Dark Knight Direct Hit

[Phoenicia]

The DH thing is kind of overrated to me personally. I made a post about this some months back asking if DH was really needed to play proficiently and most people preferred CRIT for DRK. This actually inspired me to try and do my own build and with DET>TEN>CRIT>SkS and I really enjoy it. I haven't done the math but I've seen some posts and have been told that a high DET stat isn't that much different than having a a lot of CRIT.

Decent survivorability, easy for the healer to heal and constant heavy hits due to the DET and TEN compared to having to wait for a CRIT attack to trigger...Is what it seems like at least. I'm not sure how correct this is but I like it and it's something different from the standard "go with this build or you suck" criteria.

My thing has always been that keep in mind, big numbers are always good but DRK is still a Tank not a DPS.

Don't listen to this guy please.

Determination doesn't reduce damage taken at all. And going full on tenacity doesn't add enough mitigation for it to matter (You won't save healer GCDs and you would still use CDs where you have to). So the whole "Decent survivorability" (that's not a word btw) is placebo.

Also please stop the meme of "still a Tank not a DPS", you're not a punching bag, you are a tank. you're a front-line fighter that is trading blows with the big nasty boss with an equally big and nasty weapon that's bigger than anything the DPS have... Even if it's a compensation thing (for the lower DPS you dirty minded-... you!!). Real tanks carry a cannon that's bigger than anything in the grounded army, no?

As a tank, you want to deal more damage for: 1- keeping aggro. 2- Bigger damage on self healing abilities = bigger self heals. 3- Dead boss = 0 damage taken. The deader the boss, the better your mitigation is.

All tanks should go for a desired GCD speed based on playstyle or preferred build. Then max crit. Then where they can't add crit, you add DH unless you're a WAR, where you skip to Determination. Tenacity isn't bad enough to completely avoid, but it's not good enough to prioritize either. This means a piece of crit+tenacity is probably better than a piece with sks+det.

[Renato]

You can play how you want to play but I have asked this same question before:

I looked it up once and Crit over Tenacity only gives you a few % dps. As someone who only does casual content, I think I save more time by preventing wipes with duty finder morons due to the extra damage resist than I do from the extra crit damage. I've also heard that even serious raiders use tenacity or vitality during progression, and you're kind of always in that situation even if you know the fight if you aren't doing content with a regular, experienced static.

Except the mitigation from Tenacity will barely make a difference between life and death, so stacking Ten to prevent a wipe is kinda placebo, unless you consistently survive at like 1 or 2k HP after a big hit due to Ten.

On the other hand, going full Ten meld over Crit melds is a loss of about 100 DPS (so 2-3% damage ?), it won't make a difference unless you want a fflogs highscore, or you're pushing enrage with low level gear. So, if you want to go Det/Ten over Crit, that's fine. The only mendatory meld for tanks is STR on accessories.

From another FFXIV thread on Gamefaqs:
"While melds are a way to increase your stats melding 100% correct isn't that meaningful on tanks. For example after a test on my paladin i found that the difference between going full direct hit and actively trying to avoid as much direct hit as possible, only melding DH in gear that can't take DET and/or CRIT, was 1% dps.
Yes, it's an increase but hardly worth worrying about. "

This is also an interesting read:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...e_breakpoints/

I've seen this in a few threads here and on Reddit. Regardless, as I stated above it works for me. I know that DET isn't for damage reduction, it's supposed to increase all damage from weapon skills and auto attacks. TEN is supposed to increase damage and assist with health recovered from healing.

I still put out decent numbers (don't ask about parses because I don't bother with them) and I've been able to hold aggro just fine. I will note that I don't Savage raid or do EX trials because of the somewhat toxic players I just don't want to deal with. So my experiences may differ but I've heard that there are some that favor TEN in some situations. I'm also not saying people who want to meld DH are wrong either...it seems to be the most popular thing because everyone wants to make big numbers. All I said was that I found it to be overrated as you can get by playing whatever build you want.

Why are you so aggressive though? All I did was state my findings with another setup outside of the ordinary. It may not be the optimal way of going about things but still, I like it.

[AleXwern]

TEN is supposed to increase damage and assist with health recovered from healing.

Ten increases damage dealt = bigger Clemency/Equilibrium/lifesteal. That's the whole healing part. It's not passive Convalescence. So essentially Crit/Det do that healing part better because they increase the output of said skills more.

[Phoenicia]

Snip

I wasn't trying to be aggressive as much as I was trying to be comical. And while you are allowed to play the way you like and I even encourage doing so along with experimenting, giving advice that goes against what good players give isn't always helpful.

