[Cloudius]

Some1 has his period ;3 (andincaseyoudon'tknowwhoImtalkingaboutyouWatkins)

[Watkins]

Just like someone got owned.

Edit: Ah! I could have worded that better.

Ohwell, watchin JPs suck at Nid. lawl.

[RoXno]

everyone can get 15 haste from stuff ( turban , swift belt , and 2/3 homam piece )

so 15 Gear +15 spell +10 from hasso ( total 40 )

the delay of the scythe is 317 (base 528 ) = 1 hit / 5.28 sec , in 30 sec => 5.7 hits

with desesperate blows

delay 237 => in 30 sec => 7.6 hits

DB => + 2 hits


with 1 march and 18 haste from gear ( total 54 ) :

without DB , in 30 sec => 7.4 hits

with DB , in 30 sec => 11 hits

DB=>+4 hits


with 2 march , 21 haste from gear ( total 66 ) :

without DB : 10 hits

with DB : 17.9 hits

DB=>+7hits

Then under Catastrophe's haste effect , 2 march , 22 haste from gear ( total haste 77 ) :

without DB : 15.2 hits

with DB : 42 hits :x

DB=>+27hits

its only theory, but it can give an idea about how it works

if you get often a brd in your events , maybe DB is for you

I begin to think Muted soul is useless... im rethinking about diabolic Eye.. but i dunno when it could be usefull ...

Has anyone ever tried this with a bahamut's zaghnal?

im sure it could perform really well with 2H, soul voice etc.. , maybe not as good as KC

[Evilkairi]

something doesnt seem correct whit your formulas, correct me if im wrong but i tink you gotta get higher than 77 whit all that u said because whiout apo and no SV a drk should reach 70%+ haste so correct me if im wrong.
not gonna go whit the best of all so
Gear 15%
Haste Spell 15%
MarchX2 20% (Advancing 9%, Victory 11%)
Hasso 10%
DB 15%
thats 75 rigth there not adding SV or Apo effect.

[Nameless]

His 77 doesn't count in DB's 15. So with that 42 hits he is under 92% haste.

All and all, DB's 15% and 10% from hasso are the only two thing that doesn't count towards the 70% haste cap (Haste belt is said to be out of the equips cap but I am not sure if it is still within the haste cap of 70%). And there is a huge difference between 80% haste and 95% haste. It's 106 delay vs 26 delay based on a 528 delay scythe.

If you don't own a kclub, this better be your build for DL or any sort of damagefest bcnm. In addition, DE is very overrated. I hardly ever fight a god that will take more than 10 mins assuming you are subbing thf doing a sky god. If you are not doing sky god you better be subbing sam or drg and with hasso and accuracy bonus you shouldn't be needing that DE assuming you have capped scythe and decent accuracy. Point is, there is no other things worth getting other than capping DB. Perhaps DB:3, MS:2, DE:1? DS is absolute garbage since it doesn't increase the potency and against Kirin i could hardly drain more than 100 HP with drain II with 301 darkmagic skill plus +7 magic accuracy. So it doesn't make your darkmagic 100% accurate, which IMO isn't worth it.

Just my 2 cents.

[Ilean]

Haste: 15%
2x March: 21%
Gear (Turban, swift belt, dusk hands and feet): 14%
Total haste: 50%

Delay = [Base delay] * 1 - [delay reduction]/100 * 1 - [haste amount]/100


Base delay: 528
Delay after hasso: 475
Delay after hasso and haste: 237
Hits in 30 seconds: 7.5


Base delay: 528
Delay after hasso and DB: 396
Delay after hasso, DB and haste: 198
Hits in 30 seconds: 9.0






Same as above but with only 15% total haste:

Base delay: 528
Delay after hasso: 475
Delay after hasso and haste: 403
Hits in 30 seconds: 4.45


Base delay: 528
Delay after hasso and DB: 396
Delay after hasso, DB and haste: 336
Hits in 30 seconds: 5.34



Thing can be half good (1.5 more hits in 30 seconds) when stacked with a shitload of haste and hasso, not sure in what fairyland you guys live where you get a bard and haste spell full time, send me a world pass some time.

