- Joined
- Mar 30, 2005
- Messages
- 513
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- Windurst
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- Third Job
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- Quetzalcoatl
Ok so since this is probably what I spend most of my time on drg doing I figure I should start by writing about drg's merit PTs, to keep things simple I'm not going to worry about drg burns and other sort of I guess non-traditional set ups and rather focus on sort of the main merit PT set up I do of 3-4 DDs 1-2 brd/cors 1rdm/whm sort of set up. For this kind of a PT a drg is usually just asked to do as much damage as possible well taking as little as possible, not worry about healing like in a drg burn because you have the support and hopefully the DDs know how to keep the damage they take low, why /nin is so common for everyone in these set ups.
First lets take a brief look at sub jobs
/sam: only need 6 more store tp to reach a sort of minimalist 6 hit set up that assumes all hits on pentra thrust land(11 for a 6 hit set which assumes no hits land on penta thrust somewhere in between is good) and Meditate provide great offensive gains especially if you have a strong ws set. Hasso gives haste and additional acc and STR but I only use if third eye wears off early because I am constantly under attack by whatever I'm fighting usually. Seigan provides wonderfull defensive capabilities, usually average taking more hits with it then I would with utsusemi but I've been able to get my anticipate average to around 80% in recent PTs which is very comparable please note that I hardly use hasso at all in order to do this. I also use /sam a lot in salvage as with capped parrying and siegan I seem to survive stuff pretty well, also don't have to always melee for tp so I can reduce tp feeding on some mobs.
Some of the reasons drgs can get away with /sam instead of /nin which maybe a job like war will struggle to do as much is as a drg/sam we have no abilities which lower our defense and in fact in nearly every merit PT on my drg/sam when I look at the average damage taken per hit that lands, I average lowest(unless brd is eating a tav taco or something) Also if I ws at the start of the fight and lose third eye after only one hit I have super jump to save me. where a war not only doesn't have the ability to drop hate but is generally expected to try to tank. I mention this because of so many debates about /sam recently.
/war: I have not tested this enough recently in merit PTs, I am unsure as to if it still does outdamage /sam if /sam if using hasso, as I always use seigan but using berserk while having no defensive abilities at all other than super jump every 5 mins and defender which can really lower your damage, can quickly turn you into a mp sponge, if you are doing the most damage in the PT. Back before the 2h update I loved to /war and PT with ridillberk wars and other really pimped out DDs, with carefull timing of super jump and high jump you could pretty well avoid taking hate well doing very similar damage. These days though I simply become an mp sink and I find myself not wanting to even use berserk so I no longer see the costs of /war outwaying the benefits of /sam for me in merit PTs. (I still use it for any HNMs which don't need shadows for because berserk can do wonders for your damage on high defense mobs.)
/nin: This is your maximum defense set up with proper haste gear you can block upwards of 90% of attacks and make life really easy on healers, however you gain no offensive bonuses at all, still one of the prefered merit PT sub jobs simply because you can avoid so much damage with it. Also great for a lot of endgame events where you just can't afford to take nasty aoes that might be absorbed by shadows instead, this is the case for many/most endgame activities.
/blu: I have not tried this in merit PTs of this kind but I hear some really like it. gives some STR and DEX and can do healing breaths, cocoon to reduce damage you take seems like a reasonable set up if your PT is low on suport. also great for soloing, lowmanning things and of course the drg burn! also I've used it for stuff like assault/nyzul isle where you might be seperated.
Now lets look at gear, I'm not saying everyone needs to wear the same peice of gear and there are better options than the ones I'm suggesting but I'm trying to suggest gear that is comparably easy to get, maybe even easier.
