DRK equip help

[billlcadia1]

Ok I wondering about a Haubergeon, I understand It a very great piece of equipment. My question is, is this item a must, is there any alternatives to this, (byrnie looks cool, but i understand theres no + acc and theres a - dex in it also, but i like the + 20 attack.) Lastly if a Haubergeon is a must what level is it expected by, right at level 59? Thanks for the help.

[Kailo]

Well, for starters, Haubergeon is really what you should be aiming for. But I understand it can be rough to actually obtain. Byrnie can replace it, but that doesn't make Hauberg any worse. It's still prefered over Byrnie, imho. Keep in mind that by grabbing a Hauberg, you're pretty much set to get your Hauberk later as well, due to the money you get back from selling the Hauberg, or hell, having your Hauberg crafted into a Hauberk even. As for when you're expected to have it; from my experience, it really doesn't matter when you have it, just that you do have it. Obviously if you get to 69+, you're better off going with Hauberk, but up until then, between 59-69, get it when you can. It'd be nice if you have it right at 59, but nobody will scream at you if you don't have it until 62. I, personally, will be getting it before I hit 59, so long as I keep up with the rate I'm farming at. Either way, it's totally up to you.

[Mithrael]

Haub* (ergeon at 59 and erk at 60) are really the best, and nothing can replace them until you get to cursed armor sets. Realistically though, if you have 2 sniper rings and a life belt already, you can hold out as long as lv.69 to get it. By the time you reach end-game activities, you pretty much require one or the other; the one you choose should be based on which other jobs you intend to level. The AGI and evasion penalties don't matter much, since you won't wear your Haub* to farm or tank anyway.

In the meantime, Royal Knight's Chainmail and Assault Jerking will both serve pretty well. To be honest, with sushi in the game now, you can probably make it all the way to 75 without sniper's rings or a haub... but that's a whole different story.

[Brothershadow]

Mithrael. I was actually considering purchasing a "Byrnie +1 suit". I figured with Sole Sushi and my 2 Snipers, I would be ok as far as hitting the mob. You think I'd be ok with that or would even more accuracy be needed?

[fuz]

Haubergeon, while a great piece of armor, isn't all that necessary unless you're competing for invites from well equiped melees that are also seeking. If parties are not inviting you because you don't have the haubergeon, then it becomes necessary.

The actual hit rate boost from it is... just ever so slightly noticeable. I get TP just a bit faster and can keep up decently with other melees. I think it was about 5% more hits when I parsed it. Pretty good, but I still go on wiff fests, and perytons were still hell to hit when I was using it. It's disapointing the armor isn't really as godly as people made it out to be.

Even the attack and str bonuses don't seem to add much damage to the soft def of raptors, toramas, crawlers, and gobs that you exp off around that level. Then again, I used attack food since sushi wasn't available back when I was 59-65, so the damage boost might be noticeable with sushi. I should add that I think I maxed out my weapons with so much base attack since vassago's and zwei were hitting for almost identical damage.

I am significantly better with haubergeon than your baseline drk running with full AF, but it's not as huge as you think. (You also get crit-ed a lot when you backup tank with the damn thing.)

[kumaeru]

Originally posted by fuz
I should add that I think I maxed out my weapons with so much base attack

I dont understand what you're saying. Maxing out what? I can understand using merits but thats lvl 75. Unless talking about going all out +str but then losing +accuracy in other areas, however even when going +str you wont be getting zweih and vassagos to get the same average damage. Higher Scythe Skill and higher base dmg on scythe. Zweih has base dmg of 76 and Vassagos a Base of 84. Even by adding +Str you're boosting up both weapons thus the average wont be the same. Only way you could balance it out is by getting a higher base dmg gsword (but you said zweih so :p). Seeing as how lvl 60 both scythe and gsword are of equal skill but past 60 (61+) scythe has higher cap skill, meaning scythe still has better dot.

To Brothersshadow:

Getting Byrnie+1 is you're preferance, however I wouldnt suggest using the sushi as food. Byrnie wont balance out the loss of attack that using say hauber+attack food will.

If you are really REALLY having problems getting haubergeon get snipers thick set/ and assault jerkin fomr Ose. Assault jerkin is +3 accuracy +18 attack and that will suffice. You will not get as much accuracy as a haubergeon drk or the +str on the haubergeon but you will get more attack than a haubergeon drk.

At this stage on ffxi, it is almost expected a drk get haubergeon at around lvl 60. Still it's not a must.

[gix]

haubergeon is overrated.

there is no excuse to not having a hauberk though

[fuz]

What happened to me is that the damage variation for min and max damage was very little, and had both weapons hitting for very similar damage. I had both capped (the difference between A+ and A- is very little from 60-65) and swaped them around for testing. Neither produced exceptionaly more damage than the other, despite the large difference in damage rating between the weapons.

