Merits? Where to spendFollow

This is what I'm thinking for dark merits, would like some input on what others think or have done.

Group 1
5/5 last resort effect
5/5 last resort recast

Group 2
5/5 desperate blows
then I'm not sure here on the last one. I was leaning towards muted soul or maybe dividing up for muted and diabolic eye.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

I only ever use Diabolic Eye when I'm swinging some gimp sh*t like Club for Red proc. 1/5 is probably as much as you'll ever need it, because 4/5 still isn't often enough to matter or preclude using an up/down set.

1/5 Dark Seal is handy for the same reason.

Muted Soul gets a huge debatefest. I 3/5'd it for lack of want of the other options. Stalwart Soul makes Souleater far more worthwhile and effective, and dropping a fat Souleater but capping hate that much more slowly can be nice for damage output if you've been sitting around waiting for yellow proc while the tank capped hate.

As for Group 1's, it depends what endgame weapon you're using. Keep your 5/5 Last Resort Effect merits if you plan on using Caladbolg/NQ. I'd recommend 5/5 Souleater recast over LR Effect (keep LR recast, natch) if you're going to use Scythe, again because of Stalwart Soul and Guillotine still being our staple multihit.

Edited, Jun 5th 2011 6:33pm by Raelix

5/5 LR recast
5/5 SE recast

5/5 DB
5/5 DE you'll want the acc on new content.

I have an Apoc and currently have 5/5 DS but on some of the upper tier VWNMs im not capping acc so Im changing to DE as well.

I went

5/5 LR Recast duh
5/5 LR Effect (turns it into Berserk basically)

5/5 DB duh
5/5 Dark Seal (nothing else better)

I used to be 5/5 DE but then abyssea has made acc not worth a damn, plus the -HP effect is annoying when your riding SE. I might change it back to 5/5 DE if acc becomes an issue in the newer content.

As for the reason behind 5/5 LR effect, turns out monsters over level 80 have annoyingly high defense. Inside abyssea we have super atma's and cruor buffs to offset this, outside we're not so lucky. You really want 800 or more attack to get near ratio cap and with LR now 3min effect it makes sense to max it out. Also outside abyssea riding SE isn't nearly as useful, your HP is lower and the mages don't have as much MP to keep you topped off. I dualbox a WHM and even then its damn difficult to get the most out of SE.

But that's my personal choice, YMMV.

I changed my merits up recently.

5/5 lr recast
5/5 desperate blows
Ofcourse

5/5 SE recast since the update SE is very spammable and really helps on the harder mobs. I have Apoc which makes SE even more potent. DRK is also an easy job to cap attack.

5/5 diabolic eye. With the new update even with perfect gear like I have the acc boost is still needed on upper tier mobs. I used to think DE was useless (was at 75) but now its a huge asset. Just like muted soul used to be a solid trait back in the zerg days but now its 100% useless.

The issue is why use pizza when I can use RCB and merit DE. I don't DRK in Abyssea where DE would never be needed, but its really nice in Dynamis and VW where DRK does pretty well.

The biggest issue is muted soul doesn't add anything. The other option is Dark seal which has limited use but being capped or closer to capped ACC 3 out of 5min.

My 5hit tp set for harder mobs is

Apoc/rose//whitetath
Bale/bale/bale/brutal
armadaberk(stp5da2)/bale/raja/hoard
tactical/goading/jingang/aces

Pretty acc friendly and im not capped on acc.

Get out of Abyssea for a minute, do a t4 VW their def is very very high. Its much better to swap gear around then to go from RcB to pizza. With Apoc +35acc Im parsing between 86 and 92 acc on t4s, capping with DE. 95% of DRKs will probably need pizza and DE to cap. Its also useful further into the new dynamis zones.

Again muted soul is useless, dark seal is situational and DE can be used just about everywhere. Even if you DRK in abyssea you can use it for procing. Would WAR give up agressor?

Our disagreement starts with how useless. -50 (-30) emn is worth for a DD in any situation let alone for only 1min.

DRK isn't a bad job to pull hate on and sometimes a good one. Before Abyssea it was a premier tank.

Old school KC,RC zerg DRK muted soul was very worthwhile but the game has changed drastically.

abyssea's hardly over, some of us are still spitting out empyreans and gearing our 4th or 5th jobs! hell i have to gear blu now that i've finished almace.../RAGE...have half of the +1's done already at least.

i'd rather get my enmity loss from pulling aggro and getting punched in the face with dreadspikes up, but i guess it's down to playstyle. if muted soul were a flat -enm all the time it'd be a different story.

Double because the new layout moved everything around.


I think the short version, Finuve, is "You have an Apoc, you do not speak for all of us. Do whatever you like, but don't ever insinuate that non-Apoc DRKs are doing it wrong or I will find you."

Edited, Jul 2nd 2011 2:26pm by Raelix

Do try to pay attention so you don't look like an inconsequential nag next time.




