Taru DRK

[Hinbin]

Again, Mithrael, I think you've taken an extremely unlikely situation to support your view.

First off, how many mobs that your leveling with have you managed to land 12 consequtive hits? I'd like to know where they are, especially if you can do it with an Elvaans !

If you have just done your combo (after which, I would personally go out and buy an extra lottery ticket for the week), you've just pissed off your whm no end since they're going to have to heal, according to your numbers, 1134 damage to me in the space of a minute, or if your an Elvaan... 1498! After that you are still going to be bordering on the orange hp zone at the end (you'd get a spank and sent home if you kept diong that, I'm sure).

In a normal situation, your most likely going to get a Guillotine off, which if we're generous, we'll say lands an average of 3, and possibly a few extra hits afterwards. Its impossible to say what the exact damage difference is going to be because there's a lot of varying factors, but it would bring the damage difference off souleater down to about 100-200. So, like before how are we going to get that back?

Souleater has a 1 minute use and a 6 minute cooldown time. Again, in a real world situation, your not going to have time to be resting your mp to full between each battle (see: EXP chain). It causes an unacceptable loss to your TP, and slows down your party. This means you don't need to pull off 9 drains/mb in the space of the battle, which would be about as likely as having a whm happy to heal you for 1.4k of damage in 60 secs. Instead, you've got about 2/3 battles to pull these extra drains/absorbs/mb off.

I'll shout this from the rooftops, as its my firm belief - if your not doing MB, your not a good DRK. I'd take a guarenteed extra set of damage from a MB over a possible scythe swing anyday. I don't accept your figures for 300 damage for 3 high end level 2 spells Mithreal, sorry, but I'm pulling off about 90 damage a mb at the moment with normal spells. Even if it were true, though, you've just made back your damage decifit from souleater. If your hung up on the amount of TP you'd "lose" because you've cast a spell (even though you'd of just done about 2/3 swings worth of damage), switch to Absorb-AGI, and you've just increased the incoming TP for the whole party.

I enjoy being a Taru DRK. There are drawbacks - soloing isn't great and there are people thinking your there to just /panic for them - but I can say hand on heart I'm not just doing this for fun, Tarutaru DRK is more than a valid combination, its a good one.

[Mithrael]

meh...

First off, how many mobs that your leveling with have you managed to land 12 consequtive hits?

I hope that you don't miss so often that you think this is impossible... If I miss twice in a row, I'm pissed. I have as much DEX+ and Accuracy+ stuff on me that I can carry/afford. The likelyhood that you only hit 3 of your 4 guillotine hits depends on the shittiness of your equipment. Even with a one hit weapon skill, you should be landing a lot of hits durring your time that soul eater is up. as you mention souleater is a one minute ability. our average weapon delay is 580 milliseconds + possible animation delay and lag. so let's say that lag is really bad and our delay is at a practical 7 seconds. You should still be taking 8, almost 9, swings during that time, not including potential weapon skills since you have full tp after 8 swings. This is also not considering haste. Throw a single guillotine in there and you have at least 12 swings. I was being generous by assuming that you would ONLY get 12 hits in souleater. In my example, the assumption is that you ahve 100%tp to begin with. you use guillotine for 4 hits (which is certainly faster that 28 seconds) you get at least another 32 at worst to hit the mob 4 more times. that should be 5-6 swings. then fire off the second ws before time is up. very generous allowance. in reality, the ws only takes about 10 seconds. so you have 50 seconds to get in 4 swings. in 50 seconds you get 7 swings. so you can miss 3 times between WS, or make up for any loss in your ws from an unlucky guillotine.
However, if you want to assume that our greatest accuracy potential is only 8 hits in one minute... the difference in damage would be about 242 damage between an elvaan and a taru. Since it is a 6 minute cooldown (from when you use it, not when the effect wears of, btw) you can use it 10 times per hour. Realistically, let's say 8 times per hour. so that's ~2000 dmg per hour, assuming you never achieve greater than 53% melee accuracy. I hope that I never reach a point that I miss one of every 2 swings though.

especially if you can do it with an Elvaans !

That's the stupidest thing i've read in this thread. Endgame, taru DRK/WAR have 3 more DEX than Elvaan. THREE. do you think that accuracy +1.5 really makes you more likely to hit the mob than any other race?

Its impossible to say what the exact damage difference is going to be because there's a lot of varying factors

Indeed. This dicussion is about Potential Damage. There are always uncontrolable factors. you may be silenced and unable to MB, you may be petrified and unable to act at all. You may be paralyzed and lose souleater altogether. You may be sleepga'ed and have to wait for someone with /whm to wake you up. It is a game of numbers and chance. Which is why i assumed a relatively low average hit rate to begin with. Nobody ever lives up to their damage potential in a leveling situation. Your MBs will be resisted more often than not, so the potential damage i allowed for MB is also suspect.

