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

You should be able to generally land the spells with the best gear in the game, that's just an idea and complaints around that are valid. Anything that could be seen as a cheese/exploit should have some artificially imposed limitations to require you to blow a cooldown to land a spell, sure, but absorbing stats is so far from that. Just let us sucky sucky, SE.

Yeah, but in best macc gear. Best macc gear would require dropping like 20% potency gear and you would then absorb like 25 stat (37 with Liberator). Its better to have that much then not, by I already can see most people saying its not worth casting time and aftercast delay to even do it. Stacking DSNV at least give so much stat, that its definitely worth to cast.

I'm generally able to land absorbs normally using potency on back/hands + full MACC elsewhere (especially if using Liberator + Khonsu for +110 MACC), so I generally don't find it to be much of a problem usually (with a number of obvious exception families), though gearing with a lot of MACC hurts your duration quite significantly.

However, Odyssey mobs have severely beefed up dark resistance, even on just the fodder; for example, Odyssey Tigers have around the same darkness resistance rank as non-Odyssey bats, and a lot of mobs are even worse. It's probably a kneejerk reaction to Leaden Salute (albeit one that doesn't really work all that well), but it affects us DRKs a lot too.

Have to concur on Geriond's point here: While Odyssey is the current content to do, it's also one of the worst places (second only to Ambuscade which has a single cast window and then complete immunity-per-mob rule) to compare Dark Magic spells such as Absorbs and Drains.

Kind of figured something was wrong when I would see 2~3 minute duration absorb-STR/etc on non-dark aligned mobs. On floor 1. In near perfect gear...

That said, asking for a second look at how Dark Magic spells interact in general and specific content isn't asking a lot. I do share a similar sentiment with Tip here that spell casting on DRK outside of DSNV (let alone needing a Liberator just for casting) is pretty bad...

While I do see some situations being better than others, the category in general needs a rehash.

Hello, pretty sure someone answered this before but cant find it,
got my Nyame head r20 yesterday so was switching stuff around, when it came to my DRK Odyssean Helm for Torc, i got little confused.
this is my Aug
"Odyssean Helm", augments={'Accuracy+29','Weapon skill damage +4%','VIT+12','Attack+12',}}
was thinking to use ody helm on cap att and nyame on non capped but Sakpata head came to my mind too with its 5% PDL.
the question is when should i go PDL over WSD?
thanks in advance

The general rule of thumb is for single hit WS, stick to WSD unless you will be attack capped and PDL is greater than your WSD %. Multi hit WS, use PDL where you can as it applies to all WS hits

Capped attack its
Sakpata head/body/hands, Nyame feet, Relic+3 legs

Uncapped attack its
Nyame head/hands/feet, AF+3 body, Relic+3 legs

so on attack cap that 5% PDL will be better than 8% WSD? on head ?
for Torc.

This is the opposite of what NeoJug just said, Torcleaver is single hit WS Simon.

What NeoJug said is okish general rule if you compare just WSD and PDL (tho its a rule made on assumption that you always have higher WSD and thats why diminishing return is always higher on WSD). Sakpata and Nyame is not just WSD and PDL comparison tho.

Torcleaver has 80% VIT mod.
Sakapta Helm has 16 more VIT than Nyame
Sakpata Hands have 7 more VIT than Nyame
Sakpata Body has 3 more VIT than AF+3 body

On top of that WSD diminishing returns is much higher on DRK because of gifts (8%WSD more). With Relic+3 legs and Nyame feet, you have already 47-50% WSD and only 10%PDL (from neck) before wearing hands/body/head at which point 1%WSD is around +0.6% damage and PDL is around 0.9% damage, so you would need 1.5%WSD to match 1%PDL.

Obviously damage difference between items mentioned above is small, especially for Sakpata Body vs af+3 body when already wearing Sakpata head and hands (which increases diminishing returns for PDL), but Sakpata Body is still slightly better and much safer too. Things might be slightly different if you assume that you dont have enough accuracy to land additional hit from possible Double attack proc, then AF+3 body and Sakpata body would probably be even when already wearing Sakpata head and hands, but if they are even, then Sakpata is still better because its safer.

