DRK Merits

[Mystery]

Just wondering what everyone picked and why. I am debating if I need to switch mine around before level cap changes.

 

[Rukia]

what have you merited so far ?

 

[Tristam Green]

I did Scythe merits first, followed by Desperate Blows, followed by Last Resort recast (edit* not duration).

After that it gets fuzzy because I haven't played in so long and I've forgotten, but I also merited Dark Magic twice to assist in my Black Mage, and I saved Strength for last.

 

[Icewolf]

Mine:

8/8 Scythe
5/5 STR
4/4 Crit
8/8 Dark Magic
8/8 HP (For zerg)

5/5 Souleater (I enjoy my souleater, others will say go 5/5 last resort recast)
5/5 Last Resort Effect

1/5 Dark Seal (For a good drain II before a zerg)
4/5 Diabolic Eye
5/5 Desperate Blows

 

[etchdog2000]

5/5 Souleater Recast (Most dmg potential)
5/5 Last Resort Recast (To make best use of full DB merits)
5/5 Desperate Blows (I find myself /NIN in most situations, but if you find yourself /SAM most of the time, probably dont want to cap it)
1/5 Dark Seal (I like to use this when doing zergs)
2/5 Muted Soul (Will take to 4 to finish this eventually. Less hate is never a bad thing. Especially on zergs)

I opted out of the Diabolic Eye merits. There are times where this would definately be useful, but ultimately I didnt want to play DRK like a WAR. If you were one to only go 4/5 on DB because you /SAM alot, 5/5 DE is probably not a bad idea.

Anyways thats my thoughts.

 

[Mystery]

Generic section merits are pretty much capped. I am mainly concerned about DRK specific merits. Been changing around a few things lately, which is why I've been meriting again. The following is what my build is now starting to look like.

Souleater Recast 5/5
Last Resort Effect 5/5

The reason I went Souleater recast over Last Resort is so they would have the same timer. Souleater starts at 6 minutes so full merits would bring it down to 5, which combos with Last Resort which starts at 5.

Dark Seal 5/5
Diabolic Eye 5/5

I realize the lack of enmity down from muted soul but I figure even with muted soul I would probably still end up tanking when I pop Dark Seal > Drain II > Last Resort > Souleater > WS every five minutes. To combat this, I use dread spikes just before I do that combo to hedge my bets so to speak since that runs on a 3 minute timer. It's not perfect but shadows usually covers me until it all goes off and at that point it's just trying to stay up until someone pulls hate off me.

Diabolic Eye is really there for the times when ACC might be a stretch. At that point the -15% Max HP is sometimes offset by the Drain II. I also do it sometimes on NMs where I would be using Carbonara to give extra HP and ATK, comboed with Drain II Dark Seal it's not terrible HP loss.

I see a ton of people going Desperate Blows 5/5 so that might be something I should look into. I just figured that it wouldn't be that great since Last Resort is only 30 seconds but by the overwhelming support of it, it seems like something I should consider if nothing else for zerging.

 

[etchdog2000]

Generic section merits are pretty much capped. I am mainly concerned about DRK specific merits. Been changing around a few things lately, which is why I've been meriting again. The following is what my build is now starting to look like.

Souleater Recast 5/5
Last Resort Effect 5/5

The reason I went Souleater recast over Last Resort is so they would have the same timer. Souleater starts at 6 minutes so full merits would bring it down to 5, which combos with Last Resort which starts at 5.

Dark Seal 5/5
Diabolic Eye 5/5

I realize the lack of enmity down from muted soul but I figure even with muted soul I would probably still end up tanking when I pop Dark Seal > Drain II > Last Resort > Souleater > WS every five minutes. To combat this, I use dread spikes just before I do that combo to hedge my bets so to speak since that runs on a 3 minute timer. It's not perfect but shadows usually covers me until it all goes off and at that point it's just trying to stay up until someone pulls hate off me.

Diabolic Eye is really there for the times when ACC might be a stretch. At that point the -15% Max HP is sometimes offset by the Drain II. I also do it sometimes on NMs where I would be using Carbonara to give extra HP and ATK, comboed with Drain II Dark Seal it's not terrible HP loss.

