The Definitive Dark Knight Guide

[Ipkonfig]

SOOO many videos now with "Look how much DPS I do as /insert tank!" And I watch them yo-yo tank every fight, I can't tank like that, I HATE it! I don't think it shows you are an amazing tank, it shows your healers are fantastic, and get zero glory. I tanked in EQ1 and that game defined yo-yo tanking, but there wasn't an option back then, bosses two to four shot you as tank regardless of how geared you were, so you needed full groups of Clerics chain casting Complete Heal. Now in new games they give us all this fancy gear and ability options and people forsake them and just want to deal damage, then be a DPS.

Now don't get me wrong, if you can handle dropping some defense to deal more damage, than great you are squeezing all you can out of your class, but if you constantly swing from full HP to sub 10% and back up then somethings wrong.

[Jahaudant]

@JayCommon I thought Ravana Ex's tank buster was supposed to be shared? I've seen plenty of videos of people solo tanking him though, specifically a strength stacked WAR eat it in Deliverance and watched him drop to ~10% HP, made me cringe inside as a tank, no amount of tank DPS is worth that butt hole clencher!

Well, the entire point of single tanking content designed for 2 tanks is to get the fastest time possible for no other reason than to simply get the fastest time possible. Groups doing this don't exactly need the drops.

Personally I find it a lot of fun to "break" the obviously intended design and make a fight more challenging just for the heck of it!

[Daega]

Yeah, the crit values have wild ranges now that Crit rate affects how hard your crit can hit for. There are wider extremes now. Some of my crits are around 2200, and others are in the 3k range. I think you're higher i-level then me but not by much, and I can't remember my crit rate at the moment but I'm pretty sure it's over 500. Ahh, also I still have 2 i145 VIT accessories with about 28 strength in them combined.

I know it's a bit off-topic to branch into this subject, but my tank partner for raid is a warrior and he has seen crits on his Fell Cleave of anywhere from 5k to 6300 in turn 5 (so with 20% echo so normal content numbers won't be that high). But the ranges are pretty wide now for what a crit can actually give you.

So you're saying you hit 2200-3k with Echo? I hit 1950 in a lvl 60 dungeon no echo. I imagine with the 20% or so buff I would get a bit closer to that too.

[JayCommon]

So you're saying you hit 2200-3k with Echo? I hit 1950 in a lvl 60 dungeon no echo. I imagine with the 20% or so buff I would get a bit closer to that too.

No, my 3k crit was not with Echo, it was offtanking in DPS stance in Bismarck EX. It wasn't a Souleater either, it was a Carve and Spit. I believe its 30 more potency than a Dark Arts Souleater. I'm not exactly sure what's so surprising about this.

You did a 1950 crit while tanking a dungeon, I presume while in Grit. Add +20% to the base for being out of Grit alone and youre getting closer to 2400-2500 for your crit. I may have more strength and critical hit rate then you because of accs. Item level isn't everything...

[Daega]

No, my 3k crit was not with Echo, it was offtanking in DPS stance in Bismarck EX. It wasn't a Souleater either, it was a Carve and Spit. I believe its 30 more potency than a Dark Arts Souleater. I'm not exactly sure what's so surprising about this.

You did a 1950 crit while tanking a dungeon, I presume while in Grit. Add +20% to the base for being out of Grit alone and youre getting closer to 2400-2500 for your crit. I may have more strength and critical hit rate then you because of accs. Item level isn't everything...

Yes, I'm aware of that. That's just a considerable gap when I've never noticed a huge jump in dps with my time from 30-60, just steady. I'm also focused on i180 for progression, not crit/det for dps output atm. Especially since there's not a huge variety of gear if any besides accessories.

[Xyphon]

I been doing alot of testing with DRK since I hit 60 a couple days back. Now that I've finished upgrading my all left side to ilvl180, I'm seeing a huge difference. I'm not sure if syphoning strikes scales off attack power or off of your base weapon dmg. When I hit 60 prior to my law weapon, I was getting like 750 mp back. Now I'm getting 880 mp back with the upgraded law weapon.

This is massive, because the more mp you get back the easier it is to stay spamming soul eater. I'm personally full str, and its not purely for dps reasons. Having full str helps holding threat to the point that, as long as you do a good opener with dark arts + power slash; you should never loose threat. Also since str = your attack power this is huge for all drk skills. I always keep a vit set on me just in case stuff gets rough, or in case new healers can't keep up with the dmg.

I'm typically seeing trash hit an average of 1k, without any mitigation. I'm at about 13-14k hp without food. So that's about 13-14 hits, depending on how many mobs are hitting me. On big packs though, that's what blood price + abyssal drain is for though, lol.

So far, despite carrying around a vit set I've yet to really have to swap it on. Out of tanking habit, I normally use vit on trash, and str on bosses. Though, don't forget that even unleash gets boosted in dmg by having str gear. So I'd say vit is good in terms of having enough HP to survive; just like the old ARR. As long as you are rotating buffs properly, and using reprisal every time its up; you should be fine.