Haste: One thing that I notice a lot of drgs don't seem to understand from my experiences is haste, I see them wearing +slow gear even well gaining tp, haste improves how fast you hit exponentially, this not only allows you to ws more often but also to do a lot more damage per second from just pure melee. Now I've heard things like well 3% haste doesn't do much and alone without any buffs or any other haste gear that's true it's not very much but in the merit PT set ups I'm looking at you should at least be getting haste spell and probably march or double march, when you add 3% more haste in any of these situations it can dramatically improve your damage over time. and removing 2%, 3% even 4% slow can be equally as impressive especially since the peices I generally see, heca hands or feet or rutter sabatons are mostly adding STR and DEX which has limited effects outside of ws and in the case of heca hands or feet you would probably be better off wearing nothing during tp gain than wearing these, rutter is a little better but not much.
Body armor: Why do most drgs I see exp in this
when you could get this for free and its a relatively common drop I got mine in an exp PT at lvl 61? and I'm now 3/4(helped out a few) Now I understand a few have just had really bad luck and in that case well I'm not really complaining about you but it seems some just think barone is somehow better.
18>13, 3>0.
now I know some say well for the bonus tp on jump, well that only helps if it gets you to 100 faster which if you're relying on jump to do that means you have to swing extra times when trying to get to 100 without jump becuase you don't have that extra tp now from barone.
Same goes for legs why do I see both drgs and wars in these
when still on the AH, without even trying for anything rare (granted they cost 200-300k instead of like 10k)
for the same reason as the body barone legs tp bonus is not very effective and 14 att will do more than 6 att and 2 STR for improving your damage.
a quick look at penta thrust gear since at least for me this can be more than half my damage in a PT and a lot of people ask me about it.
First you want to make sure the gear you use gets you to the max 95% hit rate because even then the odds of missing at least one of those hits is pretty significant. so before you do anything else you need to make sure you're hitting as much of those 5 hits as you can.
Now penta thrust is 20% STR 20% DEX which means just don't mess around with alky bracelets or something, they're counter productive. on a 5 hit ws attack will still play a pretty large roll and the 20% mods are relatively small but still helpfull, I try to increase my attack compared to my normal melee set (since I no longer need haste during ws) and pump up on STR and DEX where I can heca gear is good for this.
Food: I highly recomend using meat especially once you start getting polearm merits(if you go for them) because not only do we have the improved 4dex=3 acc thing but we got a second acc bonus now too, basically we just have tons of acc and its almost silly to use a sushi build now. I use meat mithcabobs on colibri and courl subs on everything else unless you want to go for the super expensive rabbit pie which is like the ideal food if only it didn't cost so much.
well I think this is a decent start that hopefully helps some people. I'll post more as I think of it.
First lets take a brief look at sub jobs
/sam: only need 6 more store tp to reach a sort of minimalist 6 hit set up that assumes all hits on pentra thrust land(11 for a 6 hit set which assumes no hits land on penta thrust somewhere in between is good) and Meditate provide great offensive gains especially if you have a strong ws set. Hasso gives haste and additional acc and STR but I only use if third eye wears off early because I am constantly under attack by whatever I'm fighting usually. Seigan provides wonderfull defensive capabilities, usually average taking more hits with it then I would with utsusemi but I've been able to get my anticipate average to around 80% in recent PTs which is very comparable please note that I hardly use hasso at all in order to do this. I also use /sam a lot in salvage as with capped parrying and siegan I seem to survive stuff pretty well, also don't have to always melee for tp so I can reduce tp feeding on some mobs.
Some of the reasons drgs can get away with /sam instead of /nin which maybe a job like war will struggle to do as much is as a drg/sam we have no abilities which lower our defense and in fact in nearly every merit PT on my drg/sam when I look at the average damage taken per hit that lands, I average lowest(unless brd is eating a tav taco or something) Also if I ws at the start of the fight and lose third eye after only one hit I have super jump to save me. where a war not only doesn't have the ability to drop hate but is generally expected to try to tank. I mention this because of so many debates about /sam recently.
