The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

[Karinya]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

@Armando: Dual Wield's benefits are a disadvantage for most Joyeuse wielding PLD/NIN. Diluting your Joyeuse mojo means fewer Atonement/Spirits/Vorpal/whatever. (The former two are not hurt by Joyeuse's low DMG - or conversely, helped by a high DMG mainhand.) There are damn few swords that I would consider DWing with Joyeuse (especially given that you can't shield block at all without a shield, which also means no Reprisal and no Shield Mastery TP; and no shield bash either; and several shields have +Enmity) - Burtgang, Excalibur, Justice and, uh, I think that's it. Company or some other attainable high DMG mainhand will give you stronger but fewer vorpals and less regular damage - probably a net loss.

DW is unusually weak for PLD because we actually make excellent use of the sub-weapon slot without putting a weapon in it.


As for the thread title and the OP, it's generalizing my point far beyond what I actually said, and coming up with something wrong. Gee, what a surprise. If you find a point of view that can't be exaggerated into stupidity, let me know.

There are some jobs that /NIN is often useful for. There are other jobs that /NIN is only useful when it's insanely broken because the thing you're fighting, while it would normally be dangerous, is horribly gimped by the presence of shadows. DRG, DRK, SAM, and MNK in particular usually fall into the latter category.

I'm not really against some jobs subbing NIN, even routinely (although I think players should be aware of the advantages of other SJs). I *am* against the fights that are ridiculously hard without most or all players going /NIN and/or ridiculously easy with it - the kind of thing Lmnop was pointing out above. Hate bouncing with shadows works way too well in exp/merit against low level enemies - and ToAU introduced swarms of weak enemies that can be profitably hunted even when their level relative to you is quite low. (Probably including the level 55-56 party in the OP.) The result is everything we've seen in the last three years that others on this thread are criticizing as the skill going out of the game (which I agree with, search for some of my old rants if you want).

The 50s seem like awkward levels for DRK - they do enough to be dangerous in hate, but are still too low to /THF and TA their WS onto the tank and improve the hate situation themselves. /NIN is a half-assed solution, but might be better than nothing. I'm only DRK37 so I don't have firsthand experience with DRK in general - which is one reason I only gave an opinion on DRG.

I think we can be pretty confident, though, that if the two DRKs were that close in damage, the /SAM was either undergeared, or holding back. You can't just ignore a difference of 10% haste and +10 acc - even assuming the DRK/NIN managed to benefit from utsusemi without ever casting it during a fight, which would reduce his damage even more. Seeing how much damage the DRK/SAM took, I'd guess he was holding back but not really holding back enough, which put the party in an awkward situation (but you can't completely blame the tank either, necessarily - hate control really is a group responsibility, and colibri are particularly frustrating from a tanking perspective.)

I think it may have been one of the rare parties that actually really needed a THF. But there isn't really enough data to be sure.

[Armando]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

Company or some other attainable high DMG mainhand will give you stronger but fewer vorpals and less regular damage - probably a net loss.

You don't get less regular damage, you get more. Single wielded Joy has 13.59 effective DPS. Company + Joy in full party has 15.15 effective DPS without Suppa and 16.1 with Suppa. The latter case is 18% more DPS.

Joyeuse has 18% faster TP gain over a Company/Joy combo. On the other hand, DW Vorpal Blade goes from 4 hits to 5, which is a 25% boost - the net increase is actually higher because 4 of those hits will be done with a higher DMG weapon. So the decreased WS frequency is offset by higher WS damage anyways.

In the case of Atonement it's a bit trickier. Both weapon setups have the same maximum damage for Atonement. Joyeuse alone can Atonement more often, but sometimes you have TP early into a fight before it's worth using over Vorpal.

[Vyuru]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

First off, an interesting topic and parse.

Some minor nitpicky stuff however:

No gear is listed
No food is listed

1) Doing damage?
Blade.......41792...25.87 %
Rikirocket..43698...27.05 %
Toraness....58581...36.26 %
Cemolie....15501.....9.59 %

Even though it doesn't add up to 100%, I'm assuming this is their damage breakdown for the party. Rikirocket and Blade only have a 1.18% difference in the total damage dealt for the party. While I can't say this for sure, but I highly suspect that this is well within the realms of plain variance even if they had identical gear and food. No matter what, if two players with the same gear, food, buffs, job/sub are parsed, they will not be identical. So I have issues with saying that such a small difference is because of a sub, even though it may have been.

