E.leibfrid said:
Dragoons are one of the few classes in the game that have the ability to solo efficiently. Pre 60 your HP needs to be at 33% or lower in order for your wyvern to use a healing breath to cure yourself by you casting any magical spell. Post 60, Dragoons have their Drachen Armet (AF3), your wyvern will use a healing breath on you at 50% HP instead of 33%. You can usually macro in the AF3 for healing breath in place of a stronger defensewise headpiece, example:
/equip Head "Drachen Armet"
/ma "Dia" <t>
/wait 7
/equip Head "Wyvern Helm"
and so on.
Get a Dark staff and the downtime is next to nothing, for we have little MP to heal, but for a mere 7 MP we can gives ourselves a healing breath compared to a Cure III and a half!
The defense might not be fully there, but our MP efficiency more than makes up for it.
Very well said "^^"; At 75 (w/o food or mp+ items I might add), we have nearly 140-150 mp - enough to cast Dia at least 20 times. Healing Breaths are dependant upon wyvern hp so items such as Drachen Brais (our af legs) that give wyvern hp will help. When I use dia, Lumy uses a healing breath that gives no less then 233 hp and has gone up to 288 before (this isn't that rare).
At level 60, as E said, we get the Drachen Armet, which will cause a wyvern to use a healing breath when you are at 50% (yellow hp) and use any sort of spell. This is not only very useful for farming, but also for soloing NMs and getting a better buffer. At 75, I can solo up to 2K/hour in XP, not 1K and that is with little to no downtime.
Like E said, get a Dark Staff, some MP gear, and drinks - you can nonstop kill pretty much.
Skaw, you mentioned Defense down? We have erase, which triggers a healing breath as well, though the biggest problems with those are their healing winds =/ can make the fights very long. Best to stick to birds and crawlers really if you're playing solo. Dhalmels are still nice if you have a friend or two along.
Being in a group with another drg/whm on the other hand is another story - I was duoing some very nice XP with Eleibfrid in Ru'Aun Gardens the other day. Next to no downtime and with 2 wyverns, going in yellow and dual healing breaths gave him nearly 500 hp everytime, putting him clear back into being near full hp. add in drinks and dark staff...
In my opinion, those who have never tried this have no room to say it's a bad idea.
Rones said:
I really doubt they will make Dragon capable of soloing. Drg have no way of taking dmg without large downtime. Bst's have pets, smn's have avatars, rdms have loads of protection spells. Drg's have paper thin armor.
Wrong, Rones. You overlook our lifeline. 8)
Beastmasters have pets and Summoners have Avatars, yes, but Dragoons have Wyverns and an ability called Super Jump. Super Jump does not take hate off your wyvern, though your hate will be reset to 0. If you get into trouble, just super jump and disengage. Have your wyvern tank while you rest up. Believe it or not, wyverns have defense that is about the same as avatars, they die no faster. When you're ready, which shouldn't take too long, just use Spirit Link to keep your wyvern alive followed by a dia to get your hp back to normal and then re-engage to finish it off. If things are really bad, Super Jump to put hate on your wyvern, then use a scroll to escape - there's still the chance your wyvern will live.
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On another note, something I haven't seen mentioned yet, wyverns have three extra moves that are based off of their TP: Remove Blindness, Remove Paralysis, and Remove Poison. These are triggered when you use a WS and your wyvern has enough TP. Say you're fighting something and get blinded. It doesn't take long for your wyvern to get tp (it's usually 100% befoire yours or close to) - just use your WS and it'll trigger you're wyvern to use Remove Blindness.
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Well, there are my 2-cents, and yes, I solo as my Dragoon quite often. It is very efficient 70+.
[/cheerleader]
