My destroyer (or soon to be), will be hitting C grade pretty quickly, but i wasn't sure which sort of weapons i should be going for. I currently have 3 options:
Zerk blade : Pros - Highest P.atk, Extra 2H masteries. Cons - Can't use half my skills (req. blunt)
Yaska - Pros - High P.atk, Utilize all skills, Fast atk. Cons - Doesn't use extra 2H masteries (important?), Need a shield? (No shield masteries)
So any help would be greatly appreciated. Oh, one other thing, i will most likely only have enough money for 1 as i am planning to buy the Orcy Pole axe too.
Don't know what anyone else will say, but if your not carrying a 2 handed sword, you will not be able to use the Destroyers best friend, Frenzy. You do NOT want to be without Frenzy, Frenzy + vr = very healthy Destro that just cleared entire cata/necro room or 2.
edit: Almost forgot.....Frenzy+vr= several dead players at your feet
You can use Frenzy with a pole for quite nice dmg too. And really, dont need 2hander to get it off, best is to use Cursed Dagger Rsk. Haste for that purpose.
really? I looked up the skill and it says that 2-handed or blunt is required for skill use. Is that a bug? that you can use it with dagger? or do you mean that he will do as much DOT with the dagger not using Frenzy?
You must have looked up the wrong skill. Frenzy works with ALL weapons, but its effect when using poles is much lower than with two-handed swords.
If you must go for a blunt, get a Karik's Horn with Focus - but Orcish Poleaxe and/or zerker are the much better choice by a margin wider than your orc. :p
I was not aware blunts were bad for exp; thanks for the heads-up. Ok, I've decided to go with the recommendation of using the berserker blade, thanks for the help everyone. :)
Oh, one more thing, the SA on the zerk blade; is the 7% atk speed increase (haste) worth it more than the Crit Dmg? I don't really solo a great deal as i level happily with clan mates of similar levels (also have access through clan mates to bish & SE buffs).
Blunt weapons will be a waste of your time. All the stun skills are a waste of MP. (Land rate is abysmal and stun breaks insanely easy/fast.)
With a 2H sword, it's all about the crits. Make sure you have a Focus SA and start swinging. With the high Patk of a 2H+masteries on a crit you hit HARD. And the higher crit rate means you do it more often. And once frenzied+Rage, you can 1 or two shot mobs with a crit. (Without buffs, if you have buffs or some herbs active things go down faster.)
Here's the technique I use to get the most out of my skills, soloing without a buffbox.
1)Start out with NO self buffs active and all their timers reset. Also make sure you have some emergency Healing potions, if the game gets sadistic and you don't get any HP herbs dropping by the time Frenzy wears off...
For more effect, use a (Alacrity) potion from the store. (Below 45 I didn't even bother, but once 46+ it's better to have at least that going all the time to speed up attacks and skill resets. Plus mobs at those levels drop enough that the cost in Alacrity pots is cheap.) You may wish to use a WW1 potion as well, but I found the WW herbs drop the most frequently, thus I seldom am without WW2 from those...and the few times I don't have it, I'm usually not to far from more mobs anyway. (I leave that up to your preference.)
2)Start killing mobs, but don't pickup any HP herbs. You WANT to drop your HP down to 30%.
You could let a mob beat you down, but sometimes it's just as easy to grind normally until your HP is down. I leave it up to you how fast or 'safe' you want to make this part. If you position your self so that 'last mob before frenzy' is not too far from a big clump of other mobs all the better.
I usually pull a couple mobs to lower HP fast, and just time it so that there is just one mob with a sliver of health left when I near 30%, so my next hit kills it after I pop the skills.
3)At 30% (HP bar starts to flash when it is real close.) You want to trigger the following skills in this order. Frenzy -> Battle Roar -> Rage. While the Rage animation is running, hit either Fatal Strike or /Attack (Shortcut) to finish off the mob your on, then start killing mobs as fast as you can before frenzy runs out. I usually take the 1 sec to grab the drops/herbs as I go, but if you got a good HP herb right away you might want to 'not pickup' until frenzy wears out completely.
