Why Arent Melee Used Anymore

Corsair's A+ in parrying for a job that is essentially dead if an ilevel mob hits it in the face says, "hi."

I leveled DRK because of Scythe. I didn't level COR because of Parrying .. and to be honest, COR has a B in Marksmanship, which is the dumbest thing ever. I'm sure any Corsair would agree that Marksmanship should be A- at the very least.

It was proposed and the reply was "cor has buffs, having a high weapon rank would be too much".

I used to use great sword on warrior way back in the Kirin days slamming every pathetic DRK wanker with a scythe and Gsword with Ground Strike (that quested WS that DRK, WAR, and PLD got) which had a pretty piss poor skill rating in comparison with average warrior gear.

Quit being a pansy and making excuses. You're getting debunked and the only thing you can come up with "but, but, but!"

Yep, at least they gave a response and a reason. I never heard anything back about scythe. I guess they just don't like anyone using it. I had to tell a DRK in my linkshell great sword is better, but he was adamant his scythe was just fine and he wasn't about to change any time soon. He wasn't even using Entropy, he was spamming Cross Reaper.

And yeah, Ground Strike was only ever good at 300 TP .. so yeah, no idea what they were doing. And I guess you was using Spinning Slash and hitting every single time?

There's not much you can say about scythe. If you make scythe too powerful then greatsword becomes a useless weapon. You can't have both being best, the game is mathematical. Nothing to do about it.

Rune Fencer? Also I wouldn't want Scythe to be supremely superior to GS, all it needs is a WS similar to Resolution, and it would be roughly the same. Then you could choose between being a scythe or GS DRK, like the old days.

10 attacks in one round - we might all go melee strat then >.>;;

Warrior never got spinning slash. Ground Strike was doing pretty boss damage for my warrior at 150-200tp - which was enough to put a lot of the drks I came up against to shame - many of them better geared, career drks.

And if you *are* going to use a scythe, at least go with Guillotine or Spiral Hell if your Entropy level is 3 or lower.

Ok, we get it, DRK always sucked, WAR used to be so OP etc. Now, stop trying to drive him into a corner and contributing to the derailment and get back on topic.

Why not full-time Cross Reaper unless you are low on MP? I get CR wrecking all other options when I spreadsheet DRK scythe builds.

Exactly. I put my opinions on the topic already. I noticed the OP had a Ragnarok, so I assumed he was in the same boat as me, so I expressed my opinions about DRK over the past 11 years. So get back on topic and tell everyone why melee DD suck in todays endgame.. aside from niche situations like Delve.

I knew some WS got changed around in terms of damage a while ago, but the DRK forums have been dead for ages, so no idea on that. If Cross Reaper is good now, then I may have given false info to him by accident.

This is why I cross check updated information on TP and stat modifiers on BG instead.

Except not really, aside from trash enemies, Great Sword was still the best with Spinning Slash since one-hit WS and it had an atk bonus like Tachi:Gekko, etc. You weren't using Scythe on anything worth a damn unless you had the glorious Apoc, which used Catastrophe, not Guillotine.

Dat silence tho.

I ain't played scythe DRK for at least 4-5 years, so I had no reason to look anything up. GS is still better, and I assumed Entropy was still better on Scythe, as I remember using it in Abyssea. Didn't look up values for Scythe WS when they changed, I don't spreadsheet anything either. I ain't someone who knows all the ins-and-outs of the mathematics behind the game (kudos to those who do), I go off my own experiences and others.

Also it's hard to take anything you say seriously after you used "wanker DRKs" and "pansy". I may get passionate over my opinions but I don't throw labels around like that.

Spinning Slash was too unreliable. You had to stack accuracy for it and even then it could miss. Guillotine was much more reliable in taking damage off the enemy, at least that was my perception at the time. And I used both weapons frequently in the early Dynamis days, so I would play with both for 7 hours of dyna every week.

Spinning Slash was not that great from what I could see, unless you could skillchain and not miss trying to. I didn't have the greatest equipment though, I never joined a HNM or Sky LS. I only ever wanted to play as a scythe DRK.

I think the main problem is that BST basically makes any melee DD completely obsolete, assuming they aren't totally gimp and/or clueless. I mean, you don't even need a DD for SC. Currently, they are nothing but dead weight in recent content. Also, I don't think anyone in their right mind would dispute the fact that MB damage and Ready spam from pets on steroids are currently at ridiculous levels.

I don't mind certain jobs finally seeing the light of the day, but I would have liked them to encourage utilizing different strategies in the same content, rather than favoring certain ones. For example; they could have made one Vagary zone melee oriented and made perfidien/plouton have physical/magical phases with different set of moves so that melees wouldn't get owned in one or two moves in the physical phase. Or they could have made half of the NMs in a given tier in Escha melee oriented. Unfortunately though, I know that it doesn't matter as soon as BST is what it is now, since if you needed DDs, you would just ride the BSTwagon anyway.

