Dragoon is Worthless

[Sage Pirotess]

Well I am playing teh game, and I did read a few threads before I started saying dragoon would be useful on a Guarda boss. I wandered into an area and tower and got some polearms. So I did figure the fight was coming up.

Seeing as I only had a maxed whm or 50 rdm, or 3 blms or scholars. I figured it be a hard fight. His normal hits were no issue, though his lightening was. Well my scholars just used one round of alchamy, 1 bomb arm 2 artic winds. all three did over 2500 dmg each. Guarda fell. No dragoon was ever needed, no polearm ever used

So I would say unless a bad ass dragon comes later on I probably wont even touch a polearm or that job.

[Wolfherz]

Most jobs including Dragoon are mostly worthless in FF 3 unfortunately. I think I used Dragoon for Garuda or whatever but then dumped it.

At least in FF V most jobs are good, and when you completely master them you get stat boosts on freelancer for every mastered job.

Ninja and Sage however are god tier in FF 3. They are the only jobs you need. Unfortunately you won't get them until you go to Eureka. Ninja can equip almost every weapon and they can throw shuriken for insane damage. They can take hits incredibly well too. Sage can cast every white, black, and summon spell. Onion Knight may be the strongest job, but it's a waste of time to grind for. Not to mention the grind for the gear for it.

[Djsstorm]

I am just glad they changed the achievements for this version. In the previous FFIII version, the 3d remake, they had an achievement to get level 99 for all jobs for all characters. Now you just need 1 of them, so you don't have to play every job anymore.

[D's Journal]

Originally posted by Djsstorm:

I am just glad they changed the achievements for this version. In the previous FFIII version, the 3d remake, they had an achievement to get level 99 for all jobs for all characters. Now you just need 1 of them, so you don't have to play every job anymore.

Thankfully, all the remasters are very lenient this go around. Even the FF8's achievements severely got cut because you don't need to play the game with level 13 Squall and other tedious ♥♥♥♥ anymore and all can be accomplished in 1 play.

[SoundsInsane]

This is all i gotta say
[Viking] - Taunt (at Critical HP)
[Dragoon] - Jump
[Dragoon] - Jump
[Dragoon] - Jump

Change my mind

[Sage Pirotess]

Originally posted by SoundsInsane:

This is all i gotta say
[Viking] - Taunt (at Critical HP)
[Dragoon] - Jump
[Dragoon] - Jump
[Dragoon] - Jump

Change my mind

Worthless took two rounds. one to ju,p. pme to land. The scholar did use items fight lasted one round due tyo his boosting on items.

So no drg was nothing special just a waste of 30 seconds why you are in air.

[Lioness 西施]

Dragoons are very strong with Blood Lances. They're self-sufficient, need very little management, and their balanced offense/defense lets them achieve things at a low level.

They mitigate damage, attack, and heal (to full) every time they use Jump, so their action economy is extremely good.

A team of 4x Dragoons can auto-battle their way through (nearly) every Eureka and Crystal Tower fight, and they can do this at an average (or below average) level.

Jump can potentially save you time, since you spend almost no time managing your party, very little time healing, and you don't input any battle commands.

Dragoon is at its best when all of your characters are Dragoons. Jump takes less time when everyone is using it. My Dragoon just now was in the air for 3 seconds.

[SoundsInsane]

Follow Up
[Viking] - 2 Shields Armor + Taunt at Critical HP
[Dragoon] - 2 Wind Lances (after you job level 30+)
[Dragoon] - 2 Wind Lances
[Dragoon] - 2 Wind Lances

If ya wanna top it all off, Blood Lances later in game, assuming if you have the budget. i didnt fighting Garuda with dragoons. i had to resort to Black Belt Pummeling & Viking
Anyway always have a Viking, Viking is the most Tanky-est Class you will ever meet. its Taunt.
Taunt Effect - Weakens Enemy's Defense, and higher your viking job level is, its successful at taunt. too (Lv 100 = 100% and heavy Def lower ness)... Helps very VERY Much. when Dragoons are plumeting down on the enemy. with double lances. you can make a full 2000-6000dmg a jump.

[Sage Pirotess]

Originally posted by Lioness 西施:

Dragoons are very strong with Blood Lances. They're self-sufficient, need very little management, and their balanced offense/defense lets them achieve things at a low level.

They mitigate damage, attack, and heal (to full) every time they use Jump, so their action economy is extremely good.

A team of 4x Dragoons can auto-battle their way through (nearly) every Eureka and Crystal Tower fight, and they can do this at an average (or below average) level.

Jump can potentially save you time, since you spend almost no time managing your party, very little time healing, and you don't input any battle commands.

