The DRG at 75 by Starr

[Gunslinger]

quick question, how much store TP would you need to maintain 6-hit? id assuming gear terms it would be Aurum+V.Fork+rajas+brutal but what exact value of store-tp is that including /sam?

Yugl is right, it's 31 stp (or 16 from gear).

The delay difference is pretty significant, as is any delay reduction.

With Pole equipped your effective delay is 419.92 with 15% haste.

With Sword strap, your effective delay is 407.33 with 15% haste.

Basically, you'd have to decide if loosing .1-.5 /sec (depending on gear, hasso, spells) between hits is worth 2% DA. I'd say it is pretty easily depending on the situation (think about shaving 2-3 seconds off between WS in some low-haste/low-man scenarios).

I can try to parse sometime if I ever merit again, but am currently moving, so it will be awhile . I parsed before and it was pretty close honestly, with Sword only slightly ahead. Just remember that using Pole will give you some 'padding' for jumping outside of 31 sTP to maintain the 6-hit.

[Cadsuane]

Level correction and/or pdif for 2hers is probably obsolete.

DA returns are constant with respect to attack rate. You drew a straight line on a graph and then second guessed yourself. Take that shit about decreasing percentages out.

Hedgehog pie has an insubstantial att advantage over coeurl subs if base attack is around 420 or less, and can be flat out worse. Hedgehog pie at least, has the 5 acc going for it but Bison Steak should pretty well never be used unless somehow you have the 450 or so base attack to justify it.

Meriting STR before Jump timers is questionable.

The gear stuff seems to be easy to agree with.

Job comparison generalizations are pretty 2006. Probably a good idea to omit that.

But I'm sure this guide is just a well executed troll. That being the case, I look forward to being entertained by people arguing about angon duration merits like meripos and TP burn events are all you should ever be doing on DRG.

[PeaceNLove]

Very nice read, but your Haste formula seems off... 10% haste for 600 delay would yield 6000 delay under that formula lol. I believe it's more like:

Delay = Delay*(1-(Haste%/100))

[Panthera]

I know Dragoons hate hearing this, as do most DDs, but i never party with a DD that isn't /nin. Why?

Dragoons are already doing piercing damage to Greater Colibri, with a two-handed weapon no less. Then start adding on superb gear, Angon, and the new multi-hit, critical damage WS Drakesbane with a STR mod, and what you have is a tank that deals damage, and no Utsusemi to fall back on.

NO, Seigan Third eye is not the same thing as Utsusemi: Ni and Ichi. It is not reliable, and it does not overwrite itself. MAYBE Seigen + Third Eye will entirely block Pecking Flurry, but just as likely the dragoon will take all 5 hits with no mitigation whatsoever, not to mention all the damage they're taking from mob's normal melee hits, gradually chipping away at mob HP.

High Jump and Super Jump are not forgiving to a 6 hit build. A Dragoon will weapon skill many times within the space that those job abilites are waiting on recast timers, and once again, we're back to unreliable Seigen + Third Eye.

In a perfect world, hate is distributed with perfect equality to all melees, and one can "get away" with only 1-3 shadows. However, no such world exists. For every SNK there are three to five Darkwarriorx's with gear that's not as good, if not much worse.

And I'm not a fan of /blu either. Fine for soloing, when you can go at your own pace, but i've watched so called drg/blu's spend and excessive amount of time self healing, which is less time spent meleeing. In what other case would a Rdm that stands around and watches a melee get down to 50% not be atrocious?

I realize everyone wants to epeen, but there's just plain more to partying than damage dealing. There's also damage mitigation and MP conservation. This is why Rdm stop nuking, and save their MP for curing and hasting, and put their bloody swords away. Remember WAY back when circa 2004 when 4000 exp / hour was good, and 5000 was unheard of? It got better when everyone, including the two handers, said to hell with Dual Wield, and figured out the point was Utsusemi.

Good info on food, acc etc, but your basics need a firmer foundation.

[Wolfknight]

I know Dragoons hate hearing this, as do most DDs, but i never party with a DD that isn't /nin. Why?

Dragoons are already doing piercing damage to Greater Colibri, with a two-handed weapon no less. Then start adding on superb gear, Angon, and the new multi-hit, critical damage WS Drakesbane with a STR mod, and what you have is a tank that deals damage, and no Utsusemi to fall back on.