Edit: Also, I never understood why they thought penalizing people for bringing more people was a good idea. They should be making the content more accessable to the more casual players, but they are essentially doing quite the opposite.

When acc is an issue that's exactly when you wanna favour one-hit ws over multi... <_<

Back then I didn't know that. Like I said, I was so in the dark on how the game worked, I used scythe instead as I hated Spinning Slash missing. Guillotine appeared stronger to me.

I'm tired of everyone ganging up on me anyway .. bottom line is, melee DD are not used in the game today, only Samurai. If melee DD are used, it's on older content, and the OP has every right to be as mad as he is over the current endgame. I sympathize with him, and agree with him.

I'll keep playing my COR and THF, and never expect DRK to be anything but that job I used to enjoy playing for everything. And I will continue to be sad for my dad, Quilly, who's main job is Warrior and he never gets to play that either. He will continue to play RNG or SMN. As for any DRG out there, I feel sorry for anyone who loves DRG and is also left out.

Not everyone wants to play a mage job. I will never play a mage job as long as I play FFXI, and nothing will change that. Totally appreciate those who do, but it's not for me. End of rant.

Well, you made an assertion that a multihit ws was more reliable because acc was a problem, in a response to a post that claimed scythe has always been ***.

Hard for a reader to infer that you actually mean "you're right, but I didn't know".

Victim much? No one is ganging up on you. You make posts, people reply to said posts. Welcome to forums.

I'm the only one who agrees with the OP at this point. Everyone wants to slam him for having an opinion, and everyone wants to slam me for defending him. I don't know the guy, but I agree with him. So I try to explain myself and everyone nitpicks things that don't really matter. And then they call me a "pansy" and say they beat "wanker DRKs" to get a reaction from me. If that's not ganging up and name-calling, I don't know what is. I'm done with this anyway, I got more important things to do.


I've been posting in forums for over thirteen years .. again, people assuming and judging.

Oh, no, I was totally ganging up on him.

Well, knowing good old SE, they WILL eventually nerf BST, just like they nerfed THF and SAM when they became to OP. Not dis-ing BST, it's a cool job (even through mine has been stuck at lvl 5 for over 7+ years and I have no intention of leveling at this point.)

The jobs that need more attention are DRG, WAR and PUP. I was around during the "loldrg" days and I remember the times when I wouldn't be allowed in a party as a DRG. Even in this day and age of FFXI, DRG is still unneeded and a "waste of a party slot" according to most people, and it's sad.

At the same time, I can understand the desire for most parties to not use a lot of melee DDs nowadays. I treasure my WHM and have taken great pride in raising/gearing it/skilling it to be the best and I know some DDs can be a total MP sponge (*cough DRK cough*). I mean more of the time if you do bring DDs, you'd want to a WHM and other supports who know how to do their jobs, but can't blame the healer/support if the MP sponge DDs get one shotted.

I find it funny sometimes when a melee DD complains to the healer that they were slow on heals to keep them alive when obviously the DDs were spamming att boosting/def reducing abilities like Last Resort/Souleater/Berserk and they end up getting one shotted thus blaming the healer for their slowness on cures. I've had that issue with DRKs for the longest time in the past as a WHM since their defense is "power thin" and they will reduce their defense even more and thus running the risk of getting killed quicker lol. (I <3 DRK btw so don't get me wrong, just explaining the facts from a WHM standpoint.)


Of course, I'm not gonna jump on the BST bandwagon like most, but I can't deny that BST is hot right now, but it does limit other DDs. But when I'm on WHM, the less stressful the event is (ex: MP sponge jobs), the better the event will be, but on a melee DD that's not BST it does make me feel annoyed at the unneededness of most good DD jobs.

I'm not disputing that they're kind of over the top but when you have 15 minutes to down an ilvl 135 NM they're not ridiculous at all. We tried the melee strats and we didn't wipe - we timed out. I think if they would relax the timer on those NMs... perhaps 30 minutes for the higher level mobs then I would think that the bst strat and the MB strat were really broken.

Oh please. You see people disagreeing and go all defensive and play victim. Maybe you've been doing that for 13 years too.

Which was the most fun I had in FFXI back when people thought they could just roll into my camp and take my ***.


BST already got hit with a nerf on the last update. I assume it's going to be a long time before another one happens. After years and years and years of being at the bottom of the chain for any sort of DDing I'm in no hurry to see BST take another hit. It was way oevrdue for that job to be on the top of the heap.

Those where the days of BST i still care for and respect....

*sails a ship of BST CHR sets*