Dragoon (Final Fantasy XIV)

The Lancer is a Disciple of War in Final Fantasy XIV, introduced in the original release. It can be upgraded to the Dragoon by equipping a Soul Crystal obtained via the quest "Eye of the Dragon", unlocked after levelling Lancer to level 30 and Marauder to level 15.

Lancer
Lancers attack with spears and are regarded as Damage Dealing classes. They specialize on dealing heavy spike damage to single targets by attacking them from their flanks or backs or damaging multiple enemies at once when they are surrounded or packed tightly in line formations.

Lancers have the most weaponskills of any Discipline of War, and have plenty of combination attacks as well. Although they do not possess many standard abilities, the abilities they do have focus on restoring their own HP and TP supply.

Dragoon


Dragoon focuses on increasing raw attack power while adding jumping and AoE attack abilities.

Equipment
The Lancer class is defined by wielding a spear.

In terms of late game armor, Lancers and Dragoons wear "Maiming"/"Slaying" gear sets. Their armor is heavier than other DPS classes, though not as heavy as tanks. Up until Patch 2.45, most of the armor for Lancers and Dragoons typically traded off magic defense for higher defense. This caused major balance issues with later endgame content (which often had party-wide magical attacks) that made Dragoons undesirable in parties, and as such the magic defense was increased to match other DPS classes.

Final Fantasy Trading Card Game
Dragoon and Lancer appear in Final Fantasy Trading Card Game with Lightning-elemental cards.

Trivia

 * Unlike previous uses of the term "Lancer" as an alternate localization for the Dragoon job class, here it is a literal translation of a separate class (though it does "upgrade" into it).
 * Despite the official in-game description of the Lancer stating it can out-range opponents, the range of spears are no different than that of swords and axes used by the other melee classes.