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

yeah i saw those hands on frontpage... need to update that

endark(433base after merits, can afford 9 on mantle)501-max
ItemSet 333576

Bah can't seem to get past +31 dmg on macbain and the ws dmg seems like it is a myth, I only see haste, sTP and lower DA than I already have

I'm in the same boat man lol

The only +wsd% on Macbain that I have seen has been on other people. It is the exact same thing with dark ring augments. I see people with 6% pdt/mdt, but I have never gotten anything above 5%.

They each use different TP sets though, Rag you'd want to go with a 6-hit /SAM and using a sh!t ton of MA because going for a 5-hit on Rag gives up too much. Macbain would be a 5-hit as /SAM, not sure how much would be sacrificed to get a 4-hit. Macbain only makes resolution ~17% stronger, and that's with my Augments (DMG +36 Atk/Acc +15 DA+4). WSDMG only effects the first hit so would only be useful on Torc which is the weaker of our WS selection, for that reason I'd go with DA or Store TP. Also to any of you using the DPS spreedsheets, make sure you manually enabled Rag to be counted a 119 relic with the 2.5x proc @16%. The DPS sheets still don't count that and only have Apoc recognized as a relic. I've still got to go through my DRK setup and rebuild it for my new Acro augments, they are almost entirely +STR +DA + Atk/Acc with the head having +Store TP because I'll never Ws in it. I'm getting ridiculous multi-attack proc rates doing this.

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. Mote's DPS sheets definitely count Rag as a relic, with it's ocassional dmg proc modifier in tact. I'm not sure what led you to believe otherwise, but if you modified anything by hand, then it sounds like you're inflating your DPS with incorrect data.

You'll find Rag is included on line 216 "Relic Dmg/Rnd" in the data tab. The equation is as follows.

Just curious, where did you try adding the relic proc? If you messed with the ODD field, you should know that is only reserved for Empyrean weapons.

Seems to of been fixed then. If you search my history I was the one who pointed out last year that originally only Apoc was in that list. It was field 215 that only had Apoc listed so it only calculated out extra DPS for that, was annoying to have to manually set 119 as the Relic Level.

Still have Rag coming out ahead but that's with my old set using Resolution. Need to update everything with my Acro sets to get it settled.

Has it been decided on if DA or WSdmg is better on Macbain? I have quit throwing money into it until I know more info. Not like WSdmg exist on macbain anyway.

Correct me if I am wrong please, but also even with upwards of WSdmg 8% it would value more for 1 hit ws than for multi hit such as reso. Meaning working only on first hit? Please help me understand the value here. I know on TC I have been stacking WSdmg and seeing much better numbers but my reso really suffered, I was thinking more along the fact of str sacrificing on reso when stacking WSdmg

WSD only works on the first hit of a WS and the highest I've seen is 3% though 4% might exist. I would personally value DA because you can get +4 of it and it's useful for TP and WS. In general I put DA on 4/5 of my Acro armor and +6 Store TP on the Acro head which turns it into a beastly TP and WS gear. I'm still not sold on Macbain but I'll play with the numbers more to see if it can make it better, Crit +14% and 2.5x damage procs with a low delay weapon are hard to beat.

I have been playing with Macbain, Ragnarok and lolApoc with DA/crit acro gear, body is my sTP rest is DA/crit/acc, last night I did a few runs in delve with a thf in my ls that I know is good and I kept up with him on better on macbain than ragnarok. Also when I ran Macbain I wasn't even using absorb-str/vit/tp or my endark spells. I was over 1.1k DPS on the scoreboard the entire time. I used Torcleaver more than Reso for the SC dmg as well and was doing very well.

Haven't gotten a chance to do new skirmish or really look into Acro gear, how does new ***match up to Xaddi/reforged? Are the good augments few and far between or did SE actually create a good augment system on this one?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance fellow DRKs

Hands down better aug system then previously. Acro smashes Xaddi and majority if not all of af/relic for dmg. For the full set of acro, just on augs, is potentially 100 acc, 100 attack, da 15, or 30 stp, mix and match depending. 3rd line augs of up to 7 str and 7 dex, ws dmg 3, crit hit, and ws acc.


Relic gear is still useful for ja pieces of course,dark magic/fast cast, etc.


3 lines of augments. Different stones needed per line. You can hit capped values with nq stones also.

Amazing! I guess I better get on this shenanigans then. Will be sad to see my Igno pieces go, I like those ;(

Is this talking about both WS and TP sets(the smashing of other gear)?

tp yes, as for single hit ws with wsdmg augs again yes. but reso seems to suffer if you go with wsdmg instead of str/acc

Maybe my gear is off, but ever since I unlocked it Torcleaver has been hitting harder than Reso. When checking parses my ACC is always high, so I think its mostly an issue of that horrid attack penalty :(

Generally I just spam TC myself. I enjoy the self sc from just haste alone. With all the gear drk has now you can wswswswsws... All the sTP/haste/da drk can get allows us to sc without need of sekkinoki

That's exactly what I do, on the rare occasion I'm on DRK and not SCH/BRD/Something of the like.

