I have a couple of positives and a couple negatives to say about recent changes.

I enjoy the continuous flight and doombringer being able to fall from any height. Nice changes.

However the ariel burst situation. From any other drak player and myself included I only wanted the heal to apply without locking obliterate. I understand if it was a balance thing as that would be incredibly strong. Im sure others that play and enjoy awaken Drakania would agree that ariel burst was awesome the way it was. The separations of the skill now making it two skills doesn't feel good. Also having a stationary skill with no protection feels terrible. 

The second critique I have is with dragonblood stormpiercer. It went by a different name but it was the flow to sundering roar in dragonblood form. This skill also doesn't feel good as it's pretty slow in all regards to the wind up of the animation and the removal of the forward guard makes this skill a trap to be caught in.

Consider an alternate route with drakania in regards to those two abilities mentioned as negatives. Overall class is extremely enjoyable but again those changes almost break that enjoyment for me.

Both Storm Piercer Versions make them hard to be viable in any PVP situation. The Hexblood version doesnt seem to have any value in PVP whatsoever, the applied debuff of 50 pain damage has little to no significance in PvP, and is now a stationary x3 hit FG, which goes against said statement in today's patch notes "Finding the the right skill to activate desired debuff, and simplifying the compisition of skill combos", since Hexblood Storm Piercer has no desired debuff in PvP and the stationary x3 hit fg makes it DIFFICULT to incorparate the skill in a SIMPLE combo. Dragonblood Storm Piercer is also difficult to incorporate into a combo as well. The skill's slowness and no protection makes it so thats its only viable to use specifily in a 1v1 scenerio and only AFTER a Knockdown effect, specifily Tip The Scale in DragonBlood form, because in order to use DragonBlood Storm Piercer from a Hexblood KD skill, You have to use legacy THEN Storm Piercer which makes it even slower to land the downsmash and seeing as how Tip The Scale is an opener CC, makes Storm Piercer even less likely to be used in combos. 

Also, The new Legacy change makes it harder for Drakina to have smooth transitions between HexBlood and Dragonblood without a skill command other than spacebar, which also coincides with the Flow: Dragon Flight when used after certain evasive skills. One could argue Hot Key skills have a tiny delay vs Key commands and the potential to activate Legacy more than once during combat by mistake, so because of this, the hot keyed lagacy would in fact not be better, or smoother, or even easier than the old Shift+E command or any key command. I would like to see this change reverted or on a new command. Skills like Crackling Flame can be used on hotkey instead or the now useless Storm Piercer. With the F key freed up Legacy could be switched from hot key to F command.

Furthermore, I would like to see the Dragon Flight abilty able to flow when used after Doom Bringer when Drakania is in the air, that way DoomBringer can be used to take flight AND to land. THANK YOU!

I would agree and well put. Piercer just feels a bit clunky now although the faster tip of the scale is a move in the right direction.

The stuff about doombringer being able to fly out of it would be awesome. Another thing would be fun with that would be able to charge doombring to launch higher by holding the key input and have a set distance you launch up with then fly out of that like some sort of oh shit escape. We can dream.

I honestly don't understand how they've managed to repeatedly fumble with Drakania as a class. She's been an absolute disaster for a while now and it seems like the developers have no clue what to do with her. Initially was excited Drakania was getting a lot of changes when I heard about it on the global lab server, but after actually getting it, I feel like too many of the changes are bad decisions.

After getting to play more with her tonight in AoS the buffs actually feel pretty nice for the most part. I only got to try her for like 10-15 minutes this morning before work and was really disappointed with the changes at the time. I'd say my biggest issue at this point is that I miss the old Storm Piercer animation quite a bit, but otherwise things seem to be mostly an improvement, which I'm grateful for.

Hexblood Tip The Scale Stiffness effect also makes no sense. I would like to see the kd back on the third hit since playing drakina I dont ever use the first 2 hits of the skill. After PVPin since change. I feel most of Drakania's power is now in DragonBlood, HexBlood: Obliderate is litterally the only powerful skill. Everything else is lacking and the new changes to Legacy makes switching so awkward. It makes me feel very sad for the class.

I feel like even the Core skills, the only thing even worth getting is Tectonic Slam. Everything else is lacking either in terms of damage, CC, Protection, or debuffs.

I can't play her anymore, not to be dramatic but feels really bad to play her now.

You just need to peek on the Drak discords to see the negative impact this changes had.

I honestly think that those changes are for the worst.

Anyway, idk what class to main now lmao maybe succ.. 

I must retract my initial post and put a more positive outlook on awaken drak ariel burst rework. As I gave it more time with the changes it seems to me the stances are more defined. Dragonblood is all about healing, dp buffs, protection minus a couple of skills still some decent dmg. As Before it was less of the same but clashed too much with hex form. Hence the ariel burst change. As before that was a form of healing and protection but for hex form. Hex now is all about attack speed and dmg with some unprotected skills. Yes it hasn't changed much but the additional abilities that ariel burst skills has given us (well now called extinction) helps pushed for more burst as I have notice with grinding higher end spots. Not to mention more flexibility to swap between dragonblood and hex. I feel I have better control. If we are counting we are getting an additional 2 skills making it 3 skills coming from ariel burst rework. If you include obliterate into that as we can use it separately now.

Trust me it starts to feel better the more time you give it. Essentially you are learning the class again with these changes. Yes I'd admit on initial reaction I was a little upset about it as I started to get into the groove of the class in pvp and pve. But it didn't take me long to start to understand what they have done and it is for the better. If you manage to stick with it and give it time I'm sure you will agree. 

That all being said, the only critique is storm piercer still feeling clunky and doesn't flow well with any skill other than sundering roar. I may be wrong and if anyone found a solution I'd like to know.  

From playing the new drakania now for a couple of hours, it definitly feels better than my first impression before the changes. But what makes me a bit mad is how they distributed CCs and protection around.

I don't see a point in aerial burst being an unprotected skill with a stun. It'd be much better if it had no cc but SA instead. Same for sundering roar. Awakening has plenty of ccs and tools to work with but compared to some other classes, it lacks proper SA rotations imo.

But just changing aerial burst to SA and removing the pvp cc would do a lot for it.

Definitely feel the gaps in protection myself. Did some rbf and it's a lot harder to be in a group fight with so many gaps. I'd be happy even with a FG at this point for Ariel burst. But then again the cc is a nice mid range engage. Just cycle it between movement skills. Minimizes the unprotection gap. But Forward guard still be nice.