Upon Closer Inspection...

Dragoon hit 80 last Friday. I didn't really get to toy around with it much until the next day due to level sync and I haven't really put all my thoughts together on how the level cap increase has affected this job aside from a few quick blurbs. Dragoon was a focal point in the update notes from the various job adjustments SE had lined up for it. Many believed it was going to become a TP powerhouse, myself included. I didn't get my hopes up too high though as I knew the changes looked good on paper, but often times, how they play out in game is a completely different matter.

First I'll go over the job adjustments themselves.

Spirit Jump

I'm still not sure what "suppresses enmity" means. I've done a little testing and from what I can tell, strictly from eyeballing, it looks like it does nothing to enmity at all. Granted, I haven't really been able to test that in a better situation like on a Salvage boss or something to that effect, but still, you'd think something would visually clue me in that it does effect enmity somewhere.

The nifty thing about this jump is that it will give you 1.5x your normal TP if your wyvern is out. I didn't notice this when I originally got the Jump. Akeem pointed it out to me a couple days later. I initially thought it was a flat amount of TP instead of a multiplier, but further testing showed otherwise.

The crappy thing about this jump is that it shares the timer with normal Jump. The crappier thing is that it overwrites your Jump merit timers. So now there's a debate. Keep in mind, the debate really hinges on which jump does more damage on average. I still need to do more testing on this facet of it, but it looks like they're about the same regardless of the wyvern being out.

In a 15 minute period, you can get 12 Jumps in against 9 Spirit Jumps if your merit timers are fully merited. While look at 12 vs. 9, it looks like a no-brainer. When you factor in TP gain however...

Jump: 17TP * 3 = 51TP extra gained over a 15 minute period.
Spirit Jump: 9 * 9TP (I hit 17TP/jump, the 50% bonus rounds up I have confirmed). 81TP extra gained over a 15 minute period.

With Carbonara, Spirit Jump basically gives me a free WS over a 15 minute period. Does an extra Drakesbane do more damage than 3 Jumps? Guess it really all depends on what you're fighting. On top of that, there really aren't many battles where a DRG is going to be standing there wailing away for 15 minutes. You get the idea though.

The main reason I bring this up is that there are a number of times where you end up at 99TP just begging for something to hit you or the time between swings and you camping your WS macro just seems to drag on forever. I pretty much view this as allowing a DRG to have a pseudo-5 hit build w/o having to stock up on Store TP gear and that's a good thing.

Now if SE would just fix that whole timer issue...

TP from Spirit Link

Pretty much made the {pettp} function relative to a Dragoon again. As I said in an earlier post, it's pretty much exactly what I thought it'd be. Wyvern usually about 15-20TP when you use it and the master gets half of it. It does work when the Wyvern is at full health and you have Empathy merits as well.

Personally, I would have liked to see them give us basic pet commands outside of "/pet "Dismiss" {me}". Really gets annoying switching targets or having to swing to get the Wyvern to do anything.

Conserve TP

Nice job trait and there's rampant speculation that Dragoon actually has Conserve TP II since level 1 shows up at level 45. I've little to no experience with how this trait actually works, but it's often times compared to Conserve MP.

The thing about this trait is that it's a little irritating. It's nice when it kicks in, but it seems so random in it's values that it's hard to tell when it kicked in and when you missed a WS entirely. In Dynamis the other day, for example. We're fighting a Yagudo Liberator. Typically, on WHM, THF, MNK and PLD beasts, I'll smash my Leg Sweep macro trying to prevent them from 2-houring (or to minimize their effect in the MNK's case...). The Liberator used Perfect Dodge a split second before I hit my macro.

"Qtipus uses Leg Sweep, but missses the Yagudo Liberator."

I was looking at my TP bar when I hit the macro and it returned 16TP like Leg Sweep normally would, but I had missed. This baffled me. I essentially got all of my TP for missing a monster. Not that I'm complaining, but if that's what that trait's capable of, that's awesome. I'm just irritated cause it makes it rather difficult to judge TP return values.

Sonic Thrust

This WS is going to get me in a lot of trouble. Not only is it rather strong, but it's a rather short (guessing 5') front cone AoE. I used it a number of times in Einherjar and Dynamis on crowds of critters and instantly drew an ass-raping, but...

