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

If I wanted a fast TP scythe and didn't want to sink the time into Liberator, I think path B Father Time would be a fine choice. Follow up attacks are easier to build around than mythic AM3, since it plays nicely with multi-attack. Also can't say no to the subtle blow 2. I use a path B Asclepius to solo Lilith E on White Mage, and the difference is stark. Also Esuna.
As for path C, it's only 5 more potency than Misanthrope or Dacnomania, and I almost never switch weapons for drain. In almost every situation I would rather keep TP, and self SC MBs tend to cap out HP anyway.

If you self sc to make mb with drain iii, you lose very little tp by switching weapons anyway, because you are right after WS. You can lose AM3 on Liberator tho, which imo is the only exception when cons outweight pros of equipping weapon for drain. Just my opinion tho :P

That's not what I mean.

Let's say you have Weapon A (such a Path B Father Time), with Subtle Blow and FUA, and Weapon B, without either, and they both do similar total damage.

Both weapons will feed similar amounts of TP over time (Father Time feeds less TP per hit, but hits more often), which means that getting Father Time Path B specifically because of the Subtle Blow makes little sense, because simply picking a comparable DPS weapon that doesn't hit as often achieves the same thing.

Lets assume only 50% ma rate for the sake of making Fathers Time looks bad. So you will have 1.5 hits with weapon B (non Liberator weapon) and 2 hits with weapon A (Father path b). With 2 hits and 75% sb you will still feed 50% less tp than with 1.5 hits and 50%sb. So weapon B would need to have 50% higher dps to beat relation of dps to fed tp. No weapon is even close to that.

Except that you can get more than 50% SB with non-Father Time weapons. In terms of TP given, 2 hits at 75 SB is extremely close to 1.5 hits at 65 SB.

Geriond, 25 SB 2 will still result in lower TP feed over time. Going from 50 to 75 SB cuts TP accumulation in half, and 50 follow up can only increase TP accumulation by 50%. I will admit putting sb2 and follow up on the same weapon compared to, say, SB2 and double damage proc is sort of odd, but I can see where SE was going with the design.

And yeah, I guess I could swap weapons mid SC, but it still seems like too much work for too little payoff, and then you have the problem of the +HP on father time actively working against you. Dacnomania has the same issue, but Misanthropy might actually be a better weapon for that use. It's that reason that I swap Ratri feet out for a pair of valorous feet with drain potency when I do avatar HTBFs, for instance.

I realize my responses are slow as I'm posting from my phone at the moment, but what SB2 options do we even have? Dragon body for 10 and father time for 25, what else is there?

This is only true if you only have 50 SB without Father Time. Dark Knight has access to up to 65 without it, which makes them extremely close in terms of TP feed when compared to a similar delay weapon without the Follow Up Attack.

Edit: Niqmaddu Ring is 5 SBII.

its not much, but niqmaddu is another 5 SB2.

Yeah but thats theory. Try to actually make that setup on DRK with body and ring slot taken by niqmadu and dagon and see how much sacrifices you will need to make to build 50sb in rest of the gear.

It's not really that hard, especially when you consider the Last Resort (with 15 SB) is up 80% of the time; if you can convince a COR to give you Monk's roll (such as if you have 4 rolls) it becomes trivial.

Dagon and the Ring are themselves excellent DPS pieces, so they're not really sacrifices themselves.

Last resort adds sb?
Having 2 cors in party is not really a lowman. Sb builds have sense when you have max 2x 75% sb DDs on target. Having 2 cors not being able to melee wouldnt have sense really. You could argue WHM should be in lowman and then you would have 25 sb from auspice. Still that makes Father time much more flexible in term of what you can wear and makes it much easier to keep 75sb during ws and use good WS gear still.

Also Dagon and Niqmaddu are good dps pieces, but you just argued that multiattack and sb on same item is kinda counter productive and here you have 2 items with 15%sb II total but also ~19% MA rate.

Desperate Blows merits give 3 SB per merit when Empyrean Boots are worn on Last Resorts use. Which you want to do anyway to cut the def down trade off.

Aah, right, I forgot Niq had 5% SB2.

I also remember fallen's sollerets +3 being weird and extra-crappy in the way their last resort buffs work. iirc it is split into two buffs, one which adds subtle blow and one which reduces the defense penalty, the problem is that the boots effect is only active while they are worn. I know that is the case for the defense penalty reduction, but I don't remember if the subtle blow effect works that way as well, but I remember being sorely dissapointed.

As for follow up attack, I'm trying to remember exactly how it works. It can proc on top of a traditional multiattack proc, can't it?

The average multiattack focused TP set usually came out to be about 65-70% total multiattack, after accounting for priority overlap from QA>TA>DA. If we assume that 50% FUA is going to bump a 70% MA build to a 120% build

Base set (70% MA)
50% SB = .85 TP accumulated
60% SB = .68 TP accumulated
65% SB = .595 TP accumulated

Father Time B (120% MA)
75% SB = 0.55 TP accumulated

Going by that, Father Time is still going to be the winner in terms of minimal TP feed. Of course, I may be factoring FUA proc wrong, but if anything it would provide less TP over time, rather than more.

/edit Whoops, basic arithmetic error, should be 120% MA not 130 for FT Path B

I noticed that the reforged +3 had these notes

Looks like they no longer need to be worn fulltime for the defensive buffs? Easy enough to test out.

iirc the way the old Abyss Sollerets work is that when you have them on and activate last resort, you get the reduction to the defense penalty until you take them off. If you put them back on during last resort, you do not get the bonus back.
On the Fallen's Sollerets iterations you still lose the buff when you take them off, but you get it back when you put them back on. Whether that applies or not to the subtle blow effect I have no idea.

