Dark Knight Direct Hit

[Phoenicia]

Snip

I wasn't trying to be aggressive as much as I was trying to be comical. And while you are allowed to play the way you like and I even encourage doing so along with experimenting, giving advice that goes against what good players give isn't always helpful.

So no. While changing the melds of the same gear may only make a 1~3% difference, you have to take into account the gear picked because of substats as well. Melding for damage isn't just 100 DPS difference, it can make up to thousands of damage difference. For example, changing from ilv 400 gloves and boots to eureka ilv 390 with 5 melds alone nets you 60 to 200 DPS gain, or a median of ~160. That's only 2 pieces of gear LOSING item level in favor of melds. Imagine what keeping the same item level, therefor same str and stat budget, for the better stats can contribute to. Then imagine changing the entire gear and meld choice combined can add up to.

Completely abandoning direct hit and going for tenacity over crit will definitely hit you closer to 1k of DPS if not more. It's been mathed AND tried out. When we're talking 4.x thousand DPS that goes up to near or above 6 thousand, we're definitely not talking single digit percents DPS anymore.

Going full tenacity as opposed to 0 tenacity is ~12% reduction in damage intake. But that's not necessarily 12% DPS gain. Since you lose crit, DH, det and/or sks. Items have a stat budget, so you're not getting "free tenacity", you're trading other, better for damage, stats for it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Tenacity does not increase healing received btw, it increases healing YOU DO. Guess what increases that better than tenacity? EVERY OTHER STAT!
/end edit.

Also, with all due respect, how do you know you're putting out "decent numbers" if you do not bother with parses? Because it is literally impossible to know if you're doing well unless you check a parse or try Sky, Earth, Sea or w/e it's called and give a good kill time. Because single hits do not matter, damage throughout the fight, or damage per second (DPS), does. Hitting a random 32k Bloodpiller once a fight isn't "decent numbers", it's just a random hit. Hitting 23-28k Bloodspillers consistently is.

On another note, how much DPS you do does not really matter that much outside of savage raids or extreme trials because enrage timers don't exist and they are tuned so low that 1 decent member dishing out enough DPS is most likely enough to carry the remaining 7 players. You won't lose aggro if you are sitting in tank stance and pushing your buttons either, compounded with the fact most people you get aren't dishing out enough DPS to be a threat anyway. And if you are sitting in your tank stance, tenacity doesn't matter either because of the default 25% increased effective health from the stance. So the whole point of what you meld doesn't matter.

Where I come from is pushing out the most out of your job. This means no staying in tank stance, getting the most out of your DPS and the most of your defensive abilities. If you are using your defensives properly, tenacity makes VERY little difference there. And if you want DPS, tenacity is ranked 5th out of 5 secondary stats, therefor my whole point of "tenacity isn't bad enough to avoid, but not good enough to prioritize". And I believe the whole point of this thread is the OP wanting to push out the most of his DRK.

Again, nothing against you personally, but my post was definitely against your advice because it wasn't good advice. I hope my explanation gave you insight as to why. And if you would prefer to keep playing the way you prefer, be my guest, it's your sub! And definitely your time for you to enjoy as you please.

[Renato]

Also, with all due respect, how do you know you're putting out "decent numbers" if you do not bother with parses? Because it is literally impossible to know if you're doing well unless you check a parse or try Sky, Earth, Sea or w/e it's called and give a good kill time. Because single hits do not matter, damage throughout the fight, or damage per second (DPS), does. Hitting a random 32k Bloodpiller once a fight isn't "decent numbers", it's just a random hit. Hitting 23-28k Bloodspillers consistently is.

On another note, how much DPS you do does not really matter that much outside of savage raids or extreme trials because enrage timers don't exist and they are tuned so low that 1 decent member dishing out enough DPS is most likely enough to carry the remaining 7 players. You won't lose aggro if you are sitting in tank stance and pushing your buttons either, compounded with the fact most people you get aren't dishing out enough DPS to be a threat anyway. And if you are sitting in your tank stance, tenacity doesn't matter either because of the default 25% increased effective health from the stance. So the whole point of what you meld doesn't matter.