[Nameless]

fairy land is when your LS need you to kill DL in 1 min and will give you all the support you need aka SV Marchs + Mnk give you HP boost + whm give you haste + rdm chainspell stun + pld cover you. We are talking about advanced merit, and I believe none of it is really needed in merit party other than perhaps muted soul can save the whm some MP, which I suggested to put 2 in anyway. DE and DS can't possibly make that big a difference than the 30 sec that DB can give you. It is all about cost and reward.

What seems like a 1.5 hit advantage in 30 sec (i don't know how you get 198 delay but I get 132 delay with 50% haste and 25% delay reduction from hasso and DB) will become a 27 hit advantage with 25% more haste. We are talking about potential here.

[Barachiel]

Well I prefer to merit on trolls just because mire is always camped up the wazoo, as is any fast camp in thickets. Trolls are just fun to play with too. I enjoy greater colibri, but for some reason people never want to go there, or just don't think of it.

The unfortunate part about our merits is that in general they're all pretty insubstantial. Diabolic eye gives a decent acc boost for 3 mins every 10 mins if it's fully merited, but then it's rare that you'd need an extra 10 acc and not just eat sushi. I've never come acccross a time where 10 acc would make a gamebreaking difference to the point where I could use meat and still have a decent accuracy. In my experience it's either I eat meat, or I eat sushi, regardless of Diabolic eye. Secondly I also dislike the HP down.

Dark Seal I find to just be weak. A single boosted drain every 10 minutes is in my mind, not something for great justice.

Desperate blows is pretty bad itself, or rather I should say last resort is pretty bad. But being able to use it once every 4-5 minutes is a big bonus. If only last resort would last longer as weak as it is. But that point has been discussed hundreds of times already.

Muted soul at release seemed to be the best of the tier 2 merits. Dread spikes however has decreased my desire to have -30 enmity with souleater at all times. I just enjoy putting up dread spikes with 1792 hp (highest I've managed with Drain II thus far) and letting loose with souleater guillotine and all that. I suppose with a kraken club, muted soul would be high on the list to fully merit.

So when it comes down to tier II merits it all seems to be personal preference and play style. There is no "right" setup, just the right setup for the person playing.

But then I also believe no one should be allowed to discuss merit parties in the drk forums unless they merit exclusively on drk, or any job with a similar stigma.

[Watkins]

Nice math Ilean. Makes more sense.

Nameless :
fairy land is when your LS need you to kill DL in 1 min and will give you all the support you need aka SV Marchs + Mnk give you HP boost + whm give you haste + rdm chainspell stun + pld cover you. We are talking about advanced merit, and I believe none of it is really needed in merit party other than perhaps muted soul can save the whm some MP, which I suggested to put 2 in anyway. DE and DS can't possibly make that big a difference than the 30 sec that DB can give you. It is all about cost and reward.

What seems like a 1.5 hit advantage in 30 sec (i don't know how you get 198 delay but I get 132 delay with 50% haste and 25% delay reduction from hasso and DB) will become a 27 hit advantage with 25% more haste. We are talking about potential here.

HP boost doesn't stack with Drain II. Dark Seal can enable you to land an unresisted Drain II on DL, which helps immensely. I believe I had 2k HP last DL as a Taru DRK? I'm still missing about 200 hp in gear as well. Without Dark Seal, your drain could get resisted and lessen your damage overall. Plus, any monk who does their research will know that Mantra doesn't stack with drain and not bother with the BS.

And yeah, having a PLD cover you is a waste as well unless your CS stunners suck.

So GJ Nameless, despite some of the incorrect information, you named one situation where DB would not suck. Compare that against the situations where Diabolic Eye is useful.

lulz

Barachiel :
Well I prefer to merit on trolls just because mire is always camped up the wazoo, as is any fast camp in thickets. Trolls are just fun to play with too. I enjoy greater colibri, but for some reason people never want to go there, or just don't think of it.

