Is it me, or is DRK really isn't that super great, nor super bad.

[Solduios]

Wondering now if I should have stuck my points in pie for mana...

[RyuDragnier]

That is how it is meant to be played, which is why Darkside isn't really like Deliverance at all, it's not a dps stance, it's "you better have this on no matter what you are doing" stance.

And while I hate it, I think the MP cost and GCD/combo breaking aspect of Grit is to prevent the exact situation you are describing. They don't want us popping out for Blood Weapon. Blood Price is "supposed" to be the BW equivalent but it doesn't really work out to be as reliable, at least not against bosses.

I thought they set up Blood Weapon how it was simply because they DO want us to have those few moments where our defenses are lowered to do more damage and gain back the MP we spent. That's pretty much the only time I drop Grit, so over the course of 4 minutes, I pull the 'burst' outside of Grit for a total of 1 minute and 30 seconds. There are of course moments where you really don't want to do that, but I don't really see them crop up often outside of having a bad healer.

[Cyrus-Wallace]

Alright, I'll give my feedback so far. Level 55 DRK here:

The class is OK, it doesn't shine though. As others have said, it's a middle-ground between Paladin and Warrior. My big concern is how this class will be played in raid content, because it doesn't shine as neither OT or MT. As a Paladin, you have passive mitigation from Shield Oath+parry+block. As a warrior you have potential damage reductions from having a high pool of HP+increased HP recovered via magic, that made spells like Stoneskin super effective with them, even though they were "nerfed". Grit is Shield Oath. You don't have a passive mitigation move but Parry, which I don't know how much effective it is now, since I'm using my DET + CRIT gear that I used with my Paladin.

- The emnity combo: It has an increased combo potency in exchange of an additional effect. Which emnity can be further increased with Dark Arts. So far, I didn't need to use Dark Arts with Power Slash since the base emnity generation was good enough. It might be a good "Oh shit, need to generate emnity quick" move but still, I think it's a wasted potential.

- The Soul Eater combo: I found myself spamming this. Not only because the self heal, which goes from 900 to 1400 crits while using Dark Arts, but its damage output with said buff on. This combo is more powerful than the Rage of Halone combo, since Syphon Strike does more damage than Fast Blade. As for Warrior, Syphon Strike does more damage Skull Sunder but Soul Eater does less damage than Butcher's Block. It's really worth it when you find yourself with plenty MP to use Dark Arts on it.

- The Delirium combo: Same than the previous one. More powerful than both RoH and BB combos. This 10% of int reduction could be handful if you don't have a MNK in your party. Otherwise, just forget it.

- Low Blow. It's not bad. It's like Heavy Swing with the chance of getting its cd reset'd upon parrying.

- Scourge: It's okay. It's an improved Fracture.

- Defensive cds:

• Shadowskin: Rampart.
• Shadow Wall: The same mitigation than Vengeance with the same CD than Sentinel. No additional effects. This skills will require some special treatment. Either with Dark Arts or adjusting either the damage you reduce or the CD itself.
• Dark Dance: Parry Rate. Increases the chances of getting a Reprisal proc. Keen Flurry is more superior than this. Dark Arts gives you 20%+ dodge, whcih can be combined with a Dark Arts + Dark Passager which blinds the enemy, but that's TOO MUCH MP. However, it's only useful with big pulls, where you can recover your MP in two seconds with Blood Price. I don't see this skill useful in raid content at all.
• Dark Mind: Magic mitigation. Good for 2hr moves, or certain boss moves. Dark Arts increases its efficiency. However sometimes it's hard to discern if it's magical or physical damage, even if it's a new encounter.

<Cross-class>
I'm struggling with this. Convalescence and Provoke are a must. Foresight... might help. Specially with the lack of defensive cooldowns you've got. However, you can freely choose between Bloodbath, Fracture and Mercy Stroke. Awareness is so circunstancial that you can swap it during certain encounters with either move but the first 2.

-The Playstyle at my current level:

Big pulls are not a big deal. You either start with Plunge (No TP/MP cost, recommended) or Unmend (MP cost) and Salted Earth asap or x1 Unleash and then Salted Earth. Blood Price then a couple of "Unleash" , and you're good. Since Blood Price is on and you're constantly receiving damage, you can use Dark Passager without major consequences combined with Dark Arts. You might want to combine Shadowskin+Convalescence whenever you can. I'll recommend to pop Dark Arts before Blood Price, so you can recover that wasted MP as you still have the buff on for the next seconds.

Small pulls, almost the same but with the chance of using dots on the monsters with Scourge.

Bosses: No problem so far. It's pretty straight. Keep dots up, just a couple of emnity combos and then Soul Eater with Dark Arts as much as you can. The CD rotation is almost the same than PLD.

- Darkside upkeep.

As an OT: Blood Weapon.
As an MT: Blood Price.

<Problem>

As an MT you sometimes don't receive damage at all. So you gotta KNOW when the boss is going to deal a lot of damage in a row to use it. Otherwise the skill is wasted. During such circunstances, the best thing you can do is to drop Grit, pop a cd (or not) to compensate, activate Blood Weapon, dot, Syphon combo moves and done. You might want to combine both to increase the chances of recovering your MP. As an adjustment, I would slightly increase the MP recovery from Syphon Blade.

