Sigurd's Descendants: The Art Of Dragon Slaying.

Huh PLD? There’s a PLD job in this game?

I'd like a total revamp of Drakes. They completely ignored it during both of the major WS overhaul updates.

Remove the atk penalty. Up the str mod a bit. 50% on a single mod WS? The 1kTP crit+ is also really low. Just +10%. I'm not sure if the fTP should be adjusted... Oh and how about the weaponskill called "Drakesbane" does some bonus dmg to dragons or something. <,<;

In any case I really doubt they're going to do anything to drakes, but I would be happy to be wrong there.

I'm really curious about what they will actually do. But I will attempt to maintain low expectations.

I"m just jealous so many jobs are getting a 2nd round of adjustments while my favored job is still sitting on the bench waiting for a chance... like alot of jobs

Buffing Drakesbane too much would completely (relatively) break Ryu.

Not something I'd personally mind, but I don't see SE going for it.

Doesnt Drakesbane with shining one (at 3k tp <~<) have a nearly 100% crit rate with the right gear?

ItemSet 368772

101% Crit rate, 16% crit damage (maybe more), and if you really wanted to sub fighter (lol), it has over a 50% multi attack rate.

Maybe they're going to just give us Angon/Deep Breathing and just make the merits do something else (like what they've been doing to mages).

My DRG wishlist:

-Remove Attack Penalty from Penta Thrust and Drakesbane (literally no reason to have it in this day and age).
-"Call Wyvern" reduced to 10 minutes.
-"Spirit Surge" resets the Call Wyvern recast.
-"Jump" modifier is now STR based instead of VIT based.
-Elemental Breaths are now based on Wyvern Max HP.
-Deep Breathing is now a buff that lasts for 30 seconds and increases Breath potency by 25%.
-Wyvern does a dive or somersault attack every time we use a jump skill, it's like an extra strong auto.
-Ancient Circle (and the other Circles) now give Attack+5%/Defense+5% buff to everyone in addition to their specific "killer" effects. Maybe make it main job only effect so people can't double up with their circle buffs with DRG/SAM.
-Add a "Piercing" trait that allows the Dragoon to have a proc% chance to ignore defense. It can proc on weapon skills and jumps too. DRG99 would have 5 tiers of it, giving us a 17% chance to ignore defense. Or instead of a proc effect, it could be the DRG naturally ignores X% of a target's defense, which would kinda be like a better version of Smite/Attack Bonus. Say like 5-10% or something. You know, to account for the fact that we don't have a native Berserk/Hasso/Last Resort skill on DRG, nor a weapon skill with an attack bonus like Gekko or Steel Cyclone.

Removing Drakesbane's attack penalty will make it competitive with Stardiver without Ryuno. Stardiver has the better wsc and fTP across all hits. With Ryuno, it will likely win out. I doubt they would remove the attack penalty AND buff its str modifier because then you have a level 75 WS being better than a level 95 one.

They really should just get rid of all the attack penalty from ws. Theres only like 4 or 5 anyway. It's just dumb.

What logic is there in negatives in weaponskills.

Accuracy varies with tp is fine, logical that a strong hit has higher chance to miss like sidewinder. More risk more reward.

The only WS with attack penalty that might be okay is requiscat since it ignores all sorts of defenses, iirc.

I think the concept was justifiable a decade ago, where you had a multi hit weapon skill with a strong modifier but with an attack penalty. This way, it was very very powerful against weak targets but trash on stronger targets where you needed a big single hit skill to pierce their defense. The problem is, nearly all polearm weaponskills are multihit, save for Wheeling Thrust, Geirskogul, and Camlann's Torment (the latter two being really only available with certain weapons/quests done). They probably wanted weapon skills like Penta Thrust to be for trash mobs, while you'd use Wheeling Thrust against bosses. THe attack penalty was a counterbalance to the fact that it was a 5 hit, 1.0 fTP WS with 50% STR wsc. If it had no attack penalty, it would be extremely powerful as a level 75 WS.

Drakesbane: 4-hit, 1.0 fTP, 50% STR, -19% attack penalty
Insurgency: 4-hit, 0.5 fTP, 20% STR/20% INT.
King's Justice: 3-hit, 1.0 fTP, 50% STR
Tachi: Rana: 3-hit, 1.0 fTP, 50% STR

Considering those 4, 2-h weaponskills, they're all relatiely similar in terms of potency. Drakesbane has a -19% attack penalty, but it's also 1 additional hit compared to the others. On paper they appear to be balanced. Remove the Attack Penalty from Drakesbane and you'd probably have to lower its fTP or make it a 20%STR/20% DEX mod or something to make it in-line with the other 3. Honestly, removing the attack penalty but also weakening the fTP to 0.5 or lowering the wsc still would be a buff to Drakesbane. It would make it weaker against weaker targets, but also much stronger in relevant content. The 0.5fTP thing would't even be a huge deal since it would only apply to the first hit anyway.

