SC w/o a MB

[Omiest]

Heyo newbie monk here again. Today in yhoator(ugh) we had a pt as follows: mnk mnk drk nin war whm. So the war goes and says we should do two SC's with a monk. We all say sure fine and whatnot. Well we're fighting a mandy and a gob spawns. The war aggros it but instead of running is yelling to SC the mandy. By the time he runs away he's almost dead and no SC has happened. I'm wondering if it was worth him dying for a SC with no MB? Is there a reason to SC w/o a MB? I'm not sure how the damage value works w/o a MB.

[Venkelos]

A thought...

As a RDM who often gets overlooked for MB potential I can say a few things about this. Will those participating in the MB ever have to wait for others to catch up to them in TP? Will the people in the SC be using weapon skills that aren't thier highest damage ones? Will the Renkei make up for the time and effort at low levels? Often the answer is no on one or more counts, even with a RDM MBer or a DRK MBer the damage lost by waiting for TP or using lower damage WSes isn't made up for.
At higher levels it is different when a Light or Dark Renkei even with an MB closes every battle. It just usually isn't worth it to tell the MNK to hold off while the DRK builds hate, or vice versa. That extra 50% of TP could likely be put to better use saving toward your next Combo. Sometimes the Renkei damage justifies it, but before the mid 30's the damage of even a level two skillchain just doesn't hold up without an MB. Just my opinion, sometimes it just isn't worth it for that extra 14 damage Fusion. ^^

-Venk

[greysenn]

He probably thought you were going to skillchain it and the mandragora was going to instantly die or something. I'd say it probably wasn't worth dying over though.

The skillchains are worth doing on the mandragoras most of the time just because they're weak to just about everything. (I liked fusion chains particularly with good monks.) If you have a strong WS closer, and 2 people that get TP even at remotely similar rates, this can be a good increase to your overall damage.

You'll have to try it out and see how it works from party to party, if you're not impressed with the results you can probably just go solo.

[Omiest]

The mandy was about 50% dead. The nin and I agreed it was pointless to hold on to our tp for a weak fusin. I can usually pull off a 150 combo with a 130% tp. The war that got killed is a 60 mnk too, dunno why he was so obsessed about 15 dmg. :confused:

[greysenn]

Thats with a wimpy chain closer. There is a couple of things that affect chain damage, the ones that I've noticed most notably the power of the closing WS, the mobs resistances, and where there chains before it.

With a typical lvl 1/2 WS, your chain damage is 25-50% of your closing weaponskill, If it's not resisted. If you have a chain building up to yours.... Say you did a level 1 liquefaction then a level 2 fusion. I believe it's around 50-75% of the closing WS. (I'm sure I'll get jumped on if I'm wrong :D )

If you're closing for 150ish, you should be able to tack on around ~75 fusion damage most of the time for mandies, assuming you're closing. It's not an entirely insignficant, but as the above poster mentioned, if you're waiting long periods of time, it's may not be worth doing.

[Macht]

Damage you get with SC depends on the WSs being used. Under lv. 30 about the only SCs that are decent and might be worth pulling of are the ones with RNGs. At lv. 20 the SCs I did would get around 30-60 damage, that's 1 extra damage delt out. Event then though to risk your own life for damage equivalent to 1 more hit?

At my 40s when I finished a SC with Piercing Arrow top damage a Renkei has done was 150. That's almost 2 extra hits, then my own attack from the WS would be around 230s. So you got around 5 hits worth of damage all done at once there. That is a little more worth it if the monster is about to die and no MBs.

Unfortunatly I've been getting stuck in parties with incompitent Mages that just ignore the SCs and let a great time to MB just be passed up

[Ungerpurr]

Some skillchain damage bonuses:

2-man level 1: 50% of second WS
3-man level 1: (not sure)
4-man level 1: Erm, doubt you'd ever plan a SC with that many people and not do a level 2 ^^

2-man level 2: 60% of second WS
3-man level 2: (not sure, think 75%)
4-man level 2: 100% of second WS

2-man level 3: 100% of second WS
3-man level 3: 150% of second WS
4-man level 3: (not sure, presume 200%)

Obviously you can go higher than a four-man chain, but it's rarely (if ever) efficient to do so, rather than making two two-man chains. As you can see, the multiplier for skillchain damage goes up for the higher level skillchains. Also, you see far fewer total resists on skillchain damage as you increase from level 1 to level 3, due to (I think) two factors:

1) Higher 'level' skillchains are innately less resistable
2) Since the level 2/3 skillchains consist of multiple elements, each of these contribute to the damage, so it is rare to see a level 2 get fully resisted (mainly because you'd have to be stupid, like doing gravitation on a skeleton, for example), and unheard of to see a full resist on a level 3 (because you'd have to be reaaaaaaally stupid, like...doing Dark on a skeleton ).

The best skillchain for yuhtunga/yhoator mandragoras is fragmentation, as they are weak to both thunder and wind. The best closers for fragmentation in those levels are:

1) Warrior (Great Axe, Sturmwind, 100-200ish damage)
2) Ranger (Bow/Gun, Piercing Arrow/Split Shot, ~90-130ish damage)
3) Dark Knight (Scythe, Shadow of Death, ~50-150ish damage)

Also in the listing are mnk/thf (shoulder tackle, w/ sneak attack), and possibly thief (does shadowstitch stack with SA/TA? I've personally never tried).

Anyway, the problem can be who starts fragmentation, rather than who ends it. At those levels, you need Axe (Bst/War/Drk/Rng), Great Katana (sam), Scythe (Drk/War/Bst), or Great Sword (Drk/Pld/War) to start it. All of the WS that start it at that level, with the exception of Shadow of Death, are completely horrible damage-wise. You don't get decent damage fragmentation starters till level 60 (Great katana, Great Axe, Scythe, Bow/Gun all have decent damage fragmentation starters at that level).

Anyway, said more than I needed to, suffice it to say that the jungle levels are where you really start to notice that picking the right skillchain makes a ton of difference.