The unfortunate part about our merits is that in general they're all pretty insubstantial. Diabolic eye gives a decent acc boost for 3 mins every 10 mins if it's fully merited, but then it's rare that you'd need an extra 10 acc and not just eat sushi. I've never come acccross a time where 10 acc would make a gamebreaking difference to the point where I could use meat and still have a decent accuracy. In my experience it's either I eat meat, or I eat sushi, regardless of Diabolic eye. Secondly I also dislike the HP down.

The acc boost is more than 10. I'd say it's more around 15-20. But hell if you can find a reliable source that says otherwise, I'll believe you.

Dark Seal I find to just be weak. A single boosted drain every 10 minutes is in my mind, not something for great justice.

Well, you can use it with Sleep, Absorb Spells (useful for ABS-STR epeen), Stun, etc. Think about it's versatility before you say such silly things.

Muted soul at release seemed to be the best of the tier 2 merits. Dread spikes however has decreased my desire to have -30 enmity with souleater at all times. I just enjoy putting up dread spikes with 1792 hp (highest I've managed with Drain II thus far) and letting loose with souleater guillotine and all that. I suppose with a kraken club, muted soul would be high on the list to fully merit.

Unfortunately, TP moves go through Dread Spikes and own you anyway. If you really want to pull hate a few rounds, simply SE Guillotine early in the fight will do the job. If you want to be able to use Souleater freely on HNMs etc, then you want Muted Soul. Of course, depending on your tank and the available healing, this might not be necessary.

So when it comes down to tier II merits it all seems to be

People being retarded or not, or having an Apocolypse.*.

But then I also believe no one should be allowed to discuss merit parties in the drk forums unless they merit exclusively on drk, or any job with a similar stigma.

Ope, well I guess since I have NIN and BRD leveled as well which are sometimes more useful in merits, I should be banned from discussing game mechanics. What idiotic logic.

[Nameless]

I don't know what situation DE will be useful lol to be honest with you. If you really have trouble hitting cuz you are not eating sushi on HNM or god or whatever, then that 3 mins isn't going to save your ass cuz you will be missing the other 7 mins. As on the other hands, zerging a mob without a kclub is impossible for drk whichever way you want to look at it. DB gives you that option where you can do it.

You don't need apoc to hit the 70% haste cap, and hasso and DB are the only two things that will give you 95% delay reduction. Whatever apoc can do with SV march a drk without apoc can do. Apoc differentiates itself from the rest of pack when you are out of two hour and bard SV wears, that's when it shines. Apoc's 10% haste counts towards the 70% haste cap, therefore, it is basically useless when you have SV march x 2 on. Tho Apoc allow you to do pretty much close what you can do with SV march x 2 without both bloodweapon and soulvoice. 10% haste + 20% regular march + gear 15% + 15% haste spell + 10% haste belt + hasso 10% + DB 15% you get 95% without SV. And since Cata drains back HP, you can rely less on Bloodweapon, which make you do crazy damage every 4 mins if you have LR fully capped.

As for us drks without apoc, we can still do 15% haste from gear, 15% haste from spell, 40% from SV march x 2 that's your 70% haste cap + 10% hasso + 15% DB. You don't need Apoc to do what the person did in that video. However, if you have a kclub, it is still better.

PS: I allocated my merit on DB x 3, DE x 1, DS x 1, MS x 1. I wish I have more point to put on MS to make it x 2 cuz i really regret putting point in DS after drain II kirin for 86 HP with full darkmagic gear and DS. That was the reason I didn't try to use Drain II before clubing DL, which was my first time anyway. But yea, our stunner sucks lol, I got one shot after 30 sec, so I wish there was a pld covering.

