What materia and stats I should go for on dark knight?

I'm just really not quite sure as some things I've read are like 3 months old so I dont know if anything has changed.

i think it remains as Sks until you fit 5 gcd into bw ( probably 2.38), then dh or crit unless you are progging tea in which case tenacity. For really accurate values search Astro's Balance.

You want to have something around 1523-1550 skill speed in order to push the GCD down to 2.38 sec, this is the best timer which allows you to hit 5 x MP regenerations with blood weapon.
Everything else i would go with crit then determination.

You don't actually need that much skill speed like others are saying. Blood weapon can get 5 full hits with slower GCDs, although it takes some getting used to on pressing the button slightly later in your GCD than with other typical 10 second buffs. I've been able to get all 5 hits up to 2.42 (others can do it even slower, but I'm in the south!), though I prefer the consistency of 2.40. That said, you'll get more consistent numbers if you go with melding det and crit, but you'll be able to achieve higher numbers with crit and direct hit, though if the difference is worth it is up to you.

Make sure you have no Skill Speed whatsoever and go for full Direct Hit on melds... you get more DPS from Direct Hit(or any other stat that isn't a speed up buff) over Skill Speed on DRK because of how garbage Salted Earth is as a cooldown...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Make sure you have no Skill Speed whatsoever and go for full Direct Hit on melds... you get more DPS from Direct Hit(or any other stat that isn't a speed up buff) over Skill Speed on DRK because of how garbage Salted Earth is as a cooldown...

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This.... this is a troll, right? This has to be a troll. I refuse to believe that this isn't a troll and not, in fact, an unironic and serious statement.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

This.... this is a troll, right? This has to be a troll. I refuse to believe that this isn't a troll and not, in fact, an unironic and serious statement.

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The only reason you want to stack skill speed is if you have a DoT that is up frequently, or the DoT is really is strong enough while also being up frequently that aligns with your burst window(see GNB and PLD DoTs), or faster weaponskill recast to go with those DoTs that are up frequently while making sure everything still fits into you burst window(also see GNB and PLD DoTs).

Salted Earth is too weak and infrequent to consider skill speed AND spell speed for a faster GCD in general, stronger auto attacks, and slightly stronger Salted Earth.

Tenacity is more of a DPS gain than Skill Speed and Spell Speed COMBINED, and is supposed to be the worst stat in the game, yet it does more for DRK than skill speed and spell speed could ever do for DRK because Tenacity boosts all damage dealt... All because of DRK needing spells for AoE combos, which do WAY less damage than GNB, PLD, AND WAR AoE combos, so even more of a reason to not stack Skill Speed AND Spell Speed on DRK.

Now if Unleash and Stalwart Soul were target AoEs like Abyssal Drain, it would be pretty justifiable to make them weaker than the other tanks AoE combos(which are point blank AoEs which can be used to cheese look away mechanics), but they are point blank AoEs so therefor they need to be stronger in some capacity, like say Retores more MP and generates more Blood Gauge than the single target combo.

Basically Skill Speed and Spell Speed for DRK is a trap, and even if it wasn't it would not address the fact DRK only has one single target combo...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

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This.... this is wrong. This is so utterly wrong on so many different levels. You have the job name in your forum username, yet have a flawed understanding of not only how the job itself works, but how basic stats in the game function and interact with said job. Skill speed is anything but a trap and, in fact, is quite vital for efficient performance of many jobs, DRK being one of them. In order to make efficient use of Both Blood Weapon and Delirium, you must hit all 5 potential GCDs within these windows, as failing to do so is losing out on a significant amount of DPS, especially with Delirium. Losing a proc of Blood Weapon due to low SkS means losing 10 Blackblood and 600 MP. While this is not a huge loss on its own, if you are running low/no SkS as you are advocating for you will be losing this with every cast of Blood Weapon, which is a staggering amount of lost DPS and even mitigation over a fight.

Let's look at the numbers. Blood Weapon is used every 60 seconds, and if you have a 12 minute fight (around the amount of time you'll be in combat in Titan savage) that comes out to 12 uses of BW. Now, if we miss the 5th GCD on every single use it comes out to this.

