A Filthy Casual's questions about SS melds on DRK and other tanks

I understand that my stat weights as a DRK is-
VIT > STR > CRIT > DET > SS

and that these weights as pretty standard with the other tanks.

I'm personally a ilvl 228 DRK Tank (ilvl 226 PLD/WAR). all 3 tanks at 60.
230 anima weapon on Drk; 210 Eso weapons on PLD/WAR
Full 230 lore left side
230 full lore acc.-
HQ 220 crafted fending rings.
230 SLAYING earring (i valued the crit and acc. over the parry and 4AP)

if you guys dont want to care about specific numbers i'll give rough estimates of relevant stats;

DRK: ~1k AP, 850 crit, 500 DET, 400 SS
PLD: ~950-1k AP, 750 Crit, 500 DET, 450 SS
WAR: ~950-1k AP, 850 crit, 400 DET, 400 SS

All that out of the way- I'm not a raider, and I have personal reasoning as to why I have no interest in starting unless things are dealt with. the reason I state this is because I'm wondering about the state of SS

Does it matter to me as a DRK? does it matter as the other tanks?
If so, how should I meld it? whats my target number? (I.E 600 something for DRG)

I havent overmelded my 220 rings yet- is it even worth melding SS because it's shared gear with the other tanks? should I just slap even more DET all over them?
What SS do i want on PLD and WAR?

Left side is already melded grade 4 Crit/DET- should i swap any of those out for SS? does SS matter for anything outside of A8S?
Should I even care about my SS as a filthy casual?

I mean, the hard-and-fast rule is just maximize VIT and STR then worry about CRT and DET and leave SKS wherever it falls after that. It doesn't matter how high or low it is - you'll still hit 4 combos between every Scourge. Too-low might cause issues with that, but I've never tested it.

The layout of Materia isn't super complicated. When melding, follow this hierarchy:

Crit V
Det V
Crit IV
Sks V
Sks IV
Crit III
Det IV
Sks III
Det III

That's the order of stat:AP values, according to stat weights calculated by Dervy.

Pld wants 0 SKS.

Warrior wants enough for you to use 9 global cool downs during berserk. 595?+

Dark wants whatever it gets, it'll make do.

Crit and det are better for drk even before you consider that as a non-raider, if a large chunk of what you're doing is dungeon runs, sks won't help your spells at all.

And the fact that if you don't raid it's all easy junk anyway so why bother min-maxing that hard?

My 5.7k DASE crit on sephi seems to show loads of crit is nice and I'm only i224

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sarynth

My 5.7k DASE crit on sephi seems to show loads of crit is nice and I'm only i224

---

Gonna need some proof of that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

Gonna need some proof of that.

---

Why? It's 400 potency, a crit would be around there pretty easily.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

Gonna need some proof of that.

---

I'm pretty sure I've seen one of my DASE crits go that high as well. Since it's getting the DA boost, you can assume that it's under Darkside, so that's an extra 15% to the potency.

It could also be under the effects of Balance, or on a target with a vulnerability/resistance debuff. There's a lot of ways to get some crazy hits out there.

Because claiming "i can get THIS MASSIVE CRIT AT ONLY 224" without perspective or clarification is not helpful. I've seen crits myself that high, but that's at higher gear levels, hence the proof question.

I believe I once read you shouldn't care much for SS as DRK, because the more you have the less effective it becomes due to the way blood weapon works.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hierro

I believe I once read you shouldn't care much for SS as DRK, because the more you have the less effective it becomes due to the way blood weapon works.

---

The more sks you have the better blood weapon becomes. Who told you otherwise?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

The more sks you have the better blood weapon becomes. Who told you otherwise?

---

agree with you good sir the more Sks you have the better your burst your that 15 secs its a huge dps increase as a ot and it lowers each weapon skill tp cost by 20% per skill

Blood weapons increase your attk speed and lower your tp cost by 20% per weaponskill the more Sks you have the more gcds you can fit in the blood weapon. So in 15 secs u have a huge gain but in those 25 secs you proably lose that dmg but the cd is 40 secs but to much sks is a lost dmg/tp or was it tp/dmg

I remember reading about this in Syzygain's "Dark Knight:Tanking on The Edge" guide here on the forums.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Syzygian

Dat 727 SkS tho. Yes, that's a no-no. Get that knocked down below about 687 I believe? And you should be good. If my math is right you're rocking a 2.36 GCD now out of BW, or close to it, which is detrimental. I think the biggest reason I didn't ever have this issue is I was using Nothung up until almost a week ago when I finally got my Edge of the Sephirot. Nothung is Crit/Det instead of Crit/metric-fuckton of SkS like the upgraded Deathbringer. Also the two remaining 210 accessories I have are Gordian instead of Eso, and the Gordian Fending gear tends to have less SkS iirc. I'd have to check in-game tonight.