Where I come from is pushing out the most out of your job. This means no staying in tank stance, getting the most out of your DPS and the most of your defensive abilities. If you are using your defensives properly, tenacity makes VERY little difference there. And if you want DPS, tenacity is ranked 5th out of 5 secondary stats, therefor my whole point of "tenacity isn't bad enough to avoid, but not good enough to prioritize". And I believe the whole point of this thread is the OP wanting to push out the most of his DRK.

I've always seen people saying that Tenacity is something that isn't too important but I wanted to try it for myself. I ended up downloading ACT and trying a few things out. You guys were definitely correct about the Tenacity. At the time, I had about 2.2k DET and around 1.6k TEN. The first time I parsed using Stone, Sky, Sea with that build, I was at 3.9k DPS. The second time, I was at 4k.

I ended up swapping out the TEN melds and gathering gear with DET/CRIT as the secondary stats. With a focus still being on DET and a 382ilv, I jumped up to 4.1k DPS.

Here are my stats now:


As you can see, my focus is still on DET>CRIT. I've been working on acquiring more high level gear and currently at ilv386, I'm getting constant 4.4k DPS. Keep in mind, I DO NOT DO SAVAGE or EX stuff nor do I want to. Doing this was out of sheer curiosity and for the sake of just wanting to try a new build out of the norm. So yeah, all of this may not matter for me but I still enjoy playing the job efficiently. I stay in tank stance while pulling mobs and switch to DPS after I build aggro on bosses. I don't consider myself the best tank but I'd like to think I'm ok at it and I understand how to play it. I just really hate how it's literally "play this build, stack this stat, meld this or you suck." Hopefully, it's a design that gets changed in ShB and the other stats get tweaked to actually do something.

This is with no potions or food as well. Someone told me that DRK should be around 4.8k-5k DPS for single target and possibly higher with multiple targets. I still have a few pieces that have TEN as a second stat that I need to get rid of but the high level DET/CRIT gear is out of my reach at the moment with the only weapons having those stats being the Omega Claymore (which I'll probably NEVER get) and Pyros Guillotine...which is another weapon that I'll never have. I may end up jumping to the Scavean once the cap is removed and just take that DET loss. I also need the gloves from the most recent Ivalice Raid.

I didn't parse with DH. Compared to a stat that we can actually stack due to our gear having it as a secondary, I just don't see how it can be that beneficial. If you melded the whole left side with DH VI materia as a tank, you'd only be at 804 unless you're over-melding and even still, it just seems like it's not worth it...to me at least.

[ReiMakoto]

This is with no potions or food as well. Someone told me that DRK should be around 4.8k-5k DPS for single target and possibly higher with multiple targets. I still have a few pieces that have TEN as a second stat that I need to get rid of but the high level DET/CRIT gear is out of my reach at the moment with the only weapons having those stats being the Omega Claymore (which I'll probably NEVER get) and Pyros Guillotine...which is another weapon that I'll never have. I may end up jumping to the Scavean once the cap is removed and just take that DET loss. I also need the gloves from the most recent Ivalice Raid.

I didn't parse with DH. Compared to a stat that we can actually stack due to our gear having it as a secondary, I just don't see how it can be that beneficial. If you melded the whole left side with DH VI materia as a tank, you'd only be at 804 unless you're over-melding and even still, it just seems like it's not worth it...to me at least.

So basically its a minor difference, ephasis on the minor, basically when you've stacked all the Crit you can, its a toss up as to what you dump points into next, and mathematically it works out that direct hit is better to put stuff into on DRK because you're going from a 0% chance to direct hit to a something percent chance to direct hit, which is more of a difference than you'll see from pumping stuff into det, a ~<10% chance to do 25% more damage will outweight the little tiddly bit of damage DET would give you.

Also yes tanks should be overmelding, their bis involves at least 3 fully overmelded accs.

[Megguido]

So no. While changing the melds of the same gear may only make a 1~3% difference, you have to take into account the gear picked because of substats as well. Melding for damage isn't just 100 DPS difference, it can make up to thousands of damage difference. For example, changing from ilv 400 gloves and boots to eureka ilv 390 with 5 melds alone nets you 60 to 200 DPS gain, or a median of ~160. That's only 2 pieces of gear LOSING item level in favor of melds. Imagine what keeping the same item level, therefor same str and stat budget, for the better stats can contribute to. Then imagine changing the entire gear and meld choice combined can add up to.