I see a ton of people going Desperate Blows 5/5 so that might be something I should look into. I just figured that it wouldn't be that great since Last Resort is only 30 seconds but by the overwhelming support of it, it seems like something I should consider if nothing else for zerging.

I am curious of 3 things.
1. Why does it matter at all that LR and SE have the same timer? I cant seem to put together a good reason to do this other then for 30 secs you will get by far the most powerful hits every 5 minutes.
2. Totally threw me not doing DB. 20% haste (4/5) for 30 secs every 5 minutes is your best bang for the buck. Say you kept your tier 1 merits the same, You will at least get an extra hit probably more like 2 during the 30 secs of LR+SE every 5 min.
3. Seems you are doing 5/5 DS specifically for the extra HP during your 30 secs of LR+SE, which to me seems pretty meh when you compare it to the 25% haste you could have for the 30secs that LR is up.

I would say if you are maximizing DD potential in melee/WS fights. (Meriting or if for some reason you are the main DD in a fight with something big) your best damage potential will be:

5/5 Souleater
5/5 LR recast
5/5 DB (if /NIN only need 3/5 to capp JA haste if /SAM and using Hasso)
5/5 DE (this could be dependant on the mob. If your acc is high on the mob this is worthless of course)

Long story short, if you are maximizing damage potential focusing on HP and souleater will not give you higher returns then hitting the mob more. I think the goal is the get as many hits as possible in while souleater is up which is mostly a hit rate issue which means haste/acc is your best bet.


PS. My preference is to get 100TP LR+SE+WS get the extra hits from DB when LR is up and WS again before SE is down.

 

[Icewolf]

Agreed with etch, 5/5 dark seal seems silly. I merit it only once specifically for a strong drain II before a 2hr zerg. And you should definitely try out desperate blows 5/5, the speed you swing at with about 18% gear haste, and haste effect stacked with it is insane for a drk. Also great for a zerg if you don't use a single handed weapon. I beat a kraken drk (this drk was pretty dumb and didn't know how to zerg properly, but still) with a fortitude axe zerg in the parse using DB. But I had like 2.2k hp where he had like 1600, maybe thats why.

 

[StanDarsh]

Info on 1h and 2h zerg comparisons if that's what you're interested in.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/jobs.html?fjob=6;mid=1218312631147257222;num=11;page=1

 

[Tomasello]

8/8 Scythe

5/5 Last Resort Recast
5/5 Last Resort Effect

1/5 Dark Seal
4/5 Desperate Blows
5/5 Diabolic Eye

I'm pretty happy with this. 3 out of 5 minutes of 20 Acc is soooo nice. Last Resort imho is the best JA we have so beefing it up to me was a no brainer. Also Dark Seal > Drain II in a pinch has saved me more times than I can count.

 

[Jeska]

I haven't touched T1 merits very much Just Last Resort Recast

T2 I did Diabolic Eye to try it out and may increase it if I go back to Dark more often did Desperate Blows naturally and one into Dark Seal can be nice to make a Drain II stick before zerging.

Talking about this just made me miss my Dark more, been ages ^^

 

[Mystery]

It's easier to keep tabs of if they have the same timer. Also, it seemed better to have SE down by a minute than LR by 50 seconds.

The only real reason I went for DS 5/5 is because I wasn't sure if the extra haste packs a punch if its only for 30 seconds. By the overwhelming support of it, it might be something worth looking into.

 

[rampagesama]

It's easier to keep tabs of if they have the same timer. Also, it seemed better to have SE down by a minute than LR by 50 seconds.

I'll agree with the first part, but not with the second. If you take SE recast, then you only get more benefit from it when you camp the timer. And if you are camping the timer, depending on what you are doing, your healer is going to dislike you very quickly.

Myself:

8/8 Scythe
4/4 Crit Hit up
Working on 5/5 STR
8/8 HP

5/5 LR Recast
5/5 LR Effect

1/5 Dark Seal (Going to remove this later for a 5th Diabolic Eye, I feel the general benefit of DE outweighs the situational benefit of DS)
5/5 Desperate Blows
1/5 Diabolic Eye (Will be 5/5'd after STR merits, this is nice for camps that need higher acc, can from from PCC to J.Torque, Cuchulain's to Forager's, Bomblet to Bomb Core, etc depending on situation)

 

[Icewolf]

Info on 1h and 2h zerg comparisons if that's what you're interested in.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/jobs.html?fjob=6;mid=1218312631147257222;num=11;page=1

That looks pretty accurate, but for most things we zerged, the fight would only last 30 seconds or so. So the numbers would be alot closer considering 2h swing like mad the first 30 sec. Anything longer than 30 sec 1h all the way, not saying I'd use a 2h over the 1h options, but just stating they do hold their own.