[FuryaOfKOTOR]

What I like to do is use souleater, weapon skill and cast diabolic eye afterwards(Turn souleater off). With muted soul level 2/3 I rarely grab hate(If timed right). My hitpoints are already that low and by the time diabolic eye wares off I can use dark seal drain II to recover.

If I want to grab hate to use with dread spikes besides provoke I will use last resort and a weapon skill at the start of the fight. I haven't merited Desperate Blows yet but I will raise it one level becouse I don't mind 15 minute recasts and level 3 muted soul is a must for me since I like to spam souleater and blood weapon every chance I get.

Some of you say "This is useless" or "Thats stupid" but you can't really go wrong with job spacific merits unless you say.. merit souleater recast and never end up useing it.

[Nameless]

There is no recast for DB, it is a JT to go with LR. So like muted soul, the more you put in, the better.

[Watkins]

Nameless :
I don't know what situation DE will be useful lol to be honest with you.

Gods for one, some Sea NMs. Could probably use it in EXP as well if you eat Meat. Basically anything you're building TP on, HNMs etc. +15-20 ACC is very rarely useless.

If you really have trouble hitting cuz you are not eating sushi on HNM or god or whatever, then that 3 mins isn't going to save your ass cuz you will be missing the other 7 mins.

Yeah it's better to miss all the time right? <_>

As on the other hands, zerging a mob without a kclub is impossible for drk whichever way you want to look at it. DB gives you that option where you can do it.

It doesn't enable you, it enhances your ability to.

[Cloudius]

Im sorry Watkins, but wtf is your problem?
80% of us know DE is partly useless or gimped, but you're still bitching about how 1337 it is
Well sorry I doubt any1 would change their minds beause of what a retard like you is saying.
Plus the OP has already pretty much set her/his mind at what s/he wants, but here you are still bitching about acc...
ZOMG DA ACC BONEASS LOLZ

[alaan]

Watkins doesn't really have a problem... atleast not from what I've seen. He just knows that the internetz is some serious business.

EDIT: DS stacks with sleep? (Honest question, I dont have DS so I wouldn't know).

[Cloudius]

EDIT: DS stacks with sleep? (Honest question, I dont have DS so I wouldn't know).

I think it's Dark magic onry even though Sleep is dark based it's still enf. magic.

[RoXno]

Yeah it's better to miss all the time right? <_>

If you miss all the time without DE , your DRK must seriously sux lawl




My conclusion :

Our group2 merit are pretty good i find

- Muted Soul , for those who merit soul eater Recast , and like to use it near full duration

- Dark Seal , for those where one good Drain II gonna make the difference , aka Kclub owner

- Diabolic Eye , for those who want to be a bit better for 3min/10 ( help greatly on THF/NIN mamool in bhaflau tickhet , ABS AGI+DEX is fine too ~~)

- Desesperate blows , for those 1°) want to have fun every 4-5min when they have good amount of haste
2°) want to have a decent zerg ability when no kclub access

We re meant to be the slower hitter , and because of DB , we can have the feeling to hit like a mnk , and im not speaking about apocalypse, everyone can do it, first time i did it , it was as good as the first time i KC/Bloodweapon

[Meo]

You mean "pretty much all the haste you can possibly get as a DRK."

[.Khrno.]

Well, non the less an interesting read.

About my personal experience, my merits are in:

1. Souleater Recast and Last Resort Effect

2. Muted Soul and Desperate Blows



I considered Dark Seal, but recast is too long, and even though an unresisted Drain II would be pretty nice, i think a couple of extra hits would do better every 5 min.

Diabolic Eye, like someone said before, i hate seing my HP reduced, normally it goes over 1400, well over 1700 with HP setup, and although i don't have a K.Club yet, my M.Kris works ok, and i'm usually getting SVs Marchs + Madrigal on me, and if not then Sushi. So MS helps much more to lower my enmity and that way i survive the minute of SE, unless mages mess up and let me kill myself after BW is gone.

Edit: Oh and for merit pts i use SE every 5 min and for the whole duration, not getting as much hate and increasing my damage greatly, and sometimes giving something to do to the WHM or RDM besides casting only Hastes and sporadic Cure IIIs.

