[draugo]

So I am finally getting a chance to go /drk, but it seems to me I am not co-tanking well. I guess my question is when you are stunning, do you spam it as soon as timer is down, or do you slow it down a bit?

Also, I was wondering what kind of support you need to have good defense, and MP refreshment? Do you bring any kind of juice?

I am packing about 22 enmity in gear, and I think about 15 in full haste/enmity setup.

Any other hate tools besides, stun, sleep, aspir, bio, weapon bash, souleater + last resort + jin (not sure whether this should be done in enmity gear of full WS gear?)?

I am only missing B.Haidate in my haste setup. What kinda recast times should I be striving for? What would help that as far as support as well?

And last. I have no MP gear in my build. I usually have 111 or so as long as I have turban on with tacos. Is this enough?

Thanks for the advise.

[Ark33]

Well, first of all, support. You want haste, refresh and at least one march at all times.
Best is to have two marches, but if there is no rdm for refresh or no cor to do evoker's roll, I think you can be fine with march + ballad ( might have to be careful with mp however)

Basically, refresh is all you need for Mp. Juices won't stack with the spell so it's useless.
Having an ether or two might be handy in case there is trouble with your refresh, though they are really long to use. I might have used ethers twice in 2 years of tanking, so it's definitely not mandatory.
An Ethereal earring is a plus, but you can do fine without one.

Frequency of spells depends on two things: your refresh rate and how much hate you want.
Basically, nin/drk is almost always full of Mp, so Mp gear is quite worthless. 90mp or 400mp is exactly the same, except more mp gives more room for errors from your support.
If you want more hate, cast more spells, if you want less hate, cast less spells.
With a single refresh, you can pretty much spam non stop.

You forgot Kurayami and Hojo as hate tools. These are good to build enmity that doesn't decay.
Jubaku is as much hate, but takes longer to cast. Dokumory is prohibited for obvious reasons.
Imo, you can skip the Ninjutsu if you already dominate your co-tank, but you should have these available.

Most of the time, you're not trying to land the spells, only things that matters are recasts and enmity.
For spells like stun and utsu, you want max haste and other slots filled with enmity gear.
For other spells, it depends. If you spam as soon as they are ready, max the hate. If you have enough hate tools allowing you to wait 2-5 seconds before casting again, remove some haste and add more enmity.

Jin isn't really useful, especially since you won't have acc food and since you'll use nin/drk on really high lv NMs.
Katanas are not a good thing as well: earth staff is safer ( yeah, sucks to use an earth staff, but it's really better).
I store souleater and last resort as emergency moves, but you can add these in your spam.
Souleater + last resort + jin implies to : have a wing for tp, have the timers ready, have a shitload of acc gear, so I don't think that's something you should consider.


About gear, if you have double march, you don't have to use a full haste setup.
I'm not sure of the numbers however, I usually remove dusk gloves, but some guys prefer to remove other stuff.
Since you don't have haidate, I'd say keep your full haste gear.

Haste caps at 50%, meaning means your Ni or Stun timers will not go below 22 seconds... that's the kind of timers you are looking for xD

[WWF_ultimatewarrior]

That was a mighty torrent of questions.

Bind is a good hate tool to add to your repitoire... the rest, well the room is spinning to fast to tell you anything more.

[Cyprias]

You won't be using Bio on some things that need to be slept. Also, the Absorb-AGI/VIT spells produce nice hate. Although takes a lot of MP, theres cases where I'm spamming so much that every spell but the absorb spells is all i have. This is including 2x march, and haste.

[Dazd]

Stun/bind/sleep/para/blind/slow tools and the occasional absorb. Those are the only spells you'll need and if you're trying to co tank no it's not a good idea to spam them exactly when they're up. If you tank often with the same people you'll get into a rhythm tho so won't be too bad figuring out when to cast and when to hold off a bit.

As far as buffs you should have haste/refresh/ballad/march. You HAVE to have at least one ballad tho as elvaan or you're gonna run out of mp fast as shit refresh isn't gonna cover it. For food just use taco' or carbonara if you're in need of high hp for shit like Ultima.

[draugo]

Thanks for the responses. I will see where I can make some adjustments.

