Quick Merit Choices For Cat1

Looking for people's input on which category 1 to go with as well as what others have done for category 1

Personally i am thinking:
souleatter recast 5/5
last resort effect 5/5

This will keep my souleatter timer parallel to last resort as well as diabolic eye so it would sync up nicely.(this here is my strongest argument for those two above)

On the other hand i am thinking just lower last resort recast(instead of souleatter) for times when i got crap mage who just cant handle a souleatter WS and end up being more careful with souleatter usage. as well as gaining the slight atk speed bonus from desperate blows/atk boost slightly more often.(this is what is stopping me from picking the above set up)

each has pro and con every time i think it over and i'm just having trouble picking. Along with the upcoming lvls it has me more at a stand still with gaining more base hp and possibilities of new ja and spells, so looking for advice (and sadly i know of only 1 decent drk i was even able to ask in game)

thanks in advance~

I personally did 5/5 LR effect and 5/5 LR recast, capping Souleater recast is pointless unless you plan on using it every time it's back up, which would probably make a few mages angry.

I would say this is somewhat dependent on where your enmity merits, if applicable apply. I'd be hesitant about having an additional 10% defense loss with LR if I had capped +enmity merits.

Without a doubt LR recast is ideal with the cap of desperate blows. However the best bet to spend the rest in group 1 is LR effect or weapon bash depending on which path you wanna follow; more readily available stuns in succession, or more damage with additional risk.

I did 5/5 Last Resort Recast and Effect, if you had a relic you could probably do Souleater due to Catastrophe's Drain but without I'd personally go for the Last Resort Merits. Last Resort with Desperate Blows is pretty beastly, hence the Recast Merits.

I kinda wish I'd done Souleater instead of started LR Recast now... Same deal for me, keeping the JA timers in sync. I usually forget to use a JA if it's not paired up with another, so I time Diabolic Eye and LR together, rendering the recast merits useless (which I know is gimping over time because Desperate Blows merits, but I can't help it ~_~). But Souleater recast doesn't seem that great either, so I've decided to just put DRK merits on hold until I've merited everything else I'd like.

But yeah, if you're out to cap merits, I'd say Souleater recast merits would be a touch less useless than LR recast merits if you play like me. But if you keep track of timers better and don't mind staggering them out, then LR recast.

im on ps2 so timers are sometimes hard to track if they start to overlap alot (at least for me lol) with currently no recast reduction i do pretty well keeping LR and Deye together but souleatter keeps getting missed once in a while since i refuse to use it during diabolic eye lol. and i think lowering LR recast might make it worse tracking all 3-5 JA(depending on the sub)..and then we got new ja coming up so im all like x.x and yes im out to cap all my merits @145 to go >.>...meh maybe i do bst merits first? :x

The answer is simple: Last Resort recast 5/5 and last resort effect 5/5 is the way to go for group 1.

If you have an Apoc relic, then you could do Last resort recast 5/5 and souleater recast 5/5 if you're always riding souleater every time it's up (which is more possible with Apoc), otherwise souleater recast merits are pretty useless. A normal drk shouldn't be riding Souleater every time the timer is up.

Either way, Last resort recast 5/5 is pretty much always the answer due to having Desperate blows's 25% job ability haste more often.(or 15% DB haste if used along with hasso's 10% JA haste, which caps you at 25% JA haste.)

As for keeping up with your timers, if you don't want to use windower's recast plugin, then I'm pretty sure you could still set some in-game macros that show you the recast for your spells and job abilities etc. (one way to do it is to set a macro to show you in "echo" text so only you see the messages, or another is to have a macro that shows your current recast timer on your chat log every time you press the macro.)

Do weapon bash!

Arcane Circle is the best since you fight arcana so often!

LR recast and effect are by far the best when coupled with desperate blows in almost every situation, more speed more often ftw.

Depends on how you play. Last Resort only lasts 30 seconds, so it's easy to completely lose the bonus by a simple bad-timed execution, Recasting a shadow or killing the target early and having to re-target another, should the autotarget not kick in.

Souleater has a much larger margin of error, and if you are confident in taking it from Activation to natural-wear off, You'll probably find it's an easier option, if open to some debate on how much better/worse.

I guess if I had to give my recommendation, I'd say, if you burn on DRK a lot, Last Resort, If you use it Endgame (Souleater is a great way to build hate for DRK/NIN tank, and not just off the Activation) then I'd say Souleater.

You should be strangled.

And for clarification:
>>Using Last Resort with 'as a DD' sensibilities.
>>/NIN

Why? A fast attacking mob, a double/triple attack, or a TP move is all it takes to wipe shadows down fast enough, and if you don't get them back up at that point if you still have hate you're going to be an MP sink or even worse die, or if you WS at that point you're also going to have no shadows after to protect yourself with. Just because /SAM is better for most situations, doesn't mean you should *never* /NIN.