The damage avoided bit though I'm good with saying that it was due to Utsusemi.

And enough people have pointed out the fact that Drk/Sam at 55/56 is problematic to begin with, so not gonna touch that.

Now then, since I missed out on the Drg discussion, and this is partly related to that, I'd like to say this.

Drg/Sam and Drg/Nin are highly situational, but they can largely be lumped into two categories. Doing something with lots of nasty AoEs (Omega/Ultima fight), magical TP attacks (Mamool Ja) then you'll probably want to go Drg/Nin. If you are doing something with lots of multi hit TP attacks (Colibri and others) or just in general few AoE attacks (Goblins may fit there, Dhalmel, Eruca since Utsusemi won't save you there anyway, and etc), you'll probably want to go Drg/Sam. If fighting something with Amnesia, such as Imps, I may be inclined to go Drg/War.

For exp parties that are lvl 70+, a Drg/Sam will have these defenses to work with:

Jump
High Jump
Super Jump
WS
Meditate
Seigan/TE
Other party members

But wait you ask, you have Jump, WS, Meditate, and other party members listed as defenses? Yup, I do, and here is why. In exp parties, your truly defensive abilities will be Super Jump and Seigan/TE. If the timers for these are down, you can use High Jump. If the timer for that is down, then there are Jump, WS, and Meditate, because after all, if the monster is dead then it can't hurt you, and it is a very rare occurrence to have Super Jump, Seigan/TE, and High Jump down with the mob's health over 20%, and you at 0 TP. If the above happens however, it is even rarer still for your other party members not to have 100% TP and toss out a WS. So in short, either your defensive abilities are enough to protect you, your offensive abilities are enough to kill the mob before it can really hurt you, or your party members will kill the mob or pull it's attention away before it can really hurt you. Now sure, there will be that odd time where you take a pecking fury to the face, or you may take a beating, but that rarely happens. Drg/Sam provides a nice mix of offense and defense, and while the defense may not be 100% perfect, I'd say that most of the time it's just fine. I don't list Hasso in there because I have not been in a merit party that ever allowed me to safely use Hasso, so instead I normally just ride Seigan/TE full time.

Drg/Nin on the other hand is all about defense. You gain no offensive abilities, instead relying on Utsu Ichi and Ni to get the job done. While this is not a bad thing, it is not always appropriate to do either. Overall though I think the defensive abilities that Drg/Nin provide are excellent. If you can't High/Super Jump the hate away, you've got Utsu Ichi and Ni to fall back on, or your party members.

It's more a matter of when it's appropriate to use which sub. For instance I wouldn't even think of going to a Mamool Ja camp without being /Nin. But by the same token I wouldn't even think about going to a Colibri camp without being /Sam.

Also, I will possibly arrogantly, but I view it rightfully so, state that if you think or suspect that your tank may have issues holding hate, invite a Thief. Now keep in mind, this is for the low level 30+ parties, but by the same token I'd be unhappy if the party leader told me I had to come Drg/Nin at say, lvl 40. Now s/he may have a good reason for asking me that, and I'll listen to it, but 99% of the time those are the parties where people gloat about getting 300 exp per kill, while taking 15 minutes to kill the mob.

This ties in where you say that you think that above lvl 24 that /nin is a viable subjob, and I'll agree that for some jobs it is, especially Thf. However for some jobs it is not. Just as I don't think it's appropriate to go all out and ignore hate, I think it is equally inappropriate to turtle up so much that you fall short of your potential. There is a fine line there that you have to learn, and party leaders will have to trust the people they invite enough to let them do their job.

Also, this was written like, noonish before the Mother usurped the internetz from me, so possibly some more stuff has been said since I wrote this.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

As for the thread title and the OP, it's generalizing my point far beyond what I actually said, and coming up with something wrong.

I took what you said to mean /NIN is not a good default SJ for DRG in exp parties; my apology if that's not what you meant. (I borrowed 'indefensible' for the title because I liked the strength and moral cannotation it conveys when you used it.)

The generalization I think I've made is that many people (not necessarily you specifically) believed that /SAM for all two-handers in most party situations.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

There seems to be a pretty big misunderstanding of the OP; the selected parser results is NOT conclusive beyond one random DD (DRK/SAM) did a bit more damage than another random DD (DRK/NIN), while taking on a whole bunch more damage in a single, random Lv.55->56 synched party.