...as crazy as this sounds, I seriously think a group of DRGs and WARs using their spiffy new AoEs could probably wipe out a large number of critters. A well timed sleep or some bouncing hate between shadows and third eye can likely keep people going long enough to prevent any serious damage from occurring.

Onto Subjob-Specifics though...

Dragoon/Samurai

This was the one that had me losing the most room in my pants. I couldn't wait to use Sekkanoki. True to form, that Job Ability is going to get me in a lot of trouble. Back to back Drakesbanes pretty much destroyed anything that I touched in Dynamis. Back to back Leg Sweeps pretty much neutralized Hundred Fists. Back to back Geirskoguls would obviously produce light and something pretty, but still did less damage than back to back Drakesbanes.

When used in conjunction with Meditate and Jumps, it's rather easy to get 3 WS off in a matter of 5-8 seconds. Unfortunately, 3x Geirskogul doesn't make double light. Unless my timing was just off that is...but 99% sure it doesn't.

Note to self: Make sure Super Jump or High Jump are up before popping Sekkanoki.

Double Note to self: Remember you moved your Super Jump macro down one spot to accommodate Spirit Jump...

Dragoon/White Mage

I wasn't looking as forward to this as I was subbing Samurai. This was partly because I thought Haste was level 42 for WHM. Turns out I was wrong and it's 40. In helping Drakus kill leeches the other night for a Katana trial, I discovered DRG now has access to:

Haste
Stona
Teleport-Yhoat
Teleport-Altep
Cura
Barvira
Banishga II

The first 2 spells are absolutely HUGE. Haste lasts the full duration of 3 minutes and appears to be full powered. Stona really needs no explanation. Pretty much anyone subbing WHM just got a spot to help remove statuses against things that like to cast or breath things that petrify you.

(Looking at you Gi'Ghi Rockchopper, Jailer of Temperance and Jailer of Faith!)

The teleports are a nice way to transport around, but too little, too late unless you've not done any FoV's. Cura is rather interesting in the sense that I can pretty much AoE wake people for half the cost now. The rest are just meh. Looking ahead, the rest of the spells from /WHM that I look forward to are Cure IV, Repose and Flash.

Dragoon/Red Mage

I didn't tinker with this subjob much. I mostly just wanted to use convert. Might prove useful if a group is overloaded with melee and not enough support. Nothing really noteworthy in the spell list either between 38-40 unless you like Ice Spikes...

Depending on how they handle the implementation of Refresh from a subjob, this could be the subjob of choice by the time the cap is raised to 99. I may still prefer /WHM to this given the fact that I can remove a lot more of the potential status effects I encounter while out soloing, but it may be that a fully powered Refresh, Haste and Convert from /RDM tips the scales.

Other Subs (BLU, DRK, WAR, SCH, etc)

I've never subscribed to the notion of DRG/BLU. The reasons are A) I'm cheap and don't want to burn an RR item, B) I'm reckless and always need to have RR up, C) Really don't like having to rely on items and TP to remove status effects and D) Really don't think BLU offers anything outside of Cocoon that makes it worth leveling. In short, there really isn't much of anything I've seen out of /BLU that makes me believe it's better than subbing WHM or RDM.

DRG/SCH is pretty much in the same boat to me. Aside from using Accession + -Nas, /WHM and /RDM seemingly do it better. Sublimination was nice until Convert became accessible. DRG/WAR and DRG/DRK just seemingly found faster ways to get themselves killed.

And before anyone asks, DRG/DNC isn't even on my radar.

Conclusion

What I think came out of this update more than anything is that Dragoon simply became a lot more flexible than it used to be. You could effectively say that about most jobs, but from a soloing and role standpoint, Dragoon gained access to a number of useful things that definitely make it easier to fulfill certain points in party setups.

I don't believe Dragoon was put over the top in terms of spike damage output. SAM, WAR and DRK are still the kings of that, but it did close the gap quite a bit by virtue of that extra WS that's gained not only from Sekkanoki, but from the little TP tweaks we got. Having a DRG/WHM around might give your mage a little bit of a breather in low man situations as well.

It's definitely changed how the job is play. Not drastically, but enough for me to feel like I'm learning something new on a daily basis about it again and that's a lot of fun in and of itself.