Completely abandoning direct hit and going for tenacity over crit will definitely hit you closer to 1k of DPS if not more. It's been mathed AND tried out. When we're talking 4.x thousand DPS that goes up to near or above 6 thousand, we're definitely not talking single digit percents DPS anymore.

Going full tenacity as opposed to 0 tenacity is ~12% reduction in damage intake. But that's not necessarily 12% DPS gain. Since you lose crit, DH, det and/or sks. Items have a stat budget, so you're not getting "free tenacity", you're trading other, better for damage, stats for it.

Kinda comparing apples to oranges.

Elemental +1 gloves and boots are better than ilvl 400 gloves and boots mostly because they have more substats. 120 Crits beat 10 STR and crappy subtstats, that was mathed out yes.

Now if you want to meld full Ten instead of full Crit, you still have the same amount of substats, but not the same distribution. And this will not hit your DPS by 1k or so. A full set of melds, with 2 eureka pieces bring a total of 760 substats (not counting accs, cause they should be melded with STR).

760 Ten is +3.5% damage (linear, so doesn't matter how much Ten you already have)
760 Crit is +6.2% damage (considering you're at 1600 crit before melds, ~2360 after melds)
Hence a difference of 2.7% total damage. A decent/good tank at ilvl ~395 would deal about 5k DPS. Losing 2.7% damage drops their damage to 4,86k DPS. You lose, in theory, 140 DPS by melding full Ten instead of full Crit. Whoo.

Tl;dr: more damage is always cool and usually better than more mitigation, even if it's not that much (and more importantly, free). Basically, a couple % more damage vs a couple more % mitigation (2.7% dmg vs 3.5% mitigation in this case). Saying "IMMA TANK, ME NOT DPS, ME TOUGH" as an argument to not pick Crit is kinda retarded. On the other hand, we tend to easily overestimate Crit/Dhit, and underestimate Ten/Det/Sks. Though melding Crit is better, melding Ten or Det isn't bad either.

I didn't parse with DH. Compared to a stat that we can actually stack due to our gear having it as a secondary, I just don't see how it can be that beneficial. If you melded the whole left side with DH VI materia as a tank, you'd only be at 804 unless you're over-melding and even still, it just seems like it's not worth it...to me at least.

See DHit like Det. Both stats scale linearly and give a pretty similar damage boost. Basically, pick Det if you also play WAR (or all three tanks), or DHit if you also play PLD (or only DRK). If you want to compare your damage output with different setups, you can use this damage calculator. Plug in your in-game stats. If you can't reach the numbers calculated on a dummy, then there's something wrong with your rotation, not your gear.

[Renato]

See DHit like Det. Both stats scale linearly and give a pretty similar damage boost. Basically, pick Det if you also play WAR (or all three tanks), or DHit if you also play PLD (or only DRK). If you want to compare your damage output with different setups, you can use this damage calculator. Plug in your in-game stats. If you can't reach the numbers calculated on a dummy, then there's something wrong with your rotation, not your gear.

Thanks for posting the damage calculator. It's good to somewhat see what particular stats are changing. I can't seem to get it apply the changes to the DPS section though.

This is what I got when I plugged in my stats with the Scavean Greatsword:

[Megguido]

Thanks for posting the damage calculator. It's good to somewhat see what particular stats are changing. I can't seem to get it apply the changes to the DPS section though.

This is what I got when I plugged in my stats with the Scavean Greatsword:

You've got to make a copy of this spreadsheet. Once the copy is made, open it, plug in your stats in either the red or blue cells. Thenit shows your theoretical DPS on a dummy (in DRK / PLD's case, it's the DPS without slashing debuff, hence the significant difference with WAR). Try to reach the "Low DPS" value at least, which is the DPS value with unlucky Crit / DHit procs.

Smol correction on your picture though, ilvl 390 Scaevan greatsword has 107 Weapon damage, not 108.

Also did a comparison between 2.38s Hydatos BiS and my "poorboye" build (full ilvl 400 without any Elemental item or pentamelded accs, with 0 DHit melds). The difference is about 130 DPS in favor of BiS. So yeah, overmelded accs and DH still are kings on DRK, for anyone wanting to push numbers in savage.