Over this past weekend, the long journey of us going from just a whee Lancer all the way to jumping and diving our way across the battlefield has come to an end. I’m so glad this was the melee class that I was recommended to start out with coming from being a caster main, but by no means would I ever main play this class.

Melee range to me is such a foreign thing along with making sure I’m in roughly the right area of the enemy to make sure the damage is correct for that part of the combo. The final combo, albeit long with a number of abilities/proc’s, felt good and thanks to the cooldowns each one has, it gave me a moment to think about where I am in the chain of abilities and what to do next.

Paralleling acquiring new abilities for the combos was also learning and acquiring all of the jumps and how they worked was so fun to do along the way. To this day, since Peloton is located in the same spot on Bard, I still Evasive Jump instinctively thinking it’s Peloton only to either be slightly embarrassed in a Duty or some awkward part of a town that we were simply just trying to get to our destination a bit quicker.

A ton of the early leveling was using Frontlines, so learning PvP and understanding how that worked along the way was a nice added bonus aside from the obscene amount of experience it gives in lower levels. Laureine was planning on wearing the Late Allagan set, so this really helped her acquire that well before any of us were even able to plan outfits!

Side thought, running Frontlines from 30-50+ every day kind of burned me out from wanting to do them, so we all ended up taking a break from it starting in the mid-50’s and just focused more on Poetic acquisition to keep gear up to date easier. Aside from that, Frontlines is still a lot of fun in moderation and I do recommend it to anyone unsure if they would like PvP or not – just be sure to visit Wolf’s Den to set up the PvP crossbar for it!

Story-wise, the Lancer story was fun and pretty good. The climatic ending to it I liked a lot as was the fight. Becoming Dragoon at 30 and heading up to 50 had a good tale to tell as well, which also ended on a really fun battle. It was nice to see Estinien so early on too and get more of his back story. Never really knew much about him before we ever got to Heavensward proper. Speaking of that, the Heavensward section was the absolute highlight of the whole story; it was just so good!

The Stormblood section was alright, but nothing real memorable until the final battle. Each section really did have a fun and memorable battle of some kind for certain! Leveling-wise, Aikirees and I, along with the Cousins, wanted to keep our levels fairly synced up as we took the journey together. Early on, this was fairly simple to do, but once we all reached 60 and the range of raid choices opened up, that was where it became a bit more of a challenge.

In some cases, it was fairly easy depending on say Aikirees got World of Darkness and I got Syrcus Tower. It would only be a matter of a Tribal Quest or two to address the difference. However, if one of us got something like Dun Scaith and the other Labyrinth of the Ancients, then the catch-up was a lot more comical to figure out! Aside from one misstep, it went pretty smooth.

I mentioned earlier that going from Caster Main to melee is a rather jarring adjustment, especially in Raids. Trials and Normal Raids, it wasn’t too bad as we all could see the battlefield fairly easily even with all of the effects. Sages and Summoner’s did make some of the Normal Raids even at 60 a bit challenging to see if we were poking and prodding the right spots though. I believe by the time we all were reaching the NieR raids, this was a lot easier to understand and moving around to avoid certain mechanics had become significantly easier.

On the annoying-side were melee mechanics where we would have to wait it out until it was over not being able to do a whole lot aside from possibly using our buff, or just hurling spears comically (seriously, where do we put all of those?!) Trial Bosses that were facing-only still kind of puzzle me if we’re doing the right thing with positionals, but it seems to always go alright. These are mostly just nit-picks though from someone who is usually just sitting in a corner lobbing Fire IV’s everywhere.

We did have to do a rework of some abilities on the crossbar once we approached the 80 tier as some of the abilities’ combos started to get a bit longer than I was expecting, but really helped the flow going further. Approaching up to and obtaining level 90 is just a blast with nearly having all abilities at one’s disposal and just continuously jumping and diving all over the place! Raiden Thrust is so darn pretty and reminds me of a certain saga of a Two-Headed Dragon from another Star and I will always see it as that.

This is certainly a class we’ll happily continue to run around and adventure with for the foreseeable future taking on odds and ends or for a different change of pace/view. As for the Role Quests, since we did the Shadowbringers one as a Bard since it was before physical damage was split into melee and range, we’re looking forward to seeing the melee role quests as a Dragoon. As for post Endwalker, well now that all those levels are behind us, getting it up to 100 will be just like the rest of ours and we are very much looking forward to more fun as Dragoon in Dawntrail!

Thank everyone over the past few years that has recommended Dragoon to us. I adore this class, and very much pass that recommendation along to anyone wanting to start out as a melee job in their adventures through Eitherys!

This is a smidgen late, since as of this post we’re fast approaching 85, but we hit the Level 80 milestone on Dragoon! It has certainly been a wild journey looking back on starting out as a little Level 1 Lancer all the while ago. This job has been really really fun and every ability that has been added later on just makes the flow all the more enjoyable!

Don’t get me wrong, even at lower levels with the lack of the combo-chains and procs that can be done, it’s still a really enjoyable job with a pretty good balance between speed and damage. I’m still really glad we all picked it as our first foray into melee, but not something we’d be maining anytime soon though.

Getting so close to the finish line now, and looking forward to it! Soon thereafter, we’re all off to finally start and complete all of the Endwalker Role Quests!