DRG's Pet

What they should do is give us an ability where the wyvern "Transforms" for a 'combo attack'. That way it don't get in the way and you have a badass wyvern now and then <.<

It would work in normal FF games.. but I dunno about FFXI..

But you know it'd be cool to have some 20s c/s of riding on the back of a super cool dragon doing like.. nose dive impalement WS lol

lv99 merits: wyvern t2 breath attacks, yes please

I wish we'd get something more like overwhelm & warrior's charge :/ I'm almost always /blu or /whm so never using breath attacks & i know SE will do something like.. Having to merit each individual breath, and that's the only merits we get. Then they'll go ahead and give SAM merits that give double tp gain on each melee hit for a 2 min duration just to piss all other DD's off.

I really wish more focus was placed on our wyvern tbh. A PUP, BST or SMN really is a PET job, the focus is completly on their pet really, our pet is just a nuisance really with the occasional ability to cure us. Not that I'm saying I dont love being able to go DRG/Mage and solo like crazy, but on DRG/Notmage, the wyvern is kinda useless really.

-Licks Ihm-

Gosh you guys, all you have to do is give it a moon stone and it will evolve.....duh

/blush.

really? useless? I'm sorry I love mine and I've seen some 500+ offensive breaths with Deep Breathing and that was WITHOUT the new lancer's torque....Just the AF2 Armet...I'd love to see what it can do with both.

And idk about you guys, but I never really considered drg to be a "pet job" as its not the main draw, just an added DD bonus. As a drg myself my dmg is nice, I just get extra DoT with my wyvern hittin ***heh

If you look at smn, and bst and pup, the master is bleh (most of the time) without the pets...Drg is not. Smn is completely useless without summons, lets face it. Bst can be an "ok/decent" DD without an HQ jug pet, but the new jug pets shine so bright the bst looks like crap again regardless lol. I'm an 80 pup as well and Pup can do really nice dmg, with say Stringing Pummel, but the main attraction is your automaton (I've seen some 1900+ Stone V's on Dea when killing it with a buddy pup of mine...thats sick dmg...). But Drg, isn't focused on the wyvern, not at all, its just an added bonus.

That's exactly the thing, though. While a DRG itself may do a lot of damage, and a wyvern is a great suppliment as well, if you compare it to some other DDs out there, you really need a boost to compete. While you may be doing 2k Drakesbanes with 500-damage Breaths, the SAM/WAR in your party is doing 1.8k Penta Thrusts, 3 times as often.

nah Ent...its kinda hard to compare drg and sam even in bird builds... Penta thrust for Sam (atleast in my experience) was highly unstable dmg...I would Penta on sam from anywhere from 100 dmg to like 1600 while drgs would get consistent Drakes for like 1300-1900. Then you gotta add the dmg from breaths on top of that AND the actual melee hits from the wyvern...It definitely comes out on top on bird builds I think and in most other situations it adds up to be competitive. (and yes I had a bit of a ninja edit on my last post lol)


ninja edit again: I would however like to see T2 offensive breaths with my wyvern though...would be a nice thought.

lol... with deep breathing... yeah... my point stands.

I'm not saying the extra dot isn't nice, but I feel that we should get some more out of our wyvern really.

well ya Ihm, but what other melee can solo like drg? .....none

{Call Wyvern}

SAM/DNC.

***. Yes.

I guess the automatic image cropping wasn't too nice to that picture >.> Fixed. Sorta.

I dont think sam/dnc can solo quite like drg/whm with an Ethereal Earring or drg/blu or drg/rdm...idk...I think drg definitely gets the edge there being able to heal so much for so little mp.

***, it'd be nice if I could just keep the dam wyvern alive for more than 5 seconds. The second it gets hit its gone... Lemme give the thing some padding or something.

lol go go ToM spear with pet: physical dmg -8%? LOL that trial path is ridiculously difficult.... go go like 1k PET KILL SHOTS lol

I think it's just the opposite, actually. I think SAM/DNC or NIN/DNC possess a pretty big advantage over DRG/Mage. Both have a form of shadows that don't take 10 seconds to cast, just to be completely unreliable. Both have high parry and Evade skills. And most importantly, you don't have to be in potential one-shot-by-unlucky-double-attack-crit range. (Yellow HP)

Seriously though... its annoying... Anything that AoEs a few times you have no wyvern on, and yeah you can spirit link and cure it, but then your *** gets handed to you. Cant win...

there are just so many things wrong with that imho..... One as an 80 sam third eye is really nice but can be VERY VERY unreliable..so thats not even an argument to help Sam. Two: Whats the cap on cure waltz 2? like 170 MAYBE 180 if you stack a ***load of vit? Wyvern Healing with just the AF2 Armet is a lot higher than that even if you dont spend time to boost your wyvern's stats in-zone on lower mobs... Three: on most high end mobs a ninja's evade isn't gonna really do all that much....tons of mobs I've run into as a high level ninja, where the only hits that are missing me, are my shadows...

