Sigurd's Descendants: The Art Of Dragon Slaying.

In terms of pure damage output, WAR/SAM/DRK/DRG/MNK are all in the same tier now with situational differences favoring one over the other. WAR's have high defense, turns enemy hate into player damage, weapon type versatility and share their spike damage buffs (Warcry/Blood Rage) with the other DD's in the party. SAM's have a wide variety of SC options, deal increased SC damage and have a few tricks up their sleeves. Dark Knights, while being prone to taking increases damage, can buff their HP to 5K+ to compensate and have the highest attack cap in the game. DRG and MNK recently got bumped to this tier, DRG from the one below it while MNK from the very bottom of the pile. DRG has high damage coupled with the ability to rapidly shed hate, MNK's have high damage, a ton of HP and the ability to limit the enemies TP gain in certain situations.

Overall I'm happy with the way things are working out, nobody is overwhelmingly "the best" while still preserving differences.

On shiva alot of people look for dd. However they Don't turn down drg though. simply due to the fact its just another dd. Except when it pulls hate it can immediatly dump hate. Considering it can dd with the best of them. They are all dd really in the end. And only one that is different is monk because its got hp for days and malignance access. I am guessing you are speaking from asura perspective?

You aren't doing a very good job of making your case. You're actually making the case against yourself.

If WAR or SAM or DRK or MNK can do the same damage, but then pulls hate and has to revert to hybrid sets/Seigan/etc., the dragoon keeps going in his full TP gear and pulls ahead over the course of a long fight. Especially since it's not reliant on Warcry or Impetus to reach a high tier of damage. It's not comparable to something like dancer or thief, where the level of damage is much lower and so you're weighing utility versus sacrificing damage.

I love bringing dragoon for wave 3s and we 100% bring one, attendance and availability permitting. After rangers and corsairs with elemental WS it's the safest and most consistent heavy DD for that content, where even Volte WHMs are absolutely killer, like Savael said. I think the first time we brought DRG he led the parse among melee, and this was pre-buff?

That's just incorrect since for zergs drg angon was very wanted, and drgs were in a decent spot back then too, just because people only shout for the popular jobs doesnt suddenly mean the rest are worse

This is so wrong on so many levels...

Its not easy to take job from depths of lol stygma. Drg was not popular for a long time and the only way to rise its "wanted" status is exactly writing about its real value on forums. You think suddenly people will start to bandwagon a job because its actually good? No lol. You need to tell them how good is it. Bandwagoners never test new job to find new bandwagon. They wait for other people to figure it out for them. Since there is not many people playing DRG in endgame, there is not many people to start advertising the job.

Kinda different example, but Thibron was there for years and none was thinking about pairing it with Tizona. Even when I initially wrote how good it is, people were still sceptic. This is how hard is to change people mindset. People had believe that non ilvl weapon cant be good in end game and I needed hard evidence to break through that stereotype. DRG is in similar spot. None is shouting for it, because none belives its actually great and it will be like that until you prove it.

FTFY

You said that was always the case, it wasnt, angon drgs were heavily desired, even pre zerg everything in 30~45 seconds you could keep def down on a boss usung 2 drgs barring some kind of erase, and back then all you had was angon/dia1-3/frightful roar, was also bolts but gl landing those.

Ahhhh yes, the good old days of sitting outside of the party with the chi-blast mnks, waiting for Angon to be off cool-down so you could get invited to the 18 man fight – only to be removed again once it was on so a BLM, RDM, or SMN could re-take your spot.

Every group had at least one of us.

If thats what you all did with your drgs instead of letting them dd where they werent in any worse shape than the other big names, similar to now actually, then sure

I don't know what shouts or linkshell you're talking about, but from my experience, ever since the update groups don't specifically ask for ANY of the heavy DDs anymore, barring a few very specific fights that a job is particularly good at (like MNK with TP denial setups). Generally they just ask for good DDs in general, whether that's a DRK, a MNK, or a DRG.

If DRGs are still less common in groups, that's more up to there being less people who have kept the job up to date due to it being lackluster for so long.

The point is that NONE of the high tier DDs are generally actively sought over the others anymore.

No.. it was the strat, it wasn't what I did – it was what everyone did. You didn't melee gods, hnms, etc way back in the day. You tanked them and threw mages at them. Monks sat outside the party boosting endlessly until they could fire off a nice 1k+ chi blast, but no one melee'd anything.

It wasn't until people started to realize how strong brd buffs were, and how you could rotate supports to buff yourself beyond belief that we started zerging everything.

I'm pretty sure Angon wasn't released until after the player base figured out BRD and melee usage on NMs.

Pepperidge CSS RDM remembers.

Yes; I've seen shouts and my linkshell mostly switching from "DRK/WAR/SAM" to "Heavy DD/DPS" or just "DD/DPS"

Exactly.

It feels like any complaints are either:
(a) addressing a situation that doesn't reaaaally happen, because what kind of groups these days really distinguish between similarly capable melee heavy DD jobs to the point where one is acceptable and another is not OK to bring? (I questioned whether that's some Asura weirdness I don't know about, but it doesn't seem that's really the case - people like Geriond aren't claiming it to be the status quo there now),
EDIT: and even prior to the most recent DRG update, I feel like people saying WAR/DRK/SAM often meant that as shorthand for "strong melee DD", and if you actually asked them to come on a very well geared DRG the majority would probably be fine with that.

or (b) you're just playing with a specific group of idiots, who you might want to reconsider teaming up with? You don't have to join shouts from morons, you know.

Yes, there are some specific exceptions that don't have broad applicability to most fights - like perhaps a particular Ambuscade or high tier. MNK for low # of DDs and low TP feed strats, jobs with the appropriate weapon type for Piercing/Blunt/Slashing weak mobs, SAM for certain Yaegasumi shenanigans, etc... Otherwise, a DD is a DD. And I'd go so far as to say most groups in my experience are pretty OK using a 1-hander like a quality geared THF DNC NIN BLU in a "DPS" slot in the majority of situations (including Dyna, and really only excluding very high end zerg fights like a WoC or something similar).

The one DD job that truly does have a bit of an advantage specific to short zerg fights would be WAR, and that's down to a combination of (1) Warcry being a very potent TP Bonus buff to all party members, and (2) Mighty Strikes being a fantastic SP that's tailor-made for zergs.

Yeah it's surprisingly "balanced" right now though DRG and MNK are a bit strong right now when combined with their other abilities, but I think that's just cause SE hasn't gotten to WAR/DRK/SAM yet which could use minor tweaks but nothing major. Like make Scythe more damage friendly so DRK can do SC's better then just spamming Torc with a R15 Cala. Maybe provide WAR with a bit better damage reduction or boost Warcry / Blood Rage's effect to provide the party with more spike DPS. Do something with SAM that lets it boosts other people's TP gain or inhibit the targets TP gain, something like that.

I like having a pseudo balanced damage meta, at least among melee's.

Yes they are, so funny because nothing was changed with BLU only they were left off some gear options after Escha. The core of the job still functions the same and not every fight is a straight zerg.

Yeah BLU is still a strong DD, maybe not the "A" tier what is WAR/DRK/SAM/MNK/DRG, but then again it was never in that tier anyway. BLU's strength is it's customization, it can be customized for each situation and can even change that customization if given a few minutes of notice. Our AoE cleaving BLU's become melee's BLUs when we head to the Wave 2 MB to start farming Wave 3. Giving up some raw damage potential for that vast versatility seems like a good trade. My only desire for them is to be given some more job traits like Subtle Blow and Damage Limit Plus.

If you haven't actually looked at the game situation post-patch from within the game, you don't really have an argument to stand on.