DRK/SAM Is Trash - A Safe Place For Unpopular Opinions From The Ffxiah Mob!

The line before it lol, "<t> is on top of me!" I'm dead lmao

Back when 1 hour JAs were 2 hour JAs....

funny story about that, sometime after they made the change I didn’t notice and I was out helping someone calling it your 2-hour and they were confused:
“you mean the 1 hour ability...?”
“Wtf, when did that change that?”

Funny how I was watching this last night. Listen to the DRK job description at min 1:55 for 30 sec

What do you mean, I still call them 2hrs to this day.

A PLD, DRG and DRK are on an airship when its engines fail. All the npcs bail, taking the last parachute with them. The 3 adventurers have no choice but to take matters into their own hands.

The PLD bravely steps forward, steeling his jaw as he looks at the ground far away. "Geronimo" he yells, as he heroically leaps over the guardrail and begins plummeting to what should be his certain, grisly death. Just before hitting the ground he pops Invincible and face plants into the ground, leaving a PLD shaped crater that he steps from without a scratch.

The DRG, having watched his companion fall, isn't to be outdone. He steps gracefully up onto the guardrail, calls his trusty wyvern and Super Jumps safely to the ground far below.

The DRK, now all alone as any DRK should be, considers his fate. A mental search of his abilities turns up nothing useful to help him survive. With an emo flick of his hair, he steps over the guardrail and into the empty air. As he falls towards his certain death, he prepares to meet his fate in a blaze of glory. He uses everything at his disposal. Blood Weapon! Soul Eater! Last Resort! Diabolic Eye! Soul Enslavement! Fully buffed he draws his scythe for one final swing, prepares to hit the ground...

...and misses.

no sub jobs?
noobs

DRK equips all the +damage taken gear and hits the ground so hard, that he bugs the physics and receives -1 damage.

They were on the airship to get the quest.

Brings back memories of jumping the rail on the airship to chill on the side of the ship like a rebel.

That was a mini-game on it's own, sometimes it'd take me most of the trip just to pull it off. Guess latency played a factor or something idk? lol

VR chat has the airship as a zone.

you can hang out in it - can see if I can find it when i get home and take pics or something

Edit -

found it -

https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_6fa3969d-9425-4630-b51d-d9f66cbb71bf

Or the memories of the.. adult themed emotes done on the guardrail involving a taru, always a taru, and an elvaan or a galka.

i thought these memories were unique to me.. the fact that it was so prevalent.. wtf was wrong with us

I run DRK/WAR 98% of the time, and have been for almost 2 decades. But on occasion, I'll run DRK/SAM...just depends on the nature of the content.

Mims 3hit Liberator build is extremely fun. Not sure how it fares in 2023 though.

The Necromancer

I've seen worse

Fun facts:

Q: Are the rumors about puppetmaster originally being designed as Necromancer true?

A: From the early stages it was planned to become a pet job, and there were some ideas to make it necromancer. However, since necromancer wasn’t too well known in the FF series, we decided to go with the puppetmaster instead.


Q: When you’re on the ferry between Selbina and Mhaura, the boat will occasionally be attacked by pirates. When the pirate boat pulls up, some Humes wearing mage gear come out and start summoning undead monsters to attack people on the ferry. Are those people actually Necromancers?

A: I believe the lore behind it was something like that.


https://gamerescape.com/2016/08/07/ffxi-development-team-reddit-ama/

CE would be a real problem, and you would take a lot of damage. It's not just PDT II that helps the real tanks take damage. PLD blocks and RUN has eva/meva/parrying, in addition to both of them having PDT II, JA for healing and defensive CDs, plus PLD can cure.

I think in a pinch it could tank some stuff, mostly single-target or small pulls, but if you need it to tank the things that tanks are used for, it's going to really struggle, especially in long fights.

Basically, I think it could be used as a tank for fights that don't require a tank. Our DRK will "tank" the Sortie bosses and mini-bosses, including Botulus, but if it tried to pull Sheol C mobs it's going to get trucked down in 5 seconds and would have a very hard time holding hate with just foil.

There is no Phalanx /RUN and there is no Inquarta gear for DRK other than a parry cape from ambu. Not a lot of Parry gear either. If you've got access to big Drain 3s and you're using a scythe, feel free to race the boss for healing.

