Sigurd's Descendants: The Art Of Dragon Slaying.

If you think of breaths as a boost to Ws damage it's not too bad. Who doesn't want an extra +1k WS damage? Cept things resist the ***outta breaths... and they're based on current wyvern HP, so the base dmg degrades whenever the wyvern takes dmg... Well, and there are times that mobs just absorb them entirely.

But to fight resists there is at least a decent chunk of pet macc you can use now. And above all, you swap this in during the JA delay post WS so it doesn't detract from the DRG's dps at all.

This set has +150~ pet: Macc, and is also a max breath potency set.(Dragoon's earring macc potency unknown) Technically you only need the +2 armet to cap non-augment breath+ with just the helm.
Acro augments Breath+8, pet macc+25, and HP+ varying amounts(max+50 per.) Updraft, breath+10 augment.

This would do 1086 dmg unresisted.
ItemSet 335141
I need to pickup a Cath Palug ring for another +12 macc. And there's also Kyrene's earring for +15. Although it has a trade off as it adds pet DT+. But I suspect it's more pet macc than Dragoon's earring.

Bored at work and started thinking about this purely in the spirit of frivolity. It's something I actually thought about way back in the 75 era, before our wyverns were capable of withstanding more than a small gust of wind. It was extremely unrealistic then, and I suspect that it is only slightly less so now, but here goes anyway:

Given the fact that it is now possible to cap wyvern -DT, as well as the existence of Spirit Link/Bond and Steady Wing, and despite the wyvern's garbage damage, is there a scenario in which making your wyvern tank would be an effective strategy?

I mean, i know at best it would basically be a super-gimp Automaton. And I play enough lately to know that anything worth fighting nowadays is usually timed, making a turtling-wyvern-tank strategy even more moronic than it already sounded. But its one of those things that I would like to try, just to mess around.

And try it I most likely will, even though I don't have the gear to fully support the concept. One of the great things about this game is that you have the freedom to do stupid stuff like this.

The main issue is that the wyvern has basically 0 enmity generation. Breaths are 0 enmity, and its melee output is pathetic. So it wouldn't be able to keep hate off anyone else acting at all.

Now, if the goal was simply to hold a mob that no one else was acting on, then that should be possible. Engage, hit mob once. Let wyvern hit mob. Superjump. Even if the wyvern's CE is zeroed, since it will have been the last one to act the mob will stay on it.

The DRG can then move to 25'~ away and use steady wing/spirit link from outside of enmity range. Although you would have to move in to HB range to healing breath the wyvern and be within 6.5 to use spirit bond.

it really requires miscast gearswaps to really take advantage of wyvern breath gear. Before I quit with all the acro gear augments I was getting about 750ish breaths on 6-8k stardivers which wasn't bad. But now that people are somehow doing 50k+ (not even quite sure what changed since 2014 to result in such high numbers when ilvl is the same tbh) and 900 breaths are lousy.

Back in the day I did a lot of wyvern testing. I would put the time period at lvl99 pre-ilevel. I subbed monk, popped counterstance and then spirit linked it to the wyvern. I engaged the Abyssea-Altepa tiger(forget his name, drops fuhrer cesti) and then super jumped and turned and sure enough Max counterstance tanked the thing and whipped his ***.

Possible to tank, sure, useful.. Needs more research.

Would assume pet enmity gear is possible for DRG? Guess the real problem would be something that will generate hate in combination with said gear.. Counterstance works, but you're /mnk. Maybe load the elemental breath set with enmity gear and spam breath?

Actually.. I'm not at all certain that counters even generate enmity. Could be like spikes effects which certainly don't.

And like I said, wyvern breaths are 0 enmity. None. 0 * enmity gear = 0.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure they don't even put the wyvern on the enmity list. Walk up to a mob, smiting breath its *** for 1k, and super jump. Mob stays on the DRG. I'll retest when I get home.

I should have specified that this would most likely be a "for solo only" endeavour, since yeah wyvern enmity is almost non existent.

I've certainly let my wyvern tank by super jumping, just to give me enough time to haul *** away from a battle that went south, back in the day.

The best you could do to supplement the crap wyvern damage would be a skillchain followed by Super Jump. Not all that helpful, but considering how little damage the pet would be doing, anything extra would be helpful I suppose.

I guess I should see what kind of things PUPs like to solo with their automatons and look into trying those, knowing full well that I won't even come close to their damage output.


EDIT to reply to Martel's EDIT: I know this was not true back when I used to main DRG - wyvern definitely used to be on the hate list. If they changed that, I never read about it, but then I only recently started playing DRG again.

I can't say if triggering Smiting Breath on a mob, without engaging, would put the wyvern on the enmity list or not, but i know auto attacking a mob definitely does (or at least used to).
The question that raises is "do pet commands give enmity to the pet, or to the master"?