To make it perfectly clear:

THIS IS NOT A TEST/EXPERIMENT. The parser result is just an example typical of my experience--please don't read any more into than that.

IT DOES NOT PROVE /NIN IS BETTER THAN /SAM. (Nor was it supposed to.)

The entire point was that this kind of things happen to me; the one and only thing it 'proves' is that it happens to me. (You'll just have to take my word that this isn't the first time I see this with /SAM players--no proof with that assessment.)

Don't know why the DRK/SAM didn't perform better, nor do I really care--that was his job, not mine. I just Regen, Cure, and put up Accession Stoneskin from time to time, along with a few Paralyze or Slow--that was my job, and it's good enough that I know how to do those.

While I DO strongly suspect that DRK/SAM's can do MUCH better, in pick-up parties that doesn't seem to happen much for me when it comes to /SAM players. Either you believe that's the common case that /SAM's are MP sponges or you do not, but I see this all the time. (If it's not the case in your experience, that's great! Lucky you...)

* * *

Nin and Sam subs, much like everything else in this game are *completely* situational. Sometimes it's better to /sam others it's better to /nin. Good players will have all options availible.

Hey, I agree with that. In the pick up group situation, though, /NIN makes the better default support job for DDs, in my experience--that's the assertion which people here unhappy with, I think?

I suppose I should've been more clear; there are really two ideas I've mixed together:
1. A strong DD can almost always make good use of /NIN's Utsusemi in a pickup party, Lv.24+
2. In my personal experience in PUGs, players who come as /SAM often do not justify the extra damage they take compare to /NIN players.

Clearly, the wording indicates these "rules" do not hold 100% of the time. YMMV, etc., etc. They are rules of the thumb, if you will.

OF COURSE a /SAM is going to take more damage pre-70 - they don't have Seigan. And guess what? /NIN doesn't have Ni. I have seen /NIN users that take more damage just because they zerg like hell and can't lose hate.

It's not just a matter of taking more damage--it's a matter of justifying the additional damage taken by doing additional damage, and that the additional damage taken do not endanger chaining.

It's not logical on paper, but Lv.74, Lv.70, Lv.50, Lv.30, Lv.24--at any of those level and in between, the majority of DD players who came to party as /NIN made good enough use of Utsusemi to justify /NIN for me.

Personally, I was bewildered and skeptical when I first started seeing Lv.30 SAMs, DRK's, and MNKs with /NIN about two, two and half years ago. Took many, many /NIN players in many parties to convince me of its general usefulness.

In any case, if /SAM does X% more damage, how much more additional damage he takes can be justified? X% more output for X% more damage taken sounds fair to me.

And that said, both /SAM and /NIN's damage mitigation effectiveness is dependant on gear, Haste and such.

And, the players' willingness to make effort in damage mitigation. If I have a ginger cookie for every time someone not using Seigan after (or just before) WS or Souleater or whatnot, I'd never run out of hMP food.

Guess what? We don't have much or any of that at 24 when we get to use /NIN. Unless you have an Empress Pin and Evasion Bonus Traits, you're going to be tagged for a while.

If you're going to be "tagged for a while", wouldn't avoidance of five, six hits in a row from Utsusemi: Ichi and overlapping recast actually make the argument that /NIN is really useful?

TBH I always saw /NIN as more of a Merit sub and a sub used for events with a tight timer such as Assault or Nyzul where there is little time to rest and eliminating downtime is more important than anything else.

If you want higher exp chain (which generally leads to better exp/hour), "eliminating downtime" is not a bad thing while in exp party at any level.

The one annoying thing about the /NIN subjob is that DDs think of it as an excuse to go all out and forget about hate because they have a couple of free hits.

I used to think this way, too, and hated WS spam parties.

Nowadays, my attitude is "Go ahead, take a few freebies." Waste less TP, use JA to improve damage output close to timer limits--be a Damage Dealer--as long as one isn't an MP sponge, why not?

Utsusemi and Seigan+Third Eye help the DDs to take less damage while working toward "kill the mob quickly". A monster angrily beating on a DD's shadow or Third Eye isn't damaging the tank, giving NIN a breather on Utsusemi timer, and PLD a little chance to build some CE. (Bad thing, of course, is that a DD that's not taking damage is also not losing CE...)