---

Not that i'm saying that is gospel, just thought id add it to the discussion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sarynth

My 5.7k DASE crit on sephi seems to show loads of crit is nice and I\\'m only i224

---

I don't have a screenshot for you unfortunately but I think part of that one was it lined up with the ninjas debuff. What I find weird though is I haven't seen. Carve and spit hit as hard. 744 crit no food if that helps.

You need a ton of skillspeed to get significant returns on BW. Like, even getting one extra GCD under BW....Would take a shitload of skillspeed.

It's 684 SkS to get 7 GCDs under BW, and any more than that isn't really worth it. I doubt we can even get enough SkS with current gear levels to get an 8th GCD. According to Dervy's weights it's 1 SKS = 0.00016949152 off the GCD, so 1489 SkS for 8 GCDs. Good luck!

This also isn't taking into account that it would be a huge detriment while in grit since you gain no extra benefit and will just run out of TP very fast.

Edit: Whoops apparently the values were wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Praesul

You need a ton of skillspeed to get significant returns on BW. Like, even getting one extra GCD under BW....Would take a shitload of skillspeed.

It's 708 SkS to get 7 GCDs under BW, and any more than that isn't really worth it. I doubt we can even get enough SkS with current gear levels to get an 8th GCD. According to Dervy's weights it's 1 SKS = 0.00016949152 off the GCD, so 2,500 SkS for 8 GCDs. Good luck!

This also isn't taking into account that it would be a huge detriment while in grit since you gain no extra benefit and will just run out of TP very fast.

---

Yeah.... but if that was the amount of GCD reduction per point of SkS most players would have a GCD of 2.48-49, as a reduction of 0.3 seconds will take 1770ish SkS.

And it's only a huge detriment in Grit if you stay in grit all the time. And don't use your mana costing enmity spells.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

Yeah.... but if that was the amount of GCD reduction per point of SkS most players would have a GCD of 2.48-49, as a reduction of 0.3 seconds will take 1770ish SkS.

And it's only a huge detriment in Grit if you stay in grit all the time. And don't use your mana costing enmity spells.

---

That is right. Since BW already lowers your GCD by 10% (2.25) you need 684 to reach a 2.14 GCD for 7 attacks under BW. To reach an 8th attack would require a GCD of 1.87 or 1489 SPD

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

That is right. Since BW already lowers your GCD by 10% (2.25) you need 684 to reach a 2.14 GCD for 7 attacks under BW. To reach an 8th attack would require a GCD of 1.87 or 1489 SPD

---

The point was the valued cited was incorrect, as you can readily test the effects of sks on gcd and it scales better than cited.

Not that stacking sks for an 8th blood weapon gcd is good idea. We can all agree it's not.

Syz here. SS stacking for increased BW returns is a bad idea because the smaller your GCD, the less of an increase activating BW is over your normal, non-BW baseline. If you have a 2.45 GCD, BW shaves off 0.245 seconds, with the result rounded up to the nearest hundredth. If you have a 2.35 GCD, it only reduces it by 0.235 seconds. The more SS you stack the worse of a cooldown it becomes and the harder it is to see meaningful returns since you reach a point of severe diminishing returns after only a couple hundred points of SS over the 354 baseline. Not to mention the crit and det (which are inarguably better for your DPS) that you are sacrificing.

BW is not FoF, it is not Berserk. Getting an extra hit in just gives you an 238 extra MP, it does not make a difference of hundreds or thousands of points of damage like other offensive CDs that actually boost your attack power or damage dealt. In no way is it optimal to load up on SS for a DRK. The only reason you would want to is to ensure that Scourge never drops while out of Grit and using BW. You can hit this mark around 687 as I was quoted saying earlier. Its still not optimal though.

