MNK/DRK Zerg. Discuss...

2 questions: isn't a tank in a zerg fight useless? (pld's don't generally have the MP pool to keep up with cure bombing a souleater MNK for hate)
And isn't the whole point of a kirin zerg to kill it before it pops a god because otherwise the god will rape you? (I've always thought having it pop one god wouldn't be too hard to handle, but "they" tell me it's very bad for it to pop a god in a zerg)

*slaps forehead*
I told you it was late

This is great timing on this thread, I am half way to 74 on Mnk and was just this weekend thinking about whether I should take my drk form 24 to 37. Since I am a Galka and am 3/5 on the af2 (missing legs and head) and since i have a great hp build already for my PLD and BLU; I figured if any race could make /drk work it would be a galka. For the sake of pointing out the obvious, Let me get this straight:

1) AF2's +HP% is calculated after your base HP+ all your +HP gear.
2) When building for the Zerg haste gear is pointless since you are using 100 Fists
3) If i were to do this I would need no less than 2 WHM cure bombing me
4) I cant open a battle with a SC (so how long should I wait?)
5) If possible I should do this with Faith hands, or would i be hitting so much at that point I would effectively kill myself?

I normally wait till a few good WS go off before I WS. Faith is the weapon of choice. You need at least 2 whm + any pld that is standing there watching the pretty lights to cure bomb you. with galka I would try to break 2.5-2.8K hp. haste gear isn't as important because in a full zerg you would be having 3 brds swap parties. (1 March X2,MinX2,MadX2) + haste and 2hr. It's fun, but you will die a few times before you find that happy line between life and dirt lol.

lol @ pretty lights and dirt ^^

Personally I find the happy line between life and dirt is just after I've unloaded my MP pool onto the mob. If I've just unloaded my entire MP pool and the *** is still standing, let him kill me and the spamurais can finish it off *shrug*

Haste gear isn't important because your haste is capped the moment you use Hundred Fists. And WSing while Hundred Fists is still active wastes potential damage you could be doing from melee hits.

My MNK is 14, so excuse this noob question, but is that always the case with hundred fists, or only on mnk/drk? (the ws part I mean, not the haste part)

I generally use my TP right before Hundred Fists, then use it again right after. I don't want to slow down my hits during Hundred Fists with a WS. That may just be me though.

I guess it'd be a kind of annoying thing to try and parse, considering 2-hour. Nyzul would be the best place to experiment with that I guess.

I have parsed both ways ( Ws and no WS) I found that on DL I can add more damn with WS but again it is finding that fine line.

edit: This is my own personal prefrence. not saying that not WS is bad, it's just that for myself I have had better luck using WS lol.

No it's not...

Hmmm... I'm fairly certian it was shown a while back on BG that using AF during HF with no swaps or boost's is the highest damage

Would have to see the data on that, and I can't remember the added delay from using a WS or JA, off the top of my head, so if you find that link I would be interested in checking it out. But to put it in perspective, a 4s delay on Hundred Fists should be around -10 additional attacks. A 2s delay would be around -4 additional attacks. Which depending if you are /DRK or not can or can't be a substantial reduction in potential damage.

I just noticed, that Mnk in Woo's shell has Mantra capped.. that's another 20% HP lol.. no wonder he has so much HP :3

Hundred Fists provides 74% Haste, this is below the 80% Universal Haste Cap, but from what I know Hundred Fists is unaffected by Magical Haste and Equipment Haste. I'm not sure if its affected by JA Haste (I would imagine that Hasso/Samba do not affect it) but was unable to find anything regarding this in old BG threads, only a thread where Kirschy said they didn't know and would post an update about it but never did in the thread. So if anyone wants to argue the technicality of my wording, HF is not capped 80% Haste however since it is unaffected by magical, and gear haste, it caps a monk's total haste at 74% during the two hour making it a "capped haste" in that sense.

http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/ffxi-standard-discussion/53772-what-exactly-does-hundred-fists-do.html

Does anyone with Mantra know how it adds HP? I'm trying to configure what my max HP /Drk is. I'm not sure if it comes into play with AF after HP base+ HP gear is calculated, or if it adds the % after all gear. I'd pretty much assume it's calculated along with gear+% though.

I'll have to look for it later, since nearly every ffxi site but this one is blocked @ work.

Well I'm looking at capping at 3,123 HP as Mnk/Drk with the gear I have in my future /Drk item set. That kind of blows my current gear set at 2.4k HP. I only have 2 HP merits atm so just capping HP merits would put me a lil over 2.5k with current set.

Elvaan Mnk/Drk base HP is 1690 with capped HP merits. The goal set adds 205hp, 50 converted HP, 27% HP, add on 20% if capped Mantra (I could never honestly see any Mnk main capping Mantra instead of Penance or Invigorate though) and lastly 180HP if you get +1 carborona.

Edit: Well the 3.1k added in full Mantra, full Mantra on my current set + food is like 2,880HP. My current set w/o food is only like 2.2kHP /Drk.

Then lvl 69 galka in af1 and nq dex+2 rings comes along and beats you by 300 hp still :/

Yeah well, I'll sacrifice a little HP so I don't look like a gorilla.

