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

Drk has been a lot more fun toying with the new skirmish armor.
As someone who loves drk but never wanted a ragnarok or apoc, its pretty fun to faceroll a 4-hit torcleaver macbain build.
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I have +7stp on the macbain.
for cp'ing, i can lock in mecisto cape and swap waist to goading belt and swap pinion to ginsen. with enough buffs its easy to skillchain with yourself ws spamming.

for cp and also if you reallllly wanna use drk in the new skirmish this eats up elementals with endark.
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i'm rather impressed with sword ws damage with lolswords

Thanks Sapphire. Gear sets for non RME users are very welcome. I also know you love to use elemental and enfeeble sets. I won't need the high-end sets right away, but if you post them I can always look back here and add them in.

I'm always interested in varying TP and WS sets at high level. Acro and Yorium can be used in many different ways. Knowing how much accuracy is in each set (without buffs) would help, as well as the content you would use it on.

The good thing about Acro is that it's very easy to obtain, semi easy to augment, and covers acc/tp sets for the most part (unless you want multiple augmented sets, which would require gearswap).

With how easy the new skirmish is and how you are assuming a new person would level, Outrider(sp?) sparks gear right into Acro which is considered high end with proper augs is feasible. Outside of the pop items, skirmish aug stones are free. Plus you can even farm your own pops!

The accuracy requirement is extemely low for escalent killing duty for undergeared people (just leave hybrid eles alone).
So yeah its not much of a stretch for someone to migrate from roe/wkr gear right into acro armor.

At worst you could have a newb pull book duty if they understand monster correlation and the stronghold watcher is calling out the battle status and incoming monster types.

Most people have spammed skirmish to death enough that armor starts hitting the floor so its easy to get a friend/alt caught up on these new armor sets.

Just fyi you can put haste +3 on acro gear with leaftip. I have it on the head so I can still cap gear haste with just acro + ionis.

Need some help/suggestions on where to start for upgrading. I had stopped playing mainly back in the end of 2013 when my father died. I had tried to make a bit of a return some time last year but it didn't work out. I have a little bit of time now before i have to work on moving. But i should be free to play a bit more after that.

I was just going to wait until summer to bother with this, after everything was done. But i read about this upcoming content release being the last new release. So id like to have something manageable to play this content as it comes out.

The set i have now wasnt even that good in 2013...

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and a resolution set that barely got started'
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Got haste +3 on the head so it's capped no matter what. And he is wrong, that's not a 4-hit but a standard 5-hit. The WS counts as a hit and shouldn't be ignored because there is a big difference between the TP return on Reso and Torc.

Its a 4 hit, 3 hits + 1 hit from torcleaver with acc/atk+stp acro gives 1005 tp because all the acro has max stp+ionis, I actually own that set and use it.
Spare me the spreadsheet lecture on optimal sets cause i'm 4hitting and not 5 cause spreadsheets say its better etc.
I said its explicitly a torcleaver set and not reso.

You are actually missing DPS with that macbain set, I posted a macbain set that is the same ws + 4 hit that carries a hair more DPS, not much but there is some more.

The biggest concern about the augment gear is that it is so ridiculously random that everyone's gear will be slightly different so the when setting up a spreadsheet on aug gear you have to try to keep certain augs out of it to find a better understanding of the actual gear DPS itself. Once you add in all the random augs/sets people get the numbers get 10 ways of screwy.

So far the most commonly high DPS with aug gear I have seen is with crit dmg +, DA and acc. (I leave attack out of there because on high eva mobs it is typically better to have over 20 acc on your pieces. Better to hit slightly light than not at all, besides drk isn't lacking in the attk dept.)

With the skirmish gear as long as you are ws + 4 hit with your sTP stack your crit dmg+ and your DA, only takes 1 piece with sTP 5 (body) on this set below in order to ws + 4 hit.

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I am still attempting to get my sTP +6 on body so I can swap earrings for brutal/trux combo. After nearly 100 mil on random augs, I am honestly happy to say f it and lose 1 DA.

edit: got lucky after a skirmish and popped a leafslit +2 first try and got the +6 sTP, so no I use the trux/brutal combo.

Not missing dps in my set imo since 1 hit less and spamming torcleaver buffed creates an absurd amount of self skillchain damage regularly that the spreadsheet doesn't model.
If people want to add a hit to their build because they don't want to toss gil at perfect stp on their macbain+armor set that's certainly a viable alternative but imo we're arguing play/gearstyle in a game that offers no challening content to someone rocking this new gear.