You could definitely do that. Another use would be to outlast phases in monster behavior.

I used to super jump and wyvern tank the brainjack chariot in salvage. Immune to charm and all that.

Trusts make this less practical now, as the mob would just go after the healer.

And if you want to see a measure of wyvern toughness now, look at my sprit bond test post where my wyvern lived through a 10k needles, and didn't kill me with it either. Did hurt though.

Yeah, the fact that Trusts would take hate kind of rains on this particular parade. It would basically mean your trusts tank until they all die, then your wyvern tanks the remainder of the mob's HP.

Sounds pretty clunky to me. I'm definitely trying it this weekend for the lulz

Actually your Spirit Bond testing was in part responsible for my initial posting about this. So thanks!

If the wyvern hits the mob with melee, then they are added to the hate list.

However if the DRG pulls a mob, the uses restoring breath, no matter how much it cures or how long the mob has been beating on the DRG and flooring their CE, the wyvern will not pull hate.

And smiting breath is the same despite being a direct action on the mob. Back in the day it would have been harder to observe this cause you had to engage to trigger elemental breaths at all, and as soon as you hit the mob, the wyvern would do so right afterward. The timing to have the wyvern use a breath, but not melee would have been tricky,and unlikely to happen naturally.

As for pet commands, ask any smn. You do generate a very small amount of enmity for just using the pet command itself. However any enmity for the pet's action is on the pet. It's just that wyvern breaths don't seem to have any enmity generation.

I think i misunderstood you - i thought you were suggesting that wyverns are never on the enmity list, full stop. I see now that you only meant breaths.

Props to whoever made the WSD Boost wiki page.

It's been hell month, so haven't had time for basically anything except the bits of testing I did.

Just running drg on neak with only trusts is super consistant and easy atm. Not sure if it was like this before though. But its a cheese now. 30k ws make it nice.

Mind posting your sets and trust call for this solo ?

Yes sure thing my dude. Let me say outta 12 attempts did have 2 deaths where it just goes wrong.

Trusts used were yoran king joachim ulmia and qultade. Sometimes in the middle i would use a super revit just to make it faster cuz extra jumps and dragon killer ja's ftw. Sometimes i wouldnt. Make sure you use the ancient circle and dragon breaker. If you want a video i think ruaomoko has a video on neak solo as drg. I can share sets in a second.

ItemSet 369225 the tp set

ItemSet 369227 the stardiver set

ItemSet 369228 the sonic thrust set.

These sets prob arent optimal but it worked pretty well.
Also the lua i use will auto equip moonshade instead if im under like 2500 tp and use the brutal instead.

I've come really close. But once Meteor killed my trusts, it was kind of game over.

Make sure you eat sublime sushi or you will wind up missing alot. And having really poor weapon skill damage?

So for the soulbond. Is there a way to macro it in to use soul bond, then the breath, and then remove the soul bond all in one macro?

Should be possible, although you'll need the cancel addon to remove a buff via command. The only thing to work out is the timing.

/ja "Spirit Bond" <me><wait 1>
/ja "Restoring Breath" <me><wait 2>
/console cancel "Spirit Bond"

Would be my guess. I'll test when I get home.

Epic. Is that console thing juzt something to get addons working in macros?

Nah its just a way of doing commands.
Since you wanted to automatically remove the buff, the easiest/direct method would be just /console cancel "buff name"

Yeah. The // prefix doesn't work from macros. So you use /console instead and it does the same thing.

That is prettt neat. Ill have to look into it.

The timing for this seems to work perfectly. Minimal exposure to extra dmg, and a full cure for the wyvern once a minute.

That is epic man thank you for testing this for us. I will make aure to make good use of this.

It's now possible to wipe out Neak in a single mutli-step skillchain even without Hunter's Roll from Qultada, you do need at least R10 on Trishula for the Accuracy though.


(2:35)
Set it to 780 or 1080p HD so you can better see the damage in the log. Full screen will also help since it was recorded in a higher resolution. Mute the audio if you want.

ItemSet 343482

ItemSet 369257

Was there a specific patch that led to the substantial powercreep of 2-handed weapon skill damage? I'm seeing screenshots of 50-60k+ weapon skills and when I quit (right around the time of 1-handed WS boosts and introduction of Unity NMs), 2-h WS were still doing ~7-11k or so, while 1h were doing upwards of 15-30k at 3000 TP. Or is this just under optimal conditions with GEO/COR buffs and 1h WS are still doing absurd damage (I remember doing 30k Rudra Storms on BRD in Incursion back in 2014)

• Higher Base Damage / Better Stats on REMAs via Augments

• Better Buffs (Regal Neck, Rostam, Moonbow +1, etc)

• Ambuscade Weapons, Easily obtainable, Comparable to REMAs

• +2/+3 Gear with Great Stats

• New HTBF gear with even better stats

• Better knowledge about BiS sets from months of math/testing