The Definitive Dark Knight Guide

[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.