One thing I can say is DRK is very very strong on enmity. So strong that when I pull with hunts, A or S; I can lock down enmity without any issues. Dark Arts + Abyssal drain, followed by dark arts+ power slash is very insane threat under grit. Though normally I do blood price > dark arts + abyssal drain > plunge > hard slash > dark arts > carve split > spinning slash > dark arts > power slash. Obviously you can weave in salt / scourge how ever you want.

I'm currently at about 840 str or so, and like 865 in party. I still have to upgrade all of my accessories to see how high it goes. I'm still not sure if crit or SS is the way to go in terms of secondary; because both are really good.

In terms of getting crits I've seen split and carve hit up to 2.7k with grit on. The most odd thing is syphoning strikes crits alot more than both split/carve and soul eater. Its probably just the sample I've seen in terms of numbers.

[JayCommon]

I'm still not sure if crit or SS is the way to go in terms of secondary; because both are really good.

I think this is going to depend on your role in a raid setting. If your going MT, I would imagine the highest priority is having a Parry stat as high as it can be, since Dark Knight's actually get rewarded in different ways for Parrying. You'll want Reprisal up as often as you can and procs on Low Blow are nice also.

As for off-tank/DPS, I just can't with good merit advise spec'ing into Skill Speed. If you don't need to be in Grit, then you won't be and will be able to use Blood Weapon. Even with low SS this becomes problematic very, very quickly. You will drain TP like a sieve and FAST. Pushing that value any further aside from organically raising off gear upgrades just seems like it would be bad for long term fights. Maybe shorter bursty fights would be advantageous for some SS, but I can't imagine it would be very viable for most endgame, when we have been conditioned with long lasting fights with little to no downtime for recovery. I realize that DoTs would be stronger and stuff, and Scourge/Salted Earth would be affected positively, but I don't see that being a good enough reason unless there is some hard data to prove me wrong. When DRK runs out of TP, we have no choice but to spam Unmend, hope for Unleashed procs and continue until we have regen enough to attack normally. You lose a ton of DPS by doing this. I'm just not sure if that loss in DPS is covered by the gain in DoT ticks.

I'm also pretty sure no one has done a substantial amount of crunching enough to know how much worse off Det is now as well, so currently (imo anyway) the only value that makes sense raising via materia is Crit because we know the stat itself has been affected in a mostly positive way: higher value = more damage possible from the attack.

I'm not doing testing like you though, I had some STR 4's laying around and figured I would help more on the DPS checks in Bismarck EX if I just put them on the gear I still had that could take them. I haven't added any Crit to anything I'm using on DRK, I just noticed that my Crit value was naturally pretty high with w/e I was wearing at the time. Also the variations on the crit values being much more spread out then in the 2.x lifetime.

[Xenosan]

Now that I've finished upgrading my all left side to ilvl180, I'm seeing a huge difference. I'm not sure if syphoning strikes scales off attack power or off of your base weapon dmg. When I hit 60 prior to my law weapon, I was getting like 750 mp back. Now I'm getting 880 mp back with the upgraded law weapon..

Keep testing. As far as I can tell there's no correlation yet to be found between Syphon Strike/C&S's MP returns and gear/stat allocation. You'll absorb 884 MP naked using a lvl30 weapon same as wearing full BiS. Job LVL so far seems to be the only determining factor (which is a non-factor, since MP cost scales up as well).

Also some suggestions I'd like to share:

One thing I can say is DRK is very very strong on enmity. So strong that when I pull with hunts, A or S; I can lock down enmity without any issues. Dark Arts + Abyssal drain, followed by dark arts+ power slash is very insane threat under grit. Though normally I do blood price > dark arts + abyssal drain > plunge > hard slash > dark arts > carve split > spinning slash > dark arts > power slash. Obviously you can weave in salt / scourge how ever you want.

Dark Arts only adds HP absorb to Abyssal Drain. I don't think you should be wasting a Dark Arts on a HP absorb at pull. It is smart to open with Dark Arts though, so just move an oGCD like Dark Passenger or Dark Dance/Dark Mind in front so you're getting an oGCD +DPS or +mitigation.

C&S, time it with your first DA'd 3 combo finisher whether it's Power Slash or Souleater. Because reasons.

[Xyphon]

@Xenosan - Hmm, good point. So you think the hp drain doesn't add any additional threat while in grit?

It may not be a huge amount, thus verifying what you said. I could have sworn my syphon strikes was weaker before I started to gear up. I'll test this as soon as I get home, and post some screen shots if I find anything interesting. I did notice that it scaled as I lvled up.

Though, it sounds like you confirmed the same number with an lvl 30 weapon on syphoning strikes.

Mind you the rotation I listed above is what I just used on hunts lol. That is by no means what I use when fighting a boss in a dungeon/raid. I just wanted to see if I could hold threat vs warriors going nuts.

[Giantbane]

One thing I can say is DRK is very very strong on enmity. So strong that when I pull with hunts, A or S; I can lock down enmity without any issues. Dark Arts + Abyssal drain, followed by dark arts+ power slash is very insane threat under grit. Though normally I do blood price > dark arts + abyssal drain > plunge > hard slash > dark arts > carve split > spinning slash > dark arts > power slash. Obviously you can weave in salt / scourge how ever you want.

for hunts, really? I wonder what the threat multiplier on DA + Power slash is. It would have to be insane to outpace a WAR opening with UBIR, especially SE > UBIR.