Dragoon Merits

IMO I would do the obligatory:

5 STR
8 Polearm
4 Crit

But specifically I would:

5/5 Jump
5/5 High Jump

5/5 Angon
5/5 Deep Breathing (5 minute recast is nothing to sneeze at for super breath)

The others tended to focus on the wyvern itself, and although empathy would be great for increasing DoT or wyvern survivability, I find Deep Breathing too powerful to not cap it.

Angon rly depends on what you do with drg. If you're a merit only type drg, then 5/5 angon is just a waste of merits, as a mob should never live that long. Same applies to limbus and dyna. Rly only useful 5/5 if you do a lot of mobs w/ long life lines as drg.

I see what you're saying, but how much of a dps improvement would giving your wyvern breath accuracy or a random buff from whatever you have over the extended amount of time the mob keeps one of the strongest def down effects in the game?

going to do

5/5 Jump (fin)
5/5 H.Jump (2/5)
5/5 Deep Breathing (1/5)
1/5 Angon (1/5)

not sure to 4/5 STRAFE or divide b/t EMPATHY
last time i used DRG alot was soloing 400 lizard -> 300 puks for Magian Lance

already have
8/8 Polearm
5/5 STR
8/8 HP
4/4 Crit Up

mostly use SAM for zerg type things

A fair bit if the extended duration of your Angon is invalidated by a dead target.

I'd do 4/5 Empathy imo. The potential bonuses in combination with SJ traits you can give your wyvern with Wyrm Mail are quite powerful. This would up the DoT significantly. Here are some compatible buffs your wyvern can obtain via Empathy:

* Ability Up
* Accuracy Boost
* Attack Boost
* Berserk
* Blink
* Defense Boost
* Dodge
* Enspells
* Evasion Boost
* Flee (lol)
* Focus
* Haste
* Intension (beseiged magic acc)
* Last Resort
* Magic Attack Boost
* Magic Defense Boost
* Magic Shield
* Mantra
* Max HP Boost
* Physical Shield
* Potency
* Protect
* Quickening (lol)
* Regain
* Regen
* Roll Effects
* Sambas
* Shell
* Shining Ruby
* Songs (Wyvern won't raise if defeated with Hymnus active)
* Souleater
* Stoneskin
* Third Eye
* Utsusemi
* Warcry

Only prob w/ empathy is you'll have to cancel a bunch of ***on yourself in order to give the wyvern exactly what you want.

Or get lucky!

Nothing lol about it. If you have +37% from capped Swift Shoes and Wlegs, your Wyvern gets +37%. Nice little glitch on SE's part; if it is indeed a glitch.

Also works in hand with Spirit Link, so you'll lose some HP as the cost of giving said buffs.

Empathy allows you to use Spirit link for 0 HP (if your wyvern has full HP, then it will still work) so that is incorrect for all of the time

Not if the wyvern's at max HP.

Ah okay. My mistake then.

I mean the buffs are givin in order from lef tot right I believe. Which means if haste happens to be one of your last listed buffs you'd have to cancel other ***to make sure it gets haste.

That's true, and as I said, I personally would go for Jump & High jump too. However, it is entirely situational. Sometimes survivability can increase the DPS in the long run. Being weakened granting a 100% slow affect for 5 minutes isn't great. However I believe the chance of death due to not merriting Super Jump too low consider merriting it over the other Jumps.

Definately do polearm 8/8

Crit hit doesn't seem like a huge increase at 110k exp for 4% crit rate, but consider that that's 4% crit rate on all jobs at any level without sacrificing a gear slot. Well worth having.

For DRG specific merits... Group 2; At least get a 60 second angon for zerg situations where you're stunlocking. After that its personal preference. I think Deep Breathing is a waste of time myself. I've put my group 2's into angon and strafe. I plan to do (when I get around to finishing my DRG merits) 3/5 Angon, 5/5 Strafe and 2/5 Empathy.

For me, group 1 was a no brainer. It seems that a lot of DRGs don't share my opinion though... For me, DRG is all about doing more damage than other DD's and getting less hate for it. The more you merit high/super jump, the less you have to hold WS's to keep hate on your tank. Sure, its good for the e-peen to pull hate of a PLD with full enmity merits but its really not beneficial to anyone. I love the combination of outparsing other DD's and watching them eat dirt. Schadenfreude 4tw!

Stat merits are an incredible waste of exp unless you have nothing better to sink it into imo.

Don't touch enmity. +enmity will get your *** killed in any situation that isn't solo, and -enmity will get your wyvern splatted while trying to solo. Plus it messes with other jobs. If you need to merit something else in the Other category, I suggest spell interrupt down. How something interupts a Barfire idk, but it occasionally happens. And gets you killed to death.

hahahaha

agree'd

I have Enmity+4 in merits, and I have never had an issue with my DRG... Its all about pacing yourself, while not wasting damage. >>HI TO YOU HIGH AND SUPER JUMP<<

I went with...

4 Crit
8 Polearm
5 Jump/High Jump
5 Deep Breathing (having this every 5 minutes is a godsend)
3 Angon
2 Empathy

Seems a bit conflicted views on cat 2 so i want to ask:

What is the potential in dmg from deep breathing? is it a 100% land on next breath or is it more dmg? would like to hear some numbers on something that isnt a merit mob if possible (if applicable)
personally i don't solo much on drg so i don't care for that.

im at 5/5 angon and looking how to arrange my last merits(and dont wanna make a new thread).
I was thinking 1 deep breathing just to have it unlocked and 4 empathy since none of the merits seem to add too much in terms of dmg and this will ensure survivability and a haste at the very least [god i hate this useless bird].

deep breathing causes the next breathe to land for 100% damage and double damage, on average by pets breathe does around 360 with deep breathing every 5 mins which isnt to bad, if the mob is weak to the element its done close to 500 a few times.

@tero (Quote button not working)

Ever had a random MB Lightning breath on Light SC w/ deep breathing active? That ***'s cool, lol.

Quasi-Necro bumping...

Deep Breathing, if you use your Wyrm Armet post WSs, on a fully XP'ed Wyvern, will deal 512 damage. Great ability, but on it's own, not that much of an increase in damage.

As Tiger said, Angon 5/5 is a waste. Nothing lives that long... if it is going to live that long, there are other DRGs to rotate with.

Strafe is underappreciated. Paired with Dragoon's Earring, I typically get 256 breaths about 8/10 breaths. Its a very substantial increase to total damage output from weapon skills.

Empathy is a pain in the *** to deal with, and not worth the time. Tracking buffs on your pet without a proper interface for it, and no assurance that you're coping the buffs that you want make this JA a waste. Furthermore, if you're wearing Homam feet, you're gonna have to macro them out for a swing to reduce wyvern's HP to not lose 25% of your HP when you spirit link (thus further burdening your healer)

I went 2/5 Angon, 4/5 Deep breathing and 4/5 Strafe. Never been happier... My wyvern, Muffin, outdamaged our relic THF on J.Lo... Of course, that may just be due to the reduction of level differences for wyvern/avatar/automaton damage equations.

Haaay~
Gogo more necrobumping, something to consider for the upcoming update...

DRG80/WHM40 might get self-Haste. Haste works with Empathy. Wyvern with Haste = more TP gain = more potent Healing Breaths.

Same goes for /BLU once we get 99. Refueling.

Though I think it's also been said that SE might be increasing the maximum amount of merit points allowed per category, so yeah, that'd invalidate all of that. Just go 5/5 Angon 5/5 Deep Breathing 5/5 Empathy or something. Or Strafe if you float that way, I'm not here to judge. :P