600 x 12 = 7,200 MP
10 x 12 = 120 Blood

In other words, missing the 5th GCD on every Blood Weapon over the course of the fight by not slotting SkS totals out to missing 2.5 uses of EoS/FoS/TBN and 2.4 uses of Bloodspiller/Living Shadow. If we go with the most lenient case and assume that you lost two BS's and EoS, that comes out to a grand total of 2,200 lost potency (500 x 2 + 600 x 2)! Now, we look at Delirium. Missing the 5th GCD of Delirium on each use directly translates to 600 lost potency. Delirium has a 90 second cooldown, meaning that over a 12 minute fight it can be used a total of 8 times.

600 x 8 = 4,800

You are losing out on 4,800 potency from Delirium. Now, if we combine these two together that is a combined total of 7,000 lost potency over the course of the entire fight. 7,000 potency lost over 12 minutes all because you chose to not slot SkS. That is an utterly insane amount of lost potency, or roughly 2/3 worth of the damage that a melee LB3 does (9,000 potency)!

In other words, my friend, you are woefully incorrect. Skill Speed is far and away from a "trap" for Dark Knight. It is, in fact, a very necessary and required stat.

Edit: Spelling.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

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And need I to remind you that Skill Speed only affects Auto attack damage, DoT damage, and weaponskill recast, and does not affect your actual damage output. It even says so in that stat tooltip for skill speed.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

weaponskill recast

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Yes, and therein lies the exact reason that you are wrong, as I quite clearly pointed out in my above post. Skill speed affects the recast timers on weaponskills, of which all but Unleash and Stalwart Soul for Dark Knight are. This means that SkS directly translates to your GCD timer and, that if you have little to none of the stat, that your GCD will be too long to be able to fit in the 5th GCD under both Blood Weapon and Delirium. This amounts to, as I once again pointed out in my above post, an extremely large amount of lost potency and DPS over the course of a fight. Thus making SkS a stat that DRK requires in moderate amounts in order to properly function (Around the 1,550-ish mark).

So, due to this, SkS very much does affect your "actual" damage output.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Yes, and therein lies the exact reason that you are wrong, as I quite clearly pointed out in my above post. Skill speed affects the recast timers on weaponskills, of which all but Unleash and Stalwart Soul for Dark Knight are. This means that SkS directly translates to your GCD timer and, that if you have little to none of the stat, that your GCD will be too long to be able to fit in the 5th GCD under both Blood Weapon and Delirium. This amounts to, as I once again pointed out in my above post, an extremely large amount of lost potency and DPS over the course of a fight. Thus making SkS a stat that DRK requires in moderate amounts in order to properly function (Around the 1,550-ish mark).

So, due to this, SkS very much does affect your "actual" damage output.

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Except you could achieve the exact same result by ignoring Skill Speed in the first place until we get to a certain point in ilvl where skill speed become desirable, but that won't be until ilvl 500 or later which at that point you're already waiting for info on when the next expansion is going to drop...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Except you could achieve the exact same result by ignoring Skill Speed in the first place until we get to a certain point in ilvl where skill speed become desirable, but that won't be until ilvl 500 or later which at that point you're already waiting for info on when the next expansion is going to drop...

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No you cannot because as I already explained you are directly losing potency by not having enough SkS to hit the 5th GCD of your respective buffs. That is a 100% direct DPS loss due to incorrect melds and ilvl makes no difference to this. In fact, ilvl only aids SkS because it means you have to spend a smaller and smaller amount of your overall stat budget to achieve your desired SkS tier, leaving an overall higher percentage of your stat pool for crit, DH, and Det.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

No you cannot because as I already explained you are directly losing potency by not having enough SkS to hit the 5th GCD of your respective buffs. That is a 100% direct DPS loss due to incorrect melds and ilvl makes no difference to this. In fact, ilvl only aids SkS because it means you have to spend a smaller and smaller amount of your overall stat budget to achieve your desired SkS tier, leaving an overall higher percentage of your stat pool for crit, DH, and Det.

