Dragoon History - Gaming and Personal

I'm not sure how many parts are going to be in this series of blog posts as I have a ton to say on this subject, but for now the general topics are going to be...order subject to change:

1. History
2. Soloing Gear
3. Merit/XP Party gear
4. Leveling Guide
5. End Game usage
6. Gungnir.

Historically, as it pertains to Square-Enix, the Dragoon job class has been present in nearly every Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy II when Ricard Highwind made his appearance as a semi-playable character that sacrifices himself. Although they aren't specifically called "Dragoons" in some of the FF games, a signature move like "Jump" or the classic Dragon Helm design show nods to this character class all over the FF landscape. Pretty much anyone with the last name "Highwind" throughout the FF series is a Dragoon. Think Cid from FFVII. Kimahri Ronso from FFX. Freya from FFIX. The list goes on.

The most famous Dragoon in the FF series is arguably Kain Highwind from Final Fantasy IV (orignally II for the SNES in the US). As an 8th grade kid playing this game, I found the design and ability of this character to be very intriguing. From that point forward, if there was a character or job class in an FF game that could use a lance/spear or even remotely looked like a Dragoon, they were getting named "Qtipus" and used as much as possible. I even went as far as to fight Odin in the remake of FF3 for the DS for literally 7 hours until I was able to steal Gungnir from him.

When SE did a remake of FF4 for the Nintendo DS though, I bought that up in a heartbeat for two reasons:

The first is that I loved the game to begin with. I pretty much own every single version of that game to date.

And the second is:



How bad ass is that. That's pretty much what my imagination was kicking around when I originally played through this game and pretty much what inspired me to create the character of "Qtipus" in Final Fantasy XI.

Prior to creating Qtipus, I had little to no experience with the MMO world. My experience was limited to a couple months of EQ and a whole host of customers addicted to EQ that left me with a rather bad image of people who play MMOs (I'll make some work stories posts at some point). I had a decent idea what I was getting invovled with, but I really had no idea the sheer amount of time SE wanted me to invest. I wanted a max leveled dragoon though, so I ended up sticking with it.

When I initially started playing, Dragoon was considered one of the better DD jobs in the game. With a SAM sub and 60TP return from Penta Thrust (game's come a long way hasn't it...), it made the job ideal for pushing out a lot of damage in XP parties or on NMs and HNMs. As I got to level 50 though, SE started making some of the more drastic changes that helped to shape the systems we know today.

Unfortunately, Dragoon was a neglected job and considered very LOL for almost anything in this game. It was gimped enough by game mechanics that I was more or less forced to level White Mage to 60 in order to get to the uncapped portion of the Chains of Promathia missions. I spent years trying to show everyone that Dragoon wasn't as LOL as they thought when greatly equipped. In most merit parties, I was often the top DD in the party against the likes of E.body/Ridill Warriors and full haste Ninjas. If I wasn't the top, I wasn't 2nd place by much. Dragoon's primary shortcoming was against end-game bad guys where, for whatever reason, our acc and damage ratings just went to complete shit.

But then it happened.

Dragoon's two hour was changed from "Call Wyvern" to "Spirit Surge". This gave us a legitimate means of spiking our damage in nearly the same manner as WAR or SAM. Still wasn't as high as those two jobs, but it was a significant improvement.

"Call Wyvern" timer was reduced to 20 minutes.

Dragoon's armor choices were expanded to include a lot of the heavy end-game armor used by Warriors or Dark Knights to increase damage output.

Hasso and Seigan added to Samurai as subjob abilities accentuated our abilities to shed hate and provide us with enough of a chance to shed it so that we weren't sucking MP pools dry as much as well as providing us with a much needed JA Haste and Damage boost.

Group 2 merits gave us the ability to spike our wyvern damage with the proper gear and macro use. Also gave us the ability to increase EVERYONE'S physical damage output through the use of Angon.

...and most of all.

SE fixed Two-Handed weapon accuracy and damage calculations.

I spent years sitting on the sideline because of game-mechanics. I often built my gear around making sure I was prepared to open skillchains as accurately as I could. After the updates, my gear choices went from loading up on accuracy to loading up on attack bonuses. Even before I got Gungnir, Mezraq was still more than enough to show that Dragoon was there to stay as it compared to overall damage out put. We're still not going to be the spike-damage masters that a Warrior or a Samurai are going to be, but in the right set ups, a Warrior and a Samurai will need that spike damage to keep up with a Dragoon's overall damage output.

(Duh...putting a COR or a BRD with any DD will increase a party's damage.)

(They still don't have a wyvern and meritable job abilities that lets them spike damage for two entities, not just one.)





Fun Facts!

Dragoon isn't just limited to the Final Fantasy series.

• The Dragoon concept makes an appearance in the first three Suikoden games through the character of Futch the Dragon Rider.
• There is a type of pigeon named "Dragoon" used as a carrier.
• The Gundam series uses a DRAGOON system.
• And if anyone needed another reason to make fun of Canada's military...there's the Royal Canadian Dragoons, the British Columbia Dragoons and the Saskatchewan Dragoons. While most would "lolcanadianmilitary" and "loldrg" at this sentence, my respect level went up .3 for the Canadian military.
• We even named a military strike as Operation Dragoon. See your history Canuck? "Dragoons" liberated southern France from the German army. The USA has a branch of the military called the First United States Dragoons that was reformed during the Vietnam war and is still carrying out operations in Iraq as America's oldest and most decorated Cavalry Unit. My respect level for the Canadian military just deleveled. YOU WERE COOL FOR A SECOND UNTIL, AS USUAL, THE USA DID IT BETTER.
• We have a Dragoon Trail in Iowa commemorating it's initial exploration by the USA's First Dragoons.
• Dragoon Mountains. Need I say more?
• Legend of Dragoon. So much potential...so little results.
• Unfortunately, I have to thank the French for coining the word "dragoon". Which was basically a reference to an old gun they probably never fired or dropped at the sight of a battle.
• The original Dragoons were soldiers trained in both ground fighting and horse-back fighting. They are still used by various countries around the world and are widely considered to be among the most prestigious units in each of their respective armies though they often times do not actually see battle (insert loldrg joke here).

Anyway, tomorrow I'll try to go over the various facets of soloing as a Dragoon. This will include gear choices, subjob preferences and whatever else I can think of to add that is specifically related to the soloing limits of Dragoon.