Dark Elemental Damage Spells

[Cloud Tiamat]

Why isn't there a Dark Element spell series like Stone/Water/Aero/Fire/Blizzard/Thunder/Banish?

Doesn't it seem a little strange that there are attack spells for every element except Dark?

[Argonic]

Drain is the dark element attack spell. Aspir is also dark type. But it would be nice if there was a Drain II. But that would make DRKs overpowered... =/

[no1_Cloud]

BioII!

[Cloud Tiamat]

Yeah but I mean something does just Dark element damage.

[Mithrael]

Drain is just dark elemental damage. It has a side effect, but it's about as powerful as the Elemental I and first few Elemental II spells. Some people still don't know that you can Magic Burst drain on dark skillchains. Even more people still don't know that Drain does damage even if you are at full HP already. The log message says you drained for 0, but you'll still be doing the damage. I wish they'd change that.

I agree though, Drain II would really be a nice upgrade. From all reports i've read, drain maxes out at about 200 dmg/hp absorbed. By the time you get to lv.75 and have people with Thunder V, Drain just isn't as powerful. As far as making DRK overpowered, I doubt it. The casting time would be longer, and the cooldown longer too, since that's the trend with all other numbered spells. Maybe 10 seconds to cast and 2 minute cooldown. Also, since Drain is uneffective against undead, it limits the ipact of giving the spell to DRKs.

[Taga]

for reference, drain is capped at 240 HP for me (63 blm)

[evilution]

drains cap is equal to your darkness skill

more or less.

so at 75 with items it would be near 300.

[Mithrael]

Nah, I regularly drain for over 170, and my dark magic skill is only 153.

[evilution]

its called dark day

[Mithrael]

No, it's called firesday, earthsday, watersday, etc. I regularly drain for 170+, with my best being 179. Darksday generally gives you an extra 10% when the effect kicks in, 10% of 153 is 15, which would make the drain 168, not 179. Darksday helps, but your drain is not capped to your dark magic skill.

[AtraposBLM]

I find that I can never tell what my max drain is because my whm's always cure me before drain finishes...so I just get that stupid Drain 0 message. I wish SE would have it say something like
Atrapos casts Drain.
Atrapos drains 0 hp.
<MobName> Takes 180 damage.

Would make it so much easier to tell how valuable/useless drain is to cast when you're sitting at full hp.

[Mithrael]

Agreed! I've had a lot of mis-informed melees angrily ask me why i'm wasting time/mp draining when i'ts doing 0 damage >.< Guess they don't watch the HP guage of the mob to see it dip when i cast. It's the most powerful spell i have, and usually does more damage than a normal swing at lv.50, so if the mob is almost dead and i have just swung, i'll drain to try and finish it off.

It's very Mana-efficient too, Water II costs me over 2ce as much, and without subbing BLM, it only does ~120.

[AtraposBLM]

yeah, drain is pretty much a staple for Dark's. Their 3 best spells are Drain, Stun, and Aspir (mob dependant). The absorbs are also nice, but I've had so few drk's ACTUALLY use them that I can't really tell how effective they are. My friend uses them a lot though, and from what I can tell, they're fairly powerful spells if they get through the mob's resistances.


Final note - off topic, yes, but could EVERYONE please wait to cast any spells until I cast burn/shock? I do it right at the begining of the battle, and it seriously helps your chances to avoid resistances, so it cuts back on the amount of recasts you need, saving everyone MP in the long run. Nobody will wait though >_<;;

[Mithrael]

The absorb spells are amazing. i agree, they are underused though. i think there are two reasons for that. one, they have a very long cast time (2 scythe swings). two, they take a significant portion of a drk's mp pool. 33mp is 20% of a lv.50 drk's mp pool.

Regarding burn/shock I've yet to see anyone reliably say what stat affects dark magic resistance. I've tried a ton of tests, absorb-mnd, absorb-int, both, and have yet to see any combination of the two have a dramatic effect on how much i drain/aspir. To make things even more confusing, I pretty regularly drain and aspir for more than the two Taru BLM/WHM I party with, both of which have astronomical INT and MND roughly 2ce as high as mine :/ It makes no sense at all. We all cap our dark skill every level too. I'd love to know what contributes to the success of dark spells. Even though i'm not resisted often, I'd like to reduce the chance of resist even more.

Maybe I should find a taru drk on our server and see which of us averages more on the drain/aspir. Maybe it's just job related.

[AtraposBLM]

a taru drk I partied with regularly drained for like 200-250, but again, I could only tell the few times that she pulled aggro, which was even less than I did...which was like 3-4 times in 4-5 hours.

[Erasmus]

drain and aspir are somewhat random within limits set by your skill and int. Go aspir the crabs in Sarutabaruta or drain on too weak monsters that can actually hurt you ( like skinks). All elemental spells hit for max consistently on them... not much variation. But Aspir and drain vary greatly.