Dragoon: Guide to Races and Subjob Selection

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CAUTION!
This article is only a guide. Information expressed in a guide is usually more opinion than fact and should be taken as such. Guides are written by players, based upon their experiences, successes and mistakes, and are meant to aid other players. However, there may be differing opinions than those expressed in a guide. Strategies and information in guides may not work for everyone.

Job Overview

Available after completing The Holy Crest. With their lances in hand and their faithful Dragoon Wyvern by their sides, dragoons suprise their enemies with their extraordinary jumping abilities.

Strengths

Having a Wyvern around provides a constant stream of extra damage.
Wyverns can use a variety of different breath abilities depending on your support job.
The Wyvern's Healing Breath is the most MP efficient healing ability in the game.
Jump abilities, when used in conjunction with a high delay lance, cut off a substantial amount of time required to attain 100% TP. This makes Dragoon one of the faster TP building melee jobs.
Jump abilities allow a Dragoon to shed hate accumulated through battle.
Polearms are extremely effective vs Flying enemies.
While lacking exceptional defensive abilities, Dragoon has the faculty of soloing monsters efficently, often taking on monsters two or three levels higher than him/herself at higher levels by making use of the wyvern's healing breath ability.
Dragoon shines in overwhelmingly powerful party setups, ie. well-oiled merit parties. By making use of wyvern damage, TP and damage from extra attacks provided by Double Attack/Jump/High Jump, and the weapon skill Penta Thrust paired with supplemented attack stats, Dragoon makes a formidable melee job.

Weaknesses

Has a general lack of utility. While most jobs have a function or purpose that allows them to be implemented in a versatile manner, Dragoon can perform damage dealing duties with no peripheral function, or be implemented as a fairly mediocre healer in a group situation. Dragoon also has an exclusive specialization in the polearm, but lacks a viable secondary weapon choice for the most part.
Polearm users rely on a wide array of multi-hit weapon skills, all of which have a very demanding stat requirement to meet an acceptable damage potential in respective party environments. While this is mostly a non-issue as a Dragoon reaches level 75 (due to better equipment choices, lessened dependency on multi-hits, and relatively weaker opponents), weapon skill damage at lower levels can be discouragingly low unless used with exceptional equipment in ideal party settings.
Dragoon soloing stratagems are rigid and often entail a degree of risk some may find to be unproductive. For example, a Dragoon can not solo a monster which can potentially take a large portion of HP with one special ability, or a monster that would interfere with his/her wyvern's functionality with a heavy area of effect damage ability or enfeeble. This leaves fewer safe soloing options.
Comparatively lower base stats when compared to other melee jobs. The lack of base Strength hurts Dragoon's ability to adequately damage some defensive opponents.

Race Selection

Starting Stats

Race	HP	MP	STR	DEX	VIT	AGI	INT	MND	CHR
Hume	30	0	7	6	7	6	5	6	7
Elvaan	32	0	8	6	8	5	4	7	7
Tarutaru	26	0	6	6	7	7	7	6	7
Galka	35	0	8	6	9	6	5	6	6
Mithra	30	0	7	8	7	7	5	6	6

Thanks to [JesterX] for this info!

Support Job Options

The choices listed below are by no means the only options available. Feel free to experiment with any combination suits your fancy.

Warrior

Choosing Warrior as a support job will give the Dragoon an Offensive Wyvern, increasing his damage potential. The stat bonuses of Warrior add to this even more. Provoke allows a Dragoon to pull hate away from other party member, or from his wyvern as needed. Later on, Berserk, Double Attack, and Warcry provide a much needed TP and attack boost.

Thief

Among melee jobs, Thief is uniformly subbed as a weapon skill buff. Sneak Attack and Trick Attack are used together before a weapon skill to intensify its effects. However, it is important to know where the benefits begin and end before using this subjob. Trick Attack when used as a subbed ability does not add any damage, but still makes the next hit transfer its hate to the person standing directly in front of you. Sneak Attack ensures that the next attack will land with 100% surety and that that hit will be a critical, provided you are standing behind the enemy. It is important to note, however, that in the case of multi-hit weapon skills, (For Dragoon primarily Double Thrust, Penta Thrust, Skewer, and Impulse Drive) the effect of Sneak Attack only applies to the first hit. The transfer of hate from Trick Attack applies to all damage done by the weapon skill. What this means is that Sneak Attack has a marginal benefit on weapon skills that hit many times (especially penta thrust in this case), and a much greater damage benefit on weapon skills with few or single hits. For example, Wheeling Thrust is the most reliable weapon skill to sneak attack in the Dragoon's arsenal because it hits once with (relatively) tremendous force. A Dragoon can also take advantage of the fact that his SA'd weapon skills can't miss to temporarily equip armor and accessories that increase his strength and attack in lieu of accuracy to increase his weapon skill damage even further. Using Sneak Attack on Jump with a similar strategy is also feasible. Outside of the weapon skill, however, this subjob offers no benefits. Also, depending on the situation, a DRG/WAR or DRG/SAM may actually perform more powerful weapon skills than a DRG/THF simply because of the attack and strength advantages, as well as being able to do those weapon skills more often and hitting harder on normal swings. It depends on the usage of the weapon skill. A DRG/THF's Wheeling Thrust will be more powerful than a DRG/WAR's, but a DRG/WAR or DRG/SAM's Penta Thrust will be close to or greater than a DRG/THF's Wheeling Thrust.

