Returning to ffxi

[Trykon]

I just came back from a 3-4 year break and a lot has changed.

I'm trying to decide on a main class to focus on and Dark Knight being one of my old favorites, I thought I would hop over here and see where they have gone and how they are.

My Dark Knight is at level (56).

Couple questions:

1.) What weapon skills do I need to cap. I remember Scythe being the main one with great swords secondary if needed and no one ever really used them. Are there any others?

2.) I remember it being a little more difficult to get parties at times with Drk. Has this changed at all? Someone in the linkshell I was in said that he had a hard time finding groups to farm seals (whatever that is) with drk so he changed his main to nin and that has me spooked haha.

3.) How good are drk's at soloing now? I was hoping to get a job that is half way decent at soloing, but that is more or less just for fun.

4.) I know I definitely need /sam & /nin as subjobs is there any others I need or will be expected to sub at times?

Thanks for the answers/advice in advance.

[Cabalabob]

It's all great sword now unless you have apoc, since great sword got resolution scythe doesn't get anything better than entropy for mp utility.

Anyone can get a party these days just walk into abyssea and shout any vacancies? at a camp or do grounds of valor parties until you're a high enough level to go there.

Not the best soloer of them all but as with most jobs if you gear it right it can do ok

/war /dnc /mnk are always nice to have for stuff

[Trykon]

Really, the Dark Knight fighting with a scythe was one of my favorite things about them.

[Zeroe]

Really, the Dark Knight fighting with a scythe was one of my favorite things about them.

Twas mine to, until SE came along and gave every WS on scythe post 75 garbage damage. Even entropy is a joke compared to resolution.

[Fredjan]

It's all about GS now, yeah. Unless you want to shoot for Apocalypse later down the road, which is still an extremely solid weapon and you can be more than capable of producing good Entropy damage (even though Resolution will still win, at least in my experience...not to mention the stat modifier is all in Resolution's favor), I wouldn't worry about scythe too much as it's going to be weaker overall damage. I would still carry both, though. You're going to need both, but from a pure damage standpoint, GS wins most of the time. I have both Entropy and Resolution 5/5.

Entropy is 4 hits, INT mod. Had to have a mod that pulls the WS back for balance (you won't have a problem getting MP back with this, seriously), I guess. It's still the best damaging WS Scythe has, at least from my experience.

Resolution is 5 hits, STR mod. Not only is it more hits, it has a "Gotta love it" stat modifier, so you won't have to worry about managing fSTR with this. Like I said, the stat mod is in Resolution's favor by far. Hate WS's that aren't STR based lol.

[Shadowsong]

1) Covered by other posted
2) All jobs have equal party invite potential, as EXP has changed pretty drastically. Can go into it further if you want, theres lots of info on how exping is done nowadays. Short Story: You will be done completely with ExPing in days so its not really ever a consideration.
3) In Abyssea, most jobs solo equally well. DRK is not one of those jobs tho, it jas very little solo potential compared to, like, ANY other DD.
4) /nin is unnecessary. /war 90% of the time, /sam is situational (proccing, voidwatch, ext). /dnc is useful for all melees, as well.
4)

[Drybones]

GS seems to be a fravorit among people but to be honest its all about preference i mean i prefer using scythe but im not saying i dont like using gs so id say have them both lvld, also /sam /nin / dnc /whm are good sub jobs also.
Drk is squish when soloing but is a beast during cb's

[Zarchery]

I can't speak to Dark Knight specifically, but XP invites won't be a problem. All the XP today is either Abyssea (at 75+) or Grounds of Valor. With Grounds of Valor, you sign up for a training regimen that tells you to kill a certain number and type of monsters. One of the most popular ones is from Crawler's Nest: 3 Worker Crawlers and 3 Death Jackets. You kill the monsters and you usually get not all that much XP per kill. But you get a big XP bonus when you finish the training regimen. Then the cycle starts anew. You get more XP each time you complete the cycle, although it eventually reaches a cap. The boosted XP will stay until you leave the zone. Even logging out won't reset it. In Crawler's Nest, the page I cited starts around 1300 XP and caps at 2420. The only restriction is that the monsters have to give you SOME XP, so a mob that is too weak to be worthwhile won't count. For that reason, nobody above level 56 can get XP, unless they use level sync to restrict their level to something lower.

You can go to Crawler's Nest and if there's a party in there, just do a quick shout asking for an invite and you'll usually get one. You can also search the area before heading out there (recommended to save you time).

Another popular spot is Bostaneiux Oubliette, beneath Sandoria. You get 2400-4200 XP for every 9 leeches you kill. Those leeches give XP all the way up to level 99, so no worries about outlevelling them.

XP is almost always done in alliances, since more people means faster kills. The extra people only penalize your per-mob XP, which is irrelevant anyway.