Also, the numbers in this thread are wrong. An 8 GCD BW is attainable at roughly ~750(ish) SS. A 7 GCD BW is attainable with *zero* skillspeed. Observe me doing this with my low SS i233 gear set, followed by me stripping off all my clothes with SS on them and then hitting 7 GCDs with 354 SS: https://www.twitch.tv/syzygianrrf9999/v/69645223

I missed you, Syz. You beat me to the punch. <3

I was going to point out (as I did in another thread) that 7 GCDs is the baseline. You don't even need to finagle it to get all 7. It's just the natural state of the cooldown.

The mistake people are making in these calculations is that, when you divide 15 by 2.25 (the default amount) and get 6.67 GCDs, they're neglecting to realize that this is 6 gaps between GCDs and not 6 GCDs. If you have 6 gaps, you have 7 GCDs, since if you hit one at the start, 6 gaps later you'll hit the seventh at the end of the sixth gap. As such, when you cross that threshold to 7 gaps, you'll hit the point where you can /barely/ hit 8 GCDs in that 15s window. You'll need more leeway than 7.009 to actually hit 8 in practice, though, which would require closer to Syz' number of 750 or so, to spread that gap from 0.02s leeway to 0.16s - a gap you can actually realistically count on hitting, if you handle it properly.

"Inarguably".

Given that Drk is the only class in FFXIV whose resource regeneration is TIED to their ability to output gcds, there will always be the argument about skillspeed break points and optional dps.

I.e., is the difference between 7gcd and 8gcds worth the det/crit loss (if you sacrifice both), for the extra gcd which could provide more potency over time than the equivalent amount of det?

Will the sks when not affected by blood weapon have a net positive effect again, over equivalent det?

These are the questions you must answer and prove before it becomes inarguable.

Also arguing that 'it decreases the return" isn't exactly a great argument. If decreasing your gcd by 0.1 results in blood weapon only decreasing by 0.2449 as opposed to 0.245, the net increase is still a positive total gain.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

"Inarguably".

Given that Drk is the only class in FFXIV whose resource regeneration is TIED to their ability to output gcds, there will always be the argument about skillspeed break points and optional dps.

I.e., is the difference between 7gcd and 8gcds worth the det/crit loss (if you sacrifice both), for the extra gcd which could provide more potency over time than the equivalent amount of det?

Will the sks when not affected by blood weapon have a net positive effect again, over equivalent det?

These are the questions you must answer and prove before it becomes inarguable.

---

Monk, Dragoon, Ninja, Black Mage, and Warrior all follow that same mold where SKS/SPS directly correlates with resource management. Three of these classes have SKS break points where they get massive boosts upon hitting a certain threshold. Only two of them actually values SKS beyond the first of said break points - one of them favors it above all else due to the fact that their resource is limitless - the other two want it as low as absolutely possible. DRK falls in the MNK/NIN camp.

See, here's the thing. I just worked out this long bit of math that basically shows that the difference of SKS from 497 to 750 will amount to ~25 v 26 GCDs in ~62.5s without BW and 28 v 29 GCDs with BW in ~58.1s. BW itself lessens the impact of SKS on your offensive output. The amount of GCDs you hit for this (coupled with all of the oGCD attacks you're using in-between) makes it incredibly stupidly unlikely for that +1 GCD to outweigh the impact on your stats that the equivalent amount of Crit/Det would have brought you.

Long math please.

Though dark knight does not use the same model as monk or ninja (never seen these models. I don't think they exist. You are free to prove me wrong).

They use a different model because no of SS correlates to no of DA which correlates to no of DASE which is linked to their dps.

But before we go on, let me make some points clear.

- If you assume that the only impact is on gcds usage, you're missing out on some of the important parts: mp regen, scourge clipping and ability to animation cancel.

-you assume the loss of crit/det is catastrophic,but have you played with current gear to see what exactly is lost?

With current gear,reaching 750 sks isn't exactly hard. In the next tier it'll be even less.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

Long math please.

Though dark knight does not use the same model as monk or ninja (never seen these models. I don't think they exist. You are free to prove me wrong).

They use a different model because no of SS correlates to no of DA which correlates to no of DASE which is linked to their dps.

But before we go on, let me make some points clear.

- If you assume that the only impact is on gcds usage, you're missing out on some of the important parts: mp regen, scourge clipping and ability to animation cancel.

