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

nice dmg shots ganno. I know it can deal some pretty nuce dmg. I use apex crabs to test alot on, would you mind doing a few trust only ws's there and seeing what numbers you can pull? will give me a little better indicator.

• Added Anguta to the list of Scythes in the Weapons Section.

• Updated information about Ignominy Set with +3 Pieces.

• Moved Older Endgame Content to a safety post, to create room for the Node.

• Cleaned up a few places here and there.

I'll have to get around to Armor Sets very soon. Need to get ready for work right now, though.

ALSO!

If anyone has any experience with DRK in any of the current endgame events that are listed as "under construction," feel free to place your input. There's two years worth of content I've missed out on, and I'd appreciate any insight I can include for the guide.

Thanks for working on re-updating this. I just came back from a 3 year break and am trying to figure out where to get started with gear. Looking forward to seeing what you recommend for starting out (accuracy seems hard to come by).

I do what I can! A good chunk of this guide is built from community input as well as my own. This guide wouldn't be possible without their contributions. :)

It's 80% VIT modifier actually. Not sure if they changed it after you made the guide.

Oh wow, they did change it. (No wonder it's super potent these days.) Thanks for spotting that.

EDIT: Fixed it to reflect Torcleaver's actual modifiers.

Also Senbaak is no longer in the running for top GS, it is literally a battle between Calad/Rag. Pretty sure people will disagree, but I think calad will win in times you don't need the acc. That ODT 50% and ability to spam light/dark sc with a very powerful torc is hard to beat.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected when I started playing again. Still gotta organize the weapons lists and whatnot. With Eminent Sword being a decent starter GS, There's not really much benefit from Senbaak anymore. And I spent a fortune on it during Delve's infancy. ._.

Now that the discussion's been active about it, I'll get started with updating the Weapons Section.

I am at work right now so can't do much for updating. Yesterday I cleared Gin in Omen as DRK with my LS. SAM sub and AG Ragnarok is highly recommended from my stand point. They both help with the do X weaponskills, skillchains, and crits objectives. A damage taken set is also recommended as a lot of the bosses do very strong AoEs at certain percentages. My accuracy after buffs was about 1250 and I only had a small issue of hitting when it came to Gin.

From my rough math i've done it does seem that Cala with ideal gear when acc/atk is capped will beat Rag by 10-20%

That said Ragnarok is still easily the better weapon because +60 acc is so powerful in so many ways... for example.

If Cala needs sushi to reach capped acc the Rag can use Atk or Store tp food to get the edge.

If Rag needs sushi to cap accuracy then Cala's accuracy will be too low to compete or would have to make lesser gear choices to keep up (even more so when you consider the higher tp return from Res).

It's kinda sad to say but for Torcleaver, Ragnarok is the better weapon because the ideal Torc gear acc is not enough in harder content alone.

If things change and hit rate becomes less important (like in the VW days) then Cala could replace Rag but as the game is at the moment DRK needs all the acc it can get.

Lastly, Cala needs more work to be viable because if you need 1200 acc for a event then rag will make that 1140-1135, probably not something to consider for "best" weapon but from a player perspective if you don't have access to the best gear in the game making a Cala over Rag would hold you back.

Don't take this the wrong way, it isn't an attack, but you need to raise your acc. I sit at 1188 acc and 50% Double Attack, before buffs on drk with Rag, azagarth has a monster 55% Double Attack tp set that has him sitting at 1150ish. Going to give away our secrets here.

My set
ItemSet 348400


I haven't been lucky enough to get the augments I want or the tp neck from tree like Azagarth has, but we both run path D argosy head/hands. He uses the t3 sTP neck from the tree in reisenjima. I have the +8sTP earring, but the loss of both acc and 5% DA wasn't worth a 7sTP gain. (Brutal has 1sTP vs the +8sTP of earring)

My current augments are
Body
~ acc+26
~ sTP +6
~ MND+6
~ attk+9

Legs
~ acc+35
~ attk+32
~ Dbl Attk +3%
~ AGI+4

Back (I finally made an acc cape)
~ DEX+20
~ Acc+30
~ Attk+20
~ Dbl Attk +10%


Also one of the major factors of the Cala/Rag debate is the loss of Acc, if you don't need the Acc we are thinking Caladbolg will pull ahead. Spamming reso will generate higher ws avg, but spamming torc will give you +50% to deal Triple damage on melee attacks, this includes multi-attack. This is where Rag will lose, the white dmg of Rag only adds 24% Crit Rate, and only 16% chance to deal x 2.5 dmg. And Rag x2.5 only works on first hit unlike Calad triple dmg proc


Out of habit, I always use sushi. Even after the eva nerf and using AG Rag.

Rag actually gives +60 acc, PLUS and additional 15 acc from AM, which should always be active. That is both white dmg and free acc.

Remember, your ws set needs acc too. If you are missing Torc easily, you forgot to put in acc. That is a +100 acc to the first hit of a ws, so if you have 1100 in your torc gear, that is 1200 acc for your ws. This actually allows you to use less acc in your torc set than you need for your reso since reso loses the +100 acc for 4/5 hits.

I have, as well as others, have been getting some monster torc numbers lately. Not beating my reso, but getting close. When I get +3 body and the ws dmg ammo, that could end up making my torc stronger than my reso. That is how close I am to my reso now.
Reso will always spike higher, but reso sc properties are nothing in comparison to the torc sc properties.