One 'tactic' you can use is to maximise your kill speed is to not target the closest mob. Instead target the mob on the *other* sside of the nearest clump. Pull the aggro with you and let your attack social any neaby mobs as well, this gets the maximum number of mobs on you possible in the shortest time. As long as you have 10 seconds left you can usually finish up to 5 mobs before it runs out. (And still have time to pickup HP herbs if you have to.)
If you happened to get one too many mobs on you at this time , or a HP herb doesn't drop right away, you will want to use a healing potion (HP/GHP/Elixer) now to make sure you stay alive. (Once Frenzy runs out you can just hit Guts if the game is still failing to drop a HP herb...just don't use it until after frenzy runs out as you can't have both up and Guts will overwrite frenzy.)
4)Once Rage resets, use that immediately to speed leveling while Frenzy and Battle Roar are still resetting.
The refresh on Rage is 5 min, exactly 1/2 of Frenzy and Battle Roar's 10 minutes. Thus you can cycle (Frenzy/BattleRoar/Rage) and do a normal Rage inbetween. You want to save Battle Roar for the time you use Frenzy for two reasons.
1)It heals you up a bit right after you Frenzy, giving you enough HP to make the most of it without having VR or wasting Potions.
2)The reset timer on Battle Roar is MUCH easier to watch than the one on Frenzy. Frenzy is mostly black so it can be hard to tell when the skill has or hasn't quite reset yet. If you Battle Roar immediately after Frenzy, all you have to do is make sure that skill is ready and you KNOW Frenzy is ready as well.
This skill rotation will take you up to B grade easy. HV/Oren/SoS will get you to 45/46, and from there I highly recommend Pavel Ruins until B grade. (The 3 pits) Although the area around Ivory Tower and Outlaw Forest can get you to B grade just as well.
Oh, and my gear for this? +4 Full Plate and a +3 Flamberge w/Focus, Augmented. (Finally got a decent Augment...) The Flamberge is low C but I still mow down mobs easy with it. A berzerker blade will have more Patk but a bit less Crit from the SA as well as using 3 SS instead of 2 per swing.
Heh, PainAmplifier you should definitely make a destroyer guide for the site, sounds like a good insight for us (relatively) newbie destro's out there how to maximise dmg output :)
For C grade I went with a +3 Pa'agrian Sword [Focus] and I've never regretted it. I am quite happy with it (though I'd like to make it into a lightsaber, I just have terrible OE luck).
I also have a +4 Orcish Poleaxe [Critical Stun], and I love it. It certainly lands a lot more than the alleged 20% rate gives it credit for, and in AOE that makes for less damage per train.
I can pull two rooms and stun half the train, if not more, with each swing. Happy destroyer, and even happier healers.
You must have looked up the wrong skill. Frenzy works with ALL weapons, but its effect when using poles is much lower than with two-handed swords.
Frenzy 3 is around 301% for 2handers, around 250% for Poles so enough when you take into consideration that you will be hitting multiple mobs with 1 swing ^^ Poling is the fastest way to lvl, hands down. Even with Frenzy usage. But yea, can be used with _all_ weapons and this is why Cursed Dagger Rsk. Haste is best for Frenzy junkies. Skill cooldown timer is dependant on the attack speed you have when you use the skill, so higher attk speed = smaller cooldown.
(I know that you know MalineII, just making it clearer to others ^^ )
It wouldn't hurt you if carried a blunt as a secondary weapon (even if it is a no grade one). Stun still works with it (just does crappy damage) and it can be helpful sometimes. You can make a macro for it (switch to blunt, hammer crash, switch to main weapon).
I have it so all 3 are next to each other on my skill bar, so i can quickly pull the blunt, stun and go back to the sword. I don't really trust macros to do much more than shout out messages and maybe self buffs (on the rare occasion it works :P)
Just would like to add that if ur looking for a blunt that can do it all, go for :
Karik Horn. It as Focus SA. thats what i used all the way to 61. Altho i was poling 75% of the time, but that 2H blunt is very good becuz of that SA.
It allows you to do all your specials + stun. It was a decent and not to expensive alternative to the above equipment mentioned.