-you assume the loss of crit/det is catastrophic,but have you played with current gear to see what exactly is lost?

With current gear,reaching 750 sks isn't exactly hard. In the next tier it'll be even less.

---

You could correlate these numbers to literally any job in the game that has a big hitting GCD that they will get to faster with more SS. It still doesn't change that a single crit for instance will pull ahead of the accumulated gains from hitting your GCDs fractions of seconds faster by thousands of points of damage. I'm no Dervy, but until someone comes along and mathematically proves him wrong, I'm going with his numbers, and his numbers put SS at the bottom of the barrel for DRK as far as DPS secondaries go.

I guess I'm just not sure what you're arguing. It sounds like you're trying to posit that SS is better for DRK than Crit or Det up to a certain threshold like it is with other jobs, when every ounce of research that we have on the topic suggests that this just isn't the case. If you have some math to discredit the data that is already out there on the internet, I would be thrilled to see it, but if you don't you're just muddying fact and misplacing the burden of proof.

STR: 1.000
VIT: 1.000
WD: 22.010
DET: 0.309
CRT: 0.368
SS: 0.259

Source: https://dervyxiv.wordpress.com/stat-weights/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

Long math please.

Though dark knight does not use the same model as monk or ninja (never seen these models. I don't think they exist. You are free to prove me wrong).

They use a different model because no of SS correlates to no of DA which correlates to no of DASE which is linked to their dps.

But before we go on, let me make some points clear.

- If you assume that the only impact is on gcds usage, you're missing out on some of the important parts: mp regen, scourge clipping and ability to animation cancel.

-you assume the loss of crit/det is catastrophic,but have you played with current gear to see what exactly is lost?

With current gear,reaching 750 sks isn't exactly hard. In the next tier it'll be even less.

---

Mmh.

So let's look at Syz's stats:
http://puu.sh/pb6g6/29e7e97909.jpg
ACC 701
CRIT 740
DET 634
SKS 497
GCD 2.44

If we assume that we need to bump SKS to 750 to get that 8th GCD, that's a net difference of 253. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we can just transfer 253 DET to SKS:

ACC 701
CRIT 740
DET 381
SKS 750
GCD 2.35

With this change in GCD, it will take approximately one minute (62.5s = ~25 v 26 GCDs) for you to gain +1 GCD over the previous set. So, it comes down to whether or not 253 DET would give enough of a gain for 25 GCDs to give you the equivalent of +1 GCD's worth of damage. For that to be the case, we'd need 253 DET to give each of those 25 GCDs a 4% boost (since 25x4% = 100%). This would mean each single point of Determination would need to boost the damage of any given GCD by 0.015%, at least, to account for this difference.

However, if we then as well add Blood Weapon into these calculations, we have patches of 15s with 90% of our GCD and 30s with 100% of our GCD. It becomes a bit trickier to calculate, for sure, but we can estimate it by just looking at a 45s chunk. We assume that the latter gets 8 GCDs at 2.12 (16.96) while the former gets 7 GCDs at 2.20 (15.4). It's a bit tricky. In the remaining time, the 2.35 GCD player will get 14 more GCDs, ending at 47.51. 2.44 player will get exactly the same amount of additional GCDs, ending at 47.12.

Therefore, we can see that the 2.35s GCD will gain an entire GCD on the 2.44s GCD player over the course of 47-ish seconds. When 2.44 is hitting their 21st GCD, the 2.35 is hitting their 22nd 0.4s later. If we extend this, we'll see that (re-applying Blood Weapon), the 2.35 GCD player will eclipse the 2.44 GCD player at GCD number 27. When 2.35 hits their 27th (58.11), the 2.44 GCD player hits their 26th (58.12). They both started at 0, with BW starting immediately, so this can be considered to be a standing pattern going forward... more than likely.

It falls in line with the non-BW approach, with one VERY SIGNIFICANT caveat. In the case without BW, the time it takes for lower SKS to beat out higher SKS is shorter than that when BW is included - as such, it's pretty damning evidence that supports the fact that SKS and BW do not play well together. More SKS makes BW less effective. BW's existence makes SKS less effective.

Not saying it does - just saying that the correlation between SKS and DPS is most similar when comparing DRK to MNK/NIN than when comparing it to other Jobs. The breakpoint for BW is not significant. Higher SKS makes BW less effective. BW itself makes SKS less effective. It DOES change other things, such as access to Syphon Strike and all that sort of jazz.

