best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

[CHAOBLACKDOOM]

I've decided that DRK is just the best option for me.

I have two questions

is DRK useful to parties in endgame events? (gods etc)

also

What is the best sub for DRK at endgame and soloing (just 2-3 monsters while trying to get a party, not FULL solo.)

Thank you for your time.

[Yagami Kunoichi]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

Warrior and Thief, sometimes people will want Ninja, and at low levels WHM is useful as well.

[mikejones]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

thief for sata kthx

[TheGrandMom]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

For endgame you'll want to have sam, war, thf, and nin lvled. There are even odd cases where it would be good to have rdm or whm lvled.

As far as being useful, we aren't on the top of the usefulness scale for melee but one saving grace is that we can stun.

[Taskmage]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I'm a melee n00b, but until 50 or 60 isn't /drg a good option? Jump at level 20 and the Haste+5% earring at level 30 seem like good options for speeding up your damage and tp gain. /war and /thf offer Berserk and Sneak Attack at 30 for increasing your spike damage, but that sounds like a good way to get killed and not necessarily superior in effect to an extra couple swings every minute and a half.

[Yagami Kunoichi]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

/DRG might be ok til 50, but then you get Double Attack from /war, and that does seem to go off fairly often, making using DRG obsolete. The trouble would be getting PTs.

[Aeni]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I'm a melee n00b, but until 50 or 60 isn't /drg a good option? Jump at level 20 and the Haste+5% earring at level 30 seem like good options for speeding up your damage and tp gain. /war and /thf offer Berserk and Sneak Attack at 30 for increasing your spike damage, but that sounds like a good way to get killed and not necessarily superior in effect to an extra couple swings every minute and a half.

Yah, at 70+, DRK/DRG kills DRK/THF in every parser I've checked out so far on JP and NA HNM LS forums. Pretty much the ultimate DD machine (2 jumps on souleater ftw ... much better than bolt spamming DRK/RNG) DRK/WAR is still the best for TP burn PTs though, since you cannot beat critical double attack (dps) and burst damage is still okay, esp on Guillotine if crits land and you get double attack kicking in.

Honestly, /THF is useless in every respect, even in end game. You just cannot compare to a SAM/THF on a TA + WS alone (Forget SA if the mob is already facing your one and only tank for a farming run or w/e) Only in a polished system where there's multiple tanks and Tp mobs running all over the place around where you're fighting will /THF for DRK become a serious option. Otherwise BLMs and RDM/DRKs for stunning and SAM/THF for general melee and SC for MBs. I think even THF/NIN fare better than DRKs for SATA duty...

Only good thing about DRKs and a risky option is to put a DRK/NIN in rotation every 5 minutes with vorpal blade spam on souleater and Kraken in offhand ... but the NM will gain plenty TP quick and this usually screws up tanking. But it's been done before on Jormy, among other NMs.

[Yagami Kunoichi]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I was under the impression that you would use DRK/THF on gods and the like for the SC properties anyway, and so you could close Light or Darkness for a Magic Burst. Best time to do it is to catch them while they're casting spells and hit them in mid-cast.

In Caedevra Mire I've been doing ok with DRK/THF though I do prefer DRK/WAR. Still, with my Martial Scythe I've been able to SA Spiral Hell for around 1200 consistently, hitting as high as 1500ish. I'm interested to see how I'll do with DRK/WAR now that I have a Deathscythe as well, since that seems nice for Guillotine. I can't justify spending 960,000 for +2 acc and switching to Orihalcum, though.

/THF I think originated out of people wanting to close skillchains for big numbers. Perhaps there's a shift going on towards using more DoT than burst damage now, in which case /DRG would have its advantages. I would like to see a parser of just how much more it could do, if it can beat /WAR, and whether the loss of Berserk is a serious problem or not.

[Taskmage]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I'm surprised to hear the addition of High Jump at 70 makes drk/drg beat out drk/war. It seems like Double Attack would add more additional attacks than 3 jumps every 3 minutes, and it has the advantage of Berserk. Is it the Accuracy Bonus trait that makes the difference?

[Icemage]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I don't know that /DRG is "that" good, though it does have its uses. It's not so much that Jumps give you so many extra attacks, but they're really fast and give you that extra boost of TP when you really need it, rather than randomly like Double Attack does.