Vassago did not hit for significantly more damage than zwei. Maybe 10 damage more at most. Critical hits were also very close in damage. This trend continued all the way up to lvl 65 when I was able to finally equip a darksteel scythe--that shunted damage up nearly 30 more per hit, even more with berserk. So I'm fairly confident I had reached some sort of cap in attack that vassago and zwei could use, since I was not able to extract a major difference between them. I felt that they were holding me back, rather than boosting my damage.

There may very well be a severe level based limitation on the damage and accuracy you can hit which is a large restriction on why highly regarded equips may not produce a significant bonus. Between my all AF setup, and my haubergeon, I was still not able to break out of the inherently slow TP gain of drk. My weapons simialrly--did not produce any large differences in damage.

Remeber I'm only using attack food, with the standard acc gear: haubergeon, snipers, life belt, assault, spike, royal guard's, RK gloves. Sushi was not an option, and actually this was before the mithkabob nerf. So I was getting the full uncapped bonus of miths.

My parser did not find any significant difference in damage between the two weapons. Vassago might hit slightly harder and have a bit more accuracy, but the damage to delay ratio is lower than zwei. The zwei has a near 5% damage bonus over the vassago in DOT, excluding WS.

[kumaeru]

hmm too bad cant go back in time and test that now :x

Meh I hated zweih with a passion anyways.. but was tortured to use it to 73 for balins due to my lack of luck for Arondight or Ascalon.

Higher up the difference of scythe and gsword is so much though :x. Although from what i've seen Gsword still can hit very high damage, but have lower min damage than scythe.


Recently an elvaan drk in full adaman from my old LS came back from WoW (now we have 4/5 drks in full/near full cursed adaman) and was just comparing damage with him while killing Amikiri PH's. My Gsword was doing higher damage than him using Death Scythe. Our Str was about the same. Infact he had just a few more total STR than me being Elvaan, as I made up the differences with my +str gear (taru has 64 base str ; ; ).

I was wondering why the differences was so large in dmg though. I had about +50 Str at the time so I was wondering if the +str affects the base dmg of the weapon more than counting in the total STR. But it doesn't really make sense. We both had very similar gear except I did have more +str and he had more +attack, wearing Adaman Mufflers and I wore Alkyoneous.

[gix]

Because the difference between the mobs' def and your atk is lower than it would be in an xp pt therefore allowing you to hit your cap more often. By having more +str, you would hit a higher cap and do more damage.

[kumaeru]

Originally posted by gix
Because the difference between the mobs' def and your atk is lower than it would be in an xp pt therefore allowing you to hit your cap more often. By having more +str, you would hit a higher cap and do more damage.

I know that; and has nothing to do with what I said.


I'm comparing damage between a lvl 75 Taru Drk and a lvl 75 Elvaan Drk both in near Full Adaman and similar equipment. The Taru wearing more +Str to make up racial differences and the Elvaan has more +attack than the Taru.

And both are hitting the exact same mob (Antares the Amikiri PH)

[Brothershadow]

Kumaeru wrote:
"Getting Byrnie+1 is you're preferance, however I wouldnt suggest using the sushi as food. Byrnie wont balance out the loss of attack that using say hauber+attack food will.

If you are really REALLY having problems getting haubergeon get snipers thick set/ and assault jerkin fomr Ose. Assault jerkin is +3 accuracy +18 attack and that will suffice. You will not get as much accuracy as a haubergeon drk or the +str on the haubergeon but you will get more attack than a haubergeon drk."

I've no problems affording a Haubergeon, in fact I once owened it before quitting the game for a few months. I have the gil for it and more. But Once i saw the +25 attack bonus of Byrnie +1
I did a double take. Unfortunately it cost twice that of a suit of Haub.

[gix]

Originally posted by kumaeru
I know that; and has nothing to do with what I said.


I'm comparing damage between a lvl 75 Taru Drk and a lvl 75 Elvaan Drk both in near Full Adaman and similar equipment. The Taru wearing more +Str to make up racial differences and the Elvaan has more +attack than the Taru.

And both are hitting the exact same mob (Antares the Amikiri PH)

The point I was trying to make was that the Antares lv is closer to yours and therefore has a def value closer to your atk but you have more str than the other drk so you would do more dmg.
Try vs golems next time you're farming ullikummi. The one with more atk should do more.

[kumaeru]

He had more attack and 3-4 more total STR than me; but I had more +STR on equip. Im Taru he's Elvaan.

[gix]

oh, i misunderstood the situation. then that really makes no sense heh.