Sigurd's Descendants: The Art Of Dragon Slaying.

i didn't optimize drg either, i haven't really messed with sets for them since relic +3 came out, but it won't be a particularly large gain if there is one

Can't say I'm too surprised.

Honestly if you like Dragoon, play Dragoon.

WAR/DRK/SAM might be better/have more damage potential. But DRG can still pull it's weight/contribute. Though it requires optimal gear sets. Fortunately most of the optimal gear is Flamma+2/Sulevia+2/Valorous/Omen Accessories.

If you show up to the fight with average equipment/entry level stuff you are going to fall behind quite a bit as a DD.

Anyways this is anecdotal.

Once I finally finished Trishula:

I actually took DRG out to Sky and cleared everything from T1-T3, Gods, AAs, Kouryu. It did fairly well, also parsed pretty high even on WoC/Kirin. I barely broke #1 in the parse. My main competition was a Conquerer Warrior (lolGAXE during a zerg I know), both of us made short work of any adds with Sonic Thrust/Fell Cleave.

So it's far from useless. Also Trishula paired with a WAR's Warcry is about a 1450 TP bonus, it's very nice spamming stardiver as soon as you get TP for it.

Stun locking the lower tiers was funny as well.

With the mindset some people have, why bother playing DRK or SAM if WAR is the superior option? Variety is the spice of life, and if something is fun; play the job

This game is pretty much dead, and if you aren't going to play the jobs you like, what is the point of sticking around/paying for it monthly. Sticking with band-wagon/popular stuff only is a great way to get burned out.


Raetic honestly seems like a game changer though for WAR and SAM polearming. Though if I am a WAR or SAM main I don't see myself dumping 5 points into stardiver.

Realistically I'd be:
5 Reso
4 Upheaval (I'd delete this if I didn't use Bravura from time to time)
1 Requi
5 Last Stand (I have RNG and COR too)

Honestly I'm not sure if I'd take the DRG to Reisenjima though. But for Zitah through Ru'Aun it does just fine.

Also the job isn't too bad in Omen either.

.

just think it’s funny when people say drg is fine when it’s in a similar state as monk, just a bit more skillchain flexibility at the cost of survival

In general, I am a fan of any sims that help show teach us things or use as a tool. But I will say that as a serial parser who has fought all of the hard stuff with pimped WAR and SAM, the delta between them and me is never as large as the sims show.

No clue why, and not dissing any sim or dps spreadsheet. All I can say as that in terms of actual in game performance on stuff in real situations, the difference is nowhere near as large as the existing tools show them to be.

could be several reasons. in smaller non zerg situation warrior may not be capped attack on weapon skill. samurai may have a weaker weapon skill set too since most of the best are random augments. who knows, maybe they’re just lazy too.

I am talking zergs (Albumen, Teles, Vini, WoC, Kirin).

I know what the data says, and I am data driven. But if I was getting outparsed by 2k dps in fights I would literally not come anymore on DRG. That does not happen.

If they wanna buff DRG I will take it. It has just never seemed far off to me and it always feels worse reading forums and looking at sims than it does playing the game, watching mobs die, and looking at the parser.

Fairly sure there was a Neak Sid and no one was even close to me and you are an excellent DRG.

A.) You are a beast, I'd image one of the better DPS across all servers

B.) You pulled insane numbers on that Neak and it didn't live 30 seconds. It was half dead after my angon animation.

C.) We have done a lot of other stuff, a few Albumen, at least one Schah - and we parse pretty close. That Neak was an outlier, not the rule. You parse everything like I do, so I think you know this.

Albumen is horrible for sam since no overwhelm, I wasn't debating at all as I respect you. Honestly things that Austar or Thorny makes are typically spot on. I do go and test things even though 9/10 times they end up being exactly what they said. Main point is DRG is a fantastic job with a lot of tools however it would never be in the same class as WAR DRK or even SAM sadly.

To be fair: I said it was below. It just has never seemed as far below as these things indicate.

Honest question, and you can't hurt my feelings. When we both show up to DPS something, do you fee like you are carrying me through the content, or are you confident I will hold me own and the mob is gonna die?

If your answer is the carry, then maybe I am wrong. If your answer is the latter - then that is kind of my point. The job is plenty capable that if it's well geared and played it's fine to bring to stuff - which I don't think is what people think when they see the sim results.

I remember 75 cap when it literally wasn't fine to bring to stuff. Massive difference.

There is a very, very, very large DPS gap between players because of their individual play style and how they approach DPSing in content, or how content and buffs may favor one job over another. Someone who is always parsing and trying to dominate the parse are much more likely to deal more DPS than another person playing more conservatively. There's also player reflex to consider.

Case to the point, in last months ambuscade I was roughly 30% ahead(something like 35-26 or 33-21 on parse) of another 2100 aeonic cor because I like do target swap to dullahan for extra tp whenever horse do TP move. That created bigger gap on parse because of DPS approach.

Then when I pt with the same person this month, I was only 10% ahead max and at one point we were even equal. That's mostly because he has better reflex than me and good at running to the right position and DPS faster when I often hesitate about where I should be standing, thus slowed down my dps.