/war: I have not tested this enough recently in merit PTs, I am unsure as to if it still does outdamage /sam if /sam if using hasso, as I always use seigan but using berserk while having no defensive abilities at all other than super jump every 5 mins and defender which can really lower your damage, can quickly turn you into a mp sponge, if you are doing the most damage in the PT. Back before the 2h update I loved to /war and PT with ridillberk wars and other really pimped out DDs, with carefull timing of super jump and high jump you could pretty well avoid taking hate well doing very similar damage. These days though I simply become an mp sink and I find myself not wanting to even use berserk so I no longer see the costs of /war outwaying the benefits of /sam for me in merit PTs. (I still use it for any HNMs which don't need shadows for because berserk can do wonders for your damage on high defense mobs.)
/nin: This is your maximum defense set up with proper haste gear you can block upwards of 90% of attacks and make life really easy on healers, however you gain no offensive bonuses at all, still one of the prefered merit PT sub jobs simply because you can avoid so much damage with it. Also great for a lot of endgame events where you just can't afford to take nasty aoes that might be absorbed by shadows instead, this is the case for many/most endgame activities.
/blu: I have not tried this in merit PTs of this kind but I hear some really like it. gives some STR and DEX and can do healing breaths, cocoon to reduce damage you take seems like a reasonable set up if your PT is low on suport. also great for soloing, lowmanning things and of course the drg burn! also I've used it for stuff like assault/nyzul isle where you might be seperated.
Now lets look at gear, I'm not saying everyone needs to wear the same peice of gear and there are better options than the ones I'm suggesting but I'm trying to suggest gear that is comparably easy to get, maybe even easier.
Haste: One thing that I notice a lot of drgs don't seem to understand from my experiences is haste, I see them wearing +slow gear even well gaining tp, haste improves how fast you hit exponentially, this not only allows you to ws more often but also to do a lot more damage per second from just pure melee. Now I've heard things like well 3% haste doesn't do much and alone without any buffs or any other haste gear that's true it's not very much but in the merit PT set ups I'm looking at you should at least be getting haste spell and probably march or double march, when you add 3% more haste in any of these situations it can dramatically improve your damage over time. and removing 2%, 3% even 4% slow can be equally as impressive especially since the peices I generally see, heca hands or feet or rutter sabatons are mostly adding STR and DEX which has limited effects outside of ws and in the case of heca hands or feet you would probably be better off wearing nothing during tp gain than wearing these, rutter is a little better but not much.
Body armor: Why do most drgs I see exp in this
when you could get this for free and its a relatively common drop I got mine in an exp PT at lvl 61? and I'm now 3/4(helped out a few) Now I understand a few have just had really bad luck and in that case well I'm not really complaining about you but it seems some just think barone is somehow better.
18>13, 3>0.
now I know some say well for the bonus tp on jump, well that only helps if it gets you to 100 faster which if you're relying on jump to do that means you have to swing extra times when trying to get to 100 without jump becuase you don't have that extra tp now from barone.
Same goes for legs why do I see both drgs and wars in these
when still on the AH, without even trying for anything rare (granted they cost 200-300k instead of like 10k)
for the same reason as the body barone legs tp bonus is not very effective and 14 att will do more than 6 att and 2 STR for improving your damage.
a quick look at penta thrust gear since at least for me this can be more than half my damage in a PT and a lot of people ask me about it.
First you want to make sure the gear you use gets you to the max 95% hit rate because even then the odds of missing at least one of those hits is pretty significant. so before you do anything else you need to make sure you're hitting as much of those 5 hits as you can.
Now penta thrust is 20% STR 20% DEX which means just don't mess around with alky bracelets or something, they're counter productive. on a 5 hit ws attack will still play a pretty large roll and the 20% mods are relatively small but still helpfull, I try to increase my attack compared to my normal melee set (since I no longer need haste during ws) and pump up on STR and DEX where I can heca gear is good for this.
Food: I highly recomend using meat especially once you start getting polearm merits(if you go for them) because not only do we have the improved 4dex=3 acc thing but we got a second acc bonus now too, basically we just have tons of acc and its almost silly to use a sushi build now. I use meat mithcabobs on colibri and courl subs on everything else unless you want to go for the super expensive rabbit pie which is like the ideal food if only it didn't cost so much.
well I think this is a decent start that hopefully helps some people. I'll post more as I think of it.
