People talk about “Job Identity” but often can’t properly pinpoint what they mean. So let’s talk about Dragoon and why I’ve loved it and its identity since A Realm Reborn. And coincidentally, tomorrow is the 14-hour broadcast where we will get our first preview of new Dragoon! So let’s see how I’ll be looking at it.
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Regarding SAM I felt like a big part of his Job Identity was that he had a resource to manage.
(For context, I started playing in Shadowbringers, so I cannot comment on the SB iteration of SAM)
And yes, the resource management wasn't too difficult but I found it quite satisfying.
You had your 25 Kenki Dump,
a 50 Kenki Spender every 2 min,
Seigan was more Kenki efficient per potency but you could only use it after third eye,
Hagakure to make your rotation flow smoothly,
Ikishouten giving you 50 Kenki every min,
your gap closer and gap maker
And of course Kaiten
In EW they made Senei and Guren cost only 25 Kenki, removed Seigan wich trivialized your resource management already significantly. And After they removed Kaiten it lost all semblence of managent. You have 25 Kenki, you press Shinten. Save it up a bit if your 2 min window is coming up, but not more then 50, so you don't overcap with Ikishouten.
It just wasn't satisfying to me anymore.
In ShB I palyed SAM quite often but I just didn't feel it anyomre in EW. And the removal of Kaiten was the last straw for me that made me drop the job almost entirely.
I don't know if many other people found this to be an essential part of SAMs Job Identity but I personally did. To me SAM feels… kinda empty now.
I love videos like this, but they also make me realize I don't really have a true passion for any particular job.
I have my favorites, but I've also lost any passion I've had for some jobs, like WHM, due to changes over the years.
I personally agree mostly with you about Dragoon's Job Identity, It is by far my favorite DPS to play. I mained it during the 2nd Tier this Expansion and the only thing I didn't like was how Dragonsight worked. I eventually figured it out how to double weave it but it took some getting used to :'D
The Thing I personally don't agree with is that you need to Change DRG just because it's a new expansion. Upgrade a few existing skills by giving them some fancy new animations and call it a day. I would be perfectly happy with that.
Removing kaiten feels like if they took away lance charge and baked it into your gcd. It rewarded players who properly managed their kenki instead of spamming it all on shinten
I played mage in wow and when I came to FFxiv I started with BLM and I've played other jobs but always come back to burn the world down on BLM
I played dragoon way back in 11 in 14 it needs the pet dragon back
I mostly agree with this, gunbreaker also has a similar feeling of like, they can change exactly how the burst works, but the core identity is in continuation and no mercy making a busy tank with downtime in between, I preferred shb gnb but you could argue ew gnb leans more into this by spending all the downtime aside from your 30s gnashing fang on reloading. The main reason I was sad to see kaiten go was it was one of the last buttons in the game that used the job gague for anything more complex than "single target spender vs aoe spender" ensuring you were cashing out with shintens approriately, especially when trick was a raid buff, was much more fun and interesting when you still had to be wary to save some for kaiten, it felt like I was actually managing a resource and not just "wait for the buff to appear then mash the spender button".
Interesting vid. I absolutely love the look and lore of drg. Blm comes a bit more naturally for me and i feel more comfy in the caster arena but if i were melee id play maiming no question
I have played Final Fantasy 14 for around 1500 Hours now and have played all jobs till atleast 60 but although i think dragoon is one of the coolest jobs i just can't play it cause of my hotbar and whenever i try to change it i just can't get used to it. Nonetheless great video!
As a person who started in endwalker leveling all jobs to 90 atm (didn't level any of them to 90 yet) I'll give my 2 cents about leveling. In paper you unlock the skills bit by bit and it gets busier as you level up. But due to how leveling is structured in ff14 that is not how it plays out. You need to do roulette to gain any meaningful xp and most of those roulettes drop you to a level 50 or below dungeons. Leveling roulette usually drops you to sub 50, main scenario drops you to 50, alliance raid drops you to 50 most of the time. Hell even if you que for 50/60/70/80 dungeon you will most likely get level 50 dungeons. It is hard to get used to the job when the game doesn't let you practice in roulette ques. This of course happens to all other melee dps but I felt it impacted dragoon much muuch more compared to others. I feels like all other melee dps have a certain level where they have their core skills set up and dragoon gets there so so much later then every other dps (other than reaper) and sometimes that can feel frustrating.
Other than that it felt great to play it after I got used to it in level 84, I'm sure it feels even better at 90 and hope it will still feel good in Dawntrail since its also my second favorite in terms of aesthetics in ff14. Thank you for making videos as always its always enjoyable to hear your thoughts about the game.