That's a flat 20% to 30% dmg gap difference between different DPS approach and how player adapt to the content. The gap is much bigger than rema and job difference.

And that's why in game I rarely pick people based on what they have, job or gear wise. Player personality, traits and their team work/communication skill plays MUCH bigger role to determines how successful the team would be. It's very possible that a war with perfect gear just wouldn't work better than a drg or mnk in a team because reasons.

That being said, on forum when we theorycraft, we can't discuss player individual difference. It's just not possible because our connections are very different. We kinda have to generalize people to the point and let sim/spreadsheet play bigger weight in dps discussions.

I keep seeing people cast doubt on spreadsheet/sim centered approach to analyze dps on forums all the time, hopefully that cleared everything. Spreadsheet/sim certainly does not accurately represent in game performance 100% of time, but it creates a base for forum discussions.

Most good 2h DD would float between 4 to 5k dps on woc with the exception of double SP + warcryed war. 2k dps is like 50% dps gap already.

Not even mnk is 50% behind none SPed 2h. 50% gap is pretty much the difference between real DD and support jobs. Not the gap between DDs.

Most DD job on different hierarchy would probably have 10% to 15% dps gap on spreadsheet and sim, no larger than 30%. On parse a 10% dps gap would look like 22-20 or something, which may be why it seems small on parse.

But in ffxi, since everything is being compared, even 10% dps gap is serious business because it's relatively large when you compare the difference hq makes. Sometimes even multiple hq and rema would not make such a big gap.

I don't ever look at it like that, if we win then we win. Since I can truly speak on Sam, without support Sam is not that great. Through various buffs of my team/ls it becomes that way. We haven't played enough to say "oh lawd gotta carry Sid" and I wouldn't to me it just means I need to kick it in overdrive to win as a team. I may lead parses but it doesn't mean ***if we lose.

Here is the thing: chasing world or server firsts, or in fights with perhaps very tight time limits - 10% matters.

In today's version of the game: it's largely irrelevant. If one DPS does 4400 and another 4900, the ***is dying.

One thing we can completely agree on: all DPS suck without support, and all wins and losses are team wins and losses.

Just wondering, has anyone ever made an Impulse Drive set that mimics Savage Blade? I'm wondering if it mimics Savage Blade in the sense that the majority of it's damage is on the first hit.

Well, you only need to look at the fTP mods to see.

Impulse Drive:1.0/3.0/5.5

At 1k TP, impulse is evenly weighted across both hits. Of Course TP bonus gear being a thing, and TP overflow would mean that it should always have a bit more than 1000 TP. So the DMG should be weighted towards the first hit... a little bit.

Compared to savage blade.
Savage Blade: 4.0/10.25/13.75

Rather than starting out 50/50, savage begins at 80/20, weighted towards the first hit. And has really steep scaling.

It does look like WSDMG+ is the way to go on Impulse(very quick and sloppy spreadsheet work), you know, if anyone ever used impulse. But it doesn't have the kinda returns it does on Savage.

Impulse dmg is actually fairly decent. Something like 12% behind Stardiver. Stronger than pretty much all our other WS. Thing is... I really can't see any reason to use it. It's SC properties overlap with stardiver(both grav.) So it ends up being a WS that's weaker than stardiver with no actual application.

Sorry didn't reply earlier. I'd say DRG was in a much better position because Polearm has exploitable WS's that can form strong SC's. So while raw DPS might not be as great, we can still work with them to produce great damage. H2H on the other hand is just ***.

And yes WAR can do ridiculous damage with almost any weapon it's given. Resolution gear set doubles for Stardiver and can be used to dump large amounts of damage into a piercing weak target. DRG has Dragon Breaker and Ancient Circle, those are both quite handy against Dragon NM's. Three maned Kouryu the other day with Rua and Shy, RUN + WHM + DRG with a COR and BRD for prebuffs. Rua really shows off DRG's versatility in that fight.

DRG damage would be sweet if Wyvern breath was like 5x stronger than what it currently is to compensate for the fact that we don't really have any other job-specific ways to boost our damage other than angon and wyvern's attack bonus. The wyvern is conceptually designed to add damage passively to give us more damage than say a SAM using a polearm, with the same weapon skills, but in reality it doesn't -- or not by much. I would have liked it if they added tier 2 wyvern breaths that simply used Wyvern max HP and was 100% consistent damage as long as the element wasn't absorbed or the enemy is strong vs it. Because as it stands, a 300-800 damage breath is meh. Hell if they made Deep Breathing a 30 second buff of +100 breath damage it still wouldn't be game breaking. It always feels like DRG could use 2-3 more job abilities but they said they've reached the JA cap already long ago. Sad thing is, things like Spirit Link and Deep Breathing count as Job Abilities and not Pet Commands. I always would have liked if we had a few skills to buff our own damage for a short time like MNK/SAM/DRK/WAR had, besides Angon. Hell, what about an ability that gave you a bunch of Save TP for 30 seconds, which would harken back to the days of "pre-Penta nerf"? Like, 30 seconds of Save TP+400 (so you always get a minimum of 400 TP back per weapon skill), before conserve TP and Store TP applies?