 

[Raesvelg]

Yeah, in retrospect Dark Seal will probably go the way of the dodo when I get back around to T2 DRK merits.

Sure, you'll have another good chunk of HP when you start the zerg proper. But you'd only really need Dark Seal to land Drain II on the mob you're zerging, and it takes three seconds to cast. Most zergs, as Ice mentioned, are over in thirty seconds. So you're sacrificing 10% of your zerg time to pull the Drain II off, unless people are willing to let the DRKs do a coordinated Dark Seal/Drain II at the start of the fight, and in my experience, it's a needless little fillip on a process that already has a number of steps that can go wrong.

If you did the job right, the mob is going to be dead in ~30 seconds regardless, so you might as well put the merits into something that helps you in other areas.

 

[Icewolf]

Yeah, in retrospect Dark Seal will probably go the way of the dodo when I get back around to T2 DRK merits.

Sure, you'll have another good chunk of HP when you start the zerg proper. But you'd only really need Dark Seal to land Drain II on the mob you're zerging, and it takes three seconds to cast. Most zergs, as Ice mentioned, are over in thirty seconds. So you're sacrificing 10% of your zerg time to pull the Drain II off, unless people are willing to let the DRKs do a coordinated Dark Seal/Drain II at the start of the fight, and in my experience, it's a needless little fillip on a process that already has a number of steps that can go wrong.

If you did the job right, the mob is going to be dead in ~30 seconds regardless, so you might as well put the merits into something that helps you in other areas.

It does hurt you at the start a bit yeah, I would dark seal beforehand, and drain II right off the bat. It actually helped me when I did drain II first, cause if I engaged right at the beginning I would die first and not last the fight. Not saying this is for everyone, I know a lot of shells are very good about keeping their drk's alive, but mine wasn't >.>

 

[Raesvelg]

Note that I did not say anything about the time required to use Dark Seal. I assume that anyone zerging is smart enough to at least do that in advance.

Statistically, given what the average Drain II will do to a mob that's high enough to need Dark Seal to land it, it's just about a null-value assuming that the zerg lasts 30 seconds. You'll pick up about as much from Drain II and the added damage as you'll lose in the 3 seconds it takes to CAST it. If the fight goes longer than 30, of course, it's worthwhile.

So it really depends on who you're playing with, and precisely what you're doing. In my case, we've got enough good zerg builds in iiZerg (ironically enough) that sometimes the mobs don't even last the full 30 seconds. I've had instances on KV where I've hit my Drain II and the mob was dead before I got 15 swings in with a Mercurial Kris.

 

[etchdog2000]

Note that I did not say anything about the time required to use Dark Seal. I assume that anyone zerging is smart enough to at least do that in advance.

Statistically, given what the average Drain II will do to a mob that's high enough to need Dark Seal to land it, it's just about a null-value assuming that the zerg lasts 30 seconds. You'll pick up about as much from Drain II and the added damage as you'll lose in the 3 seconds it takes to CAST it. If the fight goes longer than 30, of course, it's worthwhile.

So it really depends on who you're playing with, and precisely what you're doing. In my case, we've got enough good zerg builds in iiZerg (ironically enough) that sometimes the mobs don't even last the full 30 seconds. I've had instances on KV where I've hit my Drain II and the mob was dead before I got 15 swings in with a Mercurial Kris.

I agree most zerged mobs are quick and stationary. Mobs like Dynamis Lord/Kirin/Vrtra that are either longer fights or a mob that is pulled to you, there will be a benefit of DS D2.

 

[Khajit]

Kirin only lasts over 30 seconds because the DD lag when trying to engage.

 

[etchdog2000]

I dunno about you but I been on plenty of kirins w/o an ideal setup that went over 1 min. I would bring TP and WS gear just in case to every Kirin just in case.