I haven't bothered touching on Scourge clipping, because I don't believe the DPS lost from clipping Scourge will be important to discuss when looking at the overall difference in DPS from SKS to non-SKS builds. There is a model out there for Dark Knight, and Dervy has calculated weights for the class, which drop SKS to a significant bottom rung (.139 det v .117 sks with AP = 1), but I won't use someone else's numbers to explain myself. I'll go ahead and humor you on the value of SKS in relation to Mana gains. Since I've shown above that BW makes the impact of SKS LESS effective, I can use the baseline case of 2.44 (A) v 2.35 (B) having a 25:26 GCD relationship. For every 25 GCDs done by A, B will perform 26.

Let's first consider BW before considering Syphon Strike.

Every cast of BW, we can assume that B will get precisely +253 Mana that A would not have gotten (since SKS does not impact AA's or cooldown resets). Translating that into DA is ~7 shots of 253 for +1 cast of DA - thus you need to use 7 Blood Weapons to gain +1 Dark Arts. The seventh Blood Weapon (used on cooldown) will finish 4:45 after the encounter starts, assuming you CAN use every single one as it comes up AND you get 8 GCDs out of each one, while A gets 7. So BW gives +1 DA+SE with higher SKS 4:45 into the encounter, at best. It would then take over 9 minutes (9:30 or so) to get +2.

Now, we'll consider the non-BW SKS relationship and treat these independently and then sum up our additional Dark Arts Souleater casts. This will be an overestimation of the actual additional amounts of DA we will get, because the number here will be higher than it is in actuality due to the way in which BW and SKS interact.

A full rotation for Dark Knight is 13 GCDs long. After one cycle of B gaining +1 GCD, we have:
A - 25 : just hit Syphon Strike
B - 26 : just hit Souleater/Delirium

After a second run of this, we have:
A - 50 : just hit Hard Slash = 50 x 2.44 = 122s = 2:03
B - 52 : just hit Souleater/Delirium

So, every 2 minutes, you will gain +1 Syphon Strike over your lesser-sks friend. Every 4 minutes, then, you'll gain +1 Dark Arts cast. This is an overestimation of how many you'll gain, because you need to hit 125 v 130 GCDs before you see +2 Syphon Strikes, which would be ~5 minutes, not 4.

I mean - truth be told - I don't know that I need to further explain to you how it is that Skill Speed, given these results, is just not very effective compared to the Det and Crit you'll sacrifice to bump it so high. Sure, you're hitting a breakpoint that allows +1 hit under Blood Weapon, but all that does is shorten an extra GCD. It's important to note the gain in time of the two casts of BW:
A: 0.244 x 7 = 1.708
B: 0.235 x 8 = 1.880
Net savings of 0.172s each cast of BW compared between B and A - which is honestly not a very large number. Yeah, it compounds on the gain of +0.09s per GCD, but it's really not significant enough to write home about - it's not significant enough to sacrifice over 200 points combined between Critical Hit and Determination for a gain that is small enough to be realistically debated.


But, to each their own. If you think Skill Speed is really as useful as you say it is, more power to you - run the 750 and show everyone up with your superior DPS. I don't personally believe it's worthwhile for a Dark Knight to stack it. That doesn't mean I think it's worthless - I just value Determination and Critical Hit Rate far more than it, and don't believe the Skill Speed breakpoint is anything special.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JackFross

snip

---

What he said. Math is hard. <3

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I would be thrilled to see it, but if you don't you're just muddying fact and misplacing the burden of proof.

STR: 1.000
VIT: 1.000
WD: 22.010
DET: 0.309
CRT: 0.368
SS: 0.259

---

Burden of proof lies on claimant, not the questioner. You claimed an "inarguable fact", and I questioned this status. You cannot claim a fact without proving so, and your only proof is someone else's value. No mathematical considerations of other possible effects.

i.e. You claim God exists. It is not my job to prove God does not exist, it is your to prove He does. That is how the scientific burden of proof functions. If I claimed "SkS is the best stat for dark knight", it would be my job to do so. But I am not claiming this. Mathematical modelling shows that for reachable values of Crit/SkS, Crit does outscale SkS. But Det/SkS is a closer race, and it's the relationship I test against when I'm testing things such as animation cancelling and breakpoints.