There is also one more situation which is when you close skillchain with Torcleaver and skillchain damage doesnt suck. You might consider R20 Nyame head/body/hands/feet and Sakpata legs then for +32% skillchain damage.

Like I already explained, 5%PDL wouldnt be better than 8%WSD, but 5% PDL and +16VIT on top is better.

ok thats make it more understandable since the only thing that confused me ody head got 17+ vit "with my aug"
thanks for replaying

4%WSD/15VIT augment on Odyssean helm would beat Nyame marginally, still lose to Sakpata tho. Also this set is generally low on accuracy already and Odyssean Helm would most likely be even higher accuracy drop (even with your +29acc augment, its still 10~11acc behind R20 Sakpata).

Okay, so I finally got around to checking Agwu's Scythe but I need help... The Souleater+20 does indeed line up but the Stalwart Soul+30... is a conundrum to me...

10,149 HP with Omelette Sandwich* (HP+11% : Max. 150 HP) returned 2,435 HP with Blood Weapon up.

9,999 HP with Sublime Sushi returned 2,399 HP (HP+40) with Blood Weapon up.


In both cases, it's 24% HP consumed for Souleater damage conversion of 30% HP.
Stalwart Soul Trait is 5% HP consumed instead of 10% on DRK main with no Souleater+ equipment on.

So I'm either missing something or the Stalwart Soul description is in fact borked and needs to be reported.

I don't really understand what you are saying. You mean you was loosing over 2000 HP per swing? How much hp you lose without blood weapon with Souleater up and 9999hp?

The more HP you lose, the less HP you have to convert to damage. The whole point of the test was to see if the Stalwart Soul+30 actually did anything. Which it doesn't seem to be at all.

With agwu scythe you should lose around 200hp with 9999hp. It was long time since I used Souleater and Blood Weapon tho and don't remember how much HP you recover with Blood Weapon in chat. Is it only how much you missing or it shows more?

It's an exchange of 24% HP per swing at 10K HP for a gain of +3,000 damage. I'm not sure why that's so hard to understand.

I used Blood Weapon to maintain full HP and see if the item description (Stalwart Soul+30) was doing anything.

6% HP saved doesn't make sense with a trait of 5% and an item description of "+30".

There are more than two stats on gear. It's an easy trap to fall into though, like people do with MAB vs WSD, etc.

Thanks, makes more sense once explained.

It depends on how the formula is set up, and what "Stalwart Soul +30" actually entails.

I can recreate your finding on paper assuming that the Stalwart Soul trait is 5%, that "Stalwart Soul +30" is Stalwart Soul +30%, and is actually being factored in like this: [Stalwart Soul base] + [Stalwart Soul base] * [Stalwart Soul bonus]

.05 + .05*.30 = .065 --> 6.5% Calculations seem to always be floored so there's your 6%.

This could be wrong, could be right, but it does give an example of how you can be seeing that 6%.

Hypothetically, if this was the formula being used to calculate the conversion, that would be very unfortunate and a missed opportunity.

Alas, I was curious and nothing was lost except a couple mil for science.

I think this is the only piece of Stalwart Soul-modifying gear in the game, so we can't easily run down the actual formula for Stalwart Soul contributions. With that rough pass it seems pretty bad though.

Yeah, unfortunately... Agwu's Scythe had been on my radar since I read the item description months ago and since no one else had tested it I figured I might as well. I'll keep it in my MH for the time being, it actually kind of matches up with the Sakpata set.

It would be nice if Stalwart Soul was actually 50% of whatever HP Souleater converts instead of a flat 5% off.

Dacnomania and Agwu are honest to goodness fun but too difficult to maintain outside of Blood Weapon or heavy Cure Bombing...

According to my spreadsheet you are wrong.

been looking for updated fast cast set and absorb / drain set can anyone share? thank you :)

Is the Ratri +1 stuff still worth getting? 20 mil a piece is hard to justify

I only use it for maximizing dread spikes anymore. If nothing else get the feet for the duration and call it a day

Can someone explain to me exactly what makes Apoc so useful?