Muadib's Dragoon Solo Guide

This is a work-in-progress guide. Unfortunately, I don't have the time for group play. But it does give me the opportunity to work on my soloing. Below are the results of my research and experience.

A couple guides already written have good information: Dragoon Solo Guide by Urielnosushi, Dragoon: Solo/Duo Guide by Maevedarkphoenix, and Dragoon Equipment Guide. This guide is meant to close the gap between information and application.

=Subjobs=

All jobs not listed are left off intentionally.

White Mage
Best for utility. Teleports help save time and could be used to escape from sticky situations. Sneak/Invisible to avoid aggro. Access to Protect/Shell/Reraise outside of Fields of Valor. Haste.

Healing Breath Trigger: Dia

Blue Mage
Best for optimal damage output and mitigation. Cocoon provides greater defense than protect, you can arrange for the Defense Bonus job trait, AND Fields of Valor(Protect) will stack on top of them. Refueling for haste. Set spells to maximize vitality and strength.

Healing Breath Trigger: Foot Kick

Red Mage
Great for survivability. Refresh will keep your mp pool high when you need to heal frequently. Phalanx is also beneficial for damage mitigation.

Healing Breath trigger: Poison

Samurai
Only situationally useful since there is no Healing Breath. Good when trying to get the Store TP lance on Easy Prey mobs. At level 70 you get Seigan to be used withThird Eye for 3 shadows. At level 90 this combination becomes more viable because you can use Restoring Breath every minute to cure yourself without casting a spell. This is affected by Deep Breathing which is on a 5 minute timer.

This guide assumes a mage sub. However, adding bonuses to Evasion Skill and Parrying Skill would enhance this sub as a blink soloer.

Dancer
Need to test this. This sub should make dragoon solo similar to other melees soloing with this sub. Wyven will adopt an offensive stance.

=Tactics= With the advent of Fields of Valor, soloing has never been easier. From Field Support make sure to get Refresh. If you're Blue Mage then you can also get Protect. Field support is "Purchased" by spending "Tabs" which are the point system for FOV. You get tabs by completing Training. If you camp in an area with FOV be sure to get individual training on whatever your targets are. It usually asks you to kill two types of mobs, but the rewards in gil/xp/tabs are well wortht he extra effort.

In Aht Urhgan areas you can get Sanction with refresh attached to it that is active when you're below 75% MP.

At level 50 you get Super Jump. When you use this ability, the mob you are currently attacking will automatically have hate on your wyvern. This will give you time to use a Scroll of Instant Warp. If you have links, it will allow you to try and cast your Healing Breath trigger with one fewer mob to interrupt you.

=Understanding Healing Breath=

An existing Healing Breath page already has good information. When a spell-casting job is used as sub then the wyvern adopts a defensive stance and heals the dragoon when a spell is cast. Healing Breath has 2 phases that can be dealt with separately, the trigger and the heal.
 * Phase1 (Trigger) - The trigger has 2 conditions. HP must be below a certain threshold and a spell must be cast. The default trigger is 1/3 HP.
 * Phase2(Heal) - The heal is based solely on Wyvern HP.

The goal here is to trigger Healing Breath with the highest HP possible and yield the highest damage healed possible.

Separate macros can be used to augment these phases. Reserve 2 macros for Healing Breath and 1 macro to put solo gear back on.
 * HP+ Gear - First slot goes to Drachen Armet rest to HP+ gear
 * HB Gear - First slot casts your trigger spell, second slot waits 1 second, third slot goes to Wyrm Armet or Saurian Helm, rest to Wyvern HP+ gear
 * Solo Gear

Interruptions
The spell you cast to trigger healing breath CAN be interupted by a mob's attack. See Spell Interruption Rate for more information. The best way for a Dragoon to minimize interruption is proper timing. Cast the Healing Breath trigger spell as soon as you see the mob's attack animation. There is a latency to cast the spell and it will be cast after that attack. This gives you the maximum amount of time until the next time the mob attacks. Barring special abilities such as Hundred Fists, of course.