Dragoon is at its best when all of your characters are Dragoons. Jump takes less time when everyone is using it. My Dragoon just now was in the air for 3 seconds.

perhaps but i had four monks , one sub whm and they cleared the areas and anything else in game. granted by the time i ended the game i was lvl 80+ not that i tried doing that but was lvling jobs to 99.

[Lioness 西施]

It's one of the beautiful things about this game, and this version of it in particular.

Lots of things work really well.

Dragoons are doing that in the late-40's, though, and they're auto-battling (including bosses), which speeds up the game by a ton.

Auto-battle accidentally buffs Dragoon as a whole, and a team of Dragoons can clear the game surprisingly fast.

There's also a video out there of a Dragoon soloing Xande at level 38.

It's actually one of the strongest classes in the game, I feel, but only if you have a team built around it, and building around one Dragoon isn't worthwhile, because...

Jump loses value the more people there are in the party!

Dragoon also loses value the higher your level, because the more damage your party can take (and the more spell charges they have), the less Blood Lances are needed.

[StriderHLC]

Dragoon has very solid damage output and will restore their own HP if you get them Blood Lances; in terms of damage output, they more-or-less keep pace with other fighting classes and restoring their own HP as they attack is very valuable.

Damage output/healing seems to have more-or-less doubled from the NES version while enemy stats stayed more or less the same, so they're no longer necessary against Garuda, but they're a fine alternative to Knight or Black Belt as standard damage dealers starting basically as soon as you unlock the class. Certain enemies also seem to be weak against Lance attacks, so you'll get bonus damage there in some areas too.

Basically: while they're no longer a strictly required class for Garuda, they're quite powerful in their own right.

[Ramadan Steve]

Originally posted by Sage Pirotess:

Originally posted by SoundsInsane:

This is all i gotta say
[Viking] - Taunt (at Critical HP)
[Dragoon] - Jump
[Dragoon] - Jump
[Dragoon] - Jump

Change my mind

Worthless took two rounds. one to ju,p. pme to land. The scholar did use items fight lasted one round due tyo his boosting on items.

So no drg was nothing special just a waste of 30 seconds why you are in air.

Did you have a stroke while trying to type this?

[Sage Pirotess]

Originally posted by Ramadan Steve:

Originally posted by Sage Pirotess:

Worthless took two rounds. one to ju,p. pme to land. The scholar did use items fight lasted one round due tyo his boosting on items.

So no drg was nothing special just a waste of 30 seconds why you are in air.

Did you have a stroke while trying to type this?

Naw, phone sucks. Regardless I never had to touch drg. Even though leveled. Not 1 boss in game lasted through thief. As nd you get thief first.

This gamecsucks compared to alliance alive

[Judeo-communism]

I mean you can do 4 DRGs and jump spam the final boss in this game too, I've done it before on one of my 3D remake runs lol.

But yes, FF3 and FF5 have really bad job balance issues, 5's is even worse IMO despite all its praise.

FF Dimensions 1 does the job system best and every job is good and viable.

[onionwarrior298]

It is worth to note that some job classes that are deemed "usless" actually rely on job level. Geomancer's "Gaia" power exponentially grows the higher the job level. That goes the same with the Dragoon; the higher the job level, the more effective the "Jump" ability gets as IT exponentially grows. Most job classes all rely on job levels to have more effectiveness. Crap, even the "Onion Knight" classes has to rely on job level, along with regular level with a certain reach point in stats before the number of hits exceeds beyond the max (16 for single weapon, 32 for dual wielding weapons), like 40 or 57 hits.

[GlaceonChireiden]

The strength of dragoons is similar to why monks/black belts are useful; They aren't spamming spells or elemental-based (outside of what their weapons give them) and can completely ignore damage for a turn through jump.

They aren't meant to be your main damage output, they're moreso a member who is absent for half the fight (by being in the air for half of it) but providing good damage output when they do decide to show their faces. They're a sort of "backup" attacker to compliment your main damage dealer (most likely a knight or mage of some sort). Keep them buffed with your white mage through spells like haste or the bard's attack-boosting song (Loki, iirc). Healing them isn't as common since again, they're in the air half the time. If you're losing to a boss, there's a good chance they'll be the last man standing a lot of the times and sometimes that tiny extra damage is just what you need to win.

FF3PR actually did a lot of job rebalancing, some classes like the Ranger are actually really f*cking good now that arrows are no longer a finite resource. They are amazing for crowd control since you won't waste MP clearing a batch of enemies like a mage would have to do.

Also, job levels are important. A job level 50 dragoon is going to be so much better than a job level 5 dragoon. Grinding job levels is easy, you can grind it off the goblins outside the first town by having the party spam protect for 5-6 turns then killing the goblins. Guaranteed 1 job level per fight.