Merit suggestions for Ridill Hume Drk and War

[Kirschy]

I'm a Hume DRK + WAR /w Ridill myself. My merits are 8 Scythe, 6 Axe, 6 Sword. It's worked out pretti well for me. When I play WAR, I mostly dual-wield, although I'll use GAX for fun sometimes. I went /w 5+5 on Berserk/Aggressor. It's worked well for me, but I realise there are other preferences that might suit others.

[LinktheDeme]

Since i'd rather not make a new topic should i go 5/5 berserk and aggressor even if I don't have a ridill? I'll most likely be using maneater joytoy when I get to that level because I have 8 sword merits.

Go 8 Great Axe with 5 Double Attack and 5 Berserk seriously, if I could go back I wouldn't think twice but I merited before the 2hand fix and I don't have the time to change it.

I'm already 8/8 katana 8/8 sword and 4/4 evasion the only thing i'd be willing to take out is 4/4 evasion and put it in something else.

[Starr]

oh then 4 Great Axe etc?

[evilpaul]

Starr, your new sig sucks.

[Evildemon]

On WAR I'm using 4 Berserk, 4 Aggressor, 2 double, would change to 5 bergressor, but too lazy to redo atm, not a bad compromise with Ridill either way.
8 sword, or however many you can put in it is a given, so is crits and STR (or DEX if you swing that way). WAR Group 2 is pretty eh imho, I just have WC lv1 and I don't think I'm missing much.

For DRK, imho Dark Seal is essential for zerging, other than that, it doesn't really matter. If you're zerging with ridill, you can pretty much do whatever you want with the rest of group 2 and 1, focus on zerging with souleater, or a more balanced meripo-like setup. I still have to motivate myself to go out and get more than Dark Seal.

Group 1 : choose between SE recast (best if you often find yourself in a situation waiting for recast: see JoL), LR recast and effect (always good, always usable, match up well).

Group 2 : at least one in Dark Seal, Muted Soul is good for SE spamming (hey it can only help) Desperate Blows lost most of it's luster, but it still does good when matched with LR group 1 merits. Apparantly some people like diabolic eye for merits, but it doesn't seem too interesting to me.

I like ur ideas.

[LinktheDeme]

oh then 4 Great Axe etc?

Yea but my primary question for group 1 is

4 double attack, 3 berserk, 3 aggressor
2 double attack, 4 berserk, 4 aggressor
5 berserk 5 aggressor

I'm leaning toward the second one but i'm just not sure

When I'm 75 i'll have maneater and joytoy with GAxe option. I'll most likely be using joytoy and maneater for merit though.

[chapstick]

For DRK, I recommend Last Resort Recast/Effect x5 (unless that extra minute off Souleater is really going to help, at the very least it would rarely benefit me to be able to use Souleater a minute earlier whereas LR is universally useful), and in group 2 -- 1Dark Seal 2Muted Soul 3Desperate Blows.

Exactly what I did.

[Evildemon]

oh then 4 Great Axe etc?

Yea but my primary question for group 1 is

4 double attack, 3 berserk, 3 aggressor
2 double attack, 4 berserk, 4 aggressor
5 berserk 5 aggressor

personally i think i'm going to go with option 2 myself but i'll try out 4 berserk and 4 agg see how i like it before i go for 5/5 or 4/4/2.

[shaddix]

I'll most likely be using joytoy and maneater for merit though.

T_T

[RKenshin]

I honestly don't see too much of a purpose in meriting Sword, Axe, or any 1h weapon anymore outside of either having a jimmy for using those weapons, or no other DD jobs. But outside of that I don't think it's the best idea if you're trying to get the most out of your job's potential.

The whole main advantage you get out of combat merits is the ability to eat meat more easily, but the problem is that regardless of your merits you're not going to pull that off so well using 1h weapons. Or at least, no where near as well as 2h weapons can now.