Another peeve about DDs subbing in is that I never see WAR/NINs or NIN/WARs using their shadows if there is a PLD tanking. This is another annoying thing. If you are a WAR/NIN or NIN/WAR then why not take hate from the tank every now and then and use those shadows? Utsusemi: Ichi is what? Three shadows? That is three hits the tank doesn't have to take which is three hits worth of hate the tank doesn't lose which is turn is three hits worth of cures the healer has to cast and the hits worth of hate the healer gains from curing the tank.

Kinda funny your complaint is the opposite of mine; I complain only /NIN people seem to use damage mitigation in general, you say they don't. Oh, and Ichi is 5-6 hits avoidance when the monster is really mad, if the player start recasting with one shadow left.

you did not accurately take into account just how much better Blade was geared than Mr. Rocket. I still think your final say is accurate, but the margin of damage increased by subbing SAM is not.

I think we can be pretty confident, though, that if the two DRKs were that close in damage, the /SAM was either undergeared, or holding back. You can't just ignore a difference of 10% haste and +10 acc

Well, as I've indicated more than once, /SAM is GREAT for damage output potential. Just that in my experience, the /SAM users typically did not justify the extra damage taken with extra damage output.

I have no doubt with the /SAM mechanics, just with the /SAM players in pick up parties. (Or, "It's not /SAM that's the problem, it's the players who insist on /SAM who tend to become problematic." Or something like that.)

BTW, I said "The DRK/SAM did X% more damage than the DRK/NIN", not "The DRK/SAM did X% more because he is /SAM"--I did not and do not claim causality. Really, it's just one example of /SAM MP sponges in a long, long list.

If you're using /SAM, you are obviously 60+, because, as a sub, it's useless without Meditate. Any situation, therefore, where you are lower than 60th level, /NIN would obviously be preferable to /SAM because /SAM doesn't have the one redeeming ability that it's used for as a DD sub, Meditate. Your party is below 60th level, therefore /SAM is a suboptimal sub as exemplified by the SAM/WAR's complete shut out of the other DDs. Just look at the wonderful performance of the SAM/WAR (who has Seigan).

Actually, I don't remember seeing Seigan. That SAM was just abnormal in damage mitigation ability--and wonderful for that.

Hasso is a strong ability at Lv.50; if I can be assured of a good tank and a competent second healer, I actually prefer two-handers go with /SAM. But, the problem domain we're working with here is the pick up groups... Nothing is assured...

Yes, I'm well aware that on paper, Hasso should add at least 15% more damage to a two-hander's output (10% Haste, Acc+10)--but, I just don't see that happen as much as it should. Maybe there's something in the gearing or psychology of a typical /NIN user that differs from a /SAM user? Who knows?

The question here being, why is a 55/56th level DRK subbing /SAM? The sub isn't viable at that level therefore your test is flawed. Test it at 60+ (with Meditate) and then again at 70+ (with Seigan) if you really want to run some good tests.

It's not a test--again, it's just an example what I get to deal with in general. (Definitely not a proof of anything.) One more time: I didn't ask for this party set up, and did not suggest it. It just happened to be that way by the time I thought to turn on the parser.

All I really hope for now is to make people think "Hey, maybe /NIN is ok for pickup groups." Perhaps a few will show up to party in /NIN in the future, and help save other stressed out healers some grief.

DRKs also have the ability to act as a conduit to convert healing magic into damage through the use of Soul Eater. Your test does not mention if the DRK/SAM was using this ability (although I'll say that I trust that you wouldn't publish data that would be so obviously flawed), I would still like your assurance that there is parity in use of Souleater between your two DRKs because shadows don't mitigate Souleater related damage.

Actually, just assumed the data is flawed, if you must think of it as a' test', and discard it completely beyond "Oh hey, that can happen."

It really is just one more of the "more of the same" kind of experience I thought I'd share. Like I said, I don't really care what the DDs do or do not--as long as they output reasonable damage and don't take too much damage in return.

I'm really zeroing in on the SAM/WAR though, because he has Seigan. He did a lot more damage than either of your DRKs and took just 2% more damage than the DRK/NIN, so I'm sure he had a good bit of mob attention, too, unless for some reason he has -Enmity merits. I would be interested to see the "Buffs" output to see if and how often he used Seigan/Third Eye.