Drakes is only a 4 hit WS. (Or BG wiki is wrong)

Fixed. The point still stands though. It's 4 hits with -19% attack penalty, but also has a higher wsc than Insurgency and 1 more hit compared to Rana/KJ. Not to mention the crit aspect as well. I think that probably meant they were relatively balanced. Drakes would be inconsistent, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger, while the others would have less variability. On paper they probably average out the same, or at least that's what I imagined the devs thought back in 2006.

Which sounds cool, and way back when, would have been bitchin'. But crit's value has been, well, devalued over time as pDif's cap has risen. Either through direct updates or through PDL traits and gear.

Shining One Impulse Drive, before accounting for WSD or WSC, AND assuming it doesn't Crit or multi attack, will trounce that Drakesbane.

Drakesbane is, realistically, in a really bad place. Except when paired with a Ryunohige. Fixing Drakesbane for other weapons, has the potential to break Ryu, and also this inter-job weapon balance we currently have.

No.

After removing the atk penalty on drakes in the dps sheet, and optimizing a drakes set.

Using Trishula for both since this is about non ryu drakes.
Being lazy about the formatting here, so just some quick copy paste of the dps comparison from the sheet.
Stardiver Drakes.
9479.015 6653.467
Set 1 Wins! 42.46% Lead

I do not consider this competitive. The atk penalty is not the only problem with drakes.Just to mess around I pushed the str mod straight to 100%.

Stardiver Drakes
9479.015 8209.653
Set 1 Wins! 15.46% Lead

Closer, but even with a 100% str mod, and no atk penalty Drakes is not competitive with Stardiver. Now, with Ryu, drakes would be doing very well at this point. But Drakes is clearly not competitive with Stardiver with out Ryu to boost it.

No fTP scaling is a ***. So is restricted fTP transfer. Fotia Belt working would probably definitely be pretty nice.

There not going to buff Drakesbane

It's probably going to be something simple and small like changing our group 2 merits and giving us Angon as a lv 75 job ability

Even that's being optimistic

Angon and deep breathing as normal JA rather than merit JA would make sense, considering they've been doing the same with all the merit spells. Perhaps MNK would be getting the same treatment for Mantra and formless strikes.

I suppose the bigger question if this is what they're doing would be, What would the new merit categories be?

Worth noting that this is actually the first actual "Attacking" job update. Melee RDM got a large upgrade. It's not out of the question to get actual melee adjustments. Unlikely, but not impossible.

The previous drg/dnc was just split timers. Monk doesn't have timers to split, and dragoon is already done. I don't really see them changing cat2 merits for melee the "choice" is already there. I could argue for empathy being given though.

They're making Call Wyvern the 1hr ability?

No. It used to be DRG's 2hr for the longest time... then they made it 20min when they demoted it to regular ability. (But this is why DRG mobs in old Dynamis 2hr to summon a wyvern.)

Chances are it's probably something small like dropping that down to 5min or so.

Or something wtf like making breaths be affected by MAB.

Okay, I didn't see it on here.

I am bored at work again.

Dragoon w/ Naegling.

Anyone have any gear sets?

Camlann/Sonic Thrust set. Offhand Vampirism or Tanmoyagi+1

<3

That said, those are the best offhand swords? Ouch.

I did some shits and giggle math for the Kaja sword somewhere between pages 65-70, if you want to take a glance.

What about a offhand Ternion Dagger +1, or alternatively, the 119 Joyuse?

Probably great for lulz content. The ACC loss for the TP building gains seemed suspect for anything remotely serious. Particularly with a C(-?) skill rating.

Probably, but gonna try it anyway, then go punk some Apex mobs and see how it goes. LOL

Honestly, skill doesnt matter much. Lose 100 skill is only like 90 acc, and can be made up with a single song, food, etc.

Weird follow up question. Does the Wyvern's job ability haste bonus require it to be a 2h weapon im using? XD

I think the type of weapon doesnt matter which means you dont need any dw in gear with capped magic/gear haste. You can even drop some haste in gear (5%) while /nin. You can also go /dnc and still dont need dw in gear or you can even single wield with shield and cap delay with haste samba. Capped haste single wield drg with sword and shield also looks like some true knight :)

Do they even get good shields? lol