Paragraphs, man! Paragraphs!

But yes. I'd really like to see some adjustments, or better yet, something new JA wise. and screw their JA limits. Reeks of "PS2 limitations". Or "we can't add anymore inventory"

Yeah the JA thing killed it for me. I mean looking at DRG JA list, it's short AF.

Call Wyvern
Fly High
Ancient Circle
Dragon Breaker
Jump
High Jump
Super Jump
Spirit Link
Spirit Jump
Soul Jump
Angon

So really there's like 5 abilities we use with any real frequency. Compared to the tools/spells DRK/WAR/SAM/MNK have.

I REALLY hate that Ancient Circle and Dragon Breaker don't have any default buffs/debuffs that work all the time, and would just be more potent against Dragons, cuz it's such a waste of slots. Also, I hate that Jump wasn't just given Spirit Jump's (and same for High and Soul) properties when the Wyvern was out instead of making brand new abilities with shared recasts. Could have been made so much more elegant and simple with conditionals/if-then programming!

Ugh and I would have loved a Spirit/Soul version of Super Jump that shared the recast but didn't have you in the air for 4 sec and just did crit damage and 4x TP. Like FFXIV's Dragonfire Dive as the animation (but did pure physical damage, hell-- make it an AoE for that recast!)

When I first started playing DRG back in the day, I always thought your wyvern did a "Dive" attack every time you Jumped. I really think Jumps should augment wyverns, and what they do. It would be interesting if Jumps had additional effects, that did different things. Having to rely solely on Angon for dps is pretty annoying. Drakesbane crit hit evasion is practically worthless for DRG as well.

The crit evasion debuff is on Stardiver. Although it was useful for Drakes, back when we actually used Drakes.

Right, I always go through the 4 step and I forgot it's Drakes that benefits from crit evasion, not induces it.

They could have borrowed a few idea from XIV. Like every jump used gives you a stack of a "finishing move" type thing, and at 5 stacks you can blow them on Mirage Dive. Or use the stacks to recall your wyvern in a weakened state (like deus ex automata), or use the stacks for a big AoE holy wyvern breath, idk...they could have been creative.

Dragoon suffers from poor gear options, inferior native buffs/traits and relatively weaker weapon skills than other DPS have access to.

Polearms are a fantastic weapon type. Polearm weapon skills also have fantastic skill chain properties.

But Stardiver is weaker than Evisceration, Chant du Cygne, Resolution and Pyrrhic Kleos. Some of which are just as or nearly as good at skill chaining.

And DRG doesn't have an answer, at all, to powerful front loaded weapon skills like Savage Blade, Fudo, Torcleaver, Cross Reaper, Upheaval, Rudras or Dimidiation.

We also don't have wonky super powerful magic weapon skills like Jinpu and Chi. Neither of which I really understand still.

Impulse Drive should have been given the Savage Blade treatment in terms of huge scaling. They dropped the ball with Camlann's Torment making it a glorified Wheeling Thrust. What pisses me off to no end is that Camlann's and Wheeling have "Ignores Defense varies with TP" but you know what also "ignores defense"? Weapon Skills with huge hidden attack bonuses. What's more is technically Spinning Slash, Steel Cyclone, and Tachi Gekko "ignore defense" (because their huge attack bonuses are more or less the same as ignoring a certain amount of defense) but they also have nice http://fTP. Not that those WS are used much anymore but my point still stands. We don't and never have cared about "Ignores defense" weapon skills. Crit and damage varies with TP (with good scaline) is where its at.


Gear options aren't bad. Historically we had the worst gear options because we couldn't wear heavy armor like Haubergeon/Hauberk/Adaberk, and couldn't wear eastern armor like Kirin Osode or Byakko Haidate. We were stuck in this weird armor tier with THF and RNG where we could only use Scale, Leather, and Harness gear for some weird reason, so our best gear were Scorpion Harness (inferior stats to Haubergeon, but also was also historically 3-5x more expensive), Assault Jerkin (probably the only job other than BST or THF that ever bothered). It wasn't till...idk end of CoP/ToAU that DRG started getting nice things like Homam/Ares/Askar equipment.

But yeah, I think DRG gear right now is pretty *** good.

Going to put that video out on its own, that really needs to be seen in its entirety.

I was with you until the Blade: Chi comment. Chi ≠ Jinpu. Chi is an extremely niche ws that is on an extremely niche job (with far bigger problems than DRG at this moment), and the ws only works on a handful of fodder that don't resist magic to begin with. NIN barely has the gear to make Chi competitive, unlike Jinpu, which is broken as we all know. In that department, DRG is not in the least bit inferior to NIN.

I agree with the rest of your DRG issues though.

I wasn't implying Ninja is in a good place by any means. Just that Chi is an objectively better weapon skill than Raiden Thrust.

An admittedly low bar, but I've seen surprising numbers from Chi.