Deep Breathing
Deep Breathing increases the amount of healing by about 60%. If you're confident your HP won't drop too low, then use this whenever its up to be more MP efficient. Otherwise, save it for an emergency. Keep in mind the max damage your target's special attacks can do as well as linking possibility when making this decision.

Restoring Breath
Restoring Breath will cause your wyvern to cure you without requiring you to cast a spell to trigger it. If you're confident your HP won't drop too low, then use this whenever its up to be more MP efficient. Otherwise, save it for an emergency. Keep in mind the max damage your target's special attacks can do as well as linking possibility when making this decision.

=Healing Breath Gear=

Drachen Armet will increase the healing breath trigger to 50% HP.

Saurian Helm and Wyrm Armet will increase the amount healed.

HP Bonus Gear
Gear with only a handful of HP+ are left out intentionally. Satvva ring is left out because it is assumed your choice of ring for the COP reward was Rajas, if not then use that at level 30. Check your RSE gear because many of them have high HP+ on them. Finally, pick and choose which ones give you the most HP at your level given the limited macro slots.

Wyvern HP Gear
See a full list of gear here: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Dragoon_Wyvern#Wyvern_HP.2B_Gear.

Falconer's hose left off because you get Drachen Brais 2 levels later.

Feet
Enif Gambieras

Back


=Lance Analysis=

Follow this Dragoon Equipment Guide for lances up to level 75 with only a couple exceptions. At 70 use colossal lance up to 74. At level 75 choices abound with the Magian lances and other various endgame lances.

It is without dispute that the current polearm hierarcy is: Ryunohige >> Gungnir >> Herja's Fork >> Chauve-Souris >> Rhongomiant. If you can obtain these polearms then do it. Rhongomiant can be especially helpful for soloing with the +20 mod to vitality. Chauve-Souris can be obtained by minimal help with Blobdingnag. However, these cannot be obtained solo.

Here are the other choices:

Auction House Line
These lances can be easily obtained by purchase at the AH at their respective level and are usually relatively inexpensive.

Ereptor Lance

Strength Line
Can be acquired fully solo. Great for quicker kills and more damage on higher difficulty mobs. Flame geodes for the 2nd and 3rd last upgrades can get expensive.



Store TP Line
Can be acquired fully solo. See the wiki page for Store TP to make a 5-hit build.



Physical Damage Line
Can be acquired fully solo. DPS comparable to Ereptor Lance. Damage mitigation helps but only needs to be used situationally when fighting mobs with high damage attacks that require the damage mitigation.



=Gear Analysis=

This section isn't an analysis of all the gear available but teaches you how to analyze the gear yourself so that you can judge which pieces to wear. The typical solo gear will be a cross between what a damage dealer wears and what a tank wears. The general idea is to fill your slots with the best damage dealing item possible. For slots where you can't put a good damage dealing item put a tank item.

The line between enough damage dealing and damage mitigation items (this includes food as well) is drawn based on your target. Dragoon Solo Guide by Urielnosushi has a good breakdown of solo camps up to 75. If you find yourself running out of MP often because of too much curing then swap out a damage dealer piece for a damage mitigation piece.

Notorious Monsters will often require a lot more damage mitigation than XP mobs as they have higher damaging attacks. But this still is a balancing act because they have higher HP too and trading too much damage dealer gear will lengthen the fight. Longer NM fights give you more of an opportunity to make a mistake (i.e. late on a healing breath and get interrupted).

A couple things to note: 
 * With Sanction(Refresh) and Fields of Valor(Refresh) MP+ gear isn't needed
 * Accuracy generally won't be a problem

In general, follow the Dragoon Equipment Guide for damage dealing items. The items below are special ones to look for that focus on damage mitigation.

Ear
Try to avoid damage dealer earrings that compromise damage mitigation like:

Instead use something like this instead:

Ammo
Try to avoid Damage dealer ammo that compromises damage mitigation like this one:

Use something like this instead: