What materia and stats I should go for on dark knight?

[TwitchingFool0]

I'm just really not quite sure as some things I've read are like 3 months old so I dont know if anything has changed.

[PeacefulEdge]

i think it remains as Sks until you fit 5 gcd into bw ( probably 2.38), then dh or crit unless you are progging tea in which case tenacity. For really accurate values search Astro's Balance.

[Nedkel]

You want to have something around 1523-1550 skill speed in order to push the GCD down to 2.38 sec, this is the best timer which allows you to hit 5 x MP regenerations with blood weapon.
Everything else i would go with crit then determination.

[Hierro]

You don't actually need that much skill speed like others are saying. Blood weapon can get 5 full hits with slower GCDs, although it takes some getting used to on pressing the button slightly later in your GCD than with other typical 10 second buffs. I've been able to get all 5 hits up to 2.42 (others can do it even slower, but I'm in the south!), though I prefer the consistency of 2.40. That said, you'll get more consistent numbers if you go with melding det and crit, but you'll be able to achieve higher numbers with crit and direct hit, though if the difference is worth it is up to you.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Make sure you have no Skill Speed whatsoever and go for full Direct Hit on melds... you get more DPS from Direct Hit(or any other stat that isn't a speed up buff) over Skill Speed on DRK because of how garbage Salted Earth is as a cooldown...

[Lucy_Pyre]

Make sure you have no Skill Speed whatsoever and go for full Direct Hit on melds... you get more DPS from Direct Hit(or any other stat that isn't a speed up buff) over Skill Speed on DRK because of how garbage Salted Earth is as a cooldown...

This.... this is a troll, right? This has to be a troll. I refuse to believe that this isn't a troll and not, in fact, an unironic and serious statement.

[DRKoftheAzure]

This.... this is a troll, right? This has to be a troll. I refuse to believe that this isn't a troll and not, in fact, an unironic and serious statement.

The only reason you want to stack skill speed is if you have a DoT that is up frequently, or the DoT is really is strong enough while also being up frequently that aligns with your burst window(see GNB and PLD DoTs), or faster weaponskill recast to go with those DoTs that are up frequently while making sure everything still fits into you burst window(also see GNB and PLD DoTs).

Salted Earth is too weak and infrequent to consider skill speed AND spell speed for a faster GCD in general, stronger auto attacks, and slightly stronger Salted Earth.

Tenacity is more of a DPS gain than Skill Speed and Spell Speed COMBINED, and is supposed to be the worst stat in the game, yet it does more for DRK than skill speed and spell speed could ever do for DRK because Tenacity boosts all damage dealt... All because of DRK needing spells for AoE combos, which do WAY less damage than GNB, PLD, AND WAR AoE combos, so even more of a reason to not stack Skill Speed AND Spell Speed on DRK.

Now if Unleash and Stalwart Soul were target AoEs like Abyssal Drain, it would be pretty justifiable to make them weaker than the other tanks AoE combos(which are point blank AoEs which can be used to cheese look away mechanics), but they are point blank AoEs so therefor they need to be stronger in some capacity, like say Retores more MP and generates more Blood Gauge than the single target combo.

Basically Skill Speed and Spell Speed for DRK is a trap, and even if it wasn't it would not address the fact DRK only has one single target combo...

[Lucy_Pyre]

-snip-

This.... this is wrong. This is so utterly wrong on so many different levels. You have the job name in your forum username, yet have a flawed understanding of not only how the job itself works, but how basic stats in the game function and interact with said job. Skill speed is anything but a trap and, in fact, is quite vital for efficient performance of many jobs, DRK being one of them. In order to make efficient use of Both Blood Weapon and Delirium, you must hit all 5 potential GCDs within these windows, as failing to do so is losing out on a significant amount of DPS, especially with Delirium. Losing a proc of Blood Weapon due to low SkS means losing 10 Blackblood and 600 MP. While this is not a huge loss on its own, if you are running low/no SkS as you are advocating for you will be losing this with every cast of Blood Weapon, which is a staggering amount of lost DPS and even mitigation over a fight.

Let's look at the numbers. Blood Weapon is used every 60 seconds, and if you have a 12 minute fight (around the amount of time you'll be in combat in Titan savage) that comes out to 12 uses of BW. Now, if we miss the 5th GCD on every single use it comes out to this.

600 x 12 = 7,200 MP
10 x 12 = 120 Blood

In other words, missing the 5th GCD on every Blood Weapon over the course of the fight by not slotting SkS totals out to missing 2.5 uses of EoS/FoS/TBN and 2.4 uses of Bloodspiller/Living Shadow. If we go with the most lenient case and assume that you lost two BS's and EoS, that comes out to a grand total of 2,200 lost potency (500 x 2 + 600 x 2)! Now, we look at Delirium. Missing the 5th GCD of Delirium on each use directly translates to 600 lost potency. Delirium has a 90 second cooldown, meaning that over a 12 minute fight it can be used a total of 8 times.

600 x 8 = 4,800

You are losing out on 4,800 potency from Delirium. Now, if we combine these two together that is a combined total of 7,000 lost potency over the course of the entire fight. 7,000 potency lost over 12 minutes all because you chose to not slot SkS. That is an utterly insane amount of lost potency, or roughly 2/3 worth of the damage that a melee LB3 does (9,000 potency)!

In other words, my friend, you are woefully incorrect. Skill Speed is far and away from a "trap" for Dark Knight. It is, in fact, a very necessary and required stat.

Edit: Spelling.

[DRKoftheAzure]

snip

And need I to remind you that Skill Speed only affects Auto attack damage, DoT damage, and weaponskill recast, and does not affect your actual damage output. It even says so in that stat tooltip for skill speed.

[Lucy_Pyre]

weaponskill recast

Yes, and therein lies the exact reason that you are wrong, as I quite clearly pointed out in my above post. Skill speed affects the recast timers on weaponskills, of which all but Unleash and Stalwart Soul for Dark Knight are. This means that SkS directly translates to your GCD timer and, that if you have little to none of the stat, that your GCD will be too long to be able to fit in the 5th GCD under both Blood Weapon and Delirium. This amounts to, as I once again pointed out in my above post, an extremely large amount of lost potency and DPS over the course of a fight. Thus making SkS a stat that DRK requires in moderate amounts in order to properly function (Around the 1,550-ish mark).

So, due to this, SkS very much does affect your "actual" damage output.