THAT is the deciding factor for me most fights, if the mob is resistant to sc dmg, I will normally use reso. If the mob isn't resist to sc dmg I will use torc, the slightly lower raw dmg of torc will win with sc dmg assuming whatever you are fighting is not resistant to sc dmg.

Aftermath of Caladbold does not apply to ws sadly, Relic does however

No, the ODT only applies to melee swings, not the ws. If empy AM3 applied to ws I can't think of many people that wouldn't use empy over anything else.

Yeah would be nice. I just picked up the ws ammo in omen btw so will have some fun testing :)

1166! but even then my mid-acc has 1246 and 39 DA. This seems to cap me at most stuff, havent seen the use to use my HIGH-acc every which if i remember is around 1290.

Never a point to use red curry IMO, its literally less than 10% attack now. My WS set has over 1900 attack for example and tp is around 1800, this is pre anything. So 150 attack seems pretty meh at this point. Though carbonara and its 6stp MIGHT be a good reason, I could then get about 20acc 4DA more into my tp set by using it which would not be terrible.

I started the road to caladbolg, I think with the new +3 gear coming out acc will be of little issue in the future. Even Omen bosses only require 1450~ to be set capped on all or nearly all? The thf one might need a bit more.

I have started to favor torc too, not for its dmg, but for its sc dmg. The fact you can spam light with a ton of main stream dds, IMO is a bigger factor. I never felt like there was a huge gap anyhow between the 2, like 3k dmg per 1k tp tops~. With the current gear out 16% wsd will close that gap even more, and It looks only less promising for reso in the future compared to the possible additions that torc will get. On Woc/Kirin etc we already have been acc/attack capped so dmg caps wont go up much there, while torc will continually get better with more wsd.

1166, moving on up! And your mid acc set is still 5 hit as well.

I need to focus more on drk, but I have spent a ridiculous amount of time working on getting 7 other jobs to 2100 and t4 worthy. Just started another jobs as well.... My main focus is rdm with drk in a close 2nd, soon once I finally finish everything on rdm I can focus back to drk.

But Yeah Aza makes a great point with attack food, you should be at such a high attack it shouldn't matter. Always better to hit weaker than not at all.

Please add that when this is paired with a warrior using warcry you gain another 700 tp for the duration. Therefor 1k tp with moonshades + warcry is 2450 tp for 1k etc. I recently zerged woc with this an it was pretty epic.

Tbh fast 30 second ambuscade fights its my main beat stick atm

ya anguta seems killer when you get a war in pty, everywhere else do you find it kinda pointless compared to apoc/lib?

Yeah Thorva, I'm aware I need more accuracy still. Unfortunately I don't have tons of time or dual boxing to make the 100mil+ for abjuration +1 gear.

My current standard TP set (using Cronus until I manage to AG my Rag):
ItemSet 347304

Valorous Mail: Dex+5 Acc+26 Atk+3 Dbl Atk+2
Valorous Hose: Acc+31 Atk+16 Dbl Atk+3
Ankou's Mantle: Dex+20 Acc+30 Atk+20 Dbl Atk+10

If I need more accuracy, I replace the hands and legs with Flamma+1 and the Brutal Earring with Steelflash earring.

A big jump for you should be odyssean legs.

Looks like you are getting there, the +1 abj takes a lot of time and gil to get. alternatively you can stick with the nq for ws and use augment gear for tp, I did that for a long time.

As Fiasko said ody legs will give you a nice boost since they have innate acc on them.

I completely forgot I had ody legs that I was trying to get good augments on. Just got them with Dex+7 Acc+23 Atk+23 Dbl Atk+3 and switched my valorous legs over to Chr+7 Acc+30 Atk+12 WSD+5%.

Its pretty much rag or apoc purely for the bonus acc, but I'm not starting another repeat cycle again, so lets leave it at that thanks

Except, the ideal WS gear for Resolution the acc is a lot higher. (I do not have) the gap has lessened since AF+3 body has a decent amount of acc.

But even when Torc is worth using it's usually better used on Rag over Torc because +75acc if needed will allow a better WS Freq and you to use better WS gear.

The point I'm making isn't about Res vs Torc because that's more about gear available to you. I'm saying if you had to make 1 weapon Cala or Rag, Rag is easily the better weapon (even if you don't consider the WAR access) because usually acc is a factor, basically Cala will/should win when you acc is capped so you don't need sushi, from my experience that rarely seems to be the case.

For events like Kyou you need a minimum of 1400 accuracy, anything other then Apoc or Rag won't cut it. Heres a video of our win yesterday, nice to see DRK can still hand it out :)



Good demo video of DRK also for anyone wanting advice

ya drk does very well in omen.

I would like to see if we could repliably tank though to avoid bringing one. A 2nd dd would be nice to speed that up im sure.

Not sure if you were simply being cautious but that looked quite messy.

I've been doing just fine with Caladbolg/Liberator. 70 accuracy isn't exactly the hardest thing to account for. Not to mention the use of Arcane Circle and August Shirt make these fights rediculous for any job that could take advantage of both. Riding 5000 HP while having about a little over -25% DT from them makes DRK a super sturdy tank as well.

Arcane Crest is also there to help stabilize any remaining issues, though they like to remove it with Stygian Sphere.

August Shirt?