What I'm putting forward is that Dervy (who had to rely on someone else's Dark Knight rotation at a time when the rotation itself was not well understood) did not fully understand all the gain/losses of MP that happen during a dark knight's rotation and as such all the possibilities were not considered, given that Dark has the key difference from every other class, i.e. that dark knight requires MP as well as TP to function. Nor would he have done much on animation cancelling, which AFAIK very little work outside my own has been done on.

So I'm not saying "SKS IS BEST STAT" nor that "YOU ARE ALL WRONG". All I'm saying is "you can't say that without proof, have you considered x/y/z", none of which has been considered theoretically or practically before (it's on my personal to do list).

Not to mention Dervy doesn't give us a stat weight for Parry, despite it existing. (We're talking less than 0.0001, but it does exist.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

Not to mention Dervy doesn't give us a stat weight for Parry, despite it existing. (We're talking less than 0.0001, but it does exist.)

---

Coughs and points to the post below the one you quoted. Burden of proof absolutely falls on both sides of this argument, though, not just one. You claimed that the additional benefits of SKS (which Dervy accounted for since he's not negligent when it comes to numbers - he is dragging his feet in BLM and MCH and healer weights because of variables he is still trying to iron out) would potentially beat out the loss of an equivalent amount of Crit and Det - this implies that SKS would potentially be optimal to raise to 750 to reach the break point. This runs counter to popular belief, so it falls on you to prove how this is the case just as much as it falls on us to prove it is not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Violette

snip

---

The crux of the matter here is that you are stating that there are unknowns (sure, there are) and that based off those unknowns SS may or might be better. And sure, it might be. But we don't know. And when supplying someone like the OP of this post with accurate information I'm going to go with what IS known and say Crit/Det till you're blue in the face, and THEN SS. Because that's what we know to be true currently. And that is Crit>Det>SS. Any caveats only serve to misinform when they are about unknowns.

The Earth revolves around the Sun. That's what we currently know to be true. Modern science doesn't know EVERYTHING though. We may learn that this is all an elaborate virtual reality simulation and that the Earth actually revolves around Uranus. Until then, I'm going to tell anyone who asks, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, just like I'm going to tell any DRK that asks that Crit and Det are better than SS, lest we get more threads on the tank forums further confusing the meta about an already really poorly understood (and played, by many) job.

And when have we ever disagreed on advice to give to newbies outside of the DAPS part (which i admitted i was wrong about).


You can keep tell every beginner drk that crit/det is the best way to meld and i will agree with you every time.
It's more that until we understand how sks fully affects drks dps output I'm remaining credulous of all claims. I'm credulous of 8gcd sks being useful, as it might force scourge clipping at 6 or 3 seconds. It's all about critical thought and applying that ti better understanding. I do not go out of my way to disagree with you for my own kicks.

@jack: a quick excel simulation mostly agrees with you but I'll get back to you when it makes more sense. I'll get back to you with a proper model when I'm not in another state at a work conference.


I hope neither of you think I'm being antagonistic, it's all about critical thought and sounding the occasional stupid idea to test it out and check the results. Most of the time it'll be nothing, but somethings can be surprising. I'm quite fond of these mental workouts, it's nice to debate with other people as passionate about it as i am.

Oh, on that note - I actually went and dicked around with Scourge x 757 SKS yesterday. Scourge was getting clipped at 1-2s remaining. This is unsurprising, since if you compare a 2.35 gcd to a 2.44 gcd (as Syz runs) you're looking at a difference of ~1.24s over the course of 12 GCDs, so Scourge clipping will most definitely not be an issue when altering SKS to reach this 8-gcd break point. That said, no. I don't think you're being antagonistic, I just think it's a bit silly to place the burden of proof on us when your claim was the one that runs counter to common thought.

And - I don't pretend to have Dervy's math in my head, but I would be shocked if he released stat weights for Dark Knight, including Skill Speed, if he had not accounted for the way SKS interacts with Scourge, Blood Weapon, and Syphon Strike hits. As I've shown, it's just very very unlikely that increasing Skill Speed matters enough to outweigh an equivalent investment into Determination and Critical Hit Rate. If you can prove that wrong, by all means go ahead. Until I see some evidence supporting the opposite of my hypothesis gleaned from Dervy's and my own math, I'll continue to believe it's just not worth the investment.