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Almost Everything You Need to Know
Congratulations! You are a Dragoon, one of the most fun jobs in the realm of Final Fantasy 11!!! What is the purpose of this job? What are its benefits? What are its disadvantages? What is a good subjob? We will discuss some of the finer points of this job in this guide.
What You Should Do
You are a Damage Dealer plain and simple. If you are asked to tank, you should do 2 things:
- 1. Refuse to do so.
- 2. RUN AWAY!!!!!!
A Dragoon is not meant to tank in any way. Why you ask? Plain and simple, our Defense sucks! We make as good a tank as a Dark Knight does, and it's even worse for them. The only situation we would tank is when we are a Sneak Attack/Trick Attack partner. Basically "Provoke" first, after the Thief SATAs, use your jumps. It's a good idea not to use Berserk at the beginning of these battles since it drops our defense.
You and your Wyvern
With Dragoon you get to be a little bit like a Beastmaster. We get a Wyvern, though unfortunately we cannot directly control what it does via commands as with a Beastmaster. A Wyvern's main role is to back us up; they will attack a mob if we are engaged in battle with that mob and can even assist us with the Wyvern ability Healing Breath.
- Activating Healing Breath
- Healing Breath is activated when a Dragoon casts any spell while at a certain amount of Hit points. It is typically at 1/3 max HP, or if you have your Drachen Armet equipped at 1/2 HP. Your best way to figure when it would go off is either experimenting, or dividing your max hp by 3 or 2.
Another good thing to do when partying is to keep your Wyvern alive. Spirit Link whenever they are at 50% hp is the best way to prevent you from being a wyvern abuser. Some White Mage's will complain, but the extra OOMPH! from the Breath Attacks plus a Wyvern's meleeing is worth it.
Abilities
As most jobs do, Dragoon gets a few abilities.
- Call Wyvern-self explanitory, you can call your friendly little Wyvern.
- Spirit Surge-The Dragoon 2 hour, what happens is our wyvern "merges" with us to add Strength, Hit Points, Accumulated TP Etc. Another Added effect is applied to our jumps in the frame of time Spirit Surge is activated, I will detail those along with the jumps.
- Ancient Circle-Any othe rmembers of the party are granted the Dragon Killer trait for a brief period of time.
- Jump-When used the Dragoon goes off screen and falls on top of the target to do a decent amount of damage.
- Jump + Spirit Surge=additional damage on Jump and lowers the targets defense for a small amount of time.
- Spirit Link-Restores some of the Wyvern's HP at the cost of some of your own, in some instances it will also remove negative status effects on Wyvern.
- High Jump-The Dragoon jumps off screen to fall on the target causing damage as well as sheading some "hate."
- High Jump + Spirit Surge=additional damage on High Jump as well as dropping the target's TP down to zero.
- Super Jump-Dragoon Jumps off screen for a few seconds sheading all "hate" accrued by the player, in some instances the wyvern will gain the direct focus of the target.
- Super Jump + Spirit Surge=Super Jump as well as any party members behind you will have their "hate" reset.
Party Time!!!
So you want to level up a little do you? Most of us do, we can't all level in the entry-level areas or second tier forever. A few things to consider, equipment is important. Make sure you have the best equipment you have possible, though Dragoon is a great job, it's typically overlooked due to the the fact we are not good at pulling and we cannot back up tank when necessary.
If you think your spending too much time looking for a party, it's time you start your own. In my own experience, I make more parties then I join. This is a bonus since we get to control how the party interacts. You can keep the annoying Monk or get rid of him, you listen to the White Mage whine or tell him to STFU. (These are only examples and in no way are any way what I think of the afformentioned jobs)
All alone, but not without having fun
Getting tired of looking for parties? Here's an idea. Make sure your WHM/RDM/BLM/BLU/DRK/NIN/PLD/BRD/SMN/COR(?) are all at a decent level and head out to do some soloing. Those experience bonus rings come in handy for these purposes. Next you'll want to head to a zone where the mobs con from Easy Prey up to Even Match and in some cases Tough (make sure it is weak to piercing when taking on a Tough mob).
Dragoon Parties
As if partying wasn't fun enough, try doing it with several other Dragoons! The best part of multi Dragoon parties is the fact that several Healing Breaths can go off at a time. The basic set up is typically 5 DRG/mage + 1 refresher type job with Corsair and Bard being favorites. The idea is to have the five Dragoon's attack the targeted mob. When one of the Dragoons hit points gets to half every Dragoon uses a low mp costing spell (dia, poison or a low cost bar- spell) to activate simultaneous Healing Breaths fully replenishing the low hp Dragoon to full HP. Most of the time the mobs will be Very Tough to create experience chains.
Dragoons can also create a polearm specific skillchain by using Skewer and Penta Thrust. more updates coming soon!!!!