But what about with Apoc Drk spamming Catastrophe to help sustain?

While a good option, it's only good if the DRK can stay vertical long enough to be spamming Catastrophe. Pulling a Sheol-C group you likely wouldn't get your weapon out before the 10 mobs in a family killed you. Even with a capped HP Drain III and Dread Spikes 2-300 damage hits from 10 mobs will rip through that in no time.

What Bopo said, and also if you miss (5%) you're dead.

What kind of content?

DRK was the best tank at 75 cap but it was mostly HMs that were slowed to a crawl being shadow tanked.

DRK does great “tanking” in sortie and some
Gaol fights but pulling
Packs in C it would be terrible.

We could get weird and DRK/PLD sword/board and use sanguine instead of catastrophe. I know DRK has higher scythe skill and no native shield skill, but Sanguine Blade can't miss and DRK can probably push it as well as any other job that can use it.

This also gives you Sentinel for when Dread Spikes falls off. You'd be trading Foil for Banishga though, giving you that and Poisonga as your only aoe spells, would have to rely on the super crappy radius that is Circle Blade and JAs to keep any kind of hate.

I was actually screwing around with DRK/SCH a couple months ago, compiled all the cure/cure received gear DRK can use (not advocating using it over DT pieces, just that it exists):

https://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/388970

I think any legitimate discussion of DRK tanking must be based around DRK's best assets- and that damage they can generate will always remain a necessary part of any hate management for them, regardless of SJ.

I have wondered as well about the potential of single-target tanking DRK/RUN, but as someone who's DRK isn't yet at a level to make that viable, the 1st thoughts I had against it were "well, its best situations are mobs like Odyssey:Gaol, and you don't get a SJ there"...and 2nd thoughts were "well, it doesn't seem /RUN is needed to do it the shorter fights of Sortie, and you're just reducing damage compared to a more DD-focused subjob". Not saying I'm 100% convinced there isn't a home for it somewhere....but my guess is probably in re-doing older content without a need for a 100% Tank vs a DD Tank (Aeonics, Omen, the like).

DRK/RUN works best on magic heavy enemies that focus on one specific element. However, the fact that it lacks Phalanx is pretty huge. You can stack up on Aquaveil, Stoneskin, Blink, and Dread Spikes, but a decent Phalanx is what sets tanks apart from DD pretending to be tanks. A decent Drain 3 and Dread Spikes will help on a single target for a while, but if the enemy is heavy on the enfeebles, especially things like Amnesia, Silence, Paralyze, and Stun, then you'll have difficulties.

DRK has pretty good hate tools at their disposal, so I don't believe hate is the issue, although you may need time to build depending on who else is in the party. The problem with Catastrophe is you can't spam that and simultaneously do everything else to be a viable tank. However, as others have said, it serves as a suitable holder during a zerg, but the DRK has to be aware that this will hurt their own damage potential, and they must be alert of what is happening to them, instead of staring at their numbers on scoreboard.

Other than building hate by doing damage, IDK what you guys mean by "building hate" on DRK.
CE values:
Stun: 180
Last Resort: 0
Souleater: 0
Weapon Bash: 0
Poisonga: 1

Keep in mind that you also lose hate based on damage taken, another reason why PLD and RUN are able to hold hate well. If you're taking 1000+ damage per hit, it doesn't matter if you are able to get your HP back through cure bombs, Apoc, or Foenaria, you're still losing mass amounts more hate than a tank job would. You also don't have gear which improves enmity retention while taking damage, which PLD and RUN both have.

You can still hold hate off other DD by doing damage, you can solve this with other abilities/spells/songs, but just looking at the DRK kit itself, you're not going to be building any hate with JA and spells.

You could rotate through these JA and try to maintain hate by spiking above the other DD with a JA, but it's nothing like RUN/BLU, PLD/RUN, PLD/BLU.

It really is dependent on the content. If you're talking about a 3 minute ambu with 3 enemies, it will be very different to a 2 hour long dynamis with a pull every 30 seconds where you need to hold multiple mobs. Holding hate on 1-5 packs of Sheol mobs is out of the question.