NO, Seigan Third eye is not the same thing as Utsusemi: Ni and Ichi. It is not reliable, and it does not overwrite itself. MAYBE Seigen + Third Eye will entirely block Pecking Flurry, but just as likely the dragoon will take all 5 hits with no mitigation whatsoever, not to mention all the damage they're taking from mob's normal melee hits, gradually chipping away at mob HP.

High Jump and Super Jump are not forgiving to a 6 hit build. A Dragoon will weapon skill many times within the space that those job abilites are waiting on recast timers, and once again, we're back to unreliable Seigen + Third Eye.

In a perfect world, hate is distributed with perfect equality to all melees, and one can "get away" with only 1-3 shadows. However, no such world exists. For every SNK there are three to five Darkwarriorx's with gear that's not as good, if not much worse.

And I'm not a fan of /blu either. Fine for soloing, when you can go at your own pace, but i've watched so called drg/blu's spend and excessive amount of time self healing, which is less time spent meleeing. In what other case would a Rdm that stands around and watches a melee get down to 50% not be atrocious?

I realize everyone wants to epeen, but there's just plain more to partying than damage dealing. There's also damage mitigation and MP conservation. This is why Rdm stop nuking, and save their MP for curing and hasting, and put their bloody swords away. Remember WAY back when circa 2004 when 4000 exp / hour was good, and 5000 was unheard of? It got better when everyone, including the two handers, said to hell with Dual Wield, and figured out the point was Utsusemi.

Good info on food, acc etc, but your basics need a firmer foundation.

exp per hour > shadows PERIOD, because frankly mages need to support /sam or get the fuck out, dropping to 8 hit from 6 hit cause of lazy mages is unacceptable, I'd much rather /whm and get another DD over mage that wants the drg/nin fuck that, outside of something like ISNM, few BCNMs, missions, few limbus zones, and such, /nin is NEVER acceptable drg sub for exp, because 90% of the time on drg/nin you wont pull hate making the sub worthless.

[Teorem]

Specifically in the context of Greater Colibri:

NO, Seigan Third eye is not the same thing as Utsusemi: Ni and Ichi. It is not reliable, and it does not overwrite itself. MAYBE Seigen + Third Eye will entirely block Pecking Flurry, but just as likely the dragoon will take all 5 hits with no mitigation whatsoever, not to mention all the damage they're taking from mob's normal melee hits, gradually chipping away at mob HP.

As a subjob, neither Utsusemi is going to absorb all of the hits from Pecking Flurry unless you have all of the shadows available right when it uses AND one or more of the four hits misses. Add on top of the fact that if you have hate at that point, you'll likely be hit before or after Pecking Flurry, so you will, still, take damage.

And I'm not a fan of /blu either. Fine for soloing, when you can go at your own pace, but i've watched so called drg/blu's spend and excessive amount of time self healing, which is less time spent meleeing. In what other case would a Rdm that stands around and watches a melee get down to 50% not be atrocious?

How much time is an excessive amount of time? It takes--usually--one cast to trigger Healing Breath, and you usually only need one to get back above the HP threshold. That's 0.5 seconds as /BLU plus a marginal amount of animation time and equipment swap time that runs concurrent with your weapon delay.

If you rely on shadows for "complete" damage mitigation as /NIN, you need to use Utsusemi: Ichi, which involves you standing still for about 3 seconds, plus any additional time incurred when you have to recast it because the target hit you and interrupted the cast.

Maybe if Pecking Flurry dealt 1500+ damage this would be a better point (though it would still be debatable using the issue of how well one times the the use of Third Eye), but most targets don't, especially in merit. There, combined with capable healers that don't even need the most sources of Auto-Refresh to keep a party running, things like /SAM are perfectly acceptable and far superior simply because the tradeoff of making things die faster is well worth taking the marginal damage and MP cost to restore it.

Personally, I prefer /NIN in Einherjar simply due to the kind of AoE I can avoid that Seigan wouldn't absorb (things like Fluid Spread). I full time Seigan in merit and use /WHM or /BLU or /SCH when in other events that can benefit from having another healer while still being a competent DD.