If you're going to put combat merits in anything, IMO your best bet is going for a 2h weapon, as it simply allows for a greater improvement overall. With 1h weapons and full combat merits you're still going to be best off eating sushi on anything worth its salt unless you have Madrigal, but even then it's sketchy. And Madrigal is the least ideal song to use in a typical PT/event setup. So the combat merits don't really change as much for 1h, since with or without combat merits you'll almost always hit the cap with sushi. Where as with a 2h weapon it makes it rather easy to hit/come very close to the acc cap while eating attack food. In fact, a fully merited A+ 2h weapon is rather close in total accuracy to an A- 1h weapon using sushi.

So it basically comes down to an attack/accuracy bonus that's almost always there vs an attack/accuracy bonus where only the attack is useful in most situations. Where in the first situation you're simply getting more out of your combat merits. Not to mention, I don't think there's any debate now in which has the highest DD potential.

MNK is an obvious exception, as they get more out of increased skill than simply acc/att.


EDIT: Anyway, that stuff aside, to answer the OP's question:

Probably obvious how I feel by now, but I'd do 8 Scythe, 8 GA, and probably save the other 4 merits. I have a Ridill and the only time I can see myself using it now is on the first floors of Salvage or for DRK zerg, both of which the merits would be useless for.

Regardless of how you feel about combat merits though, I went for 4 DA and 3/3 Bers/Agg. WS damage is a huge part of your total damage too, and high amounts of DA give very good results in your averages. Not to mention it being useful for TP gain. But, I really think full Ares could be amazing WS gear, with a total of 27% DA in WS. Almost 2/3rds of your RRs would DD at least once.

On DRK, I went for 5 on Last Resort effect and 5 on Souleater recast. I just prefer to have SE/LE lined up together, as I use them both with each other most often (SE+Cross Reaper is very high damage that doesn't MPK you, and can be cured easily). In addition I'm 3/3 on DB, and 1 merit in each of Muted Soul/Dark Seal/Diabolic Eye.

[Alexandor]

Yay finally someone with the same opinion as me lol. Fark Sword merits unless you're a career war. I personally don't have a Ridill but if I had one, I would not bother getting sword merits. 8 GK 8 Axe 4 h2h and I'm happy with it. They seriously need to add more combat skill merits tho .-.;

[Kicoe]

I have a Ridill for a few years now, Axe 8 Sword 8 Berserk/Aggressor 5, and use Axe/Sword & meat on almost anything when I'm on WAR except maybe Salvage Bosses/Chariots. Everytime I switch to Great Axe I tend to fall behind in parses, may it be in XP, Einherjar or lets say 6th f Zhayolm Gears + Chariot.

I parse for a long time now and I've pretty much never seen a good 2 handed melee /SAM or SAM main beat me when I use Axe/Ridill. Maybe it's aggressive playstyle, or that melee on Odin usually suck, I don't know. Also, in situations where I have to use Sushi parses show that Axe/Ridill still comes out on top for me. May it be me parsing vs. other 2 handed melee, or me parsing myself using Axe/Ridill vs. myself using Great Axe.

For the record, WS average is about 970~ Rampage at Mamool south camp, 850~ Vorpal Blade at Bird camp with 2-3 fucked up WS' during the PT due to not paying attention and killing the mob with WS thus missing a few hits. I TP in 53 acc with 22% Haste, missing 1% Haste so there's still room for improvement.

I had 304 Scythe skill at some point, erased Scythe merits, got Axe 8 Sword 8 and traded my Abyssal for Suppanomimi. Never really looked back yet or am missing my Scythe merits.

I could try to setup a merit pt with a friend who is posting here also (Tonnberry), one of the better SAM on Odin, to further prove my point that Axe/Ridill WAR don't fall behind 2 handed weapon melees if played correctly, and that Axe and Sword merits are worth it.

The only thing that is annoying for me is WS accuracy with meat and Axe/Ridill on certain mobs, however it is nothing that some equip tweaks here and there can't fix.

If I would be in your shoes I would merit Axe and Sword to lvl 8 based on my experience of parsing for a few years now.

Oh and since it has been brought up, my DRK merits are Souleater recast 5, Last Resort effect 5, Desperate Blows 3, Dark Seal 1, Muted Soul 2. War merits are stated above for category 1, Warrior's Charge 3 and Savagery 3 for category 2.

[Starr]

Everytime I switch to Great Axe I tend to fall behind in parses, may it be in XP, Einherjar or lets say 6th f Zhayolm Gears + Chariot.

