(Don't) Fear The Reaper: A Dark Knight Guide

Am curious of how the JSE+2 neck parses with the added phy damage + job trait that was just recently added.

If your attack is near cap it’ll be BiS for everything. It’s literally +10% damage.

I’ll test whether the neck is applied before or after the new buff when i get home. I’m assuming it’s after which makes it more potent than before.

Ok well for the first time since way back in the Kraken club spam days .. it's safe to say we're strong enough. On behalf of all DRKs, we are sorry for being so goddamn strong right now. We asked for buffs and here we are. Please don't beg to SE to nerf all the emoknights .. we're going to have fun with this. We're not crying for a change. I take back all the cursing I did back when they fixed the WSdmg bug.

whats its like to be Drk right now:

I'm no math wiz so I figured I better stay away from WS calc's. But melee swings is a straight no brainer lol.

Now it's everyone else, and I'm drinking them tears like fine champagne.

Hit Hard or Die Trying!

Nah I won't be drinking in any tears as I know what it's like to be left in the cold. I'm one of those praying MNK gets to come back and shine, even though for the longest time all you ever saw were mnks and wars when drk and drg were nothing but "lol".

Small rant.


So what is the deal with single hit WS accuracy? The 95% Accuracy Cap loves to play games with me at times. All of my melee hits will land, but my weapon skills will sure enough miss on the stupidest/easiest of content.

Missing Cata can sadly get you killed.

:(

Even with about 1400+ Accuracy, including the accuracy bonus to the first hit of a WS, it still ends up being just as bad as Fudo at times.

At least spamming cross reaper I felt like my 2nd hit was more likely to miss than my first. I dunno..

You just notice it more because it's a wiff.

YUP!

DRK hasn't been remotely bad for a good while. The only thing this update changed is that DRK might be the defacto melee dps for like, Omen Boss runs, UMNs, applicable Ambuscades,and Sinister Reign. Content they were already quite competitive in.

Mighty Strikes and Warcry are still better for zergs, despite WAR not having a PDL neck and getting 2 less PDL traits. So nothing changed here, which is the only place DRK might have been undesirable compared to WAR and SAM.

and this is still SMN

Looking to upgrade my Catastrophe sets for DRK, would someone mind laying some sets down for weaponskill and aftermath sets, greatly appreciated!

PS.my very first post, goodbye troll status, haha!!

ItemSet 360448

I use this and 2x lugra at night for the STR/DEX/INT/DA

Cool, thanks for the quick response, what does your aftermath TP
set look like if you don’t mind?

I haven't given it too much thought.


Also if I recall catas haste, is JA haste now, not just gear haste.

Where it does help is when last resort is down, you are using /nin or seigen, or if you don't want to use hasso due to it messing with spell recast and such.

JA haste caps at 25%

Last Resort puts you at 25%
Cata and hasso puts you at 20% with LR down.

I didn't see much reason to make an AM tp set after cata's haste was changed to JA.

I was just wondering the right gear to keep your hp up without sacrificing -dt with the ratri gear and still hold a decent dps

This is my Max HP Hybrid Set I've been playing with.

ItemSet 364074

Cape is Dex/Acc/DA/PDT-10

The magic evasion has been pretty useful on certain things. Mainly sweep/frypan spam in Dyna. Magic Evasion+ on each peice is on par with Kenda+1. Downside is a lack of store tp, but the regain and damage taken-> tp can be helpful.

It's really easy to keep up 7-8k HP, not to mention surviving Mijin Gakure if one slips through.

PDT-10%
MDT-3%
DT-34%
+38% DT

I could probably change the cape to DT-5 or just use Moonlight.

It's been a while since I've invested heavily into Drk. I'm curious if Ragnarok has any place left at the top, or if Calad has just jumped too far ahead? Is anyone using it regularly and is competitive, or is it just a fun weapon at this point?

"oh ***, honor march just got dispelled" weapon.

How many capes do I need for DRK?
A STR WSD?
A STR Double Atk?
A STR STP?
A Fast Cast?

Depends... these four should cover most of your bases:

DEX Acc/Att STP (TP)
STR Acc/Att DA (Reso)
STR Acc/Att WSD (CR)
VIT Acc/Att WSD (Torc)

Auxiliary:
INT Acc/Att DA (Ent)
INT MAcc/MDmg WSD (Magic WS)
INT MAcc/MDmg FC

Personally I never bothered with the second set but if you're super OCD and want to get that last extra % out of your DRK have at it.

BTW Skarwind, I tried that HP+ build the other day. While it is nice to ride through damage on the HP and utilize Catastrophe to stay alive it leaves me on the edge of my seat. Could possibly swap out Ratri Feet for fully augmented Amm Greaves. It's a drop in HP and Magic Evasion, but having to make up for so much Damage Taken+ is scary.

Would that also be the Insurgency cape?
What about Catastrophe cape?

Insurgency & Catastrophe: STR Acc/Att WSD.

But why scary? In his set he counter all the damage taken+ with damage taken- so you dont get hit by more damage than with normal hp set without DT.

What path do people think would be a good fit for Father Time if you were to invest in one?

Route C
[1] "Drain" Potency +25%
[2] Weapon Skill Damage +15%
[3] DMG:+15

Naturally. It boosts DRK's best asset, Drains, and a flat increase to WS across the board, instead of REMA which is specific to that skill. IMO I would have preferred Path C to have 500HP vs 15 DMG.

Actually im not so sure about this.
15% WSD when DRK already have like 70%, starts to have huge diminishing returns (it's only a 9% increase for first hit of WS)

REMA boosts are for whole WS and are unique multipliers, so are FAR better (especially Mythic and Relic).

Also without Relic, the only WS that would take good advantage of 15% WSD is pretty much only Cross Reaper, but Cross Reaper has very good scaling with TP and 500TP bonus on Anguta will result in 30-40% increased damage on first hit, which is obviously much better. Anguta will actually also boost damage on Entropy by a lot (TP bonus and 10% with augment). I guess there is also Quietus, but you would very rarely use it anyway.

Also beside compering to Anguta, both path A and B are probably more damage anyway. Additional TP from Path A would easily rival 9% increase to Cross Reaper first hit from path C (assuming 4 hit build, path A would give you 144 more TP, which is 9-14% increase to first hit on CR) and it's 50% to your white damage. Path B additional TP is probably even higher than path A (especially with SAM rolls), so again it will boost your Cross reaper more than path C and it can also be used for niche subtle blow builds.

So the only advantage of path C is being a macro piece for 5% more Drain and 20 more macc and 68 more magic accuracy skill than Misantrophy.

With such low PDT- (-6% going by his build specifically) Dread Spikes gets burned off just that much quicker. Using Divergence for example, it's about 1,000~1,200 damage a hit (single hit, non-criticals) and a good bit of my experience in there has been refreshing Dread Spikes because I hit so hard. Even with 6~10K HP, I've found myself face down on the ground because Spikes recast was down, Catastrophe wiffed, and lag made the WHM slow.