[Yugl]

I know Dragoons hate hearing this, as do most DDs, but i never party with a DD that isn't /nin. Why?

Dragoons are already doing piercing damage to Greater Colibri, with a two-handed weapon no less. Then start adding on superb gear, Angon, and the new multi-hit, critical damage WS Drakesbane with a STR mod, and what you have is a tank that deals damage, and no Utsusemi to fall back on.

NO, Seigan Third eye is not the same thing as Utsusemi: Ni and Ichi. It is not reliable, and it does not overwrite itself. MAYBE Seigen + Third Eye will entirely block Pecking Flurry, but just as likely the dragoon will take all 5 hits with no mitigation whatsoever, not to mention all the damage they're taking from mob's normal melee hits, gradually chipping away at mob HP.

High Jump and Super Jump are not forgiving to a 6 hit build. A Dragoon will weapon skill many times within the space that those job abilites are waiting on recast timers, and once again, we're back to unreliable Seigen + Third Eye.

In a perfect world, hate is distributed with perfect equality to all melees, and one can "get away" with only 1-3 shadows. However, no such world exists. For every SNK there are three to five Darkwarriorx's with gear that's not as good, if not much worse.

And I'm not a fan of /blu either. Fine for soloing, when you can go at your own pace, but i've watched so called drg/blu's spend and excessive amount of time self healing, which is less time spent meleeing. In what other case would a Rdm that stands around and watches a melee get down to 50% not be atrocious?

I realize everyone wants to epeen, but there's just plain more to partying than damage dealing. There's also damage mitigation and MP conservation. This is why Rdm stop nuking, and save their MP for curing and hasting, and put their bloody swords away. Remember WAY back when circa 2004 when 4000 exp / hour was good, and 5000 was unheard of? It got better when everyone, including the two handers, said to hell with Dual Wield, and figured out the point was Utsusemi.

Good info on food, acc etc, but your basics need a firmer foundation.

You forget that /SAM provides an incredible amount of excess DMG that reduces the duration of each battle, which in turn saves the mage MP. In addition, time spent trying to put up shadows wastes much melee potential. Moreover, if a DRG is attacked with full shadows up and Ni ready, he can basically avoid 6 hits total. Perhaps between fights he can use Ichi, but once those shadows are gone, you're still left waiting on recasts. During periods where you're waiting on shadows, you're not benefiting from your sub. At least with /SAM you can use Hasso while waiting on the recast. That's the argument if you want to talk about mitigation, but I personally believe full Hasso should be no problem.

DRG/mage also allows for greater damage output. Sure, a DRG healing won't melee as much, but it allows other members to attack at full potential without worrying about MP. I once had a Galka MNK friend come /WAR and the party worked out fine. Cheap cures and high damage output from other melees make DRG healers a viable option compared to traditional healers.

[Furoris]

And I'm not a fan of /blu either. Fine for soloing, when you can go at your own pace, but i've watched so called drg/blu's spend and excessive amount of time self healing, which is less time spent meleeing. In what other case would a Rdm that stands around and watches a melee get down to 50% not be atrocious?

You're ptying with the wrong DRGs, best /blu triggers are foot kick and sprout smack both of which have a casting of .5 seconds healing breath takes about 1 second to go off, so total of 1.5 seconds. Utsusemi:Ni is 1.5 seconds and when that bird pecking furies your orginal and ni recast is down Ich is 4 second cast time. Ignoring hit builds and /sam (note you can get 7 hit on non /sam easily) you'll waist even more of your time casting shadows then you EVER will Healing breath trigger.

Also quite frankly if I'm meriting /BLU there is never a RDM in the pty, with the addition of Wyvern XP bonus to HP 2 DRGs with Saurian helms can more then easily keep a merit pty cured especially at birds. (should be noted that if there is a rdm in said merit pty and i'm /blu they are either gimp/retarted/or generally not trusted to keep me alive)

[FailureMidgard]

I know Dragoons hate hearing this, as do most DDs, but i never party with a DD that isn't /nin. Why?

Dragoons are already doing piercing damage to Greater Colibri, with a two-handed weapon no less. Then start adding on superb gear, Angon, and the new multi-hit, critical damage WS Drakesbane with a STR mod, and what you have is a tank that deals damage, and no Utsusemi to fall back on.

