Dragoon (Final Fantasy XI)



Dragoons appear in Final Fantasy XI as a job class. Dragoon is not one of the 6 basic jobs, so it must be quested for. The quest to become a Dragoon rather suitably involves slaying a Dragon in Gelsba Outpost. After beating this dragon, the player earns the right to level as a Dragoon.

In Final Fantasy XI, Dragoons are entrusted with a young dragon, called a wyvern, which they can summon. The wyvern fights along side the dragoon and will take on different characteristics determined by the dragoon's subjob. For the most part, the wyvren will focus on physical attacks and do a breath attack when the Dragoon uses a weapon skill. The one substantial difference to this rule is in the case of a Dragoon having a mage subjob. When that Dragoon casts a spell, the wyvern's breath attack will do no damage, but instead heal a member of the party.

Dragoons in Final Fantasy get three versions of the trademark jump ability; a normal Jump, High Jump, and Super Jump, which does no damage, but removes the Dragoon from the battlefield just long enough for an enemy to forget about the Dragoon and focus its attacks on other party members. They also get an accuracy bonus, which means they theoretically hit slightly more often than other classes, and Dragon Killer, which gives them increased effectiveness when fighting one of the few Dragon- or Wyvern-type enemies in the game.

Dragoon Abilities
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Job Abilities

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Job Traits

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Strengths

 * Is one of the few jobs that has Piercing Damage.
 * Dragoon is naturally the job with the highest accuracy of any melee type between the two levels of accuracy bonus and the September 2007 version update to two handed weapon combat.

Weaknesses

 * Takes good equipment to stand out from other DD jobs.
 * Generally disliked by parties, leading to slow invites and forced solo-play.

Warrior
Warrior is a popular subjob for Dragoon because of both passive and active job abilities. Berserk helps improve a Dragoon's damage over time and improves again at high levels (50+) when they gain the Double Attack and War Cry abilities.

Thief
Thief offers the Sneak Attack and Trick Attack abilities to Dragoons, allowing for greater weapon skill damage, and a thief's Evasion Bonus can help avoid attacks in some situations.

Samurai
Samurai is occcassionally used by Dragoons because of the Hasso and Seigan abilities. And the Meditate and Store TP are useful as well, allowing them to deal incredible amount of damage with multi-hit weaponskills.

White Mage
Dragoons use White Mage as a subjob primarily for soloing. In this combination in levels beyond 40, the healing breath offered by a Dragoon's pet can substantially heal him every time he uses a weapon skill. It can, very rarely, be used in merit parties with the unlikely combination of many Dragoons with similar subjobs. In this way, there would be no need for a healer, but it would be quite risky.

Red Mage
A Dragoon would choose this subjob for the same reason that he would choose White Mage. White Mage is theoretically more useful for most circumstances, but Red mage would offer some utility in its better physical characteristics and the existance of bio.