After that you are still going to be bordering on the orange hp zone at the end (you'd get a spank and sent home if you kept diong that, I'm sure).

the hp loss you are concerned about is a function of regen 2 or 3, paeon and a couple of people tossing in some cure2's. when my whm sees me go into souleater, she casts haste regen on me. if your whm doesn't do that, find out why. remember that the most HP you'll lose at a time is 35% of your total HP. that's not enough to get you in the orange. and um... if you're low on HP, Drain. duh. Play smart.
If you are in a circumstance where it's a bad idea to keep it up, you cancel it. You try to do that as little as possible, because it's a waste of time/damage. Obviously, if your tank is getting smacked around and dying, you don't have your whm healing you. Conversely, if your tank doesn't have control of the situation, you're getting smacked around and dying. These are the situations where you play it safe. Maybe you even use defender Play smart.

Again, in a real world situation, your not going to have time to be resting your mp to full between each battle (see: EXP chain). It causes an unacceptable loss to your TP

resting for mp doesn't cause an unacceptable loss in TP unless you intend to do a renkei immediately upon the pull. if that's the case, the mob usually doesn't live long enough for it to matter that you're missing mp. you'll have close to 0 tp at the end of that battle anyway, so resting isn't an issue. further... assuming we are talking about guillotine AND only guillotine, havine 200%tp is no better than 100% tp since the extra tp goes toward the duration of the silence affect. Silence certainly has uses, but it's less important in normal leveling fights that the DRK keep the mob silenced. resting until you are at 88% tp does absolutely no harm to the exp chain.

resting your mp to full

Why would i need to heal to full? i only need enough mp to cast 2 absorbs, possibly a drain, and possibly a MB. I don't use all of my mana everyfight any more than the BLM, WHM, and RDM do.

I don't accept your figures for 300 damage for 3 high end level 2 spells Mithreal, sorry

you would gain about 300

That seldom battle that you gain 300 free damage that way will simply not meet your potential.

Read the whole sentence. the 300 dmg i referrend to from 3 high levels spells was the BONUS damage. not the damge of of the spell. For example, you cast ice2, it does ~200 damage (which is generous since we have weak int and no magic damage bonus abilty). you cast ice 2 on a distortion renkei, it does 300 damage. you do that 3 times and you have the 300 bonus damage i was referring to. Unfortunately, you'll be resisted pretty often, so your damage is likely to be ~150 with the magic burst for a level2 spell on a high level i.t. mob.

if your not doing MB, your not a good DRK

i never suggested that you shouldn't be MBing. i simply said that it would be a truly rare case that you would need to be able to cast 3 mbs in one battle. If for some reason a battle lasted that long, i would probably be hording my MP for drain, and various absorbs.

switch to Absorb-AGI, and you've just increased the incoming TP for the whole party.

The only time that I don't cast absorb-agi at the beginning of the fight is if I know that we are starting the fight with a renkei. In those cases, I cast absorb-int which increases our magic burst damage about 5%.
Our absorbs and souleater are all that make us a unique class. out standard damage doesn't compare to others without fully using our resources.

Play smart.

Finally, i'll say it again. You can play a Tarutaru DRK. You can play a Galka WHM. But a Tarutaru DRK simply cannot do the same damage as other races any more than a Galka do the same with healing. It's a choice you made to challenge yourself. That's fine.
I quite enjoy playing my elvaan BLM. I enjoy it because i accepted as an Elvaan BLM, I will never do as much damage as a Tarutaru BLM, assuming we're the same level, subjob, wear the same equipment, and consume the same food. It's a fact. You cannot escape it. That doesn't mean it's not fun or possible.

Anyway, i think i've detailed my point to the best of my ability, so this'll be the last that i post of this unless someone asks something specific.

[Hinbin]

I'm going to keep my response relatively short, as I'm certain readers of the thread won't have the energy to get through another quote fest (plus, I dislike quoting, it appears to lend itself to snide comments).

The arguments are this:

You believe that the difference in HP between Taru and Elv will make Taru an ineffective choice for DRK's because of the Souleater effect.

I believe that you’re constantly bringing up unlikely theoretical situations to support your view. Quick reasoning: even with regen II and peon, your healer is going to have to keep spamming high cure spells to keep up your fantastical damage figure. That'll lead to at best a pissed off party, at worst a dead WHM. May I also point out that for your situation to work, people who can throw you cure 2's, bards etc. you need close to an ideal party set up... how often in the real world do you get them? In the majority of situations you’re going to use it for a weapons skill and then a few extra hits before you need to either cancel it, or it runs out.