So no. While changing the melds of the same gear may only make a 1~3% difference, you have to take into account the gear picked because of substats as well. Melding for damage isn't just 100 DPS difference, it can make up to thousands of damage difference. For example, changing from ilv 400 gloves and boots to eureka ilv 390 with 5 melds alone nets you 60 to 200 DPS gain, or a median of ~160. That's only 2 pieces of gear LOSING item level in favor of melds. Imagine what keeping the same item level, therefor same str and stat budget, for the better stats can contribute to. Then imagine changing the entire gear and meld choice combined can add up to.

Completely abandoning direct hit and going for tenacity over crit will definitely hit you closer to 1k of DPS if not more. It's been mathed AND tried out. When we're talking 4.x thousand DPS that goes up to near or above 6 thousand, we're definitely not talking single digit percents DPS anymore.

Going full tenacity as opposed to 0 tenacity is ~12% reduction in damage intake. But that's not necessarily 12% DPS gain. Since you lose crit, DH, det and/or sks. Items have a stat budget, so you're not getting "free tenacity", you're trading other, better for damage, stats for it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Tenacity does not increase healing received btw, it increases healing YOU DO. Guess what increases that better than tenacity? EVERY OTHER STAT!
/end edit.

Also, with all due respect, how do you know you're putting out "decent numbers" if you do not bother with parses? Because it is literally impossible to know if you're doing well unless you check a parse or try Sky, Earth, Sea or w/e it's called and give a good kill time. Because single hits do not matter, damage throughout the fight, or damage per second (DPS), does. Hitting a random 32k Bloodpiller once a fight isn't "decent numbers", it's just a random hit. Hitting 23-28k Bloodspillers consistently is.

On another note, how much DPS you do does not really matter that much outside of savage raids or extreme trials because enrage timers don't exist and they are tuned so low that 1 decent member dishing out enough DPS is most likely enough to carry the remaining 7 players. You won't lose aggro if you are sitting in tank stance and pushing your buttons either, compounded with the fact most people you get aren't dishing out enough DPS to be a threat anyway. And if you are sitting in your tank stance, tenacity doesn't matter either because of the default 25% increased effective health from the stance. So the whole point of what you meld doesn't matter.

Where I come from is pushing out the most out of your job. This means no staying in tank stance, getting the most out of your DPS and the most of your defensive abilities. If you are using your defensives properly, tenacity makes VERY little difference there. And if you want DPS, tenacity is ranked 5th out of 5 secondary stats, therefor my whole point of "tenacity isn't bad enough to avoid, but not good enough to prioritize". And I believe the whole point of this thread is the OP wanting to push out the most of his DRK.

Again, nothing against you personally, but my post was definitely against your advice because it wasn't good advice. I hope my explanation gave you insight as to why. And if you would prefer to keep playing the way you prefer, be my guest, it's your sub! And definitely your time for you to enjoy as you please.

[ReiMakoto]

You can play how you want to play but I have asked this same question before:





From another FFXIV thread on Gamefaqs:
"While melds are a way to increase your stats melding 100% correct isn't that meaningful on tanks. For example after a test on my paladin i found that the difference between going full direct hit and actively trying to avoid as much direct hit as possible, only melding DH in gear that can't take DET and/or CRIT, was 1% dps.
Yes, it's an increase but hardly worth worrying about. "

This is also an interesting read:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...e_breakpoints/

I've seen this in a few threads here and on Reddit. Regardless, as I stated above it works for me. I know that DET isn't for damage reduction, it's supposed to increase all damage from weapon skills and auto attacks. TEN is supposed to increase damage and assist with health recovered from healing.

I still put out decent numbers (don't ask about parses because I don't bother with them) and I've been able to hold aggro just fine. I will note that I don't Savage raid or do EX trials because of the somewhat toxic players I just don't want to deal with. So my experiences may differ but I've heard that there are some that favor TEN in some situations. I'm also not saying people who want to meld DH are wrong either...it seems to be the most popular thing because everyone wants to make big numbers. All I said was that I found it to be overrated as you can get by playing whatever build you want.

Why are you so aggressive though? All I did was state my findings with another setup outside of the ordinary. It may not be the optimal way of going about things but still, I like it.

A lot to unpack here but Ill go through:

Yes, worry warting about your melds is only a minor and substats is a minor difference. But that goes both ways, and it just so happens tenacity is just so minor its not worth paying attention to. No amount of extra tenacity is going to make you so much more survivable that its going to make your healers/ you feel a difference, unless you're just bad at mitigating things on time. What is better however is killing things faster, which tenacity does not contribute to as much as the other substats, because if you kill things faster, youve made your healer heal less, and mitigated more healer healing gcds. This is why crit/det/dir has risen so much, because again whilst they are a small effect they make the biggest difference overall. Also unless youre warrior its always worth melding some direct hit, because anything is better than a base 0% chance to get a direct hit.

