New Post, Drgs... YAY, Sorta. Haste.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/43912-dev1229-Job-Adjustments

I feel like this would've mattered a lot more before every single *** piece of Ilvl gear had haste, but it could allow for some changes... some wiggle room (PDT still capped haste etc)
Dragoon
As a wyvern’s level rises, the dragoon’s physical attack and defense will increase, and the player will also receive a haste effect.
Physical attack and defense will increase by 4% for each wyvern level up to a cap of 20%, and the haste effect will increase by 2% per level up to a cap of 10%.
* These benefits are only conferred while the player’s wyvern is active. If the wyvern falls in battle or is dismissed, the benefits are lost.

Owing to this adjustment, the physical attack and defense bonus conferred by the Spirit Surge ability will be changed to 25%.
The Strafe job trait, originally obtainable via merit points, will now be earned by leveling up. The trait is first acquired at level 20, with the effect increasing in stages at levels 40, 60, and 80.

Owing to this adjustment, the Merit Group 2 category “Strafe” will be renamed to “Strafe effect”
Strafe effect: From Increase accuracy by 5 to Increase accuracy by 10.
The amount of time required for a breath to activate will be decreased from three seconds to one second.

If it's not JA haste then lulz.
edit- honestly this is really what drg needed, 20% atk is pretty huge, and that's what drg was missing compared to other DD's, their tp gain is already pretty sick.

Not sure how long it takes for a wyvern to level to max, i think that will be the biggest factor in if this is actually viable for drg to be used as a DD or not.

Wyvern levels up very fast, maybe 5 minutes into a zone, it's capped out unless soloing.

It really only takes a couple kills. 20% attack is pretty nice indeed, if the haste is like hasso haste, damn, they may have actually just fixed DRG. (almost 100% sure its gear haste).

At 4/5 Empathy, one Spirit Link levels my Wyvern up to 4 immediately after I call it out, levels up to 5 on the first add or two or at most, 90 seconds after the first Spirit Link.

Now the stakes are high to keep the Wyvern alive. Wyverns are hard to kill directly now, but they still die extremely easily when the Dragoon is KO'd, meaning DRG has much more at stake to lose being killed than any other job. Like a slow cure or not bringing holy waters and being KO'd on DRG will hurt our dps much more than any SAM or MNK that dies and gets Arise'd and is back to 100% efficiency when their Weakness wears. Scrubby DRGs will now be forced to be the first one to gather at a Delve or BCNM with wyvern in tow, to start the cooldown on Call Wyvern recast before the battle even begins. I see too many Drgs in PUG showing up to a fracture and only calling their wyvern inside. They if they die to an NM inside, they're without a wyvern for a good 10min or so. Instead they should have showed up to the veil first or when everyone was gathering/changing job, just run outside the gate of Adoulin to Ceizak, use Call Wyvern and run back in town. Going into town keeps your wyvern "alive" and will be there when you zone but will allow the cooldown timer to start(unless you change jobs)

Also I'm glad they gave spirit surge an attack boost so it's less worthless(if you were at capped haste, Spirit Surge was just a Max HP Boost, Cure V, Boost-STR and Accuracy+50 for 100 seconds, the Jump secondary effects were useless(weaker than angon, remove all mob's tp on high jump was pointless since SoA have huge regain). This fills in DRG's attack gap that it suffered for primarily subbing SAM with no native atk or haste boosts. Drk SAM and War all get either +atk or +haste and those 3 jobs are all either War or /war in that they all had some combo of hasso/berserk/last resort. Drg, by subbing sam, missed out on all the goodies the other 2h jobs were getting from /WAR. Although DA and Aggressor are not as necessary to DRG, owing to the Wyvern's pretty substantial DPS(when added to the DRG's).

Doubt it's equipment haste, that would be really stupid for pretty much any reason. It would offer almost no benefit at high levels aside from maybe being able to switch out a belt or a random hand piece. If it's JA haste we should be able to stack with hasso in low buff situations for a good effect.

My only concern now is that since breaths take 1 second to activate, the equipment that boosts Wyvern HP by a percent will be very tricky to use for Healing Breath. Most DRG know that there's a good 2-3 second delay between the time you equip AF Brais and when the Wyvern HP change is actually reflected. Due to that lag, DRG's healing breath potency is going to drop a good 20-30%. Even now, with a 2-3 second wyvern breath charge time, in laggy areas, even with GS, that delay causes a lot of low baller healing breaths(800-900 instead of 1400).

