Polearm Ranking

If you have stage 4 prime, I'd save your money on anything else.

Aeonics don't techincally cost gil. I assume you'd agree it's worth picking up for low buffs?

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I have a Gungnir so I can do stupid things like jump v25 ongo and sit in full gleti's for tp to close gravitation SCs with distortion. 100% for laughs and boredom, not a serious application.

I've been gone for 3 years.

R15 Gungnir was pretty surprisingly decent post Ody/Nyame Gear. Defense down seems to proc quite a bit and it's my go to for Exemplar Points. I made it against my better judgment but it tears up KRT bats. It's pretty good when underbuffed. It's great if you weaponskill at 1000TP, though with any overflow 1750+ I would just Impulse Drive. This sets you up for darkness anyways.

Trishula is also really good for Raiden Thrust, but that is a pretty niche weaponskill/situation.

All of this WSDMG gear kind of changes things. Even with Rank 15 Trishula, I feel like Impulse Drive is more consistent than Stardiver at higher TP. Kind of disappointed, because man that lance was king prior to us having copious amounts of WSDMG.



Shining One is just god damn amazing for every jobs on it. It gives most of our lance options a huge run for their money. I love using it on Samurai for piercing weak stuff. I was pulling enemies with Namas Arrow and closing with Impulse Drive as soon as enemies were in range. Giving every physical weaponskill a chance to crit is pretty damn insane.

Just want to add Gleti's/Mpaca is just insanely nice for Shining One Stardiver if you go that route.

I know the thread is about polearms.
Trishula/Shining One/Naegling/Malignance Staff aren't too hard to make/obtain. All 3 will give you some very nice options depending on the situation.

Prime seems like the MVP out of everything. But stuff is situational as always.

I'm sure people have figured this out already, but I figured I'd put it in print; Stage 4 Prime outperforms Naegling. The WS is about equal, but in terms of the regular melee hits, building TP faster, and doing more damage quicker...Gae Buide wins out.

It would be a bigger deal if 3/4 of the NMs I do regularly in C weren't piercing resistant, where it would really shine. That being said, most of the regular mobs can still die in 1 WS which is not how piercing resistant mobs generally worked in the past. You can absolutely muscle through them which is wonderful.

I'm honestly happy to have both damage types usable. The difference between Impulse Drive and Diarmuid on Lamia is very noticeable.

Another fun tip for people that wonder if the devs have any clue what they're doing, Diarmuid > Savage Blade = Distortion, not Fragmentation. Just pop another Diarmuid on the end and clean up. It's like lvl 1 properties coming first makes polearm and great axe a little more attractive in a SB meta.

Unless you don't want to do SC (E boss in Sortie, Bumba melee strats), in which case it becomes a liability in the SB meta.

Before WS wall, the SB meta was explicitly because SC were either not important, not expected, or specifically not desirable.

Yeah but both are exclusive to jobs that SB better than the rest of the jobs in the game for bumba v20, just switch to naegling. If you make water on toad, you did that. Not the weapon.

Astral Detritus isn't free nor are the pop items. Sure you can farm the stuff but that means Empys and Mythics "don't technically cost gil" either.

Lol that's hardly making it less of a deal. Sheol C is such a insignificant part of the endgame, I don't consider that diminishing to the weapon. Gae Buide is the best weapon drg can
Weild, period and is arguably the most damaging physical weapon in the game (cause drg be drg).

Been away a while and just returned, nice to seet his list as I'm keen to try upgrade the ol drg.
I have r15 Ryu atm, should I splash out for aeonic zone clears for trish just now before trying sortie for the new weapon?

My issue right now is finding people who will accept me into sortie, having no experience. Its all vets only.i got lucky into one run the other day as COR, was told to just roll dice. The run didn't seem to go very well at all so I don't feel like I learned anything haha.

Also, it's nice to know my Ryu is back to being one of the better weapons again.

I've never run Sortie with a DRG, though I think I've seen some people post melee strats with one. I could see it working, but not likely you'll find group leaders willing to accept it because it requires some creative thought and a willingness to break "the meta".

COR is used in all Sortie strats, so if you have a decent COR you can definitely do that. Watch some videos of existing runs and you can pretty easily get a handle on which rolls, WS, etc. they're doing for most of the content.

Generally there are 3 types of runs in Sortie, Mage, Melee, and Aminon.

Mage:
BLM SCH RDM COR RUN GEO

Melee:
WAR DRK BRD COR RDM WHM (melee could be DNC, SAM, DRG, probably others)

Aminon:
PLD (RUN) BRD COR RDM GEO DNC (DRK)

Strats are different for all 3 and they can be a lot to take in. If you're just trying to learn a single job it shouldn't be too overwhelming, but sometimes people will do things in different orders or split up more/less than each other. Helps to know what the planned route & expectations are.

I would make a Trishula because the ultimate skillchains are killer on a lot of stuff. Ryu is still very capable though so you don't HAVE to make it, especially if you aren't doing the absolute hardest content in the game.

Having played around with R15 M/E/A the ranking depends on what content you are doing. I do like to switch between all 3 as and when they are the best for the situation.