Also unless you parse and actualy do hard content, you have no idea if you do good numbers

[Renato]

Also, with all due respect, how do you know you're putting out "decent numbers" if you do not bother with parses? Because it is literally impossible to know if you're doing well unless you check a parse or try Sky, Earth, Sea or w/e it's called and give a good kill time. Because single hits do not matter, damage throughout the fight, or damage per second (DPS), does. Hitting a random 32k Bloodpiller once a fight isn't "decent numbers", it's just a random hit. Hitting 23-28k Bloodspillers consistently is.

On another note, how much DPS you do does not really matter that much outside of savage raids or extreme trials because enrage timers don't exist and they are tuned so low that 1 decent member dishing out enough DPS is most likely enough to carry the remaining 7 players. You won't lose aggro if you are sitting in tank stance and pushing your buttons either, compounded with the fact most people you get aren't dishing out enough DPS to be a threat anyway. And if you are sitting in your tank stance, tenacity doesn't matter either because of the default 25% increased effective health from the stance. So the whole point of what you meld doesn't matter.

Where I come from is pushing out the most out of your job. This means no staying in tank stance, getting the most out of your DPS and the most of your defensive abilities. If you are using your defensives properly, tenacity makes VERY little difference there. And if you want DPS, tenacity is ranked 5th out of 5 secondary stats, therefor my whole point of "tenacity isn't bad enough to avoid, but not good enough to prioritize". And I believe the whole point of this thread is the OP wanting to push out the most of his DRK.

I've always seen people saying that Tenacity is something that isn't too important but I wanted to try it for myself. I ended up downloading ACT and trying a few things out. You guys were definitely correct about the Tenacity. At the time, I had about 2.2k DET and around 1.6k TEN. The first time I parsed using Stone, Sky, Sea with that build, I was at 3.9k DPS. The second time, I was at 4k.

I ended up swapping out the TEN melds and gathering gear with DET/CRIT as the secondary stats. With a focus still being on DET and a 382ilv, I jumped up to 4.1k DPS.

Here are my stats now:


As you can see, my focus is still on DET>CRIT. I've been working on acquiring more high level gear and currently at ilv386, I'm getting constant 4.4k DPS. Keep in mind, I DO NOT DO SAVAGE or EX stuff nor do I want to. Doing this was out of sheer curiosity and for the sake of just wanting to try a new build out of the norm. So yeah, all of this may not matter for me but I still enjoy playing the job efficiently. I stay in tank stance while pulling mobs and switch to DPS after I build aggro on bosses. I don't consider myself the best tank but I'd like to think I'm ok at it and I understand how to play it. I just really hate how it's literally "play this build, stack this stat, meld this or you suck." Hopefully, it's a design that gets changed in ShB and the other stats get tweaked to actually do something.

This is with no potions or food as well. Someone told me that DRK should be around 4.8k-5k DPS for single target and possibly higher with multiple targets. I still have a few pieces that have TEN as a second stat that I need to get rid of but the high level DET/CRIT gear is out of my reach at the moment with the only weapons having those stats being the Omega Claymore (which I'll probably NEVER get) and Pyros Guillotine...which is another weapon that I'll never have. I may end up jumping to the Scavean once the cap is removed and just take that DET loss. I also need the gloves from the most recent Ivalice Raid.

I didn't parse with DH. Compared to a stat that we can actually stack due to our gear having it as a secondary, I just don't see how it can be that beneficial. If you melded the whole left side with DH VI materia as a tank, you'd only be at 804 unless you're over-melding and even still, it just seems like it's not worth it...to me at least.

[Megguido]

So no. While changing the melds of the same gear may only make a 1~3% difference, you have to take into account the gear picked because of substats as well. Melding for damage isn't just 100 DPS difference, it can make up to thousands of damage difference. For example, changing from ilv 400 gloves and boots to eureka ilv 390 with 5 melds alone nets you 60 to 200 DPS gain, or a median of ~160. That's only 2 pieces of gear LOSING item level in favor of melds. Imagine what keeping the same item level, therefor same str and stat budget, for the better stats can contribute to. Then imagine changing the entire gear and meld choice combined can add up to.

Completely abandoning direct hit and going for tenacity over crit will definitely hit you closer to 1k of DPS if not more. It's been mathed AND tried out. When we're talking 4.x thousand DPS that goes up to near or above 6 thousand, we're definitely not talking single digit percents DPS anymore.

Going full tenacity as opposed to 0 tenacity is ~12% reduction in damage intake. But that's not necessarily 12% DPS gain. Since you lose crit, DH, det and/or sks. Items have a stat budget, so you're not getting "free tenacity", you're trading other, better for damage, stats for it.

Kinda comparing apples to oranges.

Elemental +1 gloves and boots are better than ilvl 400 gloves and boots mostly because they have more substats. 120 Crits beat 10 STR and crappy subtstats, that was mathed out yes.

