Dread Spikes

[Alathar]

I thought he was talking about using Dread Spikes during Kraken DRK to maximize damage dealt to the mob, not to specifically tank it.

Correct. No tanking, just kinda use the counters to your advantage. Ideally you would want a low delay weapon, since you would get more swings and feed less TP/swing. If you hit for 0, does it give your TP+2 still? (i.e. 2 TP) Or does it give the amount of TP that you would get if you had hit for 1+ dmg (X+2 TP)?

It is +2 right? It's been a loooonnggg time since I've bothered to think about it.

Or does it give 0? I could have sworn 0 damage to a mob meant 0 TP.

YOU get 0 TP for sure. I'm pretty sure the mob gets some TP though. How much, I do not know, however.

No, mobs don't get TP if you hit for zero damage.

Case in point: RDM/NINs soloing Bune using Ceremonial Daggers and Enspells.

Hadn't heard of that trick. So ... maybe grab A mercurial kris and take it to tiamat. It might actually be more effective than SMN BPs. BPs average 500 or so right? if you aim your recasts properly, you could do it twice per landing. That adds up to ~800x2 every time it's on the ground?

[Plow]

depends if he reduces it but it could be promising if you can hit him and get him to counter

I'd suggest trying it with a bronze zag or something rather than some fast dagger or whatever, just to have a chance to hit consistently

[Alathar]

depends if he reduces it but it could be promising if you can hit him and get him to counter

I'd suggest trying it with a bronze zag or something rather than some fast dagger or whatever, just to have a chance to hit consistently

You could try sushi DRK? DRK have D-E dagger skill or so iirc. Also, it's not HUGE, but sushi gives HP+.

[Jeryhn]

Hadn't heard of that trick. So ... maybe grab A mercurial kris and take it to tiamat. It might actually be more effective than SMN BPs. BPs average 500 or so right? if you aim your recasts properly, you could do it twice per landing. That adds up to ~800x2 every time it's on the ground?

Do you mean using Enspells? Well, when it comes to Tiamat and other CoP Wyrms, they have a flat 50% magic damage reduction. I don't think using Enspells for an average of 8-10 damage per swing (not including normal magic resistance) will be comparable to a summoner's Bloodpacts.

If it comes to trying to get Dread Spikes to flag on Tiamat's ninja-counters, the Spike damage is considered magic damage, so you'll only absorb half of what you get hit for. This is assuming Dread Spikes will flag on these counters in the first place, since they're not even in the log.

The reason a summoner is effective at a CoP Wyrm compared to other damage dealers is because they can use multiple strong physical attacks that don't require you to generate TP to use, is essentially hateless, and doesn't generate TP for the mob. And if it goes in the air, we have a ranged attack that will always deal a set amount of damage.

[Khamsin]

depends if he reduces it but it could be promising if you can hit him and get him to counter

I'd suggest trying it with a bronze zag or something rather than some fast dagger or whatever, just to have a chance to hit consistently

If only there were a club or something with low damage that hit a lot...

(unless said club does more than 0 damage)

[Alathar]

Do you mean using Enspells? Well, when it comes to Tiamat and other CoP Wyrms, they have a flat 50% magic damage reduction. I don't think using Enspells for an average of 8-10 damage per swing (not including normal magic resistance) will be comparable to a summoner's Bloodpacts.

If it comes to trying to get Dread Spikes to flag on Tiamat's ninja-counters, the Spike damage is considered magic damage, so you'll only absorb half of what you get hit for. This is assuming Dread Spikes will flag on these counters in the first place, since they're not even in the log.
.

Didn't mean Enspells. The 50% magic dmg reduction had occured to me ... I was hoping it might not count

As for SMNs, I'm quite aware of why they're used. What I'm saying is that DRK could maayyybbeee do an equivalent job (hateless, TPless dmg).

As for the ninja counter procing spikes ... only way to know would be to test it. If anything, you would know if "Dread Spikes effect wears off" happens before 1 min. You could also just test it vs. genbu, the counters work the same, right?

[Jeryhn]

Didn't mean Enspells. The 50% magic dmg reduction had occured to me ... I was hoping it might not count

I can tell you they sure will. Its mostly going to be a matter of whether or not the "resisted" damage on the Spikes will count towards its duration total.

Example:
Let's say you have 2000 HP total.
This means Dread Spikes caps at 1000 total HP Drain.

Now, you get hit for 200 damage by Tiamat. Normally Spikes should deal 200 damage, but since it has a 50% magic damage reduction, Dread Spikes only drains 100 HP from Tiamat. The question is, does this count as 100 damage or 200 damage against the effect of the Spikes? Or for the duration of the spell, will you drain 500 HP or 1000 HP?

The reason I pose this question is because some screenshots on the KI DRK Forum show that Spikes almost always drains 50% of your max HP... except in cases where the DRK was hit, and the Spikes only drained half the HP due to a normal resist, which led to a lower total drain after the Spikes effect wore off.

If the resistance still counts toward the Spikes' duration total, I don't think you'll deal a whole lot of damage through the Drain effect. This also doesn't factor in the whole normal magic resistance system (damage reduced by 1/2, 1/4, 1/16, etc. due to lower magic accuracy).

Overall, it's a good idea, certainly something worth testing, but because it hinges on dealing magic damage that you can't necessarily directly improve the accuracy on through gear, it can have a lot of things going against it. This shows why using Souleater is so powerful, because its basically unresistable physical damage, and very few mobs directly resist physical damage as opposed to certain types of physical damage (eg blunt, slashing, etc.).

As for the ninja counter procing spikes ... only way to know would be to test it. If anything, you would know if "Dread Spikes effect wears off" happens before 1 min. You could also just test it vs. genbu, the counters work the same, right?

Genbu does the same thing, yea, probably easiest to test it on him.

[Gerion]

But if they aren't draining the full amount, is it possible they are just running out of the 1 minute duration before the full amount is used up?

[Jeryhn]

But if they aren't draining the full amount, is it possible they are just running out of the 1 minute duration before the full amount is used up?

No, the effect of Dread Spikes is wearing off well within the normal duration as well. But it's not draining the full 50%, and the only thing which suggests why it wouldn't is the resisted drain procs.