I hope you realise this is like saying; "I merited Ice Accuracy and every time I cast Thunder it's less accurate so it falls behind", to do a true comparison you'd have to change your merits round to 8 Great Axe, 5 Double Attack and 5 Berserk.

[RKenshin]

I actually respect Zven's opinion and wouldn't really second guess his experiences, but I'd like to offer a little more on what my experience is.

I played Ridill WAR with a near top-notch gear and build for a good 1+ years straight at the majority of merit PTs and DD events, and have tons of parses to represent all of the various pickup and LS PTs, etc. But, my experiences playing with a fully equipped GA build has blown away all those results from even the best PTs.

There was a rather lengthy discussion about this in the event forum recently.

But, without repeating stuff I'll just quote what I posted there:

This is the result of a recent PT on WAR/SAM, against two rather well equipped and merited DDs:
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/8127/pparsess8.jpg

Orange is a MNK/NIN (destroyers+shura+BB+haidate+h2hmerit+etc) and red is SAM/WAR (haub+1 + hachi+1 + 6-hit + GK merits + etc). Both were aggressive players. PT'd at Mamool camp with Marchx2 + Minuetx2, accuracy is rather distorted from what felt like an abnormal amount of flashgas, as in the first 20m we all had closer to 88% acc (my WS average was also almost 1.4k then ).

But, yeah, point being the melee and WS averages I mentioned earlier weren't far off from what to expect with a high end WAR/SAM. Although, in hindsight the melee average in my original calculations should've been about 25 damage/hit higher.

I don't have the best GA setup as I'm lacking merits and some key gear, so there is still more potential to be reached. But never has my Ridill or any other Ridill WAR I've PT'd with had results like that against good DDs, dealing almost 50% or more of the damage in a 3 well-equipped DD and 2 BRD PT just doesn't happen with Rid.

[shaddix]

how did you get so many more ws than the sam

[omgaggrohelpme]

Double Attack for WAR's activates ALOT with GA.. the usual average for my WS's vs Mamool are about 980, few 1.7's on Wyverns and few 1tp return on puks(fudging flash) but GA is by far the best CHEAP solution to any WAR... a GA WAR with AH gear will beat a Axe/Axe or Axe/Sword AH WAR.. aslong as the GA WAR is semi-competent.. I've ptd with Relic DRK's and Relic SAM and I'm not too far behind with GA in a 2 BRD pt, but with axe/sword vs those same with Hastex2, Madx2 the GA just levels it..

::Edit::

Has anybody noticed that Retaliator + /SAM is just sick or does mine Pro-act more often than others o_O i'm averaging about 45% strike-back with it activated but it does suck to move with it up and wearing dusk gloves =\..

[RKenshin]

Retaliation + Hasso is a pretty sick combination, I think I was retaliating a good 1/3rd of the time for big damage swings. It really adds a nice chunk to your DoT too, although I don't think any parses count the damage yet?

how did you get so many more ws than the sam

Check the swing count, I have quite a good deal more swings landed. Pretty sure a lot of it has to do with keeping Retaliation and Meditate in sync too, so both were used whenever they were ready. I was actually a bit slow in WS'ing at 100 TP for most of the PT as well.

My delay was also slightly lower. His ~171 delay vs my ~162, and my 21% DA vs his 17% DA, as well as my higher accuracy. We both had a 6-hit build so I was getting TP faster consistently through the PT, with the only exception being 100 less TP on Meditate and 30 less seconds on the recast. Which obviously wasn't enough to catch up.

[omgaggrohelpme]

I got a picture I wanna crop of me Retaliating vs a Skoffin there for over 350 dmg, I was hitting them for 170-190 with Zerk/Aggr.. just wondering if you could Crit on the swing back.. never really bothered to check on that, but I was just like o_O.. needless to say I did die after it did Fang Rush for 1330+ lol

[shaddix]

this is excellent lolridill ammo for me

[Xrave]

I've yet to find people who can beat my Ridill WAR except for only one person (also a Ridill WAR). I've always attributed it to my playstyle in merits being that much better than anybody I've partied with.