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If skill speed does not affect the potency of weaponskills and abilities that do not have DoT effect, then it's not worth stacking skill speed.

EDIT:if I could change my forum user name, I would do it without a second thought just because of boring DRK is with how slow it's recast timers for damage oGCDs, spells, and the fact that DRK only has 1 combo like WAR, and PLD to an extent, and the only tank that has more than 1 combo is GNB...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

If skill speed does not affect the potency of weaponskills and abilities that are not DoT, then it's not worth stacking skill speed.

EDIT:if I could change my forum user name, I would do it without a second thought just because of boring DRK is with how slow it's recast timers for damage oGCDs, spells, and the fact that DRK only has 1 combo like WAR, and PLD to an extent, and the only tank that has more than 1 combo is GNB...

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Skill speed DOES affect weaponskills that are not DoTs, as it increases the speed at which your GCD rolls and, due to that, it allows you to hit the maximum number of possible GCDs within Blood Weapon and Delirium. Hitting less GCDs than the maximum possible under these buffs is a direct DPS loss, which means that if you do not have the proper amount of SkS you are not capable of hitting all 5 GCDs under them, and, as such, you are LOSING DPS because of it. This is an extremely simple concept and I cannot fathom why you are so adamant on defending your point when it is objectively and mathematically incorrect.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Skill speed DOES affect weaponskills that are not DoTs, as it increases the speed at which your GCD rolls and, due to that, it allows you to hit the maximum number of possible GCDs within Blood Weapon and Delirium. Hitting less GCDs than the maximum possible under these buffs is a direct DPS loss, which means that if you do not have the proper amount of SkS you are not capable of hitting all 5 GCDs under them, and, as such, you are LOSING DPS because of it. This is an extremely simple concept and I cannot fathom why you are so adamant on defending your point when it is objectively and mathematically incorrect.

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Except you could already hit those 5 GCDs without any skill speed gains to begin with. and it's not that hard to pop Blood Weapon after you did "discount Inner Release spam"

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Except you could already hit those 5 GCDs without any skill speed gains to begin with. and it's not that hard to pop Blood Weapon after you did "discount Inner Release spam"

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Once again incorrect. The lowest possible SkS tier that it is possible to hit 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon is 2.43, and that is under the assumption that you have low ping and every single time you hit BW you weave it absolutely perfectly without the faintest hint of clipping the GCD. As this level of perfection is not possible, you would naturally want to go higher. The slowest that most people find they are able to hit 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon is 2.40 GCD, however, after my own testing in a tank DPS calculator, this comes out to a mere 10 DPS gain over 2.38 GCD with the slightly higher SkS (and thus more comfy & lenient BW timings). What this means is that the lowest GCD timer you should be aiming for at all is 2.40, however this also depends on fights as well. For instance, if you are running 2.40 and the boss does a mechanic during your opener which means you have to back away and miss a GCD under raid buffs, but you are able to hit that GCD under raid buffs before leaving the boss at 2.38 then you have an overall DPS gain by using 2.38 over 2.40 (this is a situation that occurs in Titania EX, for instance).

TL;DR SkS is good and your understandings of the job/stats are flawed.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Once again incorrect. The lowest possible SkS tier that it is possible to hit 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon is 2.43, and that is under the assumption that you have low ping and every single time you hit BW you weave it absolutely perfectly without the faintest hint of clipping the GCD. As this level of perfection is not possible, you would naturally want to go higher. The slowest that most people find they are able to hit 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon is 2.40 GCD, however, after my own testing in a tank DPS calculator, this comes out to a mere 10 DPS gain over 2.38 GCD with the slightly higher SkS (and thus more comfy & lenient BW timings). What this means is that the lowest GCD timer you should be aiming for at all is 2.40, however this also depends on fights as well. For instance, if you are running 2.40 and the boss does a mechanic during your opener which means you have to back away and miss a GCD under raid buffs, but you are able to hit that GCD under raid buffs before leaving the boss at 2.38 then you have an overall DPS gain by using 2.38 over 2.40 (this is a situation that occurs in Titania EX, for instance).