What makes you think it will be different than Catastrophe haste?

We all know it SHOULD be like hasso, but this is SE, and it is DRG, so, my money with almost certainty goes to gear haste.

Well, it looks like a kind of mini fulltime spirit surge and since spirit surge gives JA haste this could be JA haste too

Right, right, can't argue that. All I can say is SE logic.

I have to say.. I am /shocked

Hopefully this is as nice as it sounds. Maybe i'll be able to dust of my Ryu again ; ;

Reichleiu, this sounds like what we talked about recently. Outside of a stance that bars out elemental breaths.

Let's hope that a 1 second casting on HBs should still be viable to pull off with an after activation swap to Pteroslaver armet +1 and Wyvern HP+ gear set.

Ryunohige will be done in a couple weeks! Perfect timing for good news about DRG!

/chants JA haste, JA haste, JA haste!

Catastrophe was added in an era where there were like 3 pieces of haste gear drk could wear: dusk hands, speed belt and dusk ledelsens. In an era where SE puts haste on everything, and Ionis, i doubt they would be so foolish.

Call Wyvern is a mini spirit surge now(gives a lesser atk def and haste boost.) If we go by simple syllogistic logic, if spirt surge gives 25% JA haste, 25% atk and def and Call Wyvern gives 20% att and def, why would call wyvern give a different category of haste than spirit surge? If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit.

Wow i have tears in my eyes lol. This is a huge moment for drgs. I had a feeling they were going to add something like this when they started making wyverns more sturdy.

This is a huge surprise(they never mentioned conferring atk/def) they only said they were buffing wyvern attack, breath potency and charge time(think they redacted the wyvern attack increase and changed it to dragoon attack increase.)

Don't be HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE, it's going to be job ability haste (or at worst magic haste, but I highly doubt that).

Nice man! Its one hell of a weapon.

This is very similar to what we talked about. Its nice that it appears SE finally got something right for DRG. Early September can't come soon enough.

In the event this is actually JA haste (I hope to God it is), I would assume this pushes Empathy forward on the merit priority list, to reduce ramp up time as much as possible.

loldrg

Now SAM need a buff too.

ZZZZ you're getting boring now, same old baked crap crack you come out with all the time.

I'm pretty sure it will be JA haste. Catastrophe haste is from equipment.. so it's equipment haste.

Excited about this long overdue update! 10% JA haste and 20% attack is a BIG deal

After angon 5/5.. your other merits were so situational that many of us that don't bother with much Deep Breathing already have high Empathy.

Empathy was the best DPS increase after angon.. how sad is that. It was always a good thing to have your wyvern cap lvl sooner and share some of your buffs. (more wyvern DPS/survive + Higher healing Breath much sooner)

I have always been 5/5 angon 5/5 Empathy.

Why? well.. i'm a Tarutaru and my normal 1450 heal, or whatever it is, is more than enough. If people have to rely on my healing breaths in a party fight, we have already lost. If I'm in a fight where I need to heal for more than that, I just heal, put on PDT or DT set and heal again. So Angon and Empathy were the only choices.

I don't even play this game anymore and this makes me horny

sucks about healing breath though

please tell me you got your ryunohige before you quitted...

5/5 Angon, 4/5 or 5/5 Empathy, 1/5 or 0/5 Deep Breathing was always the way to go.


You say that, but most of their adjustments as of late have been pretty smart. Even the dumb stuff like Blue Magic Learning job points got reconsidered pretty quickly.

This makes me soooooooooo happy T^T

Waiting for them to reconsider Fudo & skillchain damage, cause that was pretty dumb.

Hey now about time sam got to shine! I hope those change make drg just as good so we'll have another option as dd and my ryu ft play friends might play again D:

Lets not pretend like SAM wasn't a top 5 DD before WS+SC adjustments for almost every situation you wouldn't be using RNG or utsusemi.

Warrior isn't that bad off- it did get a HP boost last update and merited Warcry is actually pretty sweet now for a zerg. 50 seconds of +70 TP bonus is pretty significant; for example, if there's a SAM in your party, it'll increase Fudo's fTP (assuming you're WSing at 1000% and are using Moonshade) by ~32%.

Now.. if they would only give DRG a good WS ; ;

who knows though.. the massive Attack Boost that this provides might make Drakesbane top again for Ryu DRG, but its doubtful. (Considering the crit rate is so inconsistent)