Merits For DRK? (What Should I Merit)

ITT: Omega is hard to do

Love peoples opinions, Also don't like looking the same as everyone else, BUT if it's a good set its good? Why not wear it!
Level 80 DRK now yay ;D

Use perle for now and start working on Bale set.
When you finish Bale head+2 you'll be able to go back to an "enhanced" Homam + Hauberk build.

As for merits I went 5/5 LR recast and effect and 5/5 Diabolic eye and DB.
I'm considerig getting 1 Dark Seal merit though.
Grats on DRK 80 :)

tyty ^^

Can someone tell me what Magian Trial Scythe is good. Would love to start on one!

Check out the STP one. It's pretty good and easy to make.
However, should you happen to have a good Ls willig to help you with sme VNM and Aby NM, you could aim for an OaT scythe which is better.

Grats on 80 DRK.

For Magian scythes, The OAT scythe... if you can get the items for it. Otherwise, you should work on the StoreTP Reckoning +1 scythe, and make an easier 5hit build with it. (You can use this as reference, for StoreTP values, grip etc.)

Also, this may be helpful:

Scythe magian trials.

TYYYYYY ;D

Is sword skill worth skilling up on DRK?

Not really, no.

If you're one who likes to see all blue numbers, then by all means;however, it is not a necessity.

Mainly focus on skilling up your A weapons, Scythe and GS.

The only reason I would see sword being worth skilling on DRK would be if you had a Ridill and were planning on using it as zerg weapon

Ok, thanks both of you appreciate the info!

Well, compared to the eyesore of the hauberk, perle is okay, but yeah, still pretty much odd and bright for a dark knight. Being stuck on the failbox also limits my options for appearance (no dat swaps). I was thinking of the Ace's hose when I finish bale head +2 and main those (scythe +7 WHEEEEEEEE). There are a lot of options still, but I stand by perle as being ridiculously useful for a relatively easy method of procurement.

As for the diabolic eye shenanigans, glad to see other people agree that it's a waste. If it increased attack as well, or lowered something that WASN'T my only real defense against mobs kicking my *** or accelerating my damage past godly, maybe I'd be more inclined to use it. But I have a virtuoso belt, easily can get a PCC or O hat (not easily, but you get the idea) and plenty of other accuracy options, WHY WASTE MERITS???!? Hey, you guys want some accuracy, go get bale legs +2, that's 15 accuracy on just legs.

Granted, this is all opinions, so if you're spending the money, do what you like or are comfortable with. All we can do here is suggest ideas for you, give you options that we find useful. Ask, and ye shall receive, but are you ready for what we say?

Oh, and on a side note, I got smack talked the other day for wearing full perle, being called a nub, and so on. Was fighting an NM in abyssea vunkerl with a small group, 7 people total. The sir that called me out for it (everyone stays anonymous, I don't like calling people out directly) proceeded to take the mob my group was fighting (forced pop) and run with it to their little camp. They died shortly after, with said NM running back to my group. Now our pld pulled it for some odd reason, causing it to link, but even in my full perle gear set up, we managed to kill said NM. I was one of the couple of players who did not die to that horrible pull and said NM. Guess my full perle gear set up didn't do anything there? Long story short, gear is only part of the equation, just play as well as you can, and enjoy yourself. If you're happy, odds are you're playing at your best anyway, and you'll be doing great.

True. That would certainly be a use/reason to skill up sword.

Although an M.Kris would be better for zerg, but that's a different topic.


np.

I think the one point to which we all can agree is that 99% of the game is "occasional".

I dont see why the OAT scythe is so highly favored. The new gear gives HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE ammounts of +STR and the fact that the OAT scythe has such a low FSTR cap will hurt its potential. I think reckoning is clearly better unless you're fighting some rediculously hard mob.

I think the reason is to be found in the WS frequency. Provided the OaT procs often enough to allow WS every 3-4 attack rounds then you might overcome the lower DMG.
It all depends on what you're fighting and hough hard their skin is :x

Your unique point is stupid. Your wearing the setup most drks wore pre perle.

I'm more concerned with how shitty is sell is if Homam is SO RARE!!!

The biggest argument I heard for USING Diabolic Eye is this:
By gaining more accuracy from your merits, you can remove accuracy from your gearset - allowing you to TP in strength/blitz rings and other such trades in gear. Thus, these merits are the best merits for "Pure damage output."
Now to diffuse my own argument, accuracy in Abyssea-land these days is a bit of a joke.. Which makes accuracy based merits somewhat wasteful.

It's similar to samurai trying to decide between Shikikoyo and Blade Bash merits. Shiki will give more damage output when used properly, but Blade Bash is better utility. Merits are merits, some are easy to pick - others a personal choice. Don't knock anyone for their choice if it is logical.

What?

Pay attention now.

any af+1 good anymore? or should I toss this ***

I was a huge advocate of Diabolic Eye previously, but this was at 75... nowadays pretty superfluous. However, it does "support" gear such as Ace's Hose I suppose. Nowhere near as clear cut as it used to be.


fSTR cap on OaT is 18 or so iirc. Every 9 or so base damage will yield another +1fSTR to the cap... extremely minor. Barely touches how the weapons stand against each other if at all!

Yeah, these days... Diabolic Eye merits definitely are not as useful as they once were. Still, while muted soul and Dark seal may have uses, they aren't all that amazing either(not extremely necessary either anyway), in my opinion.

I wouldn't consider as bad, people having Diabolic eye and/or Dark seal merits; however, Muted soul is the least useful of them all, in my opinion. Specially if you like tanking on DRK, since the enmity generation from souleater can be quite useful for pulling hate for Dreadspikes usage, or for tanking in general etc.

I have 5/5 LR and SE recast merited, should I switch out the SE recast for LR effect? It seems a bit weird to not merit SE, since if you aren't using SE at timer, why are you on drk instead of sam or another dd? But maybe I'm thinking about it wrong and someone can explain it to me...

Because souleater is for zergs onri, in which case you aren't worried about the recast. Souleater isn't a significant enough boost in your damage to sacrifice all that MP and such. DRKs aren't DDs; they zerg and they tank. I suppose MP isn't that big of a deal in pre-abyssea stuff since we have so much refresh anyway, however in low-man situations it's not really cool to be popping souleater off all the time when the mages have better things to spend their MP on.

It may sound pointless but I actually used every Dark Seal in my last Abyssea group on Endark just to make sure it does nothing for it. My notes say 3.5/10 resists without Dark Seal and 4/10 resists with, average over four sets each. Only counted ten swings each time because then I had to Sekka-WS-WS to not look silly using Cross Reaper all the time and gear swapping makes me miss the add. effect, maybe next time I'll put Blinkmenot up.

Endark may actually behave differently from Dread Spikes and use your current gear each proc instead of setting a 'strength' with the gear you casted in, which would explain well why I run into a 20-30% resist rate with Endark but don't see a single Drain or Aspir resist in a three hour run.

In other news my starting Endark went up to 52 damage at 325 skill, so skill at casting does affect the damage aside from the accuracy being wonky.

So I guess Dark Seal is back to being a 'whenever' in my Nether Void macro for Drain II.

So I still don't know what to do with the rest of my Group 2. 5/5 DB 1/5 DE 1/5 DS. In the end Muted Soul seems more worth partial merits than a 7m 30s DE or DS, for lack of finding consistent use for either of the latter these days.

This statement is even funnier to me now than it was when it was posted.

Yeah, Dark Seal is a decent choice considering it can get some amount of use, whereas the other G2s are completely worthless. Except for Desperate Blows, of course.