I also believe that Taru DRKs can make up this damage by utilising the higher MP they are gifted with; you can use MB, Drains, Stuns and absorbs to either be dealing more damage or benefiting your party in some other way.

I guess readers are going to have to make up their own minds based on their own experiences. Don't rely on the maths we've written, because on review they've been drawn from near impossible situations.

One things clear tho, don't sub BLM :spin:

[Ednoon]

upgrade yourself, improve yourself. i dont really care if anyone wants to pick a evlaan over a taru DRK on xp group, thats totaly fine.
i can say by far i have the most up to date Equip compare to other NA DRK at my level. at this point im really careless if i have to wait all day for a group cuz i just spent 30k on fishing gears to kill my time.
i know in the end everyone will have the same equips after all, (different game play style is what makes a player different from others)
good players knows good players, they want to find the best people they can to improve max xp get per hour. i do have a group of people always send me tell to group almost everyday when im fishing. just because they know i have 27 acc.? maybe..
food. mithkobob all the time, my cooking at 38 its really easy to pick up some meats and make my own food without spending extra gil to get them. (abit off topic)
if some people just happen to have this idea "Taru suck bad as melee" and not willing to accpet you in the game you probably wont have any fun time playing, they are not your friend. play whatever you enjoy and have fun with you friends is the game all about.
why didn't i pick a elvaan to play melee? their arms and neck made them look weird (sorry) if i ever have chance to pick another race i would be a kitty or taru again.
oh did i mention how this game suck everyone running around look the same?

[Socrates]

good advice by ednoon.

a full melee line of elvaan must be the boringest thing ever.

[kumaeru]

I'm 47 Taru Drk now.. and all I can say is if the Taru Drk upgrades Armor efficiently, then he is just as good as the Elvaan.

Of course in the higher end Elvaan will still reach higher Damage, and many do say the Abosrb-Spells are a waste in the future, but still it can be semi useful in a few situations.

At the time you get Absorb spells (31-43 I believe) you will notice that it is quite effective. But the higher lvls you go the tougher the mobs are and the less effective you're absorbs will be.

Taru Drk worst problem IS the relativly low HP. But as Hinbin stated you cannot use souleater every renkei. If you can.. then you must be in the worst PT's.

I have encountered a few players that dislike having a Taru Drk as their dmg dealer ( Usually incompetent NA players ), so I update my gear almost every time I can. Currently have +5 Str base and +10 dex base. Absorb Dex and Str will help right now, and I will continue to use absorbs until I find it "useless". Absorb spells get me about +10-+15 Stat. about +20 Stat generally right now.

With proper PT's I easily get from around 207 attack - 320 attack from attack boosts from 1 Sword Madrigal Song (+attack) and 1 meat kabob. This is of course without Beserk or Last Resort which SHOULD not be used at the same time. I have actually tried and got my attack to 402 but that was with 2x +attack songs, and I prefer 1 accuracy song.

Some people think that because they have certain +attack abilities (Last Resort, Beserk) and increase dmg abilities (Souleater), that they must all be used at the same time.

Basically use Beserk one fight, use Last Resort next fight, and use Souleater next fight... etc. you probably will have a short delay before you can get Beserk again the next fight. But you can still have it.

And yes Ednoon said it best, "Good players know good players.."
and Exp/hour is all that matters in pt's. I generally get 3000- near 4000 exp an hour in pt's I make.

Pld, Drk, Whm, Rdm, Brd, Damage is usually what my pt is most of the time.

[wc326]

Originally posted by Mithrael
meh...


I hope that you don't miss so often that you think this is impossible... If I miss twice in a row, I'm pissed. I have as much DEX+ and Accuracy+ stuff on me that I can carry/afford. The likelyhood that you only hit 3 of your 4 guillotine hits depends on the shittiness of your equipment. Even with a one hit weapon skill, you should be landing a lot of hits durring your time that soul eater is up. as you mention souleater is a one minute ability. our average weapon delay is 580 milliseconds + possible animation delay and lag. so let's say that lag is really bad and our delay is at a practical 7 seconds. You should still be taking 8, almost 9, swings during that time, not including potential weapon skills since you have full tp after 8 swings. This is also not considering haste. Throw a single guillotine in there and you have at least 12 swings. I was being generous by assuming that you would ONLY get 12 hits in souleater. In my example, the assumption is that you ahve 100%tp to begin with. you use guillotine for 4 hits (which is certainly faster that 28 seconds) you get at least another 32 at worst to hit the mob 4 more times. that should be 5-6 swings. then fire off the second ws before time is up. very generous allowance. in reality, the ws only takes about 10 seconds. so you have 50 seconds to get in 4 swings. in 50 seconds you get 7 swings. so you can miss 3 times between WS, or make up for any loss in your ws from an unlucky guillotine.
However, if you want to assume that our greatest accuracy potential is only 8 hits in one minute... the difference in damage would be about 242 damage between an elvaan and a taru. Since it is a 6 minute cooldown (from when you use it, not when the effect wears of, btw) you can use it 10 times per hour. Realistically, let's say 8 times per hour. so that's ~2000 dmg per hour, assuming you never achieve greater than 53% melee accuracy. I hope that I never reach a point that I miss one of every 2 swings though.


