Are Piety Melds Useful For Dark Knight?

[Magic-Mal]

I was wondering if more MP for DRK would be more useful than say.. Determination. Like 120 piety in a compared to 120 Piety.

Wouldn't more Piety = More Dark Arts = More DPS(AoE too)? In comparison to the 120 Determination?

DRK is just my side job so I really don't know alot about it and it's melds besides "CRIT/DET!!!".

[HyoMinPark]

Don't meld Piety into DRK. The way piety scales, it isn't worth it at all. Plus, skills like Dark Arts and your Darkside MP drain scale with your MP pool, so you will still only be able to use DA that same number of times as you currently can, and your MP will drain at the same rate regardless of how small or large your MP pool is.

There are enough skills in a DRKs toolkit to easily keep up Darkside. Level 35, you get Blood Price, which is your best friend. Use it when you first pull your trash mobs, and while you're Unleash spamming to gain enmity, you are regen-ing your MP as they beat the crap out of you. After the Blood Price+Unleash spam, you shouldn't have to even touch your aggro combo, and only use your Syphon Strike combo to regen more MP. Blood Weapon is good also if you are OT in a fight, or if you feel comfortable enough to drop Grit when MT. Your Level 60 skill Carve and Spit also regens MP if you do not use it with Dark Arts.

The way I build my DRK (which I don't do Savage content, so I don't do BiS, but rather a pseudo-BiS with stats that I prefer), is I meet the current accuracy cap (so, for 3.4 around 710-ish for A12S), and then I do the Crit/Det build. I avoid Parry at all costs because the skill just isn't that useful in my--and many other's--opinion. For your accessories, stick with fending, and meld strength materia into them. If your skill speed is a little low, you could also meld skill speed into your DRK if you wish. Really melds seem to be more of a preference thing because everyone will tell you something different, and everyone will have different things that work for them. Just out of the secondary stats in this game, crit/det builds seem to be the most common.

[Cabalabob]

MP cost scales with level not max MP otherwise piety would be a worthless stat. However 1 piety is only about 4 MP. A piety V materia only gives 11 piety. It would take a lot to get any worthwhile returns and you'd sacrifice too many secondaries for it.

It also doesn't effect MP return from blood price or blood weapon. So since you'll never get back to full MP you're only getting the extra MP on the initial hit. Even with full piety melds on all your gear you wouldn't even have enough for an extra dark arts so it's useless to have that extra.

[Zephyrin]

Totally useless because you have skills to refill your mp pool.

The way to go is CRIT DET like the other dps and tanks ( minus warrior who like to reach a specific skillspeed cap and the black mage that prefer spellspeed has main secondary stat)
Also avoid parry for now. but for an alt job secondary stats doesnt really matter as long as the items ilv is better than what you already have.

[Magic-Mal]

Okay thanks guys! I'll continue to focus on melding crit and Det then and avoid Piety. Although I've been getting more Accuracy and Skill Speed because the crit/Det is in my gear.

[Kotemon]

Only at lower levels until you can learn to maintain MP with DarkSide always up while holding enmity. Even then it's more of a filler stat than a priority in that 30~45 level range. Otherwise I think only Bard can make use of Piety melds on their Dex Accessories.