Virtue(/Raetic?) weapons have the only MA effects that can proc on a MA, but limited to once a round.

Beyond that, Multi Attack Priority is:
QA > TA > DA > MTA > MDA > OAX > FollowUp (Dynamis-D Weapons) > ZanHasso

No..

Follow up attack on su5 can proc in round with ma proc, but cant proc on WS.

So you can hit 5 times with Feather Time path B if you proc both QA and follow up attack.

Source?

The 2 COR thing was a rare "just in case" situation, such as if you are doing content that scales with number of memebers and you have spare CORs to roll and drop. It's not a significant part of my argument.

No, I iargued that SB and MA on the same item is counterproductive if the MA isn't increasing your DPS, which is the whole point of my argument. Dagon and Niqmaddu are DPS increases in addition to the SBII, while Father Time B is roughly equal or a loss in DPS compared to similar delay options (IIRC, Father Time B is generally somewhat behind R15 Apoc and somewhat ahead of R15 Anguta). Plus, 19% MA for 15 SBII is a much more advantageous ratio for reducing TP feed than 50% MA for 25 SBII.

You're generally not going to have your normal ~70% MA rate in a full on SB set, since it both generally requires gear sacrifices, and switching multi attack to STP when the DPS difference is negligible is a good practice for subtle blow sets (such as Cessance to Dedition).

When you have 50 base MA, the difference is only 0.525 vs 0.5 (5% difference), and when you have 30 base MA, the difference is only 0.455 vs 0.45 (1.1% difference). This is also ignoring that when using R15 Apoc (the weapon most similar in DPS and delay to Father Time and thus the best comparison for this scenario), your main WS will be Catastrophe, which feeds a small amount less TP than Father Time's standard Cross Reaper due to 1 less hit.

That's a pretty tiny difference (if it's one at all) from what one would expect 25 whole SBII to give from a weapon one spent >100m on (in addition to Dynamis RP farming or aggregate buying).

My point was not that Father Time B will never grant the enemy less TP than other options, but that it's a very small difference despite the large amounts of SBII on it.

Raetic multi-attack and FUA are the same stat, and they can proc on the same swing as normal multi-attacks. That priority list you quoted does not say that FUA is mutually exclusive with other forms of multi-attack.

Yeah the more i look at it the more I agree with Geriond.

Is path B less? Yes
Is the TP feed worth using it over another REMA? No
If Fathertime is your main weapon path B is a great choice.

If your strategy is that dependent on low TP feed, DRKs main contribution would be absorb TP.

Not really, because the more sb you have the more valueable next 1% is. Its like haste.

With 19% MA and 65 sb you will feed 0.4165 (1.19 * 0.35)
With 50% MA and 75 sb you will feed 0.375 (1.5 * 0.25)

At this point the SB2 debate is largely academic. I don't think anyone here is saying "You need a Father Time! Buy yours today!" but we're on to track of "If you're dead set on buying a Father Time, I guess you could do X with it." And SB2 is the only thing on the weapon that could be considered unique.

Path A is like a gimpy version of the *** child of Anguta and Redemption without the good points of either.

Path B wants to be a poor man's Liberator, but raetic scythe +1 does that for 1/5th the price and can be resold when you are ready to step up for an actual Liberator. SB2 exists, but even in the best circumstances it's not *that* big a gain, and who uses Drk for subtle blow stuff in the first place? Just get a monk to do it and throw some absorb-TP in there on top of Shijin Spiral and Penance or something.

Path C gains 5% drain potency over Dacnomania and Misanthropy and has a generic WSD mod that is outclassed by any Drk REMA. Its a strictly worse Anguta. If path C had 25% Dark Affinity like archon ring it could have become a staple item, but that is yet another missed opportunity.

I don't see any point in getting Father Time.

Except that can be said about DRK in general. Why use it at all when you have monk?

The answer is simple, because you want to use it, because you like it.

I went with Path B.


I figure Ill just get multiples at this point. This one was a gift so I damn well wanted to put it to use.

Have you tried making a DRK TP set with 50 Subtle Blow and 25 Subtle Blow II? Notice significantly fewer TP moves from the mobs you fight?

Haven't tried it out yet, but heres what Im thinking in the interim, Dagon wont drop for me..:
ItemSet 372264

Follow Up Atk +50%
DA+40%
TA+5%
QA+3%
224 TP per swing
Subtle Blow I = +32
Subtle Blow II= +30
25% Haste



ItemSet 372265
DA+27% (or +17% if using a STP cape)
TA+14%
QA+3%
200 TP per swing
Subtle Blow I= 20
Subtle Blow II= 40
27% Haste (Overkill but it works) Down side is sacrificing Ios+1

Both are using a DA Ambu Cape, Set #2 may need a store TP cape to keep a 5 hit depending on TP return from WS.

If you factor in Last Resort:
Last Resort = +15 with Fallen Feet +3 should bring both to the cap, at the cost of losing Flamma Feet+2's DA/STP

Getting the +75 Subtle Blow in pure gear seems like too much of a sacrifice IMO.


Sitting at 60ish without Last Resort is nothing to sneeze at.

Is there a good addon or website for calculating STP or Tp/hit?? I tried google but kept getting outdated calculators when tp only went to 100 or whatever it was.