I didn't realize there's a "Buffs" window until you mentioned it (and after I re-reading your words a few times), since I closed all the windows before starting to parse--just started using kParser no long ago. Let me summarize the DDs:

DRK/NIN: Utsusemi: Ichi (56)
DRK/SAM: Blood Weapon (1), Hasso (23), Last Resort (15), Souleater (13), Third Eye (13).
SAM/WAR: Defender (11), Hasso (23), Meditate (7), Third Eye (33).

So, consider this a very flawed test, if you must think of it as a test, since the DRK/SAM was using Souleater frequently. Yet, as I said, the kind of damage out/in in this party isn't atypical in my experience, except perhaps for the good SAM.

Real quick, this is on Ifrit server right? If so, Toraness is a female and she has many Sams from her LS (to include myself) that help coach her on how to be most efficient.

I'd recommend Toraness to anyone on Ifrit, based on her performance in that party.

I actually prefer not to see names. If you edit the parse and replace the player's names with their job codes (and a distinguishing ordinal when necessary), it makes the parse output easier to read, and you don't end up with people complaining about whether or not you obtained permission to post said results with names included.

Why do I need permission to post results? The parser just aggregate some numbers that SE send to my computer...

First off, an interesting topic and parse.

I'm regretting posting the parse results now; it was supposed to do little more than to show "This happens to me!"

Now, posters just want to find flaws with my parse. Guess what? It IS flawed if you're looking for a controlled experiment. EXTREMELY flawed--just like the pick-up groups typically are for me.

Even though it doesn't add up to 100%, I'm assuming this is their damage breakdown for the party.

/sigh

Player..............Total Dmg...Damage %
Blade...................41792....25.87 %
Cemolie.................15501.....9.59 %
Hagitotuuh ..............1276.....0.79 %
Itazura...................161.....0.10 %
Rikirocket..............43698....27.05 %
Toraness................58581....36.26 %
SC: Detonation.............25.....0.02 %
SC: Distortion............328.....0.20 %
SC: Liquefaction...........44.....0.03 %
SC: Scission..............167.....0.10 %
Total..................161573...100.00 %

Happier now?

Rikirocket and Blade only have a 1.18% difference in the total damage dealt for the party.

(43698 - 41792)/ 41792 = 4.56%; the difference is larger than 1.18%, if comparing the two DRKs against each other. Not that it really matters all that much; I'd happier if the DRK/SAM did the same amount as the /NIN if he took just as little damage. Really, ~5% difference between DDs' output is nothing to worry about unless you're the "32k+/hour or GTFO" type.

The damage avoided bit though I'm good with saying that it was due to Utsusemi.

Thank you for at least recognize the value of that--I know I appreciated his Shihei usage as SCH.


On DRG/SAM:

Now sure, there will be that odd time where you take a pecking fury to the face, or you may take a beating, but that rarely happens.

I've retired my RDM from the pickup merit party scene, and I assure you it's not because DD/SAMs rarely let that happen. Just the opposite, as a matter of fact. (I know, I know, all the tools available, etc. I suppose I can't convince anyone that happens until I get a parse, then people will complain my parse is flawed yet again...)

Drg/Sam provides a nice mix of offense and defense, and while the defense may not be 100% perfect, I'd say that most of the time it's just fine. I don't list Hasso in there because I have not been in a merit party that ever allowed me to safely use Hasso, so instead I normally just ride Seigan/TE full time.

Want to move to Ifrit? I offer my RDM and BRD for your merits. ._. (PLD, too, but no one wants my PLD in merit parties.)

I can't remember when was the last time I saw Seigan in non-LS party, except for when I was leveling SAM to 37.

People are just lazy now days. If they can find a way to get away with doing shit easy so they don't have to actually work, then they will do it. This mostly resides on the healers and the tanks, i.e. the healer not wanting to heal and be able to cast Banish spells so they can skill up or the tank who wants to not have to hold hate/get decent gear so they can just add a small portion of damage.

Hey... ~_~ I think I've a right to complain about MP sponges who run my mana pool down to 50MP or less every three or four fights... The only 'nuke' I cast as a SCH healer is Drain...

[Celeal]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

Haven't read the whole thread (I am at a hurry atm...)

Is it a level 55 -> 56 Cobril party? or traditional camp like Crab or Bats?

I am just wondering how often (and when) are the DRKs using Soul Eater (including their spells like Stun, Drain... etc? even the mob's resistance may be high) and duration of the party session?

