For 2nd job, is it advisable to not add polearm booster and mastery as my intention is to be purely on spear and adding the remaining sp into improved hp recovery, endure and iron body? As for 3rd job, should i add other skills instead of polearm skills like maxing dragon blood , sacrifice or power crash? Advice please?
Improved HP Recovery and Endure are both useless skills. Iron Body is also kind of useless, but at least better than Iron Will, in my opinion (40 W. Def > 20 W. Def + 20 M. Def). So maxing Polearm Mastery and Booster doesn't hurt at all. I would even recommend a full hybrid build, but that's up to you. In 3rd job, don't touch Dragon Blood. It's a completely useless skill in my opinion (just buy warrior elixir!) but it looks cool. Sacrifice is also useless as an attack skill for Spear DKs. You even want to keep it at low level, cuz the larger chunk of HP it drains is helpful once you reach 4th job. Max Power Crash, it is almost a requirement in HT since it effectively increases the DPS of whole party by removing bosses' defense buffs. Polearm Fury would be the most efficient skill to use for grinding from Lv. 70 to 100+ or so, but if you don't wanna go for the hybrid build, you just max the spear skills first and then dump into some polearm skill once you're done.
Max both polearm & spear booster & masteries, dont put a single point into either final attacks, lvl 11 iron will max POLEARM fury, SPEAR crusher, 3 dragon blood, max power crash, 3 sacrifice, max dragon roar, max element resist and you have 15 points left over. I recommend you put into spear fury as a quick finisher for low hp mobs cause crusher animation is a lot slower.
For 2nd job, anything other than hybrid (maxed spear/PA mastery/booster) is terrible, since DEF/recovery buffs are completely useless and a waste of SP. For 3rd job you'll probably want to start out with at least 6 points into pole arm fury in order to have improved mobbing over slash blast, at least until crusher is maxed out. Just remember to keep crusher at 15 points and save the rest of the SP until you can have 26 points into it, since at 16 points it drops back down to hitting 1 mob again and only goes back to hitting 3 mobs at 26 points. Keep sacrifice at 3 since it's only useful for lowering your HP to the berserk threshold. Max dragon roar, as it's also useful for quick HP drains as well as farming low level mob drops, such as Nependeath's Honey for the HP quests. I've always found maxed spear fury to be very useful, even if you have to spare a few points of power crash or PA fury. For mobs that can't be OHKO'd crusher + fury combos are much faster than crusher + crusher, and PA fury is only really ideal for early 3rd job training and groupings of 6 mobs. SF also has its applications for clearing bombs or mob spawns at bosses, and one thing I regretted the first time around in GMS was that I didn't have it maxed. This time around (in Royals) I built on the 20,000+ hours of experience of playing a dragon/dark knight in GMS, maxed SF, and have no regrets. Power crash is useful for removing horntail's def buff, so depending on whether or not you feel the need to have it at 100% success rate, or if you don't mind having to cast it multiple times on occasion in the event it misses due to having it unmaxed is your call. It's really your call between power crash, spear fury, and PA fury, and you can always SP reset a few points to max one or the other later on if you have any particular preference. Since there's a plethora of options from bigfoot to zak and HT, as well as krexel in this server, bossing is the fastest way to gain exp in later levels, with occasional grinding at crimson guardians, oblivion 4, or skeles where spear crusher is faster exp per hour than pole arm fury. Dragon blood gives +12 att, and can kill you when bosses do 1/1. It looks very primal and cool, but keep in mind that red pots (warrior elixirs) also give +12 att, and in 4th job you get a buff that gives +15 att, and neither of those can get you killed. There's an old joke that the only reason anyone should ever max dragon blood is if their goal in MapleStory is to attract a mate and/or get laid.
Runs to Henesys. Buys 100 Red Potions. Drinks... Where's my 12 att? Sorry, I had to... Jokes aside though, your post was great and I doubt there is much more @WeiAi can learn about this particular question.
But why Polearm Fury and Spear Crusher? doesnt make any sense! When I get lv 150, I will try to use my strongest weapon, so a Spear (as I read, sky ski is the best weapon for DK), so I should max both SPEAR fury and SPEAR crusher. someone can explain, in depth, that distribution at 3rd job? because it doesnt make any sense!
Polearms are stronger when striking and spears are stronger when stab. Fury is always a strike and Crusher is always a stab.
Theres two animations when you attack- Stab or Swing. When wielding a spear, Stab does ~30% more damage than a swing, always. When wielding a a polearm, swing does ~30% more damage than a stab, always. Spear/polearm crusher always does a stab animation. Spear/polearm fury always does a swing animation. Therefore, polearm crusher, despite them both saying they do 170% damage 3 times, it always does ~30% less damage than spear crusher. Spear fury is the same, but opposite. I still put the last 15 points into spear fury to finish off 1hp mobs and to kill low level mobs for questing, pq, boss summons purposes because the animation is faster than crusher.
I would personally suggest going for only-spear build. On my way to lvl 200 as drk, I have raised polearm skills for the purpose of going hybrid but it ended up to be completely useless after 4th job because one simply doesn't invest in 2 different end game weapons on the same character. A drk ends up only using spear crusher in almost every situation and there is literally no time to swap the weapons during grinding or bossing. Polearm may be better than spear between 3rd and 4th job grinding but that's pretty much the end limit of this theoretical benefit. I guarantee you that you won't ever use polearm skills again after acquiring a main spear weapon. If you are a casual player who likes slow, chilled pace low level grinding, going hybrid may benefit you but if your objective is to enjoy the end game content such as bossing, I wouldn't recommend it much.
