PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

[Icemage]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

Square-Enix really needs to either give DRK some teeth with their elemental magic or remove it altogether. Thunder II at 72 is beyond lame when you have what? D rank Elemental? Good luck landing a nuke without being resisted, even on a magic burst as a DRK.

DRK is a slow power hitter, pure and simple. Tons of damage, and not much else.


Icemage

[LoneGamer]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

DRK have B-rank Elemental. Their nukes are more accurate than RDM, but RDM nukes do more damage.

[Aksannyi]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

My husband doesn't nuke as 75 DRK, not because his nukes (basically) suck, but because he's never really used Elemental magic, and his skill is probably as underleveled as my Divine magic is.

[Taskmage]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

Yeah, ironically drk get quick accurate low-damage magic compared to rdm's harder hitting whiff-prone nukes.

[tdh]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

My husband doesn't nuke as 75 DRK, not because his nukes (basically) suck, but because he's never really used Elemental magic, and his skill is probably as underleveled as my Divine magic is.

Fortunately, my Elemental Skill was cap'd for DRK until Lv.70 (I believe.) due to RDM. I now use Besieged to cap my Elemental Skill nice and quick so all my magic is cap'd.

I've always thought DRK should get at least one Magic Atk Bonus trait, but I always wanted it more for Dark Magic spells, not Elemental Magic. Of course MAB doesn't effect Dark Magic. (/angry) So casting any of the spells is a waste of time. You'd be much better served swinging that Scythe than wasting the time for a 90dmg Thunder II. Especially when the Scythe can do 120+dmg a hit by itself, and it's about the almighty TP. Even with Moldy Earring and the AF2 that has MAB+10 (The body I ~think~.), DRK nukes just aren't worth the time not spent building TP.

I've yet to find a real use for my Elemental spells outside of some AF quests, and even then with the addition of Drain II, you can forget Thunder II!

[Taskmage]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

I was thinking the other day that drk should get Dark Holy - quick casting, high power nuke with a long recast time and damage based on dark magic skill. I guess Drain II fills those criteria pretty well though.

[Icemage]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

The main reason RDM nukes don't suck is because they can wield Elemental Staves. That makes up for a big difference in skill ranks.


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

But the only reason we can do that is because our melee skill has been historically underrated, and isn't counted on when we come to a party. Not to say that isn't the right choice since staves play to our strengths whereas melee equipment doesn't really.

I think drk nukes are probably in the same position as rdm melee. A drk could probably sub blm, wield staves and DoT with elemental magic, coupling Absorb-INT and Burn to create a huge fINT to help offset their limited options for MAB gear. This is all just fanciful musing though. It's more intuitive, more aligned to our current party setup dogma and probably more effective to gear drk for melee spike damage, playing to their strengths, than to take a magier route that would be more reliant on refresh support.

I think it's only ended up that way because that's what the players have done with the job, though. Had drk been taken up as a more flexible melee-caster type of job early on, maybe the items and updates from SE since then would have been friendlier to that approach. I think the corselet set definately says the possiblity exists.

[Lunaryn]

Re: PLD vs. DRK- Pros and cons

I've only leveled DRK in a permanent static so far, but I'd say that, particularly if you have a source of refresh, the nukes aren't useless. You have a fairly good Drain, particularly if you have an opportunity to MB off of Compression or Gravitation, but the first-tier nukes are handy for a while, because you can cast them without significantly delaying your swings. At the moment, I can MB for about half the damage that our BLU does, and I get twice as many opportunities for it now that the BLU is self-skillchaining (BLU performs Fusion, PLD and I perform Distortion or Liquefaction depending on my weapon).

What race were you looking at? Galka will make very minimal use of DRKs magic while Tarutaru will want to make the most of it to keep pace.

By the way, have Signet up at all times if possible. Resting without losing TP is a handy option to have between chains.