This "stance dancing" requires you to fully know the encounter. I find myself struggling in raid content because of this. During dungeon bosses, no problem, their mechanics are simple but we'll see...

- Living Dead: °-° I question the effiency of this skill. It's not as reliable as HG, and it stresses the healers, since they need to top you as soon as you become a Living Dead. The advantage of HG is to let the healers rest to either DPS or regain MP. It was a "okay, guys, I'm Mario and I just got a Star from a "?" box. Relax now". So, if you pair DRK with WAR, the "oh shit buttom" becomes a "heal me anyway, I won't die though".

So, in the end, being both a WAR and PLD , in Raid content people will prefer to have a WAR (A reliable OT, damage dealer) and a PLD (A soild tank, with a solid mitigation skillset), not a Jack of All Trades and Master of Nothing. We'll see. I'll try it out in Alexander. In the meantime, when I'm done with DRK, I'll level up PLD right away just in case.

[Hypie]

Will do the same as Cyrus only difference i play WAR

But i agree that the new Jobs will have the longest Patch Notes in future Patches. I at least hope that SE will have the goal to make it "doable" so that we won't have a Class on 60 thats completely useless after Dungeon Farming.

Of course lazy players will still choose PLD and/or WAR and "discriminate" on the DRK if the difference is a bit more than "oh then i just heal you 2 times instead of one time only". I have seen that even in ARR. The Heals didnt enter the boss ring until i was kicked with my low equipped WAR at that time. (crystal tower lol)

Its a Shame but...lazy players....

[saber_alter]

I thought they set up Blood Weapon how it was simply because they DO want us to have those few moments where our defenses are lowered to do more damage and gain back the MP we spent. That's pretty much the only time I drop Grit, so over the course of 4 minutes, I pull the 'burst' outside of Grit for a total of 1 minute and 30 seconds. There are of course moments where you really don't want to do that, but I don't really see them crop up often outside of having a bad healer.

That's pretty much how your supposed to do it. have small bursts here and there where we pull out all the stops and regain mp like crazy. definitely a good idea for single target dps, though in pulls more than 2 blood price regens enough mp to effectively unleash endlessly.

[Odett]

Snip

Your mana costs scale with your max mp so I would not do this. I\\\\'m personally going full STR to take advantage of DRK\\\\'s high parry rate as well as well as getting more health from Souleater. I\\\\'ve found that playing DRK with a relentless DPS mindset works wonders while always rotating my cooldowns. Constant Soul Eater combo heals me for roughly 1k health- 1.4k on crits every 3 skills and even more with Bloodbath up at lv 52 with an ilv 120 weapon.Your enmity is so great that I don\\\\'t find myself using my enmity combo at all except sometimes at first just to safely establish agro.

DRKs also have the highest capacity to deal with magic attacks, which is sometimes a tank\\\\'s biggest weakness. PLD\\\\'s only have Rampart and Sentinel available to soften the blow from a magic attack, but DRK\\\\'s have access to Shadowskin, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind, and Delirium to safely deal with a Magic attacks, making them extremely versatile.

[Tila]

Your mana costs scale with your max mp so I would not do this. I\\\\'m personally going full STR to take advantage of DRK\\\\'s high parry rate as well as well as getting more health from Souleater.

Wait, seriouslly? So whats the point in getting any piety?

[Odett]

Wait, seriouslly? So whats the point in getting any piety?

Sorry, I made a mistake. Cost of skills will scale on your level, not based on Piety, but I'd honestly not recommend using your stat points for that. Blood Price and dropping Grit and using Blood Sword when a boss isn't hitting hard are more than enough enough for MP management.

[Kotemon]

From what I read a few months ago and what I'm hearing now. Piety doesn't seem like a stat you'ld want to dump points into. However my question was about crafted gear being needed for materia, and was answered with the new craft list. At best from what I can tell, add +str or +vit materia on the left and Piety to the right. If you reached the Vit or Str cap toss Dex(parry) > Piety(mp) on the left. Or Vit<>Str>Dex to the right if Piety is capped. At least until folks can find their sweet spot on max Mp and start moving stats into Vit or Str. Like how some say Warrior "@ ilev??" should have "x" amount of hp before/ after swapping +vit into into +str.

However from what I'm hearing from people that already unlocked the job. It almost seems like FFXI's Rune Fencer if it were built more like a Dark Knight. If Dark Knights parry is higher than Warriors, but is still mostly not really that useful a stat on either Paladin and Warrior. Then would that mean a overall change to parry in general somewhere down the road, if at all? So far parry as I can tell is about as useful as it was in FFXI (after the nerf). I'm hoping that the next 6+ months of updates might at least tweak it enough to where a reliable overview can be made. Right now to me it seems like it still has a little "work in progress" to it.

Other than that Warrior just had a lot of HP. How does Dark Knight compare on that stat?

[Lorielle]

There's something I've been wondering. What was the name of the move which procs on Parry to reduce incoming damage from enemies? I don't recall anything stating if it would stack with Warrior's Storm's Eye or Ninja's Dancing Edge. This could prove to be useful endgame. I haven't had the chance to test it myself. Also I apologize if it was mentioned already.