From the parse, I can see either the DRK/SAM didn't care about hate, or he trusted his party support, or he doesn't manage his tools properly (from the parser alone, it is hard to say).

If the party does not have downtime and exp. rate is good, I would think it is okay.

[Sabaron]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

Why do I need permission to post results? The parser just aggregate some numbers that SE send to my computer...

You don't, but some people complain about it as a sort of common courtesy. The only reason I don't like it is because I have to refer to a reference document to see who I'm looking at, but if you swap out the names for job codes, the parse is more intuitive especially if I'm looking at an alliance rather than a single party. With a single party it doesn't really matter too much, but when you start looking at 10 or more DDs, it's kind of nice to see codes instead.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

Is it a level 55 -> 56 Cobril party? or traditional camp like Crab or Bats?

Lesser Colibri.

I am just wondering how often (and when) are the DRKs using Soul Eater (including their spells like Stun, Drain... etc? even the mob's resistance may be high) and duration of the party session?

Summary of DRK's buffs from my previous post:

DRK/NIN: Utsusemi: Ichi (56)
DRK/SAM: Blood Weapon (1), Hasso (23), Last Resort (15), Souleater (13), Third Eye (13).

Additional info:
DRK/SAM: Absorb-TP (13), Absorb-INT (4), Absorb-MND (2), Absorb-STR (3), Absorb-VIT (7), Aspri (17), Stun (47), Drain (19)
DRK/NIN: Absorb-TP (37), Aspir(39), Stun (1)

47 fights by party recorded, I think. (Party begin before parse. Both DRKs were replacements, but parsing started after they arrived.)

Given the random Absorb's, I'd say the DRK/SAM was using exp time to skill up. The same DRK also tended to use Stun when the monster was attacking him, IIRC.

From the parse, I can see either the DRK/SAM didn't care about hate, or he trusted his party support, or he doesn't manage his tools properly (from the parser alone, it is hard to say).

If the party does not have downtime and exp. rate is good, I would think it is okay.

Exp rate wasn't great, and I ran out of MP frequently from all the curing. Oh, and Souleater full-time when mages have less than 25% MP was stupid the first time, and was stupid the second time, and was stupid the third time... (Since only one DRK used Souleater, you can figure out who that was).

Going to go with that "DRK/SAM didn't care".

[Lmnop]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

DRK/SAM: Absorb-TP (13)
DRK/NIN: Absorb-TP (37)

Wow.

Personally, I'm interested in how the SAM/WAR took so little damage while doing 50% more than the DRKs... Without using Seigan!

[Tokitung]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

Wow.

Personally, I'm interested in how the SAM/WAR took so little damage while doing 50% more than the DRKs... Without using Seigan!

That would be because mobs don't hit just based on hate. Mobs think Drks are ugly. Sams are prettier, so they don't hit us as often.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

Personally, I'm interested in how the SAM/WAR took so little damage while doing 50% more than the DRKs... Without using Seigan!

Well, the only thing I know for certain is that she used Defender liberally when under threat. (Yeah, yeah, in before "Defense means nothing!" and "Even DD PLDs 'know' they don't get hit for more damage with Berserk up!", etc. etc. Believe whatever you want... Keep in mind the SAM didn't use Berserk, though.)

It's possible the SAM also 'camping' the PLD, waiting for PLD to Provoke and Flash. Or, maybe she had enmity- merit? Didn't see any blinking, but maybe the SAM was swapping accessories when on the defensive? Who knows? All I'm sure of is that I want more DDs like that, even if it means breaking my own "I hate people who don't use Seigan" rule.

Oh, Stun, Last Resort, and Souleater are huge enmity acts compared with Hasso, Meditate, Third Eye, and Defender.

[Celeal]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

I see.

I assume that the DD that has most hate (not necessary most damage output) would have food-stolen and TP-reset-to-zero the most often compare to other DD in the same party. The frequency of Feather Tickle alone has a huge negative impact on damage output.

The SAM/WAR did very well.

[ShadowHolyFlyingDragon]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

I remember when I played DRK to 75, I was a huge fan of Souleater. (Being Galka and all.)

Now, since I didn't want to play it dumbly and be a complete MP sponge, I subbed NIN on my DRK all the way to 68 or so.