NO, Seigan Third eye is not the same thing as Utsusemi: Ni and Ichi. It is not reliable, and it does not overwrite itself. MAYBE Seigen + Third Eye will entirely block Pecking Flurry, but just as likely the dragoon will take all 5 hits with no mitigation whatsoever, not to mention all the damage they're taking from mob's normal melee hits, gradually chipping away at mob HP.

High Jump and Super Jump are not forgiving to a 6 hit build. A Dragoon will weapon skill many times within the space that those job abilites are waiting on recast timers, and once again, we're back to unreliable Seigen + Third Eye.

In a perfect world, hate is distributed with perfect equality to all melees, and one can "get away" with only 1-3 shadows. However, no such world exists. For every SNK there are three to five Darkwarriorx's with gear that's not as good, if not much worse.

And I'm not a fan of /blu either. Fine for soloing, when you can go at your own pace, but i've watched so called drg/blu's spend and excessive amount of time self healing, which is less time spent meleeing. In what other case would a Rdm that stands around and watches a melee get down to 50% not be atrocious?

I realize everyone wants to epeen, but there's just plain more to partying than damage dealing. There's also damage mitigation and MP conservation. This is why Rdm stop nuking, and save their MP for curing and hasting, and put their bloody swords away. Remember WAY back when circa 2004 when 4000 exp / hour was good, and 5000 was unheard of? It got better when everyone, including the two handers, said to hell with Dual Wield, and figured out the point was Utsusemi.

Good info on food, acc etc, but your basics need a firmer foundation.

I'm not even a dragoon, but I'd drop any merit party I was told to /nin in on any melee. Sorry, but that shit isn't that taxing on MP at all. My rdm could keep up perfectly fine at lvl 72. Any mage that can't keep up either needs to learn, or go back and merit in sky or something.

/nin in einherjar or shit, I won't complain about. Utsu blocking AoEs is actually a valid argument. In merits...sorry, you're just a bad mage if you can't handle seigan+te.

[Jeryhn]

Gotta agree. The DRG should be pretty much taking out a Greater Colibri with a good Drakesbane anyway. It's not like I dip below 700 MP anyway.

[Marcicus]

stuff

great troll or greatest troll

I have a question about Empathy. My DRG friend claims he's used Empathy to give his wyvern hasso and other buffs, then Spirit Surge to get it all back so that he has two copies of each buff.

Example: Double Hasso

This possible?

[Yugl]

great troll or greatest troll

I have a question about Empathy. My DRG friend claims he's used Empathy to give his wyvern hasso and other buffs, then Spirit Surge to get it all back so that he has two copies of each buff.

Example: Double Hasso

This possible?

I have not noticed this.

[NeoForte]

Question! Nuevo Coselete, for Drg who has Askar Body but no Heca or Zahak....would getting it with Acc+10 and Either Crit+ or Attack+10 work for a temp WS piece? (which of those two would be better?) Can't think of anything else to use Nuevo for (also don't have any other 75 jobs).

[Wolfknight]

Question! Nuevo Coselete, for Drg who has Askar Body but no Heca or Zahak....would getting it with Acc+10 and Either Crit+ or Attack+10 work for a temp WS piece? (which of those two would be better?) Can't think of anything else to use Nuevo for (also don't have any other 75 jobs).

I'd say go with att/crit unless you feel u need acc on set-up then acc/crit, for a drakesbane piece.

[Yugl]

Question! Nuevo Coselete, for Drg who has Askar Body but no Heca or Zahak....would getting it with Acc+10 and Either Crit+ or Attack+10 work for a temp WS piece? (which of those two would be better?) Can't think of anything else to use Nuevo for (also don't have any other 75 jobs).

ACC/Crit so you can use it for outside merit situations.

[Zekyr]

My notes (coming up on DRG75, have most of the gear in OP, basically confirmed my choices with a few minor differences):

Yes, DRG/SAM or gtfo (for damage). The only people who cry about any DD who refuses to sub /NIN are stuck in 2005 and prissy stuck up babies who cry that they have to do more than haste 4 people and self refresh and then afk.

A RDM can easily spam cures on a full /SAM party even with less than amazing DDs and have overflowing MP if you've a brd or cor or both. Most I'm in don't even get to convert short of a party emergency (someone went afk or targetted wrong mob and all sleeps resisting cause jupiter is aligned with mars in the 8th house or something stupid).