There's also a potential I don't have enough attack in my reso set or something like this. If anybody is super bored I could post my current sets and they could tell me what I'm gearing wrong, but I wouldn't expect that from anyone.

go ahead and post them. I don't mind looking and I am sure a few others wouldn't mind throwing an idea or two out. Not like we can't afford to see some updated sets anyway.

I don't get great results from Torcleaver. It's SC-friendly but Reso is both more consistent and spikes higher, for me.


Sort of. It's nice that you have three separate slots so you can "lock in" an augment. For instance, I was playing with Macbain and got DA+6, so now I can focus on getting better augments in the other two slots. However, I got that DA value (the max?) with an NQ stone. It's not like the old system where certain values are only possible with higher-quality stones, quality just improves your chances. The stats and value spread are still stupid and getting perfect augments is a ridiculous gil sink (now with three stone types per piece, yay!). I hate Skirmish gear for that, and I bypass it wherever I can.

Reso:
ItemSet 321450

Torcleaver:
ItemSet 333727

Obviously can upgrade rings to +1s, but haven't got the gil for luxuries like that atm.

get str ammo for reso vit ammo for tc. look more into the wsdmg gear from skirmish for your tc as well.

also you have got to get brutal/moonshade combo.

those are the majors i can see just looking at the gear without top of my head on gear stats. you will have to forgive me i am at work right now

So Aqreaq in reso until I get something else then?
Yeah moonshade is an unfortunately long way away, talking 30+ missions.

Thank you for all your help! I will see what I can't do to fix these up

yeah i actually use Aqreaq for reso myself. as for wotg missions. i actually buckled down and burnt through them in about 3-4 days and that's with a full time job, gf and kids. the longest part is actually tye start with all the annoying day waits.

ejekmal boots with str aug is also a nice set up to. 21 str plus multi-hit

Torc is considerably weaker then Reso, it's only useful for when you need to make consistent light SC's with another DD like SAM. It just boils down to numbers, Reso has better fTP and WSC then Torc. Any DRK that has "atk problems" is gimp. Out of all the jobs in the game, DRK has the highest attack.

Ok so unbuffed, no food, songs or anything my reso set has 1161 attk in it with 106+163 str. That is completely unbuffed. Now with reso's 15% that is about 987 attk in ws set unbuffed.

Ja buffs give me 1476 attk pre-attk penalty, 1254ish after the reso penalty. Even with red curry the attack would only be 1404 after the penalty.


For my Torcleaver, I get 114 completely unbuffed attk and 1449 attk 106+115 str and 86+101 vit with 18% wsdmg and gorget/belt fully buffed, needless to say no attack penatly really helps here.

This is all just from hasso, last resort. I did not factor in the acc from diabolic eye either. Add in songs and boost/absorb-str and endark it will all be higher, but this just shows that the attack on TC will always be higher. I realize the claim is that Reso wins, I just don't see it. The dmg multiplier on TC is higher and the attk is higher.

Even if I can get the attk from reso to match my TC set I still need to make sure I have the acc for reso on all 5 hits to meet max dmg and on top of that my attk gain in reso very well may cause me to gain more attk in TC. That coupled with the SC dmg of TC spamming will generate more dmg in the long run for you than that of reso. Reso was great when it came out, before the TC update, but now TC will beat reso numbers even without sc. You will just consistently deal more dmg than that of reso, even with reso spike dmg.

I know I have a few tweaks left in my gear to do, but when FFXI went samwagon, my drk kinda hit the back burner.

STR augmented Otomi Helm for both
Mikinaak STR path over Ignominy for Reso (you lose some acc but that set doesn't appear to care too much for acc so I'm assuming Fodder set)
Pyrosoul Rings are like 50k each, and Ifrit NQ are 200-400k each and 8str a piece
Gavialis Helm for Resolution on appropriate days makes an enormous difference.

What's max +dmg on Macbain? I just got D+36 to go with my Dbl. Atk. +6, looks like a very solid weapon.

I would stop dumping gil into macbain at that point, +36 dmg is beast mode and +6% DA is broken. Leave it there, if anything get some more acc with snowslit

If you didn't catch it, I think January's update added the ability to use Trusts in WotG missions? I finished WotG last week on this character (my alt). There may be two nation quests that are difficult as a melee but the rest are straightforward... I solo'ed the whole thing on DRK/SAM.

Without Moonshade you are leaving a lot of damage on the table with Resolution/Torcleaver/Cross Reaper, which all scale with TP.


That's what I'm thinking. I'm having terrible luck with acc or acc/atk from my snowslits though, +11 acc is my current best. But at least I have two slots done.

What would be better accuracy pieces for Reso set? Maybe thats my problem