TL;DR SkS is good and your understandings of the job/stats are flawed.

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In that case, you aren't that good at timing GCD presses...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

In that case, you aren't that good at timing GCD presses...

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I refuse to believe you aren't blatantly trolling at this point. The only two possibilities are that you're trolling or that you legitimately believe that objectively impossible things are, in fact, possible. So to save my own sanity I'm going to just assume you're a horrifically bad troll.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

I refuse to believe you aren't blatantly trolling at this point. The only two possibilities are that you're trolling or that you legitimately believe that objectively impossible things are, in fact, possible. So to save my own sanity I'm going to just assume you're a horrifically bad troll.

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Funny, because that says more about you than it does me...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

In that case, you aren't that good at timing GCD presses...

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Bruh, after looking at your most recent DRK log for e2s, you can't even be bothered to use blood weapon on cooldown! and at that, of the five times you used it in that eight minute fight, you missed to get the full 5 hits every single time. How can you possibly say skill speed doesn't matter? If you're missing the 5th hit consistently, you're missing out DPS. It doens't matter how hard you're hitting with those direct crits if you're losing out on a couple EoSs and blood spillers.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Bruh, after looking at your most recent DRK log for e2s, you can't even be bothered to use blood weapon on cooldown! and at that, of the five times you used it in that eight minute fight, you missed to get the full 5 hits every single time. How can you possibly say skill speed doesn't matter? If you're missing the 5th hit consistently, you're missing out DPS. It doens't matter how hard you're hitting with those direct crits if you're losing out on a couple EoSs and blood spillers.

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I haven't even done E2S let alone cleared E1S on GNB. Not sure where you're getting that info from...

Yeah...that was Eden Normal, not savage. Still your information on DRK is off

But on topic, people are right. Enough SKS to get your GCD down to where you can fit 5 bloodspillers in your blood weapon window, though it will depend on your ping how much is needed. Between 2.40 and 2.38 is your target. I personally like a little DH in my builds and the rest would go to crit.

Slight Tangent though has anyone done any numbers on Tenacity and how useful it might be?

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

And need I to remind you that Skill Speed only affects Auto attack damage, DoT damage, and weaponskill recast, and does not affect your actual damage output. It even says so in that stat tooltip for skill speed.

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You need Skill speed in 99% of situations in order to hit all 5 GCD's during Delerium, and all 5 GCD's during Blood weapon. If you lack Sks and suddenly can only hit 4, you've dropped potency as a result of either less overall mp regen, or in the form of dropping a bloodspiller. Its as simple as that, no ammount of extra crit/dhit chance will make up for missing an entire attack once every 90 seconds.

@OP

Look for the discord server "The Balance" - It provides resources for all jobs, including the best openers and food/gear for a job, including materia melds, and it's updated all the time - The advice given to you now could change after 5.2 or after another patch when stat weights change, so it's best for you to be in a place that gets consistent updates and such in this regard.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

And need I to remind you that Skill Speed only affects Auto attack damage, DoT damage, and weaponskill recast, and does not affect your actual damage output. It even says so in that stat tooltip for skill speed.

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You only need 4 sks materia to get comfy cooldown. Its nothing excessive.

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Originally Posted by DJMau

Yeah...that was Eden Normal, not savage. Still your information on DRK is off

But on topic, people are right. Enough SKS to get your GCD down to where you can fit 5 bloodspillers in your blood weapon window, though it will depend on your ping how much is needed. Between 2.40 and 2.38 is your target. I personally like a little DH in my builds and the rest would go to crit.

Slight Tangent though has anyone done any numbers on Tenacity and how useful it might be?

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

You need Skill speed in 99% of situations in order to hit all 5 GCD's during Delerium, and all 5 GCD's during Blood weapon. If you lack Sks and suddenly can only hit 4, you've dropped potency as a result of either less overall mp regen, or in the form of dropping a bloodspiller. Its as simple as that, no ammount of extra crit/dhit chance will make up for missing an entire attack once every 90 seconds.

