DRK Grips

[Vyloan]

Heya, recently I've come back to FFXI after being dragged away from school. However since I've been back, I've been having several internal debates on the overall "best" grip merting/HNM. I understand shit is situational, but with recent changes in DEX=ACC, STR=ATK, and the post-post-patch, how does everyone view grips being tiered now? Some grips are obvious like Axe for 300% TP, but for overall meriting/HNM purposes which would you choose and why?

I'm leaning towards Claymore for just about every situation (maybe excluding /war with pole strap, but even then I don't know if 2 DA is worth the loss of 3% critical). So, I decided I'd like to hear everyone else's opinion on it (this can be expanded to other jobs as well, I only put DRK because it's my main melee job.)

Thank you for reading and for any input.

[Nuketwig]

I'm leaning towards Claymore for just about every situation (maybe excluding /war with pole strap, but even then I don't know if 2 DA is worth the loss of 3% critical).

I actually had the same question, so interested to see how this thread goes!

[Therin]

I use Pole Strap, and love it. The only thing that I don't use it for is zerging, and I use my Sword Strap for that.

[Merkury]

Im only 74 atm and been using Pole Strap w/ scythe. Dont have Algol and currently breaking Subduer. I was thinking subduer + claymore for 9% crit hit rate. Any Thoughts on that over the 2% DA?

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

Claymore for HNM
Pole for everything else

[mikazuki]

my quick calculations on this indicated that pole strap is the best for any situation where you aren't using multi-hit/triple attack.

if you are using multi-hit then crit+ tends to be the best - that would be soboro and jailer weapons mainly?
using triple attack depends how much of it you have (unless you do a very detailed calculation which i'm not gonna^^) but crit+ will be a strong choice.
crit+ obviously improves as your relative attack decreases, ie. low skill weapon, high lv mob. and conversely not useful when hitting very weak mobs.

delay-% strap is obviously bad in regard to doing nothing for WS, also i believe it's been demonstrated already that it doesn't improve your tp gain rate.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

Im only 74 atm and been using Pole Strap w/ scythe. Dont have Algol and currently breaking Subduer. I was thinking subduer + claymore for 9% crit hit rate. Any Thoughts on that over the 2% DA?

And think that, and of course stacked with 4 crit merits, would be real nice actually.

Otherwise, I'd go with Pole Strap.

[Nuketwig]

Im only 74 atm and been using Pole Strap w/ scythe. Dont have Algol and currently breaking Subduer. I was thinking subduer + claymore for 9% crit hit rate. Any Thoughts on that over the 2% DA?

And think that, and of course stacked with 4 crit merits, would be real nice actually.

Otherwise, I'd go with Pole Strap.

So Pole Strap unless you're using a crit+ weapon? dammit I hope claymore and pole are still comparably priced

[mikazuki]

using a crit+ weapon isn't a reason to use crit strap.

[Max™]

using a crit+ weapon isn't a reason to use crit strap.

Using a Crit based WS, with a Crit+ weapon, and enough Dex to noticeably affect your Crit tier, but not with so much Attack that you negate the benefits of the improved crits, would be a good reason.

Unfortunately, Drk doesn't have any (many?) 2h crit WSes that I recall, but 13% Crits with a KS weapon, 14% with Tred (Tred is still considered to be 7% Crits due to the 13th hit thing, right?) before considering dexterity isn't really something to dismiss.

Claymore is cheaper than Pole Strap on most servers.

If you aren't /War, Pole will probably win for giving you closer to the /War level DA, Brutal, Askar Body, Pole for 9% DA while /Sam or /Nin sounds pretty sweet, but I'm not a Drk, I'm a War, so giving up DA for moar crits is a lot easier.

[mikazuki]

it isn't a reason at all... having more other sources of crit doesn't change the amount the two straps multiply your damage by.

[Max™]

I could have sworn DA had reducing returns, where Crit's had a straight across the board benefit (not as true for stacked dex that I know of) but uh, ok.

[fantasticdan]

Flat +% on crit would have the same "diminishing returns" as +% double attack. The reason DA/TA have decreasing values in damage output as you add more, is because you can't DA on a swing you already DA, or TA on a swing you already TA. You can't critical on a swing you already critical either.

For example, your melee swing always does 1 dmg, critical always does 2 dmg. Take 100 attacks with a 0% crit rate and add +5% crit, you go from 100 to 105 damage dealt over the 100 swings, a 5% increase in DoT. Now add another +5% crit, you go from 105 damage to 110, a 4.76% increase in DoT.

EDIT: On topic, DA works on any scythe/GS WS, while +critical won't work on any of the ones worth using. DA will also increase your TP gain, and thus the amount of WS you do, on top of the obvious increase in DoT,while +critical obviously doesn't. I think the choice is obvious...

[Max™]

Yeah, I am biased as I have a crit based WS to use, and inherent DA to spare.

The upper cap on crits is really freaking high though, and I crit a lot more than I DA during Raging Rush, so as I said, it's a much easier choice there.

[Meat]

Will the Claymore Grip let you crit on non crit ws?

[Osede]

dont think so. Since that asuran will also never be critical? So it should apply to other too.

[fantasticdan]

Heart-snatcher/dissector don't let my sword/dagger ws without "chance of critical varies with TP" critical, so I doubt this would be any different.

[Max™]

Yeah, still no chance of critting non crit WSes, never seen a Steel Cyclone show Critical damage with it when I did my "is the double attack rate altered?" testing.

Not sure if it is, but man, I still get a lot more doubles randomly than I ever did before, and only difference is 1 more DA merit so far.

[Khelek]

I use Pole for scythe, Claymore for Subduer and Sword for zerging.
I might go ahead and use Claymore for HNM on Scythe, but that'd be the only possible change from merit->HNM.
I really hope SE adds a haste+3% grip for WotG... Would make it possible for DRKs to cap haste, although hard. (Not including /DRG of course)

[Max™]

I can see it now.

Haste +3% on one.

Occasionally attacks twice. (stacks with DA like Jailer weapons) on another.

Choices, choices.

Even better, they make it some sort of quest where you can choose from a set of rewards, and those are two of them, but you can only get once (without redoing quest or whatnot, a la ZM earrings, CoP rings)... Can you imagine being the first guy to choose and test them?