Because I was able to play DRK/NIN, I could bust out a huge load of dmg in a short amount of time and still tank for 5-6 shadows and it was beautiful. I would level DRK all over again on a new char just for the experience. I even remember doing 700dmg WS's at lvl 40. Everyone use to sit around me and go "ooOoOOoO." It was soooo much fun!

Because my playstyle was such I liked using all my JAs to do high end damage, I was not about to piss off the healers and and become the drk noobmp spoonge on PUGs and so I always made sure I tanked very well. It was a hybrid playstyle of: tptptp, jaWS when mob was 40% or less, tanktankstundrainWB, versus what most DD'ers do.

I used alot of stuff too, so that I could mitigate my own damage taken, like the Drains, and especially Stun and Weaponbash. Those two abilites are simply beautiful for using Utsu 1 when you're in a pinch. I even made a macro for Weaponbash -> Utsu1 and I -never- had problems tanking until the mobs death.

The only times I had problems were on Colibri or stuff that ate shadows for breakfast. Those times, I backed down on my DDing aspects and made sure to use my TP when mob was near death, usually 10% or so.

Now, things changed when I finally leveld up /SAM and started using that around 68. I had to really tighten things up really good on my end if I wanted to play SAM in a normal xp party vs IT. Basically because Seigan, while it's nice, isn't as super-wonderfully reliable as 6 shadows. It's fickle. Sometimes it will tank more than 6 shadows, and sometimes it will tank 1 even after immediate use. Luckily by this time I had Dread Spikes and Drain 2 and so if I was about to SE-LR-WS, I'd make sure I was all situated before letting loose. Usually it worked out well and Seigan let me tank ok. But in all honesty, I always felt NIN was way better suited than SAM for the tanking aspect.

However, SAM gave me haste and accuracy and it was definitely noticable, but mostly the fact I went from swinging every 6 sec to every 5 and had super tp gain. SAM definitely increased my DMG output and I was hooked on it and so eventually I just had to learn to play seigan off relaly well if I was about to go ubercide on some mob.


I sure wish I could have saved some parser results to show how well I DD'ed vs Tanked. I know that a few times my taru rdm friend parsed our dmg and those few instances I was clearly in the lead on damage. I think at one point I was like 45% damage and had taken 2000ish points of damage and in curing and such. Can't remember.


Anyway, I see now what you were trying to do with your post Ifrit. As healers, we try to do our jobs well and save our MP for good reasons and not waste it blindly because some person in PUG isn't playing their job right. It's extremely and very annoying. Healer's deserver respect. While the rest of us get to play around and be all big and bad with our dmg we do, the healer's politely sit back and support us. It's grossly impolite to take advantage of healer's, imo, and act like some big macho moron "look at me I do big DMG numbers" without taking into regard your party.

However, the post when I read it, was trying to come off like maybe you were trying to put down the /SAM job, with the parser results and stuff. But, it's just one of those things, sometimes hard to assess someone's intentions; and you know how opinions are like a you know what; everyone's got one. XD

Healer's should be exalted and appreciated, definitely not taken advantage of. But, with WUGs, sometimes... what can you do?

[Sabaron]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

A mitigation technique I used when levelling DRK (Mind you, I'm only 40th) was to use my abilities outside of combat since they create such massive enmity spikes:

Kanican - Enmity Table (DRK)

For instance, if my Last Resort was up, I'd wait for the mob to die and when the next pull was coming in, use it just before I engaged so that I don't get any hate from it. This also works with Soul Eater, but combined timing with a WS might waste TP.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The indefensible SJ for two-handers.

However, the post when I read it, was trying to come off like maybe you were trying to put down the /SAM job, with the parser results and stuff. But, it's just one of those things, sometimes hard to assess someone's intentions; and you know how opinions are like a you know what; everyone's got one. XD

I don't know in how many variations I've stated this already, but /SAM isn't the problem--it's the players who pick /SAM who tend to be the problem. I haven't done Lv.70+ parties lately, so no parses, but it was pretty rare to see /SAM people use Seigan.

The majority of /SAM users I've encountered did not switch to Seigan even when the single healer in party is down to less than 200 MP. For whatever the reason, the /NIN players would work much harder than that to keep Ususemi up, while the /SAM people couldn't be bother to use Third Eye, much less Seigan.

If its not the case that the majority of /SAM people on your world are MP sinks, terrific. Too bad I can't move off Ifrit to join you--too many friends here.