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Goes to show that I don't take playing DRK seriously if I'm not allowed to have fun playing, because that's the only reason why I'm wrong on the skill speed part on Blood Weapon mostly because an additional 600 MP+ additional 10 Blood gauge is so far from my mind mostly because I only have one combo as DRK and I want more combos on DRK, but simple solution for Blood Weapon is to buff Blood Weapon back to before Shadowbringers launched, but it's not even going to be be enough to get me to play DRK outside of the "Hate Myself mode" days...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Goes to show that I don't take playing DRK seriously if I'm not allowed to have fun playing, because that's the only reason why I'm wrong on the skill speed part on Blood Weapon mostly because an additional 600 MP+ additional 10 Blood gauge is so far from my mind mostly because I only have one combo as DRK and I want more combos on DRK, but simple solution for Blood Weapon is to buff Blood Weapon back to before Shadowbringers launched, but it's not even going to be be enough to get me to play DRK outside of the "Hate Myself mode" days...

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You play it how you want to play it. However, you just spent the better part of two pages of this forum post saying how Skill speed isnt needed, which is clearly wrong, That's what we're taking issue with. If you don't have confidence in how to play a class or what stats said class should use, you should not be giving advice to someone asking what stats to meld.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Goes to show that I don't take playing DRK seriously if I'm not allowed to have fun playing, because that's the only reason why I'm wrong on the skill speed part on Blood Weapon mostly because an additional 600 MP+ additional 10 Blood gauge is so far from my mind mostly because I only have one combo as DRK and I want more combos on DRK, but simple solution for Blood Weapon is to buff Blood Weapon back to before Shadowbringers launched, but it's not even going to be be enough to get me to play DRK outside of the "Hate Myself mode" days...

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Blood Weapon doesn't need buffed, Dark Knight as a whole in its current state doesn't need any buffs because the job is already extremely strong.

And you know what? If your primary and only concern when you play a job is to have fun, that's entirely fine. But if that is indeed the case then you have no place to be giving others advice on something that you are objectively in the wrong about. Wanna play the "I just play for fun" card? Go right ahead. But don't try to tell others what they should be doing in that case, and especially stay out of extreme and savage.

Your GCD target will be between 2.43 and 2.38. High GCD can gear for more damage, but has less wiggle room for getting a 5 hit blood weapon. I would recommend aiming for closer to 2.41. You'll almost never put skillspeed in materia and instead get it from gear.

Crit and Direct hit will be your first materia choices, probably based off what the item already had capped.

Determination is your second tier choice.

Tenacity is good if you are struggling with tank busters or your healers are having trouble catching up. Least damage of the three, but a noticeable survivability increase.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Blood Weapon doesn't need buffed, Dark Knight as a whole in its current state doesn't need any buffs because the job is already extremely strong.

And you know what? If your primary and only concern when you play a job is to have fun, that's entirely fine. But if that is indeed the case then you have no place to be giving others advice on something that you are objectively in the wrong about. Wanna play the "I just play for fun" card? Go right ahead. But don't try to tell others what they should be doing in that case, and especially stay out of extreme and savage.

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Pretty much this, Dark is strong just because people don't like the play style you can't deny it the tanks are all in a good spot, but when people claim you don't need Sks to hit your 5 Blood Weapon hits that's when I have to agree here and say if you're not in the know then don't spread misinformation. It's not out of spite or hate but generally I'll only comment on Dark stuff since I play GNB as my other tank but I don't know enough about it and I constantly practice and figure things out, I leave it for the people who do well on the class whereas Dark I could talk about it since it's what I main and cleared savage with.

Edit: I could have quoted above but I'm just quoting this one since I agree with their points.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Blood Weapon doesn't need buffed, Dark Knight as a whole in its current state doesn't need any buffs because the job is already extremely strong.

And you know what? If your primary and only concern when you play a job is to have fun, that's entirely fine. But if that is indeed the case then you have no place to be giving others advice on something that you are objectively in the wrong about. Wanna play the "I just play for fun" card? Go right ahead. But don't try to tell others what they should be doing in that case, and especially stay out of extreme and savage.