You can also solo if you want. I was levelling Samurai recently. From 50 to about 63 I soloed various pages in Garlaige Citadel. Then I did 63-69 in Fei'Yin. It takes longer than grouping, but it's doable and it's probably still faster than the standard 6 man parties in the old days.

Another note about Garlaige: you can now get a key item that lets you open the banishing gates on your own. It's called a pouch of weighted stones.

[Unctgtg]

Don't forget Kuftal since crabs take forever to swing.

[MarauderEX]

First off I apologize for necro bumping a thread that is almost a year old but given the topic and my post being so similar I did not see any reason to create a new thread to post my observations/frustrations as a returning player, if this is inappropriate I apologize and can post in a more correct place.

I recently came back tot he game after almost 5 years off, and in the few months I have been back I am getting more and more frustrated and discouraged. Pretty much its anything I can do another job can do better. When I left DRK's were stunners which at the time was an integral part of battle strategy but now that seems to be the domain of SCH. Damage seems to be a MNK thing, (I wont go into the massive specifics I can since it is generally understood that MNK has so many advantages going for it at the moment). And magic we are even more laughable as our elemental is even more a joke as a BLM can spam stone I in skirmish for more than my highest tier nuke could ever do, and our dark magic spells either take forever, decay, or get highly resisted. We used to be good for zerging, but I haven't seen how a K-club/Souleater competes against 119+ content but given that I have seen that with the second SMN 1-hour and that avatars do well against most new content and all old content their spike damage during that time is immense.

So what does DRK actually bring to the table? I have been playing catch up for years of content but the problem I am running into is it seems like I am better served leveling another job to do the end game content to make my DRK somewhat competitive for that same end game content, so why bother even switching back to DRK?

[saevel]

DRK is useful for 6 man tojil, we do MNK MNK DRK BRD WHM SCH. Possibly useful on the new Yorcia fracture. Outside of that DD is all about MNK or RNG due to how hard everything hits now. SE got tired of players complaining about people just zerging everything with buffed melees so they created boss's that can hit you for 2000~4000 damage. Only two ways to survive that are to have really high HP (MNK) or in extreme case's to simply not be in range of the attack (RNG) while dumping all your hate onto a turtle PLD. This leaves every other DD out in the cold since they don't have the HP to survive the attacks nor can they effectively fight from outside the range.

[MarauderEX]

So the problem shifted from zerging to mnk/rng/pld
Not exactly a balanced fix really.

Heres hoping they fix things as drk is the only reason I started playing this game, why I came back over FFXIV or any other MMO, but as it is now its not worth paying SE a monthly fee to play a job I want to play by sitting on the sidelines.

[Damane]

First off I apologize for necro bumping a thread that is almost a year old but given the topic and my post being so similar I did not see any reason to create a new thread to post my observations/frustrations as a returning player, if this is inappropriate I apologize and can post in a more correct place.

I recently came back tot he game after almost 5 years off, and in the few months I have been back I am getting more and more frustrated and discouraged. Pretty much its anything I can do another job can do better. When I left DRK's were stunners which at the time was an integral part of battle strategy but now that seems to be the domain of SCH. Damage seems to be a MNK thing, (I wont go into the massive specifics I can since it is generally understood that MNK has so many advantages going for it at the moment). And magic we are even more laughable as our elemental is even more a joke as a BLM can spam stone I in skirmish for more than my highest tier nuke could ever do, and our dark magic spells either take forever, decay, or get highly resisted. We used to be good for zerging, but I haven't seen how a K-club/Souleater competes against 119+ content but given that I have seen that with the second SMN 1-hour and that avatars do well against most new content and all old content their spike damage during that time is immense.

So what does DRK actually bring to the table? I have been playing catch up for years of content but the problem I am running into is it seems like I am better served leveling another job to do the end game content to make my DRK somewhat competitive for that same end game content, so why bother even switching back to DRK?

well yeah, you got the point/current flaw of FFXI. DRK is there for damage and can contribute excellent dmg just as mnk, the problem is mnks survivability which puts all other DDs to shame. but DRKs main point is to deal Damage. But if you want invites for specific content you need to go with the trend jobs:

Super tier: MNK WHM BRD (all 3 wanted for all content)

High tier: COR PLD RNG (they are wanted, but not for every event)

Mid tier: WAR DRK SAM NIN DRG (when MNKs are not at hand or you need different type of dmg when blunt/formless doesnt work)

Low tier: SCH (usually anything that involves stuns or nukes, mostly stuns which is only olde delve)

even lower tier: the other DDs + BLM + RUN

shit tier: GEO (only for alliance content), RDM (if you really dont have a SCH at hands for debuffing)


^this is only a reflection of how the people see the jobs and want to go the easiest route (obviously a SCH can heal just not as good as a top tier WHM, etc etc,)