Not to mention with a /DRG sub you can be much happier as a trick attack buddy, since you can shed quite a lot of hate with High Jump.

This last bit is rather interesting - one of the WHMs in my HNMLS has been showing up to Tiamat fights with /DRG and it works surprisingly well. Zero accumulated hate over time, he can do Curaga III and just High Jump the hate away. Quite cool, actually.


Icemage

[Aeni]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I don't know that /DRG is "that" good, though it does have its uses. It's not so much that Jumps give you so many extra attacks, but they're really fast and give you that extra boost of TP when you really need it, rather than randomly like Double Attack does.

I have no real definitive answer as to why, but I believe it lies with the latent earring and other stuff you can equip to enhance the DRK/DRG combination (Oddly enough, however, DRG/DRK does not work equally as well ... lol) Remember, there has to be equal effort into making a DRK/DRG combination successful. Half assed setups on gear and w/o macro swapping for key moments will make it falter behind even DRK/THFs...

Not to mention with a /DRG sub you can be much happier as a trick attack buddy, since you can shed quite a lot of hate with High Jump.

This last bit is rather interesting - one of the WHMs in my HNMLS has been showing up to Tiamat fights with /DRG and it works surprisingly well. Zero accumulated hate over time, he can do Curaga III and just High Jump the hate away. Quite cool, actually.


Icemage

This is the part that allows a DRK/DRG to go all out. They can SE + LR + Guillotine and shed off tons of hate, giving them utility to do huge burst damage every 5 minutes (Leave SE on and have a mage spam Cure IVs/Vs and the damage effect will continue on good dps for that full minute) This is much more efficient than having a DRK/THF trying to gain TP painfully on something like Genbu with that evil stoneskin on... I think it takes that long (4 minutes or so) to even get 100% TP to do something worth while ... although every minute a DRK/THF can just use SA to get something in at least, but hardly worth the trouble.

DRK/DRG's effectiveness however is most noticeable on wyrms and dragons, like Faffy and Seiryu or against unstunnable AoE JA spamming mobs where timing a jump can mean one less melee to heal up (I've seen a vid of this before where it was perfectly executed) Not sure how well accuracy up trait helps, considering most people still use sushi in end game, but maybe if you're just building TP off the mobs in the area to put hurt on the HNM, then maybe you can go for meat dishes and that JT acc up might come in handy to compensate a little...

[wolfjorg]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

you'd be surprised, I am asked more than anything to sub war in hnmls at sky events.

more DMG output

faster TP gain

Plus Ground strike doesnt do to well with sata on gods.

[Standablaze]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I'm a melee n00b, but until 50 or 60 isn't /drg a good option? Jump at level 20 and the Haste+5% earring at level 30 seem like good options for speeding up your damage and tp gain. /war and /thf offer Berserk and Sneak Attack at 30 for increasing your spike damage, but that sounds like a good way to get killed and not necessarily superior in effect to an extra couple swings every minute and a half.

Not really. Jump wont do much damage and you'll probably be able to hit harder with good equipment. At those early levels your weapon skills arent worth much either. /WAR til 60 all the way for me. Those extra couple of swings from double attack can do as much as 200 damage total, quite often, a lot more than Jump would give you. When I first hit 50 I had to readjust to how I got rid of hate because double attack was doing so much extra damage.

[Stooky]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

I absoulutly hate thf, I am awful at SATA and I rather have war sub for all of it use. its nice to have voke, berserk, double attack, and just better over all damage. I do not care if I can do s huge spike damage on SATA. The overall damage output form /war I think is better. For all melee I consider /war to be the best, even if thf is handy, /war has so many more uses. Yes I will level thf since people want it, but if there not demanding it I will use /war. /Nin can also be handy along with /sam but most the time /war. I am a tarutaru and I think the str form /war is much more handy then everything thf has to offer. I do want thf level 15 soon =P

[Gwynn]

Re: best DRK sub iyo? AND endgame useful?

Well, my DRK is only 23 at the moment, but I am quite impressed with the damage output of /DRG. I've partied with THFs, MNKs, BLUs, WARs, etc., and none of them thusfar have been able to deal as much damage as me. Now, that will obviously change once Berserk becomes available from /WAR at 30, but until then I think I'm definately staying with /DRG.