| Awntawn, I know you love your /WAR subjob, so I am not going to bash it in any way or anything. I think it's cool you are trying something different (since like you said, you are not affecting anyone else because BST can solo).
I have something to warn you with, however. I have a BST friend around level 50-55, who has both WHM and WAR to 30. I asked him to try out /WAR (he was quite perplexed, saying it was horrible), and to use defender and all that.
Later he told me it wasn't worth it. Why? Defense goes up, Attack goes down. This may not sound like anything to you, but the ATK % decrease will make you do LESS damage than a BST/WHM without double attack and less inherent STR. Why?
Well, you have to be familiar with the way damage is calculated in this game. Basically, STR and VIT have a linear check, ATK and DEF have a exponential check. The less ATK you have, the more a fixed increase will raise your damage. (i.e. if you have 100 ATK and you raise it by 20, you'll notice a difference. if you have 250 ATK and raise it by 20, there will be no difference)
Not only this, but there are damage caps in this game depending your STR and what the enemy "checks" to you ("high defense", no message, or "low defense") and as you know the check is dependent on ATK. So if you are fighting an enemy that usually has normal defense, if you use defender, it is very likely it is "high defense" and your damage will be halved. He told me it took him longer to kill with /WAR if he used defender, and if he didn't use defender there was no advantage to /WAR. (At 54 /WHM has protect II and will have more defense than /WAR)
I know you're a man of numbers and you like good evidence and proof, so here it is for you. This shouldn't deter you since you are very hardset on going BST/WAR, but I think it would be handy for you to know this beforehand. |