Lacking in damage choices?Follow

So I just recently picked up THM to level. From levels 1-10 all I did was spam dart and heal when needed. Then at level 10 I threw damnation into the lineup. So, Dart Dart Dart Damnation Dart Dart Dart Dart Damnation Dart etc etc etc. Kinda boring so far....but I was looking forward to the 2 DoTs at level 12. After 1000 darts later, I finally get to level 12. Sweet! Now I can stack those 2 dots with poison and finally get away from dart. But I found out even when all 3 dots land, dart is still the most efficient way to kill. By far.

I guess my question is, does this change at any point?

Just need to understand this for clarity purposes. You are saying killing a mob by using scourge and banish nets you the most sp? Or just that it is a way not to use Phantom Dart? What I don't quite get is that when I use Scourge/Banish I don't get anywhere the amount of numbers you are getting but then again I am not fighting solo...is this what you are doing? If this is the case then I'm not surprised your banish and Scourge damage is so high because if you are a 25 THM and fighting Star marmots....well whats the point of getting seriously high numbers when fighting a mob that will net you 0 sp or very very low sp at best? Try it on crabs that con green or orange to a party of 5 and see if you get the same numbers. I have been in quite a few parties and I find that even though I have been testing your 'MND only' method my numbers are more like 30-80 damage, and I certainly wouldnt recommend spamming it over phantom dart. Weapons are fairly easy to get repaired but I totally agree that just using Phantom Dart will wear your weapon very quickly on tough mobs. The best method I find is to do combinations of all three things that net THM's sp. These are, healing, Physical attack (Phantom Dart/Damnation) and DOT/Debuffs. If you do this method when fighting in a small party (3-5 players) you will be netting around 50-500 sp per kill - this is very quick sp as the kill speed is fast. I was managing around 6k per hour and that was including downtime for party rests etc. I wouldn't even say this was particularly quick either.

To the OP, well after a while the THM role does get a lot more interesting and as soon as you get ABSORB spells, siphon MP, Sacrifice II and can start cycling your debuff + Heal + hitting the mob with Phantom Dart + managing AOE properly you will not be bored trust me. Parties are starting to 'need' THM's now because of our damage and healing abilities. I parties yesterday on Island Crabs near Bald Knoll and after 1.5 hours of play I finally managed to get three debuffs on one of those crabs! lol I think this is because I had reasigned many of my points into MND though and that I should put some more back into PIE - I will see.

lol the star marmot example was just a fun kill they give 0 exp/sp and thats a Prof/BR hit for it to be that high.
i mean its a marmot, even my staff does like 550 to a marmot lol.
now about the damage numbers, those are examples with Prof and BR active and in a crab which has high defense id do about 330 Prof/BR about 220 BR and 160 or so normal damage(these are all Scourge/Banish).

and personally i find that where id get 13-55 points doing a dart now at my Rank , i can get 75-150 sp off Scourge/Banish, but my biggest problem is that since my damage its so high i keep my weapon broken while in a party because otherwise i kill too fast and my party members dont get good SP.
and by having my weapon broken i do about half damage and the only way to get good SP its with Scourge/Banish hits that be giving me 30-80 sometimes more when it does actually give me any, and avarage of 13-30 points with broken weapon from a Dart.
so instead of me throwing several darts of 13-30 SP i throw Scourge/Banish and 1 or 2 that give me SP covers a spamming of Darts.
but one other reason for me to do things this way, its that if you spam Dart, your always going to be runing low on Stamina and i dont like to be in that position, by Spamming Scourge/Banish your stamina Stays pretty high, leaving your options open for anything that you might need like for example a quick Second Wind , if your spamming darts, you have to wait on stamina to recharge for something like that which might mean your death.

if your still having issues with the damage let me know and ill give a better explenation of how to get it up there, also give me your lvls and ill try to give you a stat points setup that suits you.

ah if you lvl up the conj do it for pro/shell and if you dont mind R20 for cure 2
ignore me on the profundity, its a thing to start a battle it counts for only 1 hit, its pretty good first hit, no big deal on that, and yes to hit a crab 300+ its with pro/br 1 hit then its only on br something over 200.
but w/o either of those buffs it will be under 200 damage on a crab they are tough :O. when my staff is broken a scourge/banish does usually 61 to a crab, and since i usually fight crabs wit atleast a party of 3 or more, then its all good since healing isnt affected by the staff, maybe 1 less hp healed if at all lol.

and dam i just got my horn staff like 3 days ago too, i need to lvl my GLD because i cant repair it yet XD, atleast a lvl 18 was able to repair it for me which means i dont have to lvl GLD up too much.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2010 3:22am by AggroDoctor

This is true of basically every combat class. You should level the craft that will (or is most likely to) allow you to repair your weapon in the field. Then you should take your tool and a stack of repair reagents with you wherever you go.

DoMs get it pretty easy on this: THA needs GLD, CON needs CRP. Pugs, Glads, and maybe LNCs get kinda screwed. I know my leveling partner is a PUG and he's banging a level 19 weapon at level 32 because he leveled LW to repair it and the next few weapons all require goldsmithing or blacksmithing.



It's my opinion from anecdotal experience that the penalty is much harsher when equipping abilities cross-discipline, whereas intra-discipline but cross-class isn't so bad (still sub-optimal). E.g., Second Wind sucks for THM, but Cure is nearly full effectiveness.

Yah really nice, i myself am stuck having to rank up GLD to repair my horn staff, so far a rank 18 was able to repair it but failed twice,i focus too much on WEV.

and its absolutely true about the spells being equiped by another classes and theyr effectiveness, but its wise as a THM to have your Pro/Shell as there are many mobs you cant even fight w/o Shell and sometimes you will find yourself alone like last night i was in a 7-11 man party with 1 conj but often found my self healing by myself because the conj kept getting killed in 1 sometimes 2 hits, the worst part we had to fight 5 mobs at one time and the conj was dead luckily i was able to Paralyze/Protect then keep healing, we always buff/heal only in the fight fo SP.

and when you go solo a leve 30 or just go solo its good buffs to have, and sadly alot of times the conjs forget to buff they get too involved in theyr elemental spells, have to keep telling them to buff, i have partied with 5 conjs and was the same story with all of them, but if you have a conj that remembers to buff, its true that its better to have them do it. but its much easier to have a thm do it since the differience isnt big, and a conj will have to "Gather Together" "Buffs" and that might cause downtime, but the thm can just stand back midfight and buff everybody, we have HUGE frontal cone AOE while Conj is circular AOE which is good at times but it is rather small, can easely miss players if they position wrong.

Edited, Oct 24th 2010 1:13pm by AggroDoctor

hehe your right the tier 2 scourge/banish barely do more damage than tier 1, i dont use them.
and due to theyr MP cost you would have to use Spiritbind if you plan to spam them and not run out of MP, so i just keep tier 1 since i can spam w/o having to add Spiritbind to roseter and its not that big of a damage pump + they are higher casting time higher cooldown, i feel they arnt worth it.

i gotta say i love the paralyze and bind, i definetly felt they saved me that one time i ended healing the party while fighting 5 antling diggers, sure paralyze dosnt stop enemies from attacking 100% of the times while in the effect, but its a decent chance, and being able to bind those crazy mobs when they are that many, its priceless, its abit tricky tho, if the mob isnt moving bind wont affect it.