Oh dear! I actually f*cked that up, hold on:

Let's go with 400 defense, 800 attack to simplify the math. On EM or lower, 100 attack is a 12.5% increase. Now let's throw 9 levels of correction at it, so 1.8 / 1.55 = 16.1% more damage. Edit: Oops, hit cap, so it's actually only 12.9%. How about 600 defense? 1.05 / 0.883 = 18% increase on a very extreme mob. Still nowhere even near the same greater metropolitan area as the benefit of accuracy from pizza.


As already postulated, non-Apoc DRKs need every bit of Acc they can get, especially if swinging a low hitbuild and needing certain pieces in for WS. Apoc/Quietus/Torcleaver DRKs aren't known for having incredible amounts of accuracy on their WS sets so my further annotation about DA/TA procs is even more valid.


No I didn't. That's why the damage increase from improved accuracy on Guillotine was only 20.1% instead of 26% and I gave a point about accuracy on WS helping secondary DA and TA procs land. Torcleaver has no Ratio bonus and you personally disavow Quietus' Ratio bonus at every opportunity so what does that matter?

Congratulations! You've succeeded in being entirely confrontational and contradictory without making a single valid point whatsoever or even making the bare minimum attempt to back your claims. If you'd even considered the latter you wouldn't have spouted such garbage.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2011 3:57pm by Raelix

Sure, pick at as many little things you can and tweak the numbers to make your idea look less retarded. DE+RCB still fails to give a larger benefit than Pizza alone even on a level 104 mob. Jormungand is level 95. Level 99 was a decent guess for the current top end NMs except that players will be getting there eventually. Stretch that out as far as you like, maybe SE will make level 140 NMs and you'll be right!

But here's the funny part: you dicked the math in your favor because no self-respecting DRK is gonna have just 650 attack with Last Resort up and no food. Against a mob with 400 defense any decent DRK is gonna slam into Ratio cap even with just Pizza. If you argue 'Last Resort goes down for one minute out of four!' I'm gonna kick you in the face and point at Diabolic Eye being down even more often than that.

At any rate a 20% accuracy increase is 26% more damage across the board, not just TP phase, because you land 26% more melee hits for 26% more WSing per bunch of swings, so it's 26% even if your f*cking WS accuracy is capped. Just wanted to make that clear to you. Additional damage per WS because of increased WS accuracy is just gravy, but still you cock up this idea that everyone WSes in an accuracy set which says nothing to the benefit of Torcleaver (You've heard of this thing right? It's kinda popular...) and Quietus. 26% more damage from 20% accuracy increase is a minimum, and the lower your starting accuracy on potentially stronger mobs, the more the benefit balloons even faster than Attack.

But your own argument about swapping for WS turns against you, because no DRK less retarded than yourself is gonna be WSing in the same amount of Attack as their TP set, particularly Torc and Quietus DRKs, so they easily slam into Ratio cap with RCB and lose much of the benefit for 60% of their damage, especially with Torc DRKs and many others rocking LR Effect merits.

Yours is the way of the E-Peen, the BNS whore. That's all RCB is for: E-Peen (Like it's predecessor and main ingredient, 'look how much money I can blow on food!') amd BNS'ing. It's fun to use on trash mobs, but mob Evasion is growing just as rapidly as their Attack.`

Edited, Jul 2nd 2011 9:09pm by Raelix

God. Damn. You're retarded. It's 26% from baseline versus <20% from baseline. You can't get it through your thick f*cking skull that Twenty-six is greater than twenty or less.

It's 126x 100 damage hits versus 100x 118 damage hits and 25x 1000 damage WS versus 20x 1180 damage WS. Want me to show you how to use a calculator? I figured you passed third grade but you're making me wonder.

You f*cking ignore that the accuracy value I'm using is based on Finuve's allegedly parsed data from a goddamn Voidwatch mob. Meanwhile you make up hypothetical level 104 mobs and say I'm the one pulling numbers out of my ass?

You're f*cking pathetic, you know that? Do whatever you like to win an argument on the internet, I don't have to do dick-all to prove you wrong at this point. You're doing everything possible to make yourself look like you were right and I can't stop you making sh*t up and spouting garbage in the process. Just stop already. You've lost, you don't even have to admit to it. Just go away.

I'm ashamed to have to explain concepts to an Apoc DRK that were established in motherf*cking 2004.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2011 10:28pm by Raelix

Oh leave them be, Kao, it's funny.

My concern was that people would use Diabolic Eye as a major source of Accuracy. It plainly isn't, especially when only up 3/5ths of the time. It should never be a first choice or be majorly considered as part of a 'build'.

Where do you get 28acc? Did you apply DE's '3/5ths of the time' hobbling to the 40+ accuracy you get from Pizza?

My statement is simple: Accuracy has always been, and will always be, more important than Attack when both are uncapped; this is true even in vastly disparate values (40 accuracy vs 100 attack). Diabolic Eye isn't enough for Voidwatch mobs as shown here, plus that it generally sucks unless your fights are under three minutes (Is it more important to be hitting the mob at the start of the fight or when it's almost dead? See?). If Diabolic Eye could be up 100% of the time it would be incredible, but as it is you have to pop Souleater in the downtime to maintain the same accuracy and you still have a full minute of -10% hitrate.