Or poop out your offspring through some kind of asexual birthing butt

Hate to say it but your a little off :P The way it works for the +3% hp on the relic gloves is by rounding down not up (really easy to see youself with enough gear to swap about) so without any other +hp% gear you need a base of 1700 to get 51hp with melee gloves (or 1667 if you want to match +50). However most mnks use the rest of the relic pieces for the best hp boost per peice which gives you a +20%hp to your base, but this is applied to the +50hp from the seiryu kote aswell making them an effective +60hp when combined.

To match this with Melee Kote you need a base hp of 2000 (because of the rounding down of +%hp gear) and a base hp of 2033 before it will give more hp than Sieryu Kote.

Of course got to factor in the nice subtle blow and att bonus aswell when actually deciding gear but from a pure HP point of view base hp <2000 and full relic you're better off using seiryu

Just some quick calculations.

Since a monk with an HP build should be able to break 2k, we'll just assume you're at 2K HP, no higher.

Assuming you land about two hits every second using Hundred Fists @ 5% of your current HP worth of damage.

Not calculating regular damage, just that of Souleater.
(5%DamageViaHP/Souleater) BaseHP = 2000 - 2hits/second = 200damage/second - 5% of 2000 is 100. H2H/Hundred Fists = TwoHits/Second - 2HourDuration = 45seconds
>> 2000x0.05%=100x2=200, 200x45seconds= 9000 Damage in 45 seconds, if kept alive...

Having three monks do this at once with a party of healers would devastate anything. May not kill it, depending what you're fighting, but it would definitely put a huge 25k+ dent into it!

If im wrong forgive me, but isn't souleater only % of "current hp" if drk is main, and if it is subb'd then souleater is % of overall hp regardless of current?

And that would be why you need Cure Bombs.

"When activated by a character with Dark Knight as a support job, each successful attack that lands will cause the user to lose 10% of his/her current HP and converts half that amount directly into damage."

With /drk subbed only 5% Damage is caused instead of 10%. 10% Damage is still taken though.

HOWEVER! With Monk's Double Attack, you might as well consider it doing that initial 10% Damage.

I guess it really depends on the person

A MNK/DRK (like somebody I know in my old LS) would always use SE as soon as its up, regardless of TP or not.

Then he would complain when he dies from getting hate, saying its the PLDs fault for his spike damage.

But then again, he would stun a mob in a room full of magic aggro....

From my experience it's quite the powerhouse even without use of souleater. Of course nothing compares to overall power of warrior with combined use of berserk and double attack, however, /drk has it's uses particularly in campaign for fun and zerg friendly fights (ie: BV2, DL, Apocalypse Nigh, etc.)

The only real downside is to keep optical damage throughout use of souleater & hundred fists you need to be curebombed constantly otherwise your damage will take a steep dip down and then you become nothing special.

Well if you want to see something funny, do MNK/DRK grab a KC and hundred fist something with souleater on.. its actually really funny

Also if you have a dnc for drain samba its not as bad, but with out that basicly your HP drops like crazy to the point that souleater effect doesn't really do anything

If I still had my KC i'd make a video for you all, but I sold it :(

Sooo... someone pointed me to this discussion. Seems it started with my MNK/DRK set. I've just read through all the comments on here.

First of all, I have Seiryu's Kote, but they don't give me as much HP as the Melee Gloves +1. I can't remember what the difference was but I do remember testing my max HP with different gear sets and the Gloves just gave more than the Kote. Same applies to Gold Moogle Belt vs. Desert Sash; 3% is just higher in the end.

I saw someone mention Ritter Gorget... well, simple answer; MNK can't wear it :).

I know my rings are gimp >.>. I should motivate myself to get a few people together to kill Bomb Queen one day (the sad thing is that I actually do have Avengers from that NM, sitting on a mannequin, but I don't have the ring itself). I know it's quite easy, I just have to find the time to do it. As for Bloodbead ring, I don't see me ever getting my hands on that one. I hate NM camping and I hate huge respawn times even more... getting Black Belt was already bad enough, I got all items from KSNM in the end).

The Cassie Earring gives a nice bonus. And it seems I have enough MP to use it effectively. 3 MP merits and the natural MP from /DRK adds up to more than 50 MP (even on Galka).

As for the other earring (the Pigeon one), I swap that one out pretty much immediately after the first hit to replace it with Brutal Earring for Double Attack. Once I start HF SE I never reach my max HP cap again though the WHMs do a great job at keeping me and the other party members alive. They tend to keep my HP close to my max HP :).

And for food, Carbonara +1 obviously.

Fully merited Mantra is an easy way to get ridiculously high HP, for yourself and for the entire party. Our LS's Kraken Club DRK always goes in my party for the HP Boost and we then fill up with 2 WHMs, and 2 other MNK/DRKs. The second WHM is only invited in the end after the BRD rotation. 2 WHMs spamming Curagas and a well-timed Benediction, coupled with one or more external healers who keep an eye on the MNKs HPs actually works pretty well.

I recently got 2 more merits in HP. One more and I'll be capped for that merit section (5 HP + 3 MP). I also got my hands on Faith Baghnakhs so that will help do some more damage next time we attempt a DL zerg.

I think that's pretty much the definitive answer :D

@Phaal, my comparison between kote and relic was considering simply the gloves slot themselves, I overlooked the fact that an extra 50HP in that slot would help the other +HP% pieces more than the difference between those two pieces on that slot alone. However, there's obviously something we're both overlooking, perhaps in the order that things are calculated, as Vlacatocc assures us that the kote gives less overall HP.