Dieter has a powerful attack boosting skill called Pyroclastic, which boosts not only your own, but also your dieter's attack power. It also changes your weapon's element to fire (And on your dieter too). Pyroclastic increases your acid bomb damage by a decent amount. It does have a penalty, though. Once the skill duration ends, your weapon will be broken (unless it's either an axe/mace or the weapon has been chemically protected by alchemical weapon/full chemical protection). The skill lasts for 180 seconds.
Hopefully if you're a genetic, it's full chemical protection, not alchemical weapon. Note that if you die while in pyro, you will lose coating before pyro is canceled, thus breaking your weapon. Kinda high stakes if you're doing something that you can't get back to easily - that's the reason I don't use it on instances unless I have two weapons with me...
Dieter's Granitic Armor reduces the damage you and Dieter take by 10%. Since it's a percentage of damage reduction, it has the potential to reduce much more than Pain Killer. Once the skill ends you and Dieter will lose HP equal to about 30% of your/dieter's Max HP, though it will not kill you if your current HP is lower than 30%. Not sure how useful this is, because of its penalty. If you can defeat the MvP before the skill ends, you'll be fine. Otherwise, you'll just have to keep a close eye on your/dieter's HP. The skill lasts for 60 seconds.
In most cases, painkiller will reduce damage more than granitic, usually much more. It's like ~800 subtraction type damage reduction, and I very rarely take hits for more than 8k damage (If you do, you're probably doing something wrong). But Painkiller SHOULD be better than granitic, because Dieter has other good skills, while Sera's all about the painkiller.
Dieter's Volcanic Ash Skill can 'neutralize' an MvP. The skill has been disabled on all naturally spawning MvP maps, because of its unintended effects on MvPs (just like Silent Breeze). Don't count too much on this skill (or Silent Breeze), since they may be fixed in the (near) future.
Ash making MVPs bug out is a bug, doing it intentionally is a bug exploit.
Ash is a very powerful skill for WoE. That Ash status is nasty. This is the correct use of the skill, not bugging MVPs so they stand politely in place while you kill them.
What about Accessory and Headgear and Midgear and Sheild?
So far i have list to try get:
Weapon: Try aiming for a +9 ~ +12 Triple Kingbird Twin Edge of Naght Sieger (Red)
Armor: You'll need several (elemental, status effect resisting) armors for the various MvPs.
Garment: +9 Immune Heroic Backpack (How do you get one?)
Shoes: Variant Shoes
The Heroic Backpack (HBP) is from events, usually cash shop boxes, but I could imagine them including it as a top prize in a Raffler event too. I think they even drop from the ridiculously overpriced fire sale box currently in the kafra shop. Expensive item, but absolutely amazing for genetic, since we have 90+ int/dex/str/vit, and all of those four bonuses are useful to us.
Like any other class, you use 30% racial reduction carded shields for whatever you're fighting, and an royal (alice) for serious MVPing. The cranial and royal should be in valk shields, everything else, you can use your judgement on. There's another thread in merchant section about genetics and shields too.
Upper headgear.... that gets complicated!
Some people will tell you to go pure offense, and there are certainly times for that. A +9 Evil Marching Hat [1] or +9 Sagitarius Crown is the best you can pull off on upper headgear (both are +5% ranged damage). The book hat (which was an event in september, and is account bound, ie, you missed it. I was on break, so I did too) is slightly better for bombing if +9 (+9% atk/matk, which is about +6% damage with acid bomb - but only around 4.5 on cart cannon).
You may need a Rideword Hat while leveling to keep your SP up, though I found that this wasn't necessary when I was leveling my male genetic, though.
For MVPing stuff that hurts (I don't bother MVPing anything that doesn't ;-) ), I use Abysmal Knight Helms, carded with -10% element damage cards, paired with mid headgear with same -10% ele damage card. But by the time you're doing MVPs that need this kinda defensive gear, you'll know what you need.
That said, all the practical hats (except AKH, which is fairly cheap, but only useful for limited situations, and also ugly as sin) cost a goddamned fortune relative to how much they help you. Get the other stuff first - you're much better off with a good weapon, a shield, and an immune hbp, and basic gear and a vanity hat, than to have a fancy hat, but lack one of the other things.
Mid headgear should be Black Devil Mask (again,
very poor cost to benefit ratio on this). Robo eyes is probably a decent budget choice, or a dark pinger card. And like I said, I have a set of -10% elemental resist carded mid headgear.
For accessories...
One of them's gonna have to have a phen card for uninterruptable cast UNLESS you use an orleans gown (But even if you do, keep a phen in your back pocket, for when you need to wear a different armor).
For the other one, an RWC Pendant (from an RWC rally box - the accessories are account bound, and boxes aren't in kafra shop anymore, but the rally boxes are still under 200m) with good spell enchants (this can cost a few thousand KP of reset ticket boxes to get) is a good choice, but may not be worth it unless you have other classes that also need it (note that since acid bomb cast time is 100% fixed, spell enchants don't make it faster, but they do make cart cannon faster.
For the accessory that's not a phen, there's a strong case for it being a Kafra Blossom Card. But god they are expensive!
I normally default phen waterdrop brooch and KBC waterdrop brooch, but this is largely because I'm mostly doing big MVPs where I really need elemental reduction
Edited by DrAzzy, 23 January 2013 - 07:58 AM.
