The Definitive Dark Knight Guide

[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.