That's the stupidest thing i've read in this thread. Endgame, taru DRK/WAR have 3 more DEX than Elvaan. THREE. do you think that accuracy +1.5 really makes you more likely to hit the mob than any other race?


Indeed. This dicussion is about Potential Damage. There are always uncontrolable factors. you may be silenced and unable to MB, you may be petrified and unable to act at all. You may be paralyzed and lose souleater altogether. You may be sleepga'ed and have to wait for someone with /whm to wake you up. It is a game of numbers and chance. Which is why i assumed a relatively low average hit rate to begin with. Nobody ever lives up to their damage potential in a leveling situation. Your MBs will be resisted more often than not, so the potential damage i allowed for MB is also suspect.


the hp loss you are concerned about is a function of regen 2 or 3, paeon and a couple of people tossing in some cure2's. when my whm sees me go into souleater, she casts haste regen on me. if your whm doesn't do that, find out why. remember that the most HP you'll lose at a time is 35% of your total HP. that's not enough to get you in the orange. and um... if you're low on HP, Drain. duh. Play smart.
If you are in a circumstance where it's a bad idea to keep it up, you cancel it. You try to do that as little as possible, because it's a waste of time/damage. Obviously, if your tank is getting smacked around and dying, you don't have your whm healing you. Conversely, if your tank doesn't have control of the situation, you're getting smacked around and dying. These are the situations where you play it safe. Maybe you even use defender Play smart.


resting for mp doesn't cause an unacceptable loss in TP unless you intend to do a renkei immediately upon the pull. if that's the case, the mob usually doesn't live long enough for it to matter that you're missing mp. you'll have close to 0 tp at the end of that battle anyway, so resting isn't an issue. further... assuming we are talking about guillotine AND only guillotine, havine 200%tp is no better than 100% tp since the extra tp goes toward the duration of the silence affect. Silence certainly has uses, but it's less important in normal leveling fights that the DRK keep the mob silenced. resting until you are at 88% tp does absolutely no harm to the exp chain.


Why would i need to heal to full? i only need enough mp to cast 2 absorbs, possibly a drain, and possibly a MB. I don't use all of my mana everyfight any more than the BLM, WHM, and RDM do.




Read the whole sentence. the 300 dmg i referrend to from 3 high levels spells was the BONUS damage. not the damge of of the spell. For example, you cast ice2, it does ~200 damage (which is generous since we have weak int and no magic damage bonus abilty). you cast ice 2 on a distortion renkei, it does 300 damage. you do that 3 times and you have the 300 bonus damage i was referring to. Unfortunately, you'll be resisted pretty often, so your damage is likely to be ~150 with the magic burst for a level2 spell on a high level i.t. mob.


i never suggested that you shouldn't be MBing. i simply said that it would be a truly rare case that you would need to be able to cast 3 mbs in one battle. If for some reason a battle lasted that long, i would probably be hording my MP for drain, and various absorbs.


The only time that I don't cast absorb-agi at the beginning of the fight is if I know that we are starting the fight with a renkei. In those cases, I cast absorb-int which increases our magic burst damage about 5%.
Our absorbs and souleater are all that make us a unique class. out standard damage doesn't compare to others without fully using our resources.

Play smart.

Finally, i'll say it again. You can play a Tarutaru DRK. You can play a Galka WHM. But a Tarutaru DRK simply cannot do the same damage as other races any more than a Galka do the same with healing. It's a choice you made to challenge yourself. That's fine.
I quite enjoy playing my elvaan BLM. I enjoy it because i accepted as an Elvaan BLM, I will never do as much damage as a Tarutaru BLM, assuming we're the same level, subjob, wear the same equipment, and consume the same food. It's a fact. You cannot escape it. That doesn't mean it's not fun or possible.

Anyway, i think i've detailed my point to the best of my ability, so this'll be the last that i post of this unless someone asks something specific.

lol someone is pretending he is FFXI expert here lol.... well just stop this shit..... everyrace and every job combine has there own positive side ... so what are u guy arguing here.....if u sub war..u get more hp and attack..if u sub whm..then u can heal the youself..and others'' so both are good #@$%@$#$#@