[Watkins]

RoXno :

Yeah it's better to miss all the time right? <_>

If you miss all the time without DE , your DRK must seriously sux lawl

Yeah... ok, I was actually referring to the thing I actually quoted, showing the errors in his logic. But since you jumped at a chance to use my sig in an ironic way, I forgive you ^-^.

Cloudius :
Im sorry Watkins, but wtf is your problem?
80% of us know DE is partly useless or gimped, but you're still bitching about how 1337 it is
Well sorry I doubt any1 would change their minds beause of what a retard like you is saying.
Plus the OP has already pretty much set her/his mind at what s/he wants, but here you are still bitching about acc...
ZOMG DA ACC BONEASS LOLZ

Well, I guess my problem is that 80% of you are retarded. Ilean has done a great job showing how useless DB is, and I've said what I can to explain Dark Seal's versatility.

However, I wouldn't normally merit it more than once because of only needing a boosted Drain II at the start of K.Clubbing, to get a good ABS-STR in for your 300% TP WS at the start of a God fight or something (You all know you want that e-peen. C'man! Don't bullshit me.), or like Cloud said, Stun Kirin (I actually didn't know that worked, and found it interesting).

I also believe that Dark Seal actually doesn't stack with Sleep, that was more of a brain skip.

As far as Merits go, I honestly think the only real hard choice is whether to go 3/2 or 2/3 in DE and MS.

Regardless, I've contributed situations where DE is useful and other little tidbits, and you've provided... nothing but how you pull cement hate on yourself with Stun and 600 damage Ground strikes and juvenile jokes about people having their period when they're trying to get a point across.

Really, who's the "retard" here? =/


DB seems to be pretty awesome actually with Apoc, since obviously the Acc bonus isn't as needed because of the +20 on the Scythe itself, and +27 hits is indeed a shitload of damage. (More than a Kclub though? I find it unlikely, but hell I don't have an Apoc.)

But now that Ilean taken the time to figure out the actual numbers, we can see that full DB is only 1.5 hits per Last Resort if you have 15% Haste. No problem, right guys? That's just Turban, Speed Belt, and Dusk Gloves +1. Of course you could toss some Homam in there, since that's easy to get too!

Sarcasm aside, like Roxno's math said, under DL conditions DB will only give you 7 hits under DL conditions (the only place you'll realistically be getting double March and Haste etc). Is that good? Yeah, it's decent, but it would be better if it lasted a full minute, so it's most likely going to wear before the DL fight is even over : (though truthfully your fights might go faster since my LS only does it with 28ish people).

So we have that all laid out on the floor. It doesn't seem like much does it? Then compare it to the times when you're skillchaining with another melee and you simply cannot afford to miss often on HNMs. Compare it to exp when you're eating meat (or even Sushi on THF mobs). Compare it to Sky Gods. Compare it to annoying evasive shit in Sea. Maybe you feel like wearing Turban instead of Optical Hat in situations where Turban just isn't quite good enough (I can't name a situation, I'm just making this paragraph longer for dramatic effect). In these situations, DE can give you more than a hit or two every 4 minutes, and I'm not sure about you guys, but I'm not subbing SAM to everything so I'd benefit even less from SAM sub then.

I'm not ignoring the HP down effect, I just really don't think it matters that much. The only situation I could see it screwing me over in is something like Kirin deciding to bust out Astral Flow, but I wouldn't use DE till that happened anyway (even though we seem to have started TP burning Kirin, which is fun even though I'm tanking through DMG )

i think a couple of extra hits would do better every 5 min.

Unless you're wearing 15% worth of Haste gear, have Hasso up, and have Haste and a March or two, it's not a couple. It's One. Like Ilean said:

The problem i have with all these pro-DB arguments is that "when they have good amount of haste" actually means "when they have shitload of haste.

And.. there we go. Anyone have any logical arguements?