Like so many other things in this game, I believe the term is situational lol.

If you're fighting something that could do enough dmg to kill you while you're at half hp in 1 tp move I wouldn't recommend DRG. And I don't mean 1 unlucky hit that might happen every 2 hours. I mean the kinda move you're constantly worrying about as soon as you get close to half. Like a VT Manticore...Deadly Hold for 800-1k could kill you at any time. They attack slow, much easier for a NIN/DNC to just blink all that away. Anything Even Match or lower the solo'ing ability is basically the same. By that I mean neither of them are in any real danger. I would still pick DRG/Mage over Nin/dnc tho cause I wouldn't have to spend any shadows lol.

eva tank vs blood tank argument?

***is situational. Depends on mob. /debate.

Pretty much, but the only time I'd really want to use DRG/Mage (Granted I don't have it at 75 on either of my characters, so I can't speak from experience, but rather from logic), is if I'm fighting something that's really weak or (more likely) weak to Piercing. Colibri are a perfect example. I wouldn't want to go out and solo one on NIN/DNC or anything. Even though it's possible, DRG would be a lot more efficient.

On the flip side of that, DRG/Mage can't solo indefinitely. I say indefinitely because there are a lot of things that can cut your soloing short. Running out of MP not foremost among them.

The fact that you have to keep your HP lower than you normally would, obviously sets you up for a higher chance of death versus stronger mobs, Colibri's Pecking Flurry included, if you're not Galka or Elvaan. Your wyvern could die, which leaves you out of luck for 5-15 minutes. Low inherent defensive stats, even with /BLU spell traits, leaves you taking more damage than any job with shadows or higher defensive skills would. You can argue that cocoon gives you +50% DEF, but absorbing attacks through the use of shadows will reduce damage by more than that.

All of that is combined with the fact that you have a finite amount of MP. Sometimes you just have to cast too fast than your Auto Refresh can handle.

SAM/DNC with Soboro and a good Haste build literally has inifinite TP and can solo indefinitely, although at a slower pace.

fixed ^^

MP is not an issue with the Ethereal Earring (pretty sure I mentioned that above) and Sam is not this "infinite tank" you speak of...have you ever really played 75+ sam/dnc with a soboro or anything of that nature? On any mob worth a damn you're taking a lot of dmg some of which curing waltz can't make up for, so you have to rely on a fair amount of misses, or a high procs on your drain samba. Its not quite as cut and dry as you put it really

Edit: and lets not even mention mob TP feed from soboro.... lol

You're really not taking a lot of damage on SAM.

The average seems to be between 3 and 4 attacks blocked through Utsusemi. Just going to say 3 for the sake of fairness.

Mobs have 240 delay by default. That's one attack every 4 seconds. Assuming no evades and no parries, that's 3 attacks blocked, then three attacks that hit you. Logic states that's a 50% decrease to damage taken. Again, assuming you never evade or parry.

SAM has the highest Parry in the game, and Evasion for when that doesn't activate. Even not using gear for these situations, you'll still negate roughly 25% of the attacks from an EM mob. So SAM mitigates 75% of the damage a mob would put out (on average), and if 200 HP cured every 5 seconds isn't enough to cure that (Keep in mind that requires a mob to average 800 damage in a 5 second period, not even AV does that), then you're probably vastly underleveled or completely naked. Or most likely both.

we're arguing sam/dnc not sam/nin and who cares how you solo EMs? those are easy as crap...I thought we were talking much higher here..not to mention sam's parry is tied with nin (and thf and cor...) and sam's evade is worse than nin... so.....what? lol


Edit: not to mention if you're on /nin (lets just go ahead and use this sub for soloing now too) you're either going to be using Seigan/third eye to help or Hasso both of which give massive cast/recast penalties to shadows...or you're gonna not use either and thats gonna take even longer to kill a mob... (and a mob doesn't have to average 800 dmg in 5s (which btw idk wtf you got that number from) if it can kill you in 2 hits (AV's Case)

You're also not accouting for mob WS, or double or triple attack from mobs (which most mobs have atleast double attack) in your delay equation with the sam/nin example....and who the heck has capped parry? (mine is 270 @80 which isn't capped but the highest of anybody I've ever run in to)