I feel so priveliged to be a Black Mage main rn. No one's questioning my job identity, and it isnt ever changing.
This is very interesting to learn.
I didn't start playing until I think SHB already being out.
My main was SMN. Then the SMN got that rework in EW and I just…didn't click with it. I mean it was fine, but it just didn't feel as fun anymore. Given, I heard the previous version was very complicated to learn. I struggled more with other jobs more so I couldn't relate to that specifically.
I thought i was very attached to the SMN job and it lost what made it SMN – but only to me. Looking at it in hindsight, it's doing what I think it was always doing: summoning. and that hasn't changed at all in the rework. If anything, it improved it.
My hope for Dragoon as a Dragoon main is improving on Dragon Sight, making it more akin to Dance Partner and giving Dragoon more buffs to share with the party. I'd actually kinda love for it to kinda be the Dancer to Samurai's Machinist and Ninja's Bard.
I'm a Bard main and I actually love the job identity and feel for Bard.
Battles are like songs, and you are a maestro. Put dots to continuously deal damage, setting the tempo. Play songs to buff allies (pretty obvious). Use procs to make it feel like an improv/jam. Keep the entire performance going.
I love the harpbows and other instrumental looking bows. And this is a job where I feel like my glams actually buff my perfomance.
My one problem with Bard's look is that they're not flamboyant/flashy enough in their animations. Machinist has more style with all their flips and Bard just kinda… Shoots arrows. Empyreal Arrow looks awesome with us spinning in the air. I want more of that!
I find DRG to easily suffer from misalignment if there's 30s of downtime and Nastrond (plus Stardiver at higher levels) gets pushed out of burst phase.
The only things I would change about Dragoon are:
A. Make jump's animation slower again.
B. Rework Dragon Sight so we don't have to untarget the boss, target a player, use it, then retarget the boss while double weaving all of that with something else. Maybe add a new action similar to dance partner that allows us to designate a Dragon Sight recipient pre-pull, which causes each subsequent use of Dragon Sight to be given to that player automatically.
C. (maybe) Merge Lance Charge and Battle Litany into one action, with Lance Charge upgrading into Battle Litany at level 52.
I've only been playing since just before EW so maybe older players will disagree, but personally I think the job would be more fun this way.
You talking about weave economy made me realise that's why I keep coming back to dragoon. It's the only job whose reopener I feel like I have to be really careful about because of how important it is to properly sequence your OGCDs in the short window you have, and I find that exciting compared to "busy" jobs like DRK whose bursts are mindlessly spammy, or GNB/NIN whose burst tools don't interact or overlap enough for it to take much effort with sequencing
And to add, the part at the beginning about archiving old job states is extremely appreciated. As someone who loves digging into old resources to find out how jobs used to play to better inform myself on the game's history, your videos are bar none the best place to go for ShB, because you show the skills in motion, contextualize them within the job's kit and explain how they work in practice. It goes beyond just a basic tutorial and I really appreciate that.
I'm playing catch up since I just started in March but it is cool to hear these job specific opinions. Gives me something to think on when I do decide to level up the job.
So personally, my hope is that mYbe for dragoon they make it where after you hit the 3rd hit of your combo, the first attack changes to a different attack that continues the combo. I think that'd do a good job of reducing the clutter and making it accessible while still keeping it bust. In my opinion at least.
Having finally gotten dragoon to 90 on two characters…. I don't really want dragoon to change. I want bard to change. Though dragoon could use less buttons because it's kind of hard to fit stuff efficiently on controller. I went from dragoon to bard and then coming back to dragoon it feels fine in comparison. But things like the AOE rotation at low levels… just needs to exist in the first place.
Weave economy is always the reason I recoil whenever I hear the common "just make jumps GCD" take. That… runs counter to the entire goal of the job. Constant weaving is not a PROBLEM.
I'm not gonna lie at all, I main Dragoon for two main reasons:
I adore the general job fantasy of Final Fantasy dragoons and always have. FF4 with Kain was my first FF game, and I love Aranea from FF15, and the enemy dragoons from FF16. I adore their armor, and more than that, I go crazy for the idea of their super high jumps on top of how they can chain them mid-air, as displayed in the Shadowbringers cinematic.
I love how they play, plain and simple. No reduced GCD that makes Monk really hard for me to play both in terms of pure play style and literally hurting my thumb with my MMO mouse.
As a DNC, assuming a more or less competent party, I can release my second tech step in Euphrosyne right at the same time as the first "fairest goddess wandering the night" hits and GOD that feels good when thinking about what DNC job identity means to me.
My greatest fear is that Yoshi messes with WAR. Leave our big dumb angry asses alone.