Most agree that in typical exp situations, left to his own devices a DRG/WAR or DRG/SAM will do more raw damage than a DRG/THF. However, a DRG/THF has strategic implementations a DRG/WAR doesn't have as an skillchain closer (the damage done by the closing weapon skill in a skillchain determines the damage it can do), and as an aid for tanks to acquire enmity via a strong Trick Attacked Weapon Skill. Also, in non-typical situations against extremely strong monsters, a high level DRG/THF can be more effective by relying on consistent high damage weapon skills. Ultimately, preference on one or the other is entirely situational and it's best to have both prepared. However, most Dragoons generally get more mileage out of subbing Samurai or Warrior.

Samurai

Samurai offers two passive Store TP traits, and the active abilities Third Eye and Meditate.

As of 19/10/06, Samurai gained the abilities Hasso (lv.25) and Seigan (lv.35) and the job trait Zanshin (lv.20). Hasso gives a boost to strength, accuracy and attacking speed while using a two-handed weapon, Seigan allows Third Eye to absorb/counter multiple hits, and Zanshin will randomly execute a second attack on the event of missing a swing, potentially resulting in making up for the lost hit. These abilities make Samurai a more attractive subjob for Dragoon.

Beastmaster

Due to the inability to have two pets at once(i.e. the Dragoon's Wyvern and a charmed monster), this is a moot subjob option, with the exeption of needing an Offensive Wyvern, and possibly the extra Killer traits Beastmaster gives.

White Mage

Useful in party as well as solo, White Mage gives a dragoon a Defensive Wyvern. Since the wyvern's curative breaths can affect any party member, this makes him a useful backup healer. Access to the -na spell line allows him to cure party member or himself of any nasty effects that may come his way. White Mage also gives Dragoon access to Curaga I and II, which can be used in conjunction with Divine Seal and Super Jump as a harmless area of effect heal.

Red Mage

Red Mage provides the same Defensive Wyvern. Poison provides the dragoon with a quick and cheap way to provide himself and his party with cures. Later on, the single target Bar-element spells provide him with an even faster way to cure (as the breath takes affect after the spell is cast) that is only 1 more MP than Poison, attracts less hate, and does not give the mob TP. The smaller MP pool is offset by cheaper spells. Red Mage has an advantage over White Mage in that the single target Bar-Spells are a superior healing breath trigger to Dia. However, White Mage provides Na-spells and Erase, Curaga and Divine Seal. A faster healing breath trigger is always desirable but not necessarily required, while na-spells and Erase are either essential or completely useless. Most Dragoons agree that as soloing subjobs the preference over one or the other is situational. After reaching Dragoon level 32, Red Mage sub allows access to the En- spells, starting with Enthunder. This allows the Dragoon to deal slightly more damage with each attack, along with tailoring the damage to the monsters elemental weakness.

Ranger

Ranger provides an offensive wyvern. It also provides Accuracy Bonus I and II. The first is eventually over-written by Dragoon's inherent accuracy bonus at level 30, and second is only inherited at level 60. Lacking a better subjob option, Ranger is a viable Dragoon sub from levels 20-29 simply for the passive 10 accuracy. The second accuracy bonus is a moot point, as Dragoon gets Accuracy Bonus II at level 50.

Ninja

Ninja provides the multipurpose wyvern, Dual Wield, and Ninjutsu. Dual Wield is mostly wasted as polearms are two-handed, with the next most effective Dragoon weapon being staff, also two-handed. Ninjutsu enfeebles and nukes are ineffective due to half-level ninjutsu skill. When Utsusemi: Ni rolls into the Dragoon reportoire at level 74, it can be used much as any other job would use it. Because of the slow casting time in Ninjutsu and reduced trigger HP, Dragoon/Ninja's can only rely on healing breaths in an indirect manner. This makes Ninja a dubious soloing and party choice.

Paladin

All though it may be argued if the DRG/PLD combination makes any sense at all, the Paladin, however is one out of the four classes that can use a polearm (although weak it may be). The Paladin may provide some extra defense and protection from undead. It has a few traits and abilities that improve shield use, but that won't be a question since the Dragoon will NEVER use shields. But, on the bright side, it provides a very useful multipurpose wyvern.