Now if you want to meld full Ten instead of full Crit, you still have the same amount of substats, but not the same distribution. And this will not hit your DPS by 1k or so. A full set of melds, with 2 eureka pieces bring a total of 760 substats (not counting accs, cause they should be melded with STR).

760 Ten is +3.5% damage (linear, so doesn't matter how much Ten you already have)
760 Crit is +6.2% damage (considering you're at 1600 crit before melds, ~2360 after melds)
Hence a difference of 2.7% total damage. A decent/good tank at ilvl ~395 would deal about 5k DPS. Losing 2.7% damage drops their damage to 4,86k DPS. You lose, in theory, 140 DPS by melding full Ten instead of full Crit. Whoo.

Tl;dr: more damage is always cool and usually better than more mitigation, even if it's not that much (and more importantly, free). Basically, a couple % more damage vs a couple more % mitigation (2.7% dmg vs 3.5% mitigation in this case). Saying "IMMA TANK, ME NOT DPS, ME TOUGH" as an argument to not pick Crit is kinda retarded. On the other hand, we tend to easily overestimate Crit/Dhit, and underestimate Ten/Det/Sks. Though melding Crit is better, melding Ten or Det isn't bad either.

I didn't parse with DH. Compared to a stat that we can actually stack due to our gear having it as a secondary, I just don't see how it can be that beneficial. If you melded the whole left side with DH VI materia as a tank, you'd only be at 804 unless you're over-melding and even still, it just seems like it's not worth it...to me at least.

See DHit like Det. Both stats scale linearly and give a pretty similar damage boost. Basically, pick Det if you also play WAR (or all three tanks), or DHit if you also play PLD (or only DRK). If you want to compare your damage output with different setups, you can use this damage calculator. Plug in your in-game stats. If you can't reach the numbers calculated on a dummy, then there's something wrong with your rotation, not your gear.

[ReiMakoto]

This is with no potions or food as well. Someone told me that DRK should be around 4.8k-5k DPS for single target and possibly higher with multiple targets. I still have a few pieces that have TEN as a second stat that I need to get rid of but the high level DET/CRIT gear is out of my reach at the moment with the only weapons having those stats being the Omega Claymore (which I'll probably NEVER get) and Pyros Guillotine...which is another weapon that I'll never have. I may end up jumping to the Scavean once the cap is removed and just take that DET loss. I also need the gloves from the most recent Ivalice Raid.

I didn't parse with DH. Compared to a stat that we can actually stack due to our gear having it as a secondary, I just don't see how it can be that beneficial. If you melded the whole left side with DH VI materia as a tank, you'd only be at 804 unless you're over-melding and even still, it just seems like it's not worth it...to me at least.

So basically its a minor difference, ephasis on the minor, basically when you've stacked all the Crit you can, its a toss up as to what you dump points into next, and mathematically it works out that direct hit is better to put stuff into on DRK because you're going from a 0% chance to direct hit to a something percent chance to direct hit, which is more of a difference than you'll see from pumping stuff into det, a ~<10% chance to do 25% more damage will outweight the little tiddly bit of damage DET would give you.

Also yes tanks should be overmelding, their bis involves at least 3 fully overmelded accs.

[Renato]

See DHit like Det. Both stats scale linearly and give a pretty similar damage boost. Basically, pick Det if you also play WAR (or all three tanks), or DHit if you also play PLD (or only DRK). If you want to compare your damage output with different setups, you can use this damage calculator. Plug in your in-game stats. If you can't reach the numbers calculated on a dummy, then there's something wrong with your rotation, not your gear.

Thanks for posting the damage calculator. It's good to somewhat see what particular stats are changing. I can't seem to get it apply the changes to the DPS section though.

This is what I got when I plugged in my stats with the Scavean Greatsword:

[Megguido]

Thanks for posting the damage calculator. It's good to somewhat see what particular stats are changing. I can't seem to get it apply the changes to the DPS section though.

This is what I got when I plugged in my stats with the Scavean Greatsword:

You've got to make a copy of this spreadsheet. Once the copy is made, open it, plug in your stats in either the red or blue cells. Thenit shows your theoretical DPS on a dummy (in DRK / PLD's case, it's the DPS without slashing debuff, hence the significant difference with WAR). Try to reach the "Low DPS" value at least, which is the DPS value with unlucky Crit / DHit procs.

Smol correction on your picture though, ilvl 390 Scaevan greatsword has 107 Weapon damage, not 108.

Also did a comparison between 2.38s Hydatos BiS and my "poorboye" build (full ilvl 400 without any Elemental item or pentamelded accs, with 0 DHit melds). The difference is about 130 DPS in favor of BiS. So yeah, overmelded accs and DH still are kings on DRK, for anyone wanting to push numbers in savage.