM in your group, and you can probably do more damage with skewer or double thrust anyway.

[Lucavi]

Some things never change. Its almost 2009...

[Dragonhope]

I was when I made the toon in 2003.



There's a little cited update that boosted the TP growth for high delay weapons. In the old days you'd only get ~10% TP a hit from 492 delay weapons, which made it pretty shitty to be a DRK/DRG/SAM. The wheeling thrust update (used to do 120 damage at the most), the tier 2 merit update, the /SAM update, the 2h update, the addition of accuracy bonus II, the boost to wyvern breaths with exp, and the addition of drakesbane. Of all the jobs in the game DRG has probably gotten the greatest number of benificiary updates.

People still like citing the multi hit nerf as the death knell of drg in 2004 that we're only climbing out of now, which is a bit foolish. Say it's early 2004, you're fighting Processionaires or toramas, sushi doesn't exist yet, and you're in AF gear. TP on your multi hits don't matter a goddamn, because the only reasonable justification for your existence is to make SCs for the BLM in your group, and you can probably do more damage with skewer or double thrust anyway.

It's weird how many of those updates that affected us came about indirectly. Hasso and Seigan were actually more meant for SAMs to play with as well as give DRKs and WARs a reason to use their A+ weapon (from how SE has worked in the past, I'd say more for WAR to use Great Axe). The 2-handed update was also for all 2-handed melees in general and not just DRG in particular. Our Tier2 update seems to be on par with what SAMs and DRKs got for their Tier2. Angon is pretty much our bread and butter while SAMs got Overwhelm to allow them use other subjobs a bit more freely and DRKs got the Last Resort enhancement (the one that gives them haste which is separate from magical/gear haste) which gives them more options then a KC to zerg with (although I think KC is still ranked best?).

Which basically leaves the Wheeling Thrust, Accuracy bonus II, Drakesbane and Wyvern breath boost. The accuracy bonus and Drakesbane I would say were the best upgrades out of these. Wheeling Thrust at the time was pretty much needed. Because it (as well as Impulse Drive) was pretty much weaker then Double Thrust (first WS obtained for Polearm). When a job that's meant to do damage is being out-done by every other DD job in the WS department by at least 10x...there's obviously something wrong. The wyvern breath boost, I can't really see its usefulness outside of a merit pt. And I don't remember seeing much of a damage increase from its breath attacks when I was there as /SAM either. Quite a nice boost to Healing Breath though (especially with a Wyrm Armet). So the only thing we really got were 2 new things since every other melee also got a new WS (even if a bunch of em are utter crap) and the other was showing a clear imbalance to the job.

[Juib]

No, DRG got fixed and accepted, they were not worth it before. The only person who comes DRG to anything in my shell is the leader and that's the only reason he gets away with it.

lol thats how my limbus leader was

[Cadsuane]

It's weird how many of those updates that affected us came about indirectly. Hasso and Seigan were actually more meant for SAMs to play with as well as give DRKs and WARs a reason to use their A+ weapon (from how SE has worked in the past, I'd say more for WAR to use Great Axe). The 2-handed update was also for all 2-handed melees in general and not just DRG in particular. Our Tier2 update seems to be on par with what SAMs and DRKs got for their Tier2. Angon is pretty much our bread and butter while SAMs got Overwhelm to allow them use other subjobs a bit more freely and DRKs got the Last Resort enhancement (the one that gives them haste which is separate from magical/gear haste) which gives them more options then a KC to zerg with (although I think KC is still ranked best?).

Which basically leaves the Wheeling Thrust, Accuracy bonus II, Drakesbane and Wyvern breath boost. The accuracy bonus and Drakesbane I would say were the best upgrades out of these. Wheeling Thrust at the time was pretty much needed. Because it (as well as Impulse Drive) was pretty much weaker then Double Thrust (first WS obtained for Polearm). When a job that's meant to do damage is being out-done by every other DD job in the WS department by at least 10x...there's obviously something wrong. The wyvern breath boost, I can't really see its usefulness outside of a merit pt. And I don't remember seeing much of a damage increase from its breath attacks when I was there as /SAM either. Quite a nice boost to Healing Breath though (especially with a Wyrm Armet). So the only thing we really got were 2 new things since every other melee also got a new WS (even if a bunch of em are utter crap) and the other was showing a clear imbalance to the job.

I guess what you're trying to say is that DRG was mostly in the same league as the other jobs that were affected by those updates, since we got boosted concurrently.

Fair enough, but consider the fact that all the jobs affected by 2h centric updates were considered as at the very least second rate damage unless you were SA WSing a big NM in the ass. Which, look at that, DRG still can't do, and the only reason we're not still complaining about that (like we used to at great fucking length) is there's better gear and more BRDs to make your multi hits not a complete joke to anything above low IT.

So I'll give you that DRG wasn't that much worse off than every other superfluous shit melee class in the game, but you should at least admit that it isn't saying much.

[Darkani]

I think the only ppl that still bitcha bout the TP return update are the ones that either didnt play back then or didn't have drg, mnk or drk high enough to benefit from it.

Penta was REALLY weak back then because everyone fought IT+ mobs and the only acc pieces in the game were SH (which was very rare), snipers (too expensive for most), peacock charm (dropped from argus, so really rare) which left life belt as the only reasonable easy acc piece to get.
You'd often see pentas landing for under 100 damage on exp mobs and most hits missing so the "great" tp return didn't mean much.

IMO the key updates for drg were:
2hr + Spirit Link (I think those came in the same update, but not sure)
Angon
2 handed weapon boost
Penta boost (changed TP modifier from damage to acc)


I'm not mentioning Drakesbane because it's so close to penta damage-wise, sometime I even wonder if penta isn't stronger.