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Blood Weapon needs a buff. It's not actually a 10 second buff, it's something less, and that's why people have issue landing all 5 GCDs, but none with delirium.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Blood Weapon needs a buff. It's not actually a 10 second buff, it's something less, and that's why people have issue landing all 5 GCDs, but none with delirium.

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No, BW does not need a buff. Does it have a very very slightly shorter than advertised duration? Yes. Does that warrant any sort of buff in the job's current state? No.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Blood Weapon needs a buff. It's not actually a 10 second buff, it's something less, and that's why people have issue landing all 5 GCDs, but none with delirium.

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They can just make it like Bunshin but for DRK I think that'd fix the issue.

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Originally Posted by Awful

They can just make it like Bunshin but for DRK I think that'd fix the issue.

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Bunshin was was a very specific situation for Ninja, as it was required to be changed to a charge system in order to allow their burst window to work properly in the job's current state. Blood Weapon does not have this issue and, as such, is completely fine in its current state.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Bunshin was was a very specific situation for Ninja, as it was required to be changed to a charge system in order to allow their burst window to work properly in the job's current state. Blood Weapon does not have this issue and, as such, is completely fine in its current state.

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All they literally need to do is put back the weapon skillspeed buff it used to have or just extend the duration but like a second?

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Originally Posted by jetfire117

All they literally need to do is put back the weapon skillspeed buff it used to have or just extend the duration but like a second?

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They don't need to do anything at all. As I have said multiple times up to this point, Blood Weapon is perfectly fine as is, and with how powerful DRK currently is there is no justification for buffing it in any way.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

They don't need to do anything at all. As I have said multiple times up to this point, Blood Weapon is perfectly fine as is, and with how powerful DRK currently is there is no justification for buffing it in any way.

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Dude, BW is extremely ping reliant because the MP component is checked server side unlike pretty much every single other similar buff. It's not about buffing it, it's about making it not punish the player for some arbitrary reason.

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Originally Posted by AleXwern

Dude, BW is extremely ping reliant because the MP component is checked server side unlike pretty much every single other similar buff. It's not about buffing it, it's about making it not punish the player for some arbitrary reason.

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It has absolutely nothing to do with ping. The "standard" GCD for DRK is 2.38, and if you aren't capable of landing 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon at that amount of SkS then your ping is so bad that that 5th GCD is going to be, by far, the least of your problems. Stop trying to create issues where there are none. If you can't land 5 under BW and you have the proper amount of SkS then you're either not keeping your GCD rolling, mistiming the weave, or have such horrific ping that you can't even play the game normally anyways.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

It has absolutely nothing to do with ping. The "standard" GCD for DRK is 2.38, and if you aren't capable of landing 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon at that amount of SkS then your ping is so bad that that 5th GCD is going to be, by far, the least of your problems. Stop trying to create issues where there are none. If you can't land 5 under BW and you have the proper amount of SkS then you're either not keeping your GCD rolling, mistiming the weave, or have such horrific ping that you can't even play the game normally anyways.

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The standard GCD is 2.43 although many do not use it because it's, you guessed it, ping reliant. 2.38 is main standard WAR because otherwise Upheaval starts drifting.
And yes it has everything to do with ping. The free Spillers are checked when you press the button and game sends a request to the server. With BW it's with damage calculation which is way after.
11/12s with 5 stacks doesn't make DRK more powerful or fundamentally different, it makes it less *clunky*.

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Originally Posted by AleXwern

The standard GCD is 2.43 although many do not use it because it's, you guessed it, ping reliant. 2.38 is main standard WAR because otherwise Upheaval starts drifting.
And yes it has everything to do with ping. The free Spillers are checked when you press the button and game sends a request to the server. With BW it's with damage calculation which is way after.
11/12s with 5 stacks doesn't make DRK more powerful or fundamentally different, it makes it less *clunky*.

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No, the standard is not 2.43. The theoretical maximum DPS is 2.43 but there is one key word here, theoretical. That low speed is not optimal in many situations.