A dead DD is a worthless DD.

I had a long drawn out discussion with a drk friend about what he should merit. We finally came to the conclusion of:

Group 1
5/5 LR recast and effect

Group 2
5/5 Desperate Blows. 3/5 muted soul. 1/5 diabolic eye. 1/5 dark seal

If you're taking hate /NIN you have other much more pressing problems in your group, like one utter failure of a tank.

Anything you wouldn't have a dedicated CE-Capping tank for, Third eye will handle just fine, and you have WB/Stun for when it drops.

@Krizz: Muted soul is worthless because it doesn't affect the usage enmity, you still get the initial spike. Better off 4/5 Diabolic eye.

Was stating reasons that can ruin Last resort. You're pathetic attempts to validate yourself by throwing blind insult is only amusing in it's sheer stupidity.


The simple fact of the matter is /SAM will always produce the best damage results, nobody is denying that, least of all me. But /NIN can reliably tank endgame, and in situations that call for a stun (Cerberus, Byakko, ect) the Recast nerf on /SAM is not worth the damage bonus against targets such as that. If you had something beyond a one-track mind, you could see that, but not everyone has matured enough mentally to imagine such abstract concepts as "Might not have an Available Tank" or "Backup Plans are Nice in case of Connection Loss or lolfail."

Muted Soul is Utterly worthless. Diabolic Eye 5/5 or Diabolic Eye 4/5 and 1x Dark Seal.

No...

For group 2, it's: Diabolic Eye 5/5, and Desperate blows 5/5.

Unless you're always /sam AND always riding hasso, then you can do diabolic eye 5/5, desperate blows 4/5, and dark seal 1. Well, in fact, IF you're always riding hasso with last resort, you can put in as little as 3 on desperate blows.

I personally have Diabolic eye 5/5, and Desperate blows 5/5 (nice for when you have to switch to seigan + third eye etc).

Edit: And don't touch Muted soul...

Never seen //cancel?

The appeal of /SAM for these applications is not Hasso or Seigan, but shaving no less than 16.6% of your TP phase more easily and 12 more WS per hour on top.

4/5 DB is pointless. 5/5 DE is for Elvaans.

Because everybody plays on PC and everybody that does uses windower.

Anyone who plays on PC and doesn't use Windower is a self-deluded scrub.

Wow, ignorance at it's best.

It was based off of his play style and events. We discussed the ups and downs of each one. I don't have the time to waste copy and pasting our conversation with what we discussed. I don't really care either way.

Yeah, this makes people want to listen to you so much more.

Wow... you really must be dumb Raelia... go fix that StoreTP guide on lolalla....

Anyone who uses windower is a mediocre(At best, retard at worst) player who relies on a third party crutch to make up for their inability to play, even at the most basic level of skill.

Exhibit A:Raelia

Aren't baseless insults fun, children?

I like how everyone around here argues about stuff from 2006.

Upping the Ante with a totally incorrect use of a meme, that's win.

Which is more petty, an off-the-cuff insult or a deconstruction of said insult to feign wit?

There has been one other person in today's discussion who shows to have DRK above level 7. I'm just wasting time.

Raelia... I already pointed out what I found wrong in your STP guide on the other drk thread. (Infernal scythe, page 4...http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/?topic_id=10730&page=4)Apparently you decided to ignore it though, oh well.

As for Diabolic Eye 5/5... have you ever heard of Diabolic Eye up and down gear sets? if you are not capped on acc on whatever you're fighting you use Diabolic eye, if you are barely at acc cap without using DE, then you can use Diabolic eye and switch to more Haste, attack.. etc. If you go over capped acc with Diabolic eye, swap more pieces etc.

It's specially very useful for higher level mobs too, but maybe all you fight is pink colibri heh.

And lol @5/5 DE for Elvaans.

Its called poking fun. It gets every single one of them riled up, yourself inclusive it seems.

I haven't gotten back to the store-tp guide in a long while. You may notice the last edit was a few months ago and that was to remove a more glaring error. Yes your 'can WS in less' annotation is valid, and no I don't use GS enough to have known such. Apathy != Ignorance.

Pairing sets for useful gains for DE on/off gets somewhere between rough and pointless if you're wearing Homam/Aurum already. Some of the few choices are Cuch/Amemet/Foragers and Bomblet/Core, and few are aware you can swap the latter without losing TP. Ace's/Turban could be a debatable switch, but I mentioned something about useful gains...

The crux is that very few players can find 20 accuracy to drop for higher damage pieces, and even then its marginal silliness like putting Plastron over Haub.