DRK - SS vs Det ?

[Vividos]

i cant seem to find any info regarding SS vs Det for DRK (yes, ive been looking)
given the way i play and the groups i run, im wearing mostly str accessories and i like doing damage.
im well aware of DRK's TP issues, and hopefully like the live letter implied, this will be addressed soon.

so if we take TP starvation out of the equation, which stat will result in more dps?

any help would be appreciated so i can make intelligent gearing choices with my esos and alex drops (gearing 3 different 60s = have to be fickle)

[Zorthos]

I've done a lot of testing. On paper you would think det would have heavier weight due to increasing damage to everything, but as a DRK ss crushes it, the changes to ss effecting dots is a big boon, on top of that using abilities faster will net more dps than a slight increase of everything with det. Crit is useless, with 630+ crit that's only roughly 10% critical chance, not worth it. Imo. I'm going for str, ss, det, crit. Since testing it started to make sense why our AF gear has so much ss on it. Also works well with blood weapon.

[Violette]

It's like this:

For every class (minus black mage), you have a finite amount of resources to face punch your target with.
Due to having finite resources, you do not want to be focusing on a lot of small little hits (or in black mage, a lot of big hits).


On top of that, due to Det no longer affecting auto-attacks and crit chance increasing both crit chance and crit damage (despite being 3.7x (roughly) less effective), crit on every job (except blm) is your massive winner. Even on blm, you gear ss>crit>det.

Now, because of this, you see Det values on gear approaching 1-1 with SS and Crit, reflecting change in Det's value.


So what does this mean?

In general, you will always want crit>det>ss unless you're a whm/Ast (det>pie/ss/crit for healing) or a blm (ss>crit>det).

Dark Knight TP issues are not so much a thing (at least A1S A2S and to an extent A3S), so we can safely ignore that discussion.


So crit >det/ss.

[Rbstr]

As long as you're not wasting a bunch of secondary stats on accuracy (over the cap) or parry, there's not really a whole ton of difference in the end between them. (As the total # of secondary points ramps up over time this will become less true)

[Phoenicia]

...On top of that, due to Det no longer affecting auto-attack...
So crit >det/ss.

Please note: Determination STILL affects auto-attacks. It just affects them less than it used to in 2.xx. The 3.0 patch notes wording was such that it affects them less as opposed to "no longer affects auto-attack damage". I could quote but I'm too lazy to go back and find it in the patch notes.

Well, regardless of how finite (or infinite) resources are for classes, skill speed is a % increase to DPS and every class benefits greatly from it, specially now that it also affects DoTs. Most classes (all except DRK and PLD lol) have good ways to manage their resources anyways.

That said, I think the following order of stats should be followed:

WAR: Get SS to 470+ for the 9GCD zerk, then get as much as you can of the other stats in this order: Crit > Det > SS. WAR has good native crit chance (4.7% average from Abandon, or 10% on FC, and 10% more from Internal Release) so the "stronger" those crits get, the better.
WAR has 1 weak DOT that ticks on a 200 potency (100 initial + 200) so SS isn't as important for their "DoT damage". But WAR practically has infinite TP so skill speed doesn't hurt them in that regard. However, the more SS you get, the more the pacification from Berserk "hurts" since the 5s become more than 2 GCDs.

PLD and DRK: They have no native crit chance. I believe PLD and DRK should go for DET = Crit > SS. Also the lack of resource management makes SS "worse" on them. Even though they have powerful DoTs (500+ potency) so SS would benefit them nicely. Also it would allow PLD to fit in 1 more GCD (Shield Swipe or Stance change) and still reapply Goring Blade before it drops. SS has nice potential on these two but the lack of resource management is the main deterrent.

One would argue that fights have TP breaks and that "TP issues are not so much a thing", but Skill Speed means you may floor your TP before those breaks happen. I'm speaking from experience here.

On a side note regarding the other classes, I think SMNs arguably benefit more from SS than Det now. So they follow a Crit > SS >= Det priority. SCH should be similar for DPS, but since they don't have that many HoTs (if at all), they should focus on Crit > det = SS.

As for BLM, I think they have a resource people don't consider much: Server clock tick! Once you have too much Spell Speed, timing those MP ticks in Umbral Blizzard becomes a thing. Also I dun know if Det became a worse stat for BLM, it was their top priority in 2.5. If anything, I think their stats shifted to Det > Crit > SS. Determination should be their top stat since BLM doesn't Auto-attack anyways, SS became less important than crit was. I think there isn't enough testing out there to verify. I wish Puro Strider would update his sheet.

I also am not sure I agree with the WHM/ASK priority you listed as skill speed affects HoTs greater than Det now. But I could be wrong as my only healer is SCH atm.

[Zorthos]

As a DRK ss is so much better than det and crit. With 645 crit that is roughly 10% chance, it's not worth the sustain loss from ss and det. Imo should be STR, SS, DET, CRT. The higher your sustain the more consent dps you do since it's 100% increase Vs crit being a low chance of maybe doing higher dmg. Now if your sustain is high and you do crit you will we be hitting like a truck.

[Sapphidia]

The higher your sustain the more consent dps you do since it's 100% increase Vs crit being a low chance of maybe doing higher dmg.

No. No no. This is just a fallacy and the wrong way of thinking. You have to average stuff out over time. Yes, Det increases every hit and Crit might only increase 10% of your hits, but if the Det you have only increases every hit by 1% then the crit will be better.

You cannot say "det/sks is better because crit is only a chance". You have to have exact figures. 10% crit chance at +50% bonus is a 5% increase in damage, period (I'm not sure on what the actual crit damage of this would be, just for the sake of example). If the same amount of Det were to increase your damage by less than 5%, the crit would be the better choice.

[Ditto]

I feel Det/Crit are better than SS.

It however seems much easier to stacks SS right now than Det/Crit, so I don't know if the amount of SS you can currently obtain over the other two makes SS better for the time being. I was closing in on 800 SS until I changed some pieces for more Crit.

[Zorthos]

Well here is my thinking. Not saying anyone is right or wrong..it's all our own preferences. Why I say SS/DET/CRIT is because over a say 2.5min fight...on a training dummy since..it's for testing purposes. With my own crit roughly ~640 on avg does an overall 10% chance to crit. I then tested identical tier foods one with crit other with ss at the same max lvl. Crit was still 10% but with SS I gained ~120 dps. Why? With the new change to SS effecting DoT's was a massive boost...Salt the earth and scourge both increased by 20dps alone...that's 40 combined, on top of that you are able to use abilities at a faster rate consistently and hit slightly harder consistently. Pair this with blood weapon you then generate more mana because you can use your abilities at a higher rate. In short..for me at least what works for me..is that the sustain out weighs the current crit rate only for now since there is no way we can boost it considerably. I still had my 10% crit only this time the critical did more damage due to increase of ss (dots)/det.

[ManaKing]

I don't factor Blood Weapon when thinking about stats since that's not really a realistic scenerio for anything worth doing and worrying about min/maxing. Though I do agree with the SS argument for it.

SS is nice in its own right because you get in more siphoning strikes. I believe Darkside is MP/minute cost, not MP per swing cost (though that makes me want to test it). So I can see having more MP being a good thing even without Blood Weapon.

Crit is just a good stat. I'm sitting at around 652 crit personally and my rate seems to be 14~15%. I have more that exceeded the x1.5 damage increase and it's just nice.

Det is not impressive, especially as our STR continues to increase and if you use STR/VIT accessories. I'd never complain if it was on a piece, but i would never seek it out.