It worked fine at Mamool and Bird camps where we had a known, tested, verified, mathable accuracy target and could build up/down sets if we wanted to be so neurotic. Are you gonna stop in the middle of every fight to check your parse and decide if you need to put DE up or not?

If you wanna be sure you're hitting something, though: Seriously... why dick around? Swallow your f*cking pride and eat some goddamn pizza.

People cream their pants over 16% more total damage from Aftermath ODD on 2-hander Empyrean weapons. It takes just +25 accuracy to see a 16% damage increase from accuracy if it puts you at or close to cap. How's that for a little perspective?

Edited, Jul 3rd 2011 2:32am by Raelix

Two words:

Dia II

Yeah, but never any excuse to not have Dia II at the very least because it comes with WHM or RDM sub.

More fun perspectiveism: Dia II on a 400 defense mob is equivalent to adding 85 or more attack for an average DRK. Dia III is equivalent to adding 130+ for the same DRK.

You just hate when napkin math makes your ideas look downright silly.

don't bother trying to reason with these two. just sit back with popcorn. it's funner, and safer.

The one with the ban button and the highest ban count of any of the administrative staff here by several thousand. Also known as the Senior Forum Administrator, or the "yes Kaolian, I'll stop doing that thing you told me not to do now because I don't want to get banned." admin.

Take your pick. And by all means, please, find out if I am bluffing. I'll give you a hint though.

I never, ever bluff about such things.

Administrator Kaolian

Even if you never had a reason to use DE it would still be more useful then muted soul, if not for the animation alone. DS could be argued for the italian DRKs but loldrk magic. I switched to a 6hit for harder mobs and its working good so far.

TP
Apoc/pole//firebomblet
af3/bale/abyssal/brutal
Bale/bale/raja/mars
atheling/goading/jingang/homam

AM
Apoc/pole//bombcore
af3/bale/abyssal/brutal
valk(ta2,zan5)raja/mars
ath/goad/jing/jing

Use RCB and save DE for the NMs = profit.

Love the double standard when we were just talking about non-Abyssea Voidwatch (Tanked) fights and Souleater being the thing that will push you to hate cap fastest anyway.

Still have to 5/5 DE for it to matter at all to go past 1/5, which means you're ass-out on Dark Seal (which lands Drain II on Absolute Virtue = more zerg output, same can probably be said of Voidwatch mobs) or you laughably take fewer merits in Desperate Blows. Not saying that you need Dark Seal, but it does have and will have applications.

Remember my phrasing: Partial merits are 'less useless' in Muted Soul than Diabolic Eye.

Some people think stealthy insults make their opinions more valid than others'.

Edited, Jul 5th 2011 8:52pm by Raelix

Or you can just eat Pizza, which was the whole argument in the first place.

I'm just gonna go out on a pretty stable limb and say DE is garbage compared to any other accuracy source. You're either capped accuracy on something, or you should be eating Pizza or bringing better buffs. Ignoring that it's only up 60% of the time at best doesn't make it useful.

In any fight under three minutes going /DRG will serve you better, both in terms of more accuracy and Jumps, AND gives you better use of Souleater AND gives you an opportunity to put Muted Soul to work (High Jump).

Keep up the DE peen sucking, I'm just even more convinced it's worthless now. Your penchant for being a cookiecutter blowhard meathead must-max-out(-but-using-all-the-wrong-ideals) DD has trumped even my patience, and I just found the 'Ignore' function and have decided to do the DRK forum a favor by using it.

Edited, Jul 5th 2011 9:10pm by Raelix

You still make a tradeoff. You're trading attack for the accuracy.



If you're at 85-94% Accuracy, DE is doing something for you, and pizza is a waste, period.



@#%^ing horrible advice. Godawful. Offensively, /SAM gives a 6hit, meditate, hasso, sekka, and Zanshin making up for some ACC. Defensively, /SAM also offers Seigan TE which can negate powerful tp moves or several attacks, even adding some damage with counters.

All you do is napkin math only considering what you want, and give out terrible advice.

Bling Bling wants his Crack.

Everything else these two have argued about is just an extension of this.

Boils down to +40ish acc via pizza's flat 10% total acc boost vs RCB's 90-ish att advantage over pizza. Stalwart soul makes soul eater much more viable to use every chance you can, increasing the use of muted soul's -enmity on fresh mobs. Anything lasting long enough to use souleater more than once the merits probably won't help as much unless you got KO'd along the way. Though it'd be a different story if swinging a multi-hit weapon, actually on /drg for just this purpose, and want someone else to stay tanking the duration (can't imagine you'd not take hate during this though; is capped MS that strong an effect to prevent taking hate during that kind of souleater barrage?).

I'm still not used to the thought of spamming souleater; just got used to not using it much in the old days unfortunately. You obviously can now, and with the most evasive mobs not really flooring your acc quite yet, pizza is a pretty easy option to use to help maintain x-hit builds and haste gear. The lost att from not using RCB really isn't that big a deal due to how much att drk gets normally (I can't imagine you'd be att floored on anything).