InFinal Fantasy 14,Final Fantasyfans finally have an MMO where they can save the realms set in the popularSquare Enixfranchise. Moreover, as with other MMOs, players can only protect the world if they take on the role of one of many specializations that exist in the game. That being said, the Dragoon comes back inFF 14with its polearm in tow.
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As with its other appearances, the Dragoon brings a ton of fast-paced attacks. Moreover, coming from the Lancer Class, the Dragoon is an agile enough class to bring in much-needed firepower to the team. The Dragoon Job enables players to descend from the skies and mow down enemies like a dragon.
10Mind The Aggro
As a DPS class, the Dragoon will most likely end uppulling aggro accidentally. In these situations, Dragoons should always rush towards the Tank so they can pull aggro away from the player. When these happen, Dragoons should also take the time to position themselves to fully optimize their attacks.
Likewise, the Dragoon should take note of enemy positions when forming attacks. As a quick refresher, enemies always have semi-circles below them that denote direction. Dragoons should always aim for the space on the opposite side of the frontal arrow (indicating the rear), and the lines on the side (indicating the flank).
9Mind Positions When Attacking
Unlike other melee DPS classes, Dragoons almost always get stingy with their positions. Thanks to their jumping capabilities, they become extremely mobile fighters. Unfortunately, maximizing the Dragoon does meanmaximizing their movement to positiontheir attacks properly. In fact, some Dragoon abilities work best when targeting certain areas.
For instance, Wheeling and Chaos Thrust work best when attacking the rear of the opponent. Meanwhile, Fang-and-Claw specializes in flanking attacks. While these abilities still work regardless of the position, hitting those sweet spots do grand additional potency.
8Note AOEs, Wide Attacks
Unfortunately, despite Dragoons being one of the strongest AOEs, they aren’t exactly defensive fighters. Whereas Tanks can usually take on most damage, Dragoons shouldtake advantage of their mobilityto reposition when opponents attack. Thanks to their mobility, they can use their jumps to avoid AOE from enemies and at the same time unleash a quick counterattack.
Moreover, Dragoons shouldn’t hesitate to move away a bit whenever opponents begin their attack animations. Not only does retreating help the Dragoon recover, but this also restores unnecessary aggro back to Tanks.
7Avoid The Need For Heals
While it’s true that Healers focus on making sure the party stays alive throughout combat, it’s the damage dealers' job to ensure the Healer can focus on buffing the entire party and not constantly healing unnecessarily. Like the Tank and other DPS, Healers need to manage their MP pool properly, meaning Dragoons need tomaximize their presenceon the battlefield.
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Moreover, it’s important for Dragoons to remember that as a DPS class, they’re not always in the priority list of Healers. Given the chance, they should always give an opening for the Healer to heal the Tank. As such, Dragoons shouldn’t get unnecessary aggro and keep a close eye on who’s taking heavy hits.
6Disembowel For Maximum Damage
As single-target specialists, Dragoons have access to powerful single-target combos to hack a way through bosses and stronger foes. As such, this particular opener prioritizes Chaos Thrust and Disembowel to deal with damage-over-time to opponents. In this combo, a Dragoon opens with True Thrust, followed by Disembowel, Chaos Thrust, Wheeling Thrust, Fang-and-Claw, and finishing with Raiden Thrust.
Ideally, this combo should force enemies to be more vulnerable to the Dragoon’s other combos as well as the rest of the party’s attacks. Players who can’t use Disembowel immediately can use a more standard combo while waiting for it to recharge.
5Full Thrust For Single-Target DPS
The Full Thrust combo remains as the bread and butter of the Dragoon’s single-target arsenal. Dragoons should use this combo after the Chaos Thrust combo above, or if Disembowel isstill recharging. In this combo, the Dragoon opens with True Thrust, followed by Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust, Fang-and-Claw, Wheeling Thrust, and finishing with Raiden Thrust.
Unlike the Chaos Thrust combo, this particular combo won’t have Disembowel’s damage-over-time benefit. As such, it’s ideal for Dragoons to juggle the Chaos Thrust and Full Thrust combo for maximum efficiency.
4Attack The Line
Unlike other classes, a Dragoon’s area-of-effect will almost always be line-shaped. As such, Dragoons should position themselves to hit the most number of enemies. Thankfully, their staple AOE combo isn’t extremely complicated. It simply uses Doom Spike, Sonic Thrust, and then Coerthan Torment.
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Dragoons who love the Blood of the Dragon buff might get worried when using this kind of AOE combo. After all, these techniques almost demand the Dragoon to reposition themselves before attacking. Thankfully, Coerthan Torment does increase the duration of Blood of the Dragon’s buff, giving the Dragoon extra time to reposition.
3Remember The Buffs
Aside from rotating around themain damage combos, Dragoons should remain mindful of the buffs they activate in between them. Some of the best Dragoon buffs include Life Surge, Battle Litany, Dragon Sight, and Lance Charge. However, they shouldn’t activate all of these at once. It helps to understand which buffs work best with which skill.
For instance, Dragoons will likely want to rely on Chaos Thrust in terms of potency, which means Dragon’s Sight and Lance Charge should buff it nicely. Meanwhile, Life Surge works well with Full Thrust considering the latter is the Dragoon’s strongest non-damage-over-time attack. Moreover, since Dragon Sight and Lance Charge greatly boost DPS, Dragoons should almost always have them activated whenever possible.
2Maximize Jumps And Dives
InFinal Fantasygames, the Dragoon’s signature Jump move deals devastating damage to opponents.FF 14maximizes this signature move by expanding on them through attacks. As such, Dragoons inFF 14tend to maneuver the battlefield with jumps and devastating attacks from the skies. The most basic form of this skill, Jump, is an aerial attack that returns the Dragoon to their original position. Interestingly, it’s the Dragoon’s other jumps and dives that play around with mobility.
For instance, Elusive Jump will force the Dragoon to jump a few yalms backward. This skill enables them to escape area attacks, but they might backflip to more compromising positions such as ledges. meanwhile, Spineshatter Dive serves as a great rush attack especially when Dragoons want to dominate the battlefield early on.
1Take Note Of Innate Weaknesses
Overall, the Dragoon serves as a very high-damage DPS, albeit with some drawbacks in terms of defense and overall flexibility. Granted, its primary strengths dwell within its ranged global cooldowns, burst abilities, and high-frequency attacks. However, the Dragoondoesn’t have extremely high-defense armor, making them vulnerable to strong attacks.
As such, Dragoon players should remember to focus more on establishing the “flow” of their combos than to immediately assert pressure, meaning a lot of the Dragoon’s success has to do with their player’s capacity to pull off their preferred combos.
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