Advice on gear

[Bman10119]

Hi folks, so i've been leveling dark knight and have been REALLY loving it. enough that im seriously considering turning it into my main, or a co-main. I'll be hitting 60 later this week and want to try to plan out the best way to gear up. I already have prototype gordian strngth accesories, and two bolts (will be farming two more for full fending accesories). can also buy the prototype gloves, helm, belt, and with aother pedal boots. Have the void ark fending skirt. What id like to know is this

1.) Which weapon is best to get, esoteric or relic? if eso swords better then id rather just save till next week to buy that than farm 16 more crystals.

2.) Chest pieces, is the eso chest piece good or should i just grab a void ark chest with my drop this week?

3.) after getting myself a weapon and chest, what are considered must haves as far as dark knight esoteric purchases?

Thanks for any advice you can give!

[Melian]

1) The esoteric is pretty much the same as the "awoken" anima. I think with my job (PLD) the awoken weapon ends up being technically worse if you want to theorycraft it, but not significantly worse in any meaningful way (same weapon damage, strength, vit... the rest is fluff and either weapon is getting replaced with Thordan's 205 or the actual Anima as soon as possible). The actual anima will take significantly longer to get than either the esoteric or the awoken weapon. But save your esoterics and get the awoken sword if you think you want to work on a relic anyways; it's worth waiting an extra week and using esoterics on other stuff rather than wasting them.

If long grindy stuff really isn't your bag though, there's no outstanding reason to invest in the anima. The best weapons in the game will probably continue to come from raid content in the future, and the third best weapons will be /way/ faster to get than the anima-quest line and just as viable for everything (including getting a good weapon from challenging content rather than grindy content).

2) The Void Ark fending gear is pretty solid (no parry), and free. That said, your esoteric is almost certainly better once you up it to 210.

If you want anything more specific... both have 424 defense/magic defense, as well as 93 strength and 97 vitality. The Void Ark armor has 86 acc and 60 crit, while chaos has 86 parry and 60 acc. So technically the Void Arc Armor should be better at the 200 level. That comparison is meaningless though, because as soon as you get the esoteric you can up it to 210, and the extra str/vit/defense should outweigh you being stuck with some parry.

The upped cuirass will get you 456 defense/magic defense, 101 strength, 107 vitality, 94 parry, and 66 acc. Primary stats almost always win.

3) If I was starting with nothing, honestly, I'd just hop on the Void Ark train to get yourself free i200 stuff, and pick up 210 esoteric accessories. It's not the best way to min-max efficiency, but it's a good way to raise your item level fast on both character sides at once. In my view everything will end up at 210 anyways before too long, so you shouldn't stress the journey that much imo. I'd also consider doing the Diadem for more 210 gear you can get easily enough. I should check it out more myself.

[Bman10119]

1) -snip-

long grindy stuff doesnt really bother me. plus it gives me something to do since i just had surgery on my foot yesterday. alrighty to the void ark with eso accessories. Ive only done diadem twice (a flop of a hard mode attempt and then a decent hard attempt yesterday) does matchmaking for easy/normal happen frequently? and do easy/normal have good chances at 210?

[Melian]

Long grindy stuff doesn't bother me either. I got a relic and am doing the Anima thing now too, and both seem a lot less grindy than stuff in the last game I played. Just saying though. The number of people I see working on anima weapons who never got around to completing their relics is so high. I don't know why they think they'll have the patience this time. So I just thought it bore mentioning.

I'm really not a good person to ask about the diadem yet... for some reason I've just put off learning about it. Shame on me.

On my server (Edit: oh hey, we're on the same server! Come say Hi sometime) I mostly just see Diadem(Hard) parties in the PF for what that's worth. But yeah, this is literally something I plan on learning more of and taking my own advice on later today or tomorrow. Hopefully someone else here can tell you all about it though.

Unrelated, but hope your foot is doing well now.

[Bman10119]

-snip-

i think we're on the same server, according to your profile info next to your post. Midgardsormr right? yeah i see diadem hard pretty frequently in pf too. and thanks yeah its doing fine.

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

I have to disagree with Melian here.

1- The DRK relic weapon is BiS. It is the best i200 weapon and the best i210 weapon. ESO is number 2 at both ilevels. buy the eso while you work on your relic - if you have ESO to spare

2- Chest piece - The VA chest piece gives you a slight advantage on damage output (+1.48 relative strength) . the ESO+ gives you a bit more health and defense. Personally, this is an even split, if you already have the 210 ESO, you don't really need to go after the VA piece (or vice versa). If you are min/maxing for DPS, the answer is the VA chest piece. Again, this is where you would buy the ESO and use the gobtwine only if you have extra on hand.

