Thank you for Stardiver!

[Ophannus]

Stardiver is DRG's most powerful weapon skill now outside of Abyssea when geared properly, it has higher attack and more consistent damage than Drakesbane on most things and the additional effect of boosting everyone's critical hit rate by 5% is an added bonus. Messing around in Dynamis, it was doing consistent f 2.2-2.9k which is really good for outside of Abyssea for a non-empyrean WS and was keeping up and sometimes exceeding Victory Smite numbers. Thanks for the addition of this great WS!


It's also not so bad in Abyssea either.

[Thonuwan]

Would you mind listing some of your equipment?

[Ophannus]

Corseca+3
Rose Strap
Thew Bomblet
Twilight Helm
Shadow Gorget
Brutal Earring
Aesir Ear Pendant
Lancer's Plackart +2
Lancer Finger Gauntlets+2
Pyrosoul Ring
Rajas Ring
Atheling Mantle
Soil Belt
Lancer's Cuissots+2
Hecatomb Leggings+1(Augmented with STR+3 Polearm Skill+3)


For that screenshot I used VV/Atma of alpha&omega/Apoc for the sweet Triple Attack(was dicking around, stick with Drakesbane inside abyssea for those 6-7kDrakesbanes)

[Thonuwan]

Thank you very much.

[ShadowHeart]

thanks for the info i assume you are 5/5 on merits with it?

[Meldity]

This has been a question bugging me for awhile, but does OAT proc on a weaponskill or is that mythic only? How much of a difference if so?

[Kriegsgott]

finally a Thank you to SE nice to read !

[Ophannus]

Reiterating for importance: Stardiver has a +20% attack bonus associated with it WHEN COMPARED TO DRAKESBANE. Drakesbane has a negative attack modifier of -20% so it performs poorly outside of Abyssea on high level mobs, Stardiver does not have this penalty so it's attack is higher and more consistant. To make this WS viable you will >NEED< Elemental Gorget/Belt. These 2 items together will boost the fTP of the WS from 0.75 for all 4 hits to 0.95 for all 4 hits. Older weapon skills normally had the first hit of the WS with a differing fTP and subsequent hits had 1.0 always. This is NOT the case for Stardiver as all 4 hits have a crappy fTP of 0.75. Wearing either Soil/Shadow/Light Gorget and Soil/Shadow/Light belt together will boost it to 0.95 and make it significantly more damaging.

Regarding OAT Lance(Corsesca)

OAT does not proc on WS. But it doesn't need to. For all you DRGs out there wondering about OAT lance(Corsesca with Occasionally Attacks Twice)

-It has pretty decent base damage, the level 99 version is ~110 base damage.
-It has 507 delay, making it extremely easy to get enough store TP to gain 100% TP in 5 hits(20% TP per swing).
-The OAT rate is 45% meaning almost every other attack will be a double attack(does not stack with Double Attack gear like Jailor Weapons or Mythic Weapons, but +Double Attack% gear will inflate your overall number of OAT's per attack round, somewhere equivalent to DA/2. So at 45% OAT rate from Corsesca and +10% Double Attack from gear, you're looking at roughly a 50% overall OAT rate.
-The OAT stacks with all Jumps. This means almost every other Jump will be a double attack for high damage and more importantly, double the TP.(Assuming 20% TP per hit with a 5-hit and /SAM, you're looking at 80% TP from a single Spirit Jump and 120% TP from a single Soul Jump!!)
-The lower base damage compared to mythic/relic/empyrean isn't too relevent with Stardiver since at 5/5 Stardiver, 1 point of STR increases Base DMG by 0.83. (It's a 100% STR mod and the ratio of STR to Base DMG for the WS is 1:1 but corrected with alpha) meaning at high STR, base damage on weapon is nigh irrelevant,making Corsesca seemingly less differential than Gungnir/Rhongomiant.
-Since OAT can proc on Jumps, your Jumps will have higher accuracy when it procs because the OAT will give your Jump a 'zanshin'-like effect in that if the first hit of the OAT jump misses, the second one might still hit so your Jump Accuracy will be inflated by the OAT level.