R15 Ryunohige with high Gleti's augments is a great zerg weapon that lets you output a lot of damage quickly.

R15 Trishula is just the king when you can skillchain as others have said. Spamming Stardiver also does a lot of damage on its own.

R15 Rhongomiant isnt a slouch when it comes to damage either. Its a great weapon to use for Arebati with Camlann's doing more damage than Stardiver and Drakesbane (with Ryu). Its also a really good weapon for any low buff fights.

Since the guide was deleted, DRG-ry is a forgotten technique.

All remaining DRGs had to resort to pole dance to eat. They are now called DRG QUEENs

No. We dominate as DRGs

made Arebati KI1 my *** with Rhongo like 35% on our winning run so it has its uses. If you solo MLs it’s pretty decent as well getting the defense down from Camlann’s, but if you have the right trusts Stardiver spam is stronger. If you have high buffs absolutely the top 3 would be Gae stage 4/Ryu/Shining situationally and i imagine at stage 5 you just would never take Gae off.

Minor point of correction here but so as to not confuse newer players coming here and reading this:

Camlann's doesn't give defense down on the target. Camlann's itself will ignore a portion of the mob's defense when used. This doesn't affect your melee swings, other WS, or anything any other person hitting the mob does, like an actual defense down effect would do.

Still good to use in low-buff or high-defense situations, but not the same as defense down.

Gae Buide stage 4 isn't situational. It's the best polearm period aside from stage 5.

This isn't FFXIV or WOW, there's no one single weapon to use for all situations. If you use Gae Buide regardless of buffs, skillchains, or the enemy you're targeting, you're gimping your damage and effectiveness.

There are two situations I can think of where I wouldn't use it. Sheol C when I need slashing or blunt and bumba/aeonic nms where you can't skillchain. So I'll give you that. If a polearm can be used though, I wouldn't take it off. You'd be surprised how versatile it is skillchaing and you can do 4 step light with other jobs using Diarmud and camlans and my testing has it parsing ahead of trishula doing solo darkness. Maybe there is some crazy scenario I can't think of with a skillchain that's never needed but in those cases, I'd probably use another job.

I would concede that Trish may be best for Stardiver, and Shining may be best for Impulse. I don't have Trish, but Stardiver was hitting for *** compared to Diarmuid under the same conditions (using Gae). I'm working to build out the DRG Community Guide, so I need to go run some Shining One vs. Gae Buide using Impulse Drive to see which performs better.

I'd say if you don't have much attack, the PDL from prime is useless and if the mob has good DEF, you would rather use Camlann's which (partially) ignores mob's defense. Better to have a weapon with Camlann's damage then. Also triple damage rate is higher on Empy and it can proc on multiple hits in the same round.

If you don't have enough haste to self-SC, the MA from Ryunohige AM3 will definitely out-do the 10% DA on prime

If you need to set up Distortion property for someone to close (like a COR with Leaden) then Gungnir is the only polearm you can do that with.

If you're doing Stardiver (to lower enemy's critical evasion in a party situation, or to set up SC for a partner, to self-darkness, etc.) then Trishula performs significantly better.

If you need to crit (to proc Xevi, Arebati, etc.) then Ryuno or Shining One are much better.

I'll stop now, hope you get the point. Granted if you're hyper-buffed and looking to do purely physical damage, sure you only need 1 polearm. If you want to be prepared for a myriad of situations and actually perform the best you can, you should probably not hold a myopic view of the landscape of weapons.

Shining is best for Impulse. Will test again whenever I get Stage 5. Outcome was about a 10-15K difference. Only ran a couple tests each weapon at 3K TP.

Not trying to be a hound here and for the record I agree with your conclusion but...how do you know both of the Shining One test WS weren't crits...? Again, I think if you're writing a guide where you're telling potentially all new DRGs what to do, you should probably do more than "a couple" tests to determine the advice you're giving.

Kudos for working on the guide, I appreciate it and I'm sure plenty of other people will too, but please try to be a bit more careful with your testing. Especially as it relates to weapons with critical hit chances, multi-attack, and other random factors.

I won't go *** for tat with you. This isn't ff14 and you shouldn't be on drg for most of those unlikely situations you describe. The one thing I will coment on is your attack capped statement. You do understand tgat the bulk of diarmuds strength isnt the am but the insane tp scaling, right?

You are however right about Xevi and Arebati. I am usually tank8ng or on war for those.

I believe both were. Each of the weapons tested had a regular hit and a crit hit. The regulars were low range and still Shining hit for more. The Crit is where Shining did around 10-15K more (mid 60K versus Gae in the low 50K range).

But good question. That's why I pointed out that I only ran 2 tests with each. Worth noting, tested Impulse on Gae after Lv. 3 AM was up, and it still did less on both.

I'm about ready to resolve that the weapons with the "stated WS damage is increased by X%" generally hit hardest for that given WS of all weapons save Stage 5 (which I won't know for a long time). Since Impulse Drive doesn't offer any buff/debuff by itself, I doubt I'll use it over Diarmuid unless I'm part of a needed or convenient SC.

Impulse Drive can't crit unless you're wielding Shining One, so I'm not sure how your Diarmund test had a "Critical hit" WS.