3 - At 210 tank BiS includes ESO head, hands, waist and feet. For the same cost of your main hand and eso chest you can obtain all of the best pieces for your DRK.

Depending on the current content you are running, your weapon is the most important thing to obtain first. It took me a week to get my relic to 200, and that was because I didn't want to fate grind. I ended up with all my crystals in 3 days of running, and the dungeons were cake.

Starting from scratch, it will take a little over 4 weeks of capping ESO and running VA for tank chest/farthing. The VA head/hands/waist/feet would be a decent substitute, but I wouldn't desperately spam VA with that tank queue for it.

BiS on the right side (slaying accessories) - Neck: ESO, Earrings: 210 Gordian, Wrist : 210 Gordian, Rings: ESO/Gordian

[Bman10119]

-snip-

alright so relic weapons best in slot, good to know. I managed to get my first relic in two days grinding fates (couldve done faster but procrastinated becuase i wasnt getting any xp or anything from it. drk has 6 levels to go so can just finish leveling it farming those crystals this week.) i took a pretty big break so dont have a lot of esoterics saved up so ill jsut gun for the relic asap. thanks for the BiS eso buys. i mostly run lower end content, have been wanting to get into a static to do the harder endgame but I have no clue how to go about getting into one. what are the best alternatives to 210 gordian accessories? just use my prototype acessories till i can get the gordian stuff? thanks

[AlexiIvaniskavich]

for the Right side stuff, go with the prototype until you can gather the ESO (after you are finished with left side gear). My purchase order would go neck > ring > wrist > earring

[SpookyGhost]

week 1: i200 relic + void ark chest/legs + eso belt (upgrade with farthing)
week 2: void ark chest/legs + eso feet/hands/head (upgrade with farthing)
week 3: void ark feet/hands/head + eso ring (upgrade with farthing)
week 4: eso feet/hands/head (upgrade with farthing)

Grind Alex NM for accessories, mix and match STR/VIT as you see fit - just get a set of both if youve got the time. Then buy accessories from there with eso.

Alternatively just wait for 3.2 when the grind resets and go from there.

[Merkava]

I honestly feel that for the TC to better understand what BiS is at any given time it is better if he understands how much each stat weights into the overall performance of a tank. Now, if all you ever do is clear normal content then just go for the highest ilvl gear available, normal content is face-roll enough as it is. If you are, however, working on raiding (getting into it or already part of a static) then what you need to understand each stat weight in order to tell which is, in the end, BIS for you.

Before we go into that understand overall stat importance for a Tank, it varies a bit but its generally something along the lines off...

Vit (Until you have enough) > ACC (Until you reach the threshold needed for a fight) > Offensive Stats >>>> Parry (You really should ignore this).

What is enough VIT? For regular content you can go full STR without problems if you play properly. While raiding it is generally agreed that it's somewhere between 16k-17k HP (without any HP buffs).
What is enough ACC? That depends on how much raiding you do, currently the cap for A4Savage is around 650 so anymore than that is a waste.

Now, you have those stats up where it matters? You analyze the offensive weight of all the offensive stats in a weapon or armor before you decide what is BIS.

Generally the importance of offensive stats goes in this order...

Weapon Damage (WD) >>>>>>>> STR >>>> CRIT > DET > Skill Speed (SS).

1 point of WD is equal to roughly 9.5 - 9.8 points of STR.
1 point of CRIT is equal to roughly 0.14 - 0.16 points of STR.
1 point of DET is equal to roughly 0.13 - 0.14 points of STR.
1 point of SS is equal to roughly 0.10 - 0.12 points of STR.

This is specially important when picking the right weapon. This is the main reason why say Deathbringer (link) is a better weapon than Gordian Greatsword (link) and why Nothung (link) is considered BIS, you really don't want that parry on your weapon while aiming for the best possible secondary combinations.

As far as armor pieces just follow the above rules, meet your HP requirements, meet your Accuracy requirements and then pump the rest into good secondaries as is possible while avoiding parry. Do note that Parry is still better than Accuracy when you are already above the necessary amount. Understanding stat weights makes choosing what BIS is MUCH easier since the answer will change from patch to patch.