I still plan to make a new guide for this forum. Just finishing off something totally not FFXI related before I jump back to it.

With the news of the final storylines being released this year, I was wondering whether I should bother making a guide or not. I know that people have high expectations of anyone who even thinks about making a guide.

I thought about splitting the guide up into two separate chunks. Although I know not many players are going to join/return to the game, I feel like I have to put a lot of effort into it. It's going to be more like a diary of my Dark Knight career. I have had a couple of players on the forum interested in helping me with it.

I was originally going to call the full thing Zeid's Disciples. However, I might change it to have two separate titles. Disciples would be the leveling (first job to 99) guide, Zeid's Destroyers would be for endgame. I hope players can post more sets with the latest gear so we can get a better understanding of what to aim for with our augments. Thanks for the contributions.

PS: New content could make certain sets much more desirable. We still have someway to go before we can assume anything in terms of final TP/WS sets.

PPS: I got Double Attack+3 augment on my Acro body the other day. I have no idea if anyone already knew this, but that's a total of double attack +5 on the body!

Nearly all drk sets can spam self sc now with acro gear.

And yes, you are severally nerfing your own dmg, All that sTP is going to waste, you seem to miss the fact that drk with last resort can self sc with ws + 4 hit You are missing out on a ton of double attack and a little more triple attack with bleating mantle. Getting 100.5% tp to spam TC at all of 100% tp mod isn't that grand, if you raised your double attack and even that little amount of triple attack on back you will see a large gain in your DPS.

Swap all that sTP and haste gear out for some crit dmg + and double attack. If you refuse to believe me as well as a few others on here and are concerned about losing the stats you have just get another set of acro and see which one does more dmg yourself. (However I think it would be more ideal to take the words of people that have already done the math and tested the gear out. Would save you time/gil)

That's just ... dumb

Macbain has 142 base TP for 510 delay, 4-hit would be 250TP per hit including WS, that would be 77 Store TP with 15 coming from /SAM. So your nerfing your WS set to fit in the needed Store TP or your really nerfing your TP set to make up for it. You will get far better damage going with a 5-hit filled with Multi-Attack.

Hey go for it! I dont even play DRK but I came in here hoping to see what DRKs aim for and to my dismay it seems the guide is not being updated too often. I say with our final content updates on the way now is the time to make guides as they wont be outdated after the nov 2015 update. People picking up the game/coming back need some new 2015 guides to know what they're stepping into. I personally know a potential 5 people coming back to see the last scenarios through so try not to think nobodies coming back, lets atleast have a last hurrah ^^b (I'll be playing as long as the servers are open)

What are some good current sets with apoc and what kind of augments should I be trying to get?

I will pull up my apoc sets and post them when I get home for you.

I haven't touched DRK in awhile, but my advice would be look at the Macbain set. If you're going for a certain X-hit build, they have almost identical delay, so in theory they will be pretty much the same gear set, just making adjustments to adding more attack/multi hit instead of acc if you don't need the boost from Apoc.

Side note, I don't think people bother with AM gear for it anymore since you can cap attack speed before AM. Unless there was a ninja-update that made Apoc AM break haste cap.

Sadly apoc hasn't had the AM updated from the lvl 75 version so AM is practically useless to us now, unless you end up with AM up during encumber it won't help you any.

Apoc has a base of 142 tp per hit

35 sTP gives you 191 tp per hit so if you take that number and add in /sam you will get 213 per hit. Now personally I feel that is a bit of a waste on best in slot to have tp overflow like that if it isn't helping your xhit. Especially with ws like catasrophe where tp overflow doesn't matter with ws mod.

So apoc with /sam (for the sake of numbers) I will go with 207 tp per hit which means you need 31 sTP (doesn't free too much but still something) My reasoning behind that number is pretty simple, if you are going /sam you are most likely using meditate meaning you wont need to worry about the initial xhit build to get 4-hit. I Pick the number 207 tp per hit because generally most ws sets on single hit ws will leave you with 174-181 tp after ws. Leaving you to need 207 per hit at max.
There are a few ways to hit the +31 sTP in gear, best way I have learned is that the lowest possible slots dedicated to sTP possible is best, common sense right? Just remember that some pieces also force you to sacrifice double attack to get that store tp.
Acro and Yorium can both get sTP+6 from augments, but that is your DA aug too. (3% DA augment)

So unless you are using duplus grip needless to say pole grip is out and bloodrain strap is in. (Duplus Grip forces you to make multiple sTP skirmish pieces, let just go the simple route here, and not waste the