The bottom line is the only parties that can't support a DD /SAM are the ones too terrible to get decent exp/hr anyways. More damage means mobs die before they have a chance to do much damage to anyone. Anyone using a gimped sub like /NIN that slows that down is contributing more to the party's downtime than a /SAM would.

Anyways, back to topic.

For /magery, I mostly use /BLU, pretty happy with it. I have most of my macros preset, just dinging into gear as I go, and right now my healing breath macros basically looks like this.

/equip DRG trigger gear*
/ma "spell" <t> (head butt or foot kick)
/wait "spelltime"
/equip HB gear**

*my trigger gear is basically full HP+ gear and drachen armet in order to be able to trigger it at the lowest threshold possible (can get it off at 60% right now, should be able to get 70% or higher at 75). Homam, gigant, cassie, intruder, bloodbead, BQ ring, etc.

**breath gear is wyvern HP+ stuff, drachen brais (+1), wyrm armet, homam feet, chanoix's gorget, wyvern mail, no ostreger's mitts ever on AH but want them

This has served pretty well for me up til now, but one of my DRG friends mentioned that wyvern HP has a lag when equipping wyvern HP+ gear, sometimes 3-5 seconds, which I have seen on occasion (the slower dropping wyvern HP bar).

My question is if, despite not showing the lower bar, the bonus to wyvern HP is actually applied in time. If not, I'd be better off triggering in a combo of HP+ gear and the wyvern HP+ gear, and only switching helms. But I'm curious what other people do for this. I'd rather get the benefits of lower triggering and higher breath healing but if it's not possible I'll change those.

[pchan]

Yes, DRG/SAM or gtfo (for damage). The only people who cry about any DD who refuses to sub /NIN are stuck in 2005 and prissy stuck up babies who cry that they have to do more than haste 4 people and self refresh and then afk.

A RDM can easily spam cures on a full /SAM party even with less than amazing DDs and have overflowing MP if you've a brd or cor or both

This is stupid. If you are going to "spam cure" a /sam your are failing you merit pt already. Either you can tank on on /sam or you can't. This has nothing to do with the rdm sucking w/e. If you are an MP sponge, you suck.

[Argettio]

This is stupid. If you are going to "spam cure" a /sam your are failing you merit pt already. Either you can tank on on /sam or you can't. This has nothing to do with the rdm sucking w/e. If you are an MP sponge, you suck.

+1000000 to that ^

Im a nearly full time RDM, and do 90% of my meriting on RDM. I find a lot of DDs underestimate how good they need to be to merit on birds. Not just good gear/merits, but paying attention, ensuring their defences are up, thinking about how and when to WS.

Most just turn up on ???/sam and just expect the RDM to keep them alive. They have no understanding of how to make my life easier, how to bounce hate or work as a group. They are all just going for epeen damage. If we lose chain due to MP or some one dies, its my fault for not managing MP enough... never that he isn't good enough to handle /sam

I dont demand that all the DD /nin in my parties, but it certainly is the best for 90% of all the DDs seeking at any given moment.

The best merit party I ever had was with a salavge group that needed buffer, 4DDs (WAR, DRK and 2 DRG all /sam) and a BRD that all played together regualar, and really knew what they were doing, used to low-maning very hard mobs (as well as have some amazing gear). They spent the next 3hours SC with each other, bouncing hate as much as possible even voking if 1 person held to much hate.

I didnt touch my Cure 4 macro once in the whole time.

Some of you may play like that salvage group, capable of meriting almost with no healing and still hitting 25-30k+, but most of the people that will be reading a guide are not.

[Starr]

Thanks for comments everyone, with this and the thread on KI combined I will fix all errors when I get round to it and edit it on KI.

[Cadsuane]

Don't mystify meripos like they're not an artless and banal task. When should you WS in a meripo? When you have TP. See how simple it is?

/nin is only demanded by princess mages who prefer to jerk off and semi-afk during merit parties, and/or as a bandaid solution for a party that already sucks shit anyway. It's particularly hilarious for a DRG to consider /nin on birds, since he's much better off telling his brain dead cunt mage to fuck off, sub a mage job, and main heal the pt himself.