To give you an example of how awesome Corsesca can be this is not uncommon:

Engage NM with 200% TP
Sekkanoki(Your TP:200%)
Stardiver(Your TP:123%)
Stardiver(Your TP:23%)
Soul Jump(Your TP:143%TP [120% from the Jump and 23% left from the last Stardiver])
Stardiver(Your TP:23%)
Spirit Jump(Your TP:103%)
Stardiver(Your TP:23%)

That's 4 Stardivers or 4 Drakesbanes in less than 10 seconds, assuming OAT procs on both Jumps. Although our WS damage was never higher than WAR/MNK/SAM, we definitely out-do them in weapon skill FREQUENCY with this weapon so although Drakesbane/Stardivers only do 1.5-2.5k roughly on NMs we can do them pretty damned often to close the gap between our frequent 1.5-2.5k ws and WAR/MNK/SAMs 3-5k less-frequent WS.


I've been on 3 servers in the past year and honestly, checking every DRG I come across(dozens, if not hundreds) I've only seen maybe 3 or 4 other DRG's besides myself with Corsesca. This weapon is GAME CHANGING for DRG, it's not simply an upgrade, it completely boosts our WS damage output by 60% or higher at the price of maybe 10-12% weaker weapon skills(if at that!). Also getting 700-800 damage Spirit Jumps/Soul Jumps almost every other time adds up nicely! The only thing annoying about the trial is Blobdingnag but at 9 he's probably killable by Kannagi NIN(tank and main DD) WHM, THF(for TH to ensure 2 items drop) and crowd control(Cleave-WAR or BLM-aga)

As long as you don't zerg it you will win. He summons 6 babies every 15-20% HP so if he summons babies and you Blade:Hi or Ukkos Fury he will summon 6 more and you will be overwhelmed cuz they're immune to sleep/bind/gravity/petrify, and they hit hard/fast and have En-enfeebles on their melee hits. A good tip i can offer is do shouts to see if anyone owns an Orange Abyssite. Many players who upgrade empyreans require Lamprey Lord or Shoggoth kills for their early stages and those NMs upgrade Colorful Abyssites to Orange Abyssite (Blobdingnag pop). I found many MNKs had Orange Abyssites from their Vere trials so I paid them 100-200k to pop their Blobdingag while my friends and I killed it.

Pro Tips:
-Try to macro as much Store TP and Double/Triple/Quadruple Attack gear into your Jumps as possible.

[Transmit]

I've really enjoyed Stardiver so far. I did several Kaggens the other night with a "work in progress" set up for the weapon and was able to average 1500~ damage very consistently, which for Kaggen isnt mind blowing... but good enough to warrant that DD spot, and I'm sure once I sort out tweaks in my gear it will be even better. And inside Abyssea (lolAbyssea) on exp mobs I was easily able to average 3-4k~ with peaks of 6k+ using VV, RR and Apoc.

Current set up

Thew Bomblet
Twilight Helm
Soil Gorget
Brutal Earring
Kemas Earring
Ares's Cuirass
Alkyoneus's Brc.
Flame Ring
Rajas Ring
Atheling Mantle
Soil Belt
Lncr. Cuissots +2
Perle Solerets


For those who don't know, Stardiver copies its ftp over all hits, instead of the usual first hit of the WS. Meaning Ele Belt / Gorget actually benefits every hit of the WS, not just the first, so you NEED these items for it! Also it's not confirmed yet, but it seems since every hit is treated as the first hit of a WS that the first hit Acc bonus is also applied to every hit.

To echo what is said above, the OAT polearm on paper is GREAT for this WS due to its absurdly high STR mod. As far as I know basically 100% of your STR is added to your base damage. Which turns a 110dmg versus 130dmg~ (roughtly 15% difference in base damage) in TP phase into a 280dmg vs 300 dmg (less than 7% difference in base damage) assuming you're WSing in around 170 STR~. Meaning on WS Stardiver see's no significant drop at all with OAT lance.

[Kykusho]

Would a Stringray with +TP bonus or 10% WS dmg be worth it? If so which one is better outside abys.