[Nattack]

NIN/DRK: I think we're moving too fast

[Gov]

I cannot say I am the Best NIN but I can certainly hold my own, and that being said.. I would like to give you an example as to what I do in a given situation. Assume we are fighting Byakko.. I will mainhand a sword build up 300% TP obviously for Spirits Within, now once Byakko is spawned I will unleash that 300% TP SW and immediatly swap to Earth Staff followed by a Last Resort, Bind, Sleep< equip ninjutsu skill gear and run through kurayami and Hojo, (it can stick hell I've stuck bind as nin/drk =o) Stun however I save for when shadows are down and I KNOW I have no time to get them up without some sort of help.. the reason I save Stun for such occasion is for the simple fact that taking DMG = -enmity ... I cast Stun I gain time to get uts back up, I take no DMG, Success. I guess what I'm trying to say is... /DRK tools are sitational.. you need to understand their uses.. and take everything into consideration in a given situation... like if you are kiting Kirin... obviously you cant stun hi.. so it becomes a hate tool primarily.. with nothing secondary. I don''t think anyone can answer your questions completely without knowing the situation.. do some research on the amount of enmity each spell can acheive.. and really try to refrain from absorb spells.. 33mp is a lot to almost any ninja subbing drk... poison is great.. bind great too dont forget about those ^^ GL to ya =)

edit: on mobs tha need stuns... using a Staff gives you the option of Weapon Bash ... Make good use of it ^_-

[Cyprias]

I cannot say I am the Best NIN but I can certainly hold my own, and that being said.. I would like to give you an example as to what I do in a given situation. Assume we are fighting Byakko.. I will mainhand a sword build up 300% TP obviously for Spirits Within, now once Byakko is spawned I will unleash that 300% TP SW and immediatly swap to Earth Staff followed by a Last Resort, Bind, Sleep< equip ninjutsu skill gear and run through kurayami and Hojo, (it can stick hell I've stuck bind as nin/drk =o) Stun however I save for when shadows are down and I KNOW I have no time to get them up without some sort of help.. the reason I save Stun for such occasion is for the simple fact that taking DMG = -enmity ... I cast Stun I gain time to get uts back up, I take no DMG, Success. I guess what I'm trying to say is... /DRK tools are sitational.. you need to understand their uses.. and take everything into consideration in a given situation... like if you are kiting Kirin... obviously you cant stun hi.. so it becomes a hate tool primarily.. with nothing secondary. I don''t think anyone can answer your questions completely without knowing the situation.. do some research on the amount of enmity each spell can acheive.. and really try to refrain from absorb spells.. 33mp is a lot to almost any ninja subbing drk... poison is great.. bind great too dont forget about those ^^ GL to ya =)

edit: on mobs tha need stuns... using a Staff gives you the option of Weapon Bash ... Make good use of it ^_-

I wouldn't use poison on mobs you need to sleep, regardless of resist or not. ;o

Also, you're better off using haste/enmity gear on Kura/Hojo, and using Stun when you can. The only mob on NIN/DRK that I've seen Stun pay off long enough is Sandworm. Everything else stun is knocked off immediately and its noticeable that you would have the same amount of time to cast utsu as you did when you casted Stun.

The best case of a Stun for Utsu is as you mentioned, Weapon Bash. The only fallback of this is well... the timer.

[Thelian]

The vaugueness of your questions makes it hard to give a defined answer. ark gave a good overview that i think more or less covered most. i only have 1 point i want to add. The part with support, you can do it with just a rdm and a whm if you have a good co tank and mages/DD that understand basic hate management(i know thats sometimes more then u could hope for). you said you were having issues co tanking, is it that you whore hate more then you think you should or you dont have hate as much as u think you should?

in either case the answer is teh same, its just a matter of which side you are looking at it from. The better geared, or better yet more seasoned, tank needs to adept himself to be better able to share hate with his co-tank, if you understand my meaning. you need to gear yourself for the mob your fighting, the support you have, and the capabilty of your co tank at the same time. The main problem comes when you have to sacrifice so much hate to effectivly co-tank that the hate threshhold is so low everyone else begins to pull hate. You need to find teh balance between you, your cotank, and everyone else in your alliance.

if your other tanks are generally plds and nins /war, or pld/nins that arent that good, for the most part you should end up solo tanking. If that is the case the only way you will realisticly be abel to share hate better would be to change back to /war or tell the other tanks to get better, as condesending as that may sound.

it goes beyond simple gear choices. that is why guides are dangerous, they generalize to much. this may go beyond what you had asked but im board and felt like typing. just some food for thought

[IronPandemonium]

NIN/DRK: I think we're moving too fast

What have I done.

[Gov]

Thelian holds very good points... what are the others you are tanking against like? are they fighting for hate from you? however from what I had read.. I perceived it that you were having problens pulling hate back from the co-tanks ... this bring me back to what I had said in my original reply... the tools that you use are situational and it may not be a fact that you are using stun tooo fast... like i said.. its completely situational... you did not specify what mob this was on regrdless it shouldnt matter ... you seem to be asking for a universal answer which IMO is not something anyone can answer specifically... unless you can specify he specific conditions.. it's very likel noone can answer your question... either shed a bit more light or take what we have said and use it in your next battle =)

[Hakamaru]

Save stun? That's silly. Even in the case of weapon bash, you are more or less locked out from any actions for almost a second following any spell or JA. If you didn't save your stun, you might not be running out of shadows in the first place. You're much better off trying to time your utsu ni cast between attack rounds than saving stun/bash.

And the Byakko example... get yourself a proper DEF kit. Byakko hits me for 90-130 non crits. You lose some hate while getting hit, but it's negligible if you're geared properly.

If stun is up, you should be casting it. The only exception I can think of is stunning Ultima's Dissipations. You know right when he's going to be doing it, so another pair of eyes watching for it can't hurt.

[Cyprias]

Thelian holds very good points... what are the others you are tanking against like? are they fighting for hate from you? however from what I had read.. I perceived it that you were having problens pulling hate back from the co-tanks ... this bring me back to what I had said in my original reply... the tools that you use are situational and it may not be a fact that you are using stun tooo fast... like i said.. its completely situational... you did not specify what mob this was on regrdless it shouldnt matter ... you seem to be asking for a universal answer which IMO is not something anyone can answer specifically... unless you can specify he specific conditions.. it's very likel noone can answer your question... either shed a bit more light or take what we have said and use it in your next battle =)

Things are always situational. But NIN/DRK tanking is pretty straight forward. You cast what you can immediately to keep hate, and keep counting your shadows while doing so to maintain that hate and not getting hit.

[Gov]

I really disagree Haka.. when you are getting a barrage of triple attacks that 90-130 dmg adds up fast.. im geared for evasion when shadows are up and DEF when they are down.. i do gear properly for defense -45% DMG reduction Is pretty damn good if you ask me, Im not going to judge you and your gear obviously because i do not know you so dont judge mine, i can dump on plenty of hate to the point where i could not even use stun and still be fine, which is why i save it for occasions where i need him to stop and give me time to get shadows up.. i can easily get ichi up in the time it takes him to recover from a stun, ive tried many methods, this has always been my best approach, and ive not been having any problems but ill say it again.. saving stun may be a good thing in certain situations, as i said i use it as soon as its avail on mobs like kirin consider the scenario and build your defensive strategies on that.. i was just making an example of one scenario that i do not use stun ASAP hakamaru seems to think i do that in all cases

[Hakamaru]

I'm not judging your gear... only what you're saying. And yes, saving stun is retarded... no matter how offended you get.

I never accused you of doing it in a general sense. You said you save stun on byakko... that's stupid. End of discussion as far as I'm concerned. You're saving stun for what? So you can get your shadows back up and immediately get them stripped by more triple attacks? You could be a team player and stun while it's pounding on your co-tank instead of holding onto your crutch.

The only reason I mentioned gear in the first place was because you made it sound like getting hit by byakko was the end of the world for you. That only makes sense if you have a crappy DEF set. If you've got -45%, make it work for you. Ask for a phalanx II and shining ruby on top of that. All better alternatives than not casting stun when it's up. The CE you lose from getting hit is probably less than the CE you're not getting by holding onto stun in the first place. Not to mention the huge chunk of VE it affords.

[Gov]

well, I think you might be misinterpreting the timeline. when i suggest saving stun, sitting on it, it's not for a long long time, in fact i might be stunning 2-3 times less in a byakko fight than you do. you are absolutley right... he kils shadows fast. but when i could stun at my disposal adding 5-10 sec longer of a wait between stuns but saving me from a volley of triple attacks it sure helps, my LS is not as expd as most.. I HAVE to rely on having it at my own disposal. i don't sit on it when the co-tank has hate, I'm merely speaking as if the hate is on me Idont think you or I can agree on this, ive tried stunning the second it was available.. but Id always die before the tiger did, I then what good am I? certainly not going to be gaining CE dead ;p i then tried what i am doing now and since i have it's worked.. so maybe i should say the situation depends on you, your LS abilities/exp, and the type of mob you are up against? if i was in a very very good LS that had my back i wouldnt have to rely mostly on my own skills to stay alive. if that was the case im sure id live and die by the strategy you suggest ^^ but this is about Draugo.. I dont mean to misinform you draugo.. im sorry if i have, i was just giving a different perspective on the idea of nin/drk i hope whatever you try works out for you and your LS GL !

[drizzeee]

Haka: 2
Gov: 0

Saving stun is for pussies.

[Ark33]

Necrobump -50

[Gov]

arguing on the internet is like the special olympics... even if you win you're still a retard <.<
I am once again reminded why I should never come here