Ridill vs Mandau vs MNK/WAR

[aurik]

In this latter case, Mnk/war's parse close to Mnk/nin's and generally (generally) tend to get outparsed by very good Wars, Ridill Wars, and other very good DD's (mandau, etc).

mnk/war parses a really good amount more than mnk/nin. Double attack, attack boost, berserk, and no downtime casting shadows increases damage a great deal.

Saying what I've said for a long time:
mnk/war > ridill/nin > mnk/nin

What margin do you beat ridill wars by as mnk/war?

I don't get to /war often, but I'd expect to be ~3% above a peak ridill war (compared to 1-2% below it as /nin) on neutral mob.

[Sidanoir]

In this latter case, Mnk/war's parse close to Mnk/nin's and generally (generally) tend to get outparsed by very good Wars, Ridill Wars, and other very good DD's (mandau, etc).

mnk/war parses a really good amount more than mnk/nin. Double attack, attack boost, berserk, and no downtime casting shadows increases damage a great deal.

Saying what I've said for a long time:
mnk/war > ridill/nin > mnk/nin

What margin do you beat ridill wars by as mnk/war?

I don't get to /war often, but I'd expect to be ~3% above a peak ridill war (compared to 1-2% below it as /nin) on neutral mob.

Considering I put up 1%-2% over MNK/WAR that I have partied with who are extremely well equipped minus relic....is Spharai that much better than destroyers? BTW--I assume you are including counter damage in part of the total? Also Can I safely assume your talking a 2 BRD party?

[draxyl]

is Spharai that much better than destroyers?

Yes. From what I remember when Aurik first got his, its something on the order of 3-5% improvement in most situations?

[Lynsy]

And lol @ getting interrupted casting ichi on a mob that has elegy on it....cause your bards do pull with and land elegy...right?

Well, between the recast on Elegy (24 seconds), the number of mobs that are pulled as "links" or by melee voking them because they happen to be near camp or pulled with Finale (mage mobs at non-colibri) or happen to randomly resist elegy (or blink it, in the case of mage mobs), I would guess that more or less half of the mobs you fight in a merit party are not elegied.

But even assuming it is elegied 100% of the time, people get interupted way too much and the spell is way too long of a cast for it to be worth it most of the time for merit parties. Just don't be retarded. Is that really asking so much?

[Scorp]

I have to agree that mnk/war will provide higher dd than a ridill/nin. There is a far larger difference though in a player being awake in a merit party, getting to the next mob before its half dead and maximizing their damage rather than being semi afk.

Mnk/war being just a mp sponge still annoys me as an argument, if its viable in a place like KRT where good mages could keep up with both curing, buffing and status effects without needing to break for mp then it should be easily possible in the colibri camp. (Mamool's/skoffins are slightly different due to the mass of tp moves, but if the wrong combinations come up they can easily trouble other dd).

Maybe i'm just bitter about never getting to play on my mnk anymore but it seems that its more just a negative perception combined with slightly worse/lazier mages. (ok i am bitter )

I refuse to go mnk/nin on principle... i just hate to see my damage fall away so much, I have a meat set up so the attack isn't too bad but the tp gain and the over dps loss irk me.

(I have no experience with thf or sam so i'm not gonna compare)

[aurik]

KRT was always brd whm rdm. Whm provides a lot of healing, and counter rates are sky high due to the low evasion of the bones.

Bird parties are usually brd rdm or brd/nin brd rdm, so there is a lot less healing power. Pecking Flurry does a lot more damage than Hell Slash; Fang Rush & the mamool rush WS can do 4 digits with counterstance up.

So there are your good reasons to go /nin.

[Eaglestrike]

you reactivate ur ID yet LoH? I'm waiting to whoop some mandau THF's ass

Yeah just the other day, went from 700 buffer to capped now, I think I've gotten most of the rust off.

[SephYuyX]

Damn you are stupid. You missed the entire point of his rant. Not to mention you missed the point that Birds don't get off more then 1-2 moves with 3 MNK/WAR and they get off 4-5 moves with WAR/NINs. I have both jobs, no it's not a big deal and I generally enjoy WAR more but you still don't have a fucking clue about anything. MNKs don't take a shitton of damage like everyone thinks. MNKs were doing TPburns long before anyone else.

Mages are fcking sissies now usually anyways.

Bolded the important part...lol. Biggest proof of this was when I tried making a monkburn in KRT one time, just to do it...the BRD for some reason forgot what pulling was, didn't finale BLM skeles, no one Banish'd ghosts...Pretty sure I died two times from pure ignorance -.-;

The only reason I despise ToAU was because it made 90% of all mages retarded when it came to stressing situations. Not that KRT parties are really stressing...but apparently, it was.

You must be mistaken thinking that only the mages have become idiots, try 90% of the entire population. If anything, melees have become more lazy, and tanks dont even tank anymore. People have been spoiled so much that when the go fight something that actually takes effort, they fail because they lack the skill to do so; both knowledge and the ingame skill like parry, shield, enfeebs, etc. Hell, people are so lazy they wont even take 10mins out of their time to get all the area warps for AU.

I dont trust anyone who hasnt had a 75 job before ToAU came out.

[Scorp]

KRT was always brd whm rdm. Whm provides a lot of healing, and counter rates are sky high due to the low evasion of the bones.

Bird parties are usually brd rdm or brd/nin brd rdm, so there is a lot less healing power. Pecking Flurry does a lot more damage than Hell Slash; Fang Rush & the mamool rush WS can do 4 digits with counterstance up.

So there are your good reasons to go /nin.

Question is would 3 mnks using /nin and 2 bard be better or worse than 3 mnks /war and bard whm rdm.

[aurik]

KRT was always brd whm rdm. Whm provides a lot of healing, and counter rates are sky high due to the low evasion of the bones.

Bird parties are usually brd rdm or brd/nin brd rdm, so there is a lot less healing power. Pecking Flurry does a lot more damage than Hell Slash; Fang Rush & the mamool rush WS can do 4 digits with counterstance up.

So there are your good reasons to go /nin.

Question is would 3 mnks using /nin and 2 bard be better or worse than 3 mnks /war and bard whm rdm.

2 bards.

[Shamaya]

On bird camp, a good thf not only has the piercing advantage, he also has the ability to use food, and not have his tp taken.

The food thing isn't such a big deal, since I think more and more people are starting to wake up to the fact that melee should at least use meat mithkabobs there. You can see this effect on the AH price of mithkas, which went up by something like 3k a stack a few months ago to 4k a stack, while other foods got cheaper. It's ideal to bring at least 3 stacks to a decent PT, and at 4k a stack, that's barely over half the price of sole on my server.

All melee stand to have an increase in dmg by going mithka, so they should, though there is less incentive for /war's. Thieves gain an advantage in that a decent bit of our damage is transmitted through trick attack, but (what sidanoir said) thieves do get their food eaten and their tp stolen. A good thf will get hate all the time--after SA, after SA+WS, and sometimes just by meleeing. I know when I go out to birds I go through at least a stack or two an hour. We may get tp stolen less often in virtue of us tricking, but this is counterbalanced if we're on top of the parse. All in all I'd say a good thf at birds will still get their tp stolen less often, but not by very much.

The big bad colibri isn't going to wipe the party cause of TP...nor slow experience down....
Colibri have 1 TP move that does damage.....

Pecking flurry isn't much to be afraid of, and with mithkas snatch morsel isn't so bad. But they do have feather tickle, which reduces TP to 0. So bird tp-gain is a factor which does slow down the party a bit (not a ton, I'd say).

mnk/war parses a really good amount more than mnk/nin. Double attack, attack boost, berserk, and no downtime casting shadows increases damage a great deal.

Not gonna argue that I'm right and you're wrong on this cuz you have 10x the mnk knowledge I do. I do know that you mentioned earlier you go mnk/nin the majority of the time, and that mnk/war does great 'for about 50 seconds, then dies' which is also jokingly overstating how fast they would die. It's just in my experience, those gains that you talked about by going /war are countered by the mnk having/wanting to hold back a little, even with counterstance considerations. If they don't hold back and they don't die, this will help their parse. The mnk/war I've exped with do hold back, and on one occasion have gone back to the mog house to change to nin sub (when he came back, he parsed almost exactly as he had when he was /war, only he took less damage).

Same concept applies to the Thf/war vs Thf/nin debate. The biggest factor to consider imo is holding back. I decided to actually try /war again recently at mamool camp, and tried to see what it was like without holding back. Second or third fight, nin first vokes, I have 100tp, sneak is up but trick isn't, berserk is on, I SA+WS, get down to 200hp quick, keep hate for the entire fight, and have the bard and red mage laugh about me being an MP sponge. They would have stopped laughing if I kept doing that, but ultimately I did have to hold back. In future such circumstances, I would have to wait until a safe time before I could SA+WS without risking dying, oftentimes wasting ~50pts of valuable tp in the process that could have been used on another WS if I was /nin. Perhaps thf/war would stand to benefit more from faster kills and outside cures in the way that mnk/war does? Idk, I'll have to try it. I still want to try /war at colibri camp regardless, just because they die so fast and their WS are more harmless.

In the end you're probably right that a noticeable advantage is gained going /war over /nin--whatever the party situation--but I do not think that the gap between the two is necessarily large if you don't have outside cures or a party that kills in 5-10 seconds (ie a slower party of, say, mnk/war, war/nin, war/nin, nin/war, brd, rdm - with no ridills).

take non-retarded SMNs to Colibri camp. Predator Claws destroys them and, when used only to keep chain

I'm going to have to try that some time. It's easier to take a Smn over a Whm than it is a Smn over a Rdm, but then again, MP issues aren't a huge deal on birds.

[RKenshin]

Ruke, how does your Kraken RNG compare to your relic SAM? Or have you retired RNG?

I haven't retired RNG and I still play it often, but when I play RNG I only use kraken RNG for certain situations. I love its power and everything but I don't like to whip out kraken unless it's in ideal situations (where mobs die fast and potential TP spam isn't a problem)... Which mostly ends up being just some Salvage runs and higher end exp PTs, and sometimes dynamis/limbus/etc.

However I'm relatively sure that kraken RNG would still be a little behind. I've outparsed some really decked DDs as Kraken RNG but it tends to be really close. I'll usually go head to head with a MNK/WAR most of the PT and then by the end it'll either be even, or me/them will pull 1-2% ahead. Considering I can't reliably outparse the same DDs, and when I do it's only by 1-2%, while my SAM will outparse them by a good 4-7%, I think I can safely say that my kraken RNG will hold up well against my SAM but still won't outparse it.

Although I've yet to see any kind of SAM use a Soboro and spam ranged WS on Colibri, much less a relic Bow one. I'd love to see how that does.

By the way ruke..have you noticed really shitty damage on Kaiten if your low on attack...ie no berserk and no meat say at colibri?..difference is pretty crazy vs zerked and food ( like more than I would expect....)..

Kiaten also seems pretty terrible in my experience vs high defense mobs..like Ultima...Fafnir...wonder if you saw same things...

Yeah, I notice really significant differences between high attack Kaitens vs low attack Kaitens... And Kaitens on HNMs vs Kaitens on weaker mobs. I mentioned this quite a few times on my last LJ updates.

A while ago when I was comparing Kasha/Gekko/Yukikaze averages with Defender on Steelshells, all three of them averaged much higher than Kaiten by almost 2x. Then when I put up Berserk and used attack food Kaiten had a much bigger improvement than all three.

However I've still found spamming 100% TP Kaitens to be the best DoT for all mobs.

[draxyl]

Man, there was snow on the ground when you last updated that LJ. Bush was still president, too.

[aurik]

mnk/war parses a really good amount more than mnk/nin. Double attack, attack boost, berserk, and no downtime casting shadows increases damage a great deal.

Not gonna argue that I'm right and you're wrong on this cuz you have 10x the mnk knowledge I do. I do know that you mentioned earlier you go mnk/nin the majority of the time, and that mnk/war does great 'for about 50 seconds, then dies' which is also jokingly overstating how fast they would die. It's just in my experience, those gains that you talked about by going /war are countered by the mnk having/wanting to hold back a little, even with counterstance considerations. If they don't hold back and they don't die, this will help their parse. The mnk/war I've exped with do hold back, and on one occasion have gone back to the mog house to change to nin sub (when he came back, he parsed almost exactly as he had when he was /war, only he took less damage).

The whole point of going /war is to not hold back. If you're holding back so as to not get hate, you should go /nin and co-tank instead.

[Baha]

On bird camp, a good thf not only has the piercing advantage, he also has the ability to use food, and not have his tp taken. Of course, all three are pretty damn good, but when it comes down to it, I'd pick ridill war last.

I don't see how THF's can more easily eat better food, unless you're in some kind of KI-inspired PLD + THFx3 trickburn. After a first voke, you'll often take hate from melee'ing alone, and usually it's better to SAWS than TAWS (or unstack if you want), since as a THF, you're much better equipped to migitate damage. SAWS after first voke, and you can tank pretty much anything till death, only having to worry about recast for shitty tp moves. Sounds better to me than having some WAR/NIN try to tank something for the rest of the fight, or making the NIN have to recast even more.

Think it's kind of sad how people make excuses for not using food at colibri camp, it helps out a ton. Spamming that kabob/sushi macro every five minutes is pretty annoying, but if you can't put up with it, go someplace else. (I know I like eating some decent meat at mamool camps every once in a while)

[Taint]

'm surprised nobody mentioned a Relic DRK/SAM in a 2brd pty. Its WS spam with Catatrophe adding haste and drain for 400-500 per WS. With the right merits you are looking at ~70% delay reduction with ~85% every 4minutes during LR and the ability to self Darkness and if lucky self Double Darkness.

with the best gear its more like 77% delay reduction ( 118 delay) and 92% ( 41 delay ) every 4min10

im 4% away from max haste and i calculated 4% would give me a 20% boost in dmg output , i already beat good ridill war ( never fought against a speed belt dusk glove+1 ridill etc... war though )

Cata maxes out the 25% cap from gear, so no point in getting that last 4% from what I can tell. I'm just missing Dusk hands+1 and homam feet and my haste is maxed.

Still Relic DRK is freakin sweet ^^

[Weeks]

I don't see how THF's can more easily eat better food, unless you're in some kind of KI-inspired PLD + THFx3 trickburn.

Because THFs plant a decent portion of their hate on someone else, so they never wind up tanking their fair share and they get to use whatever food they can build the best gear set around without spending 50k per hour.

[NynJa]

On bird camp, a good thf not only has the piercing advantage, he also has the ability to use food, and not have his tp taken.

What the fuck kinda pussy ass thieves do you merit with ?

[Denchi]

I really need a Black Belt and Faith Torque.

Then maybe I'll be a good mnk.... this thread makes me sad. People ask me to come Nin/War more often to XP anyways. God knows why, my Mnk definitely isn't Wal-mart (Full merits, only missing BB and Faith torque). *sigh* good merit parties are hard to find these days.

[Francisco II]

I love anytime I get to play MNK/WAR - but Counterstance against most merit mobs doesn't seem very feasible to me... Mamools get Vorpal-esque skills, Wyverns get Fang Rush, and Colibri get Pecking Flurry... it's great for Flies, Imps and Puks, but who kills "just Puks" - and Flies/Imps seems to be the least desirable of the merit camps these days.

I'm on a huge Counter splooge lately, regardless... I find Counterstance is very effective against LBC and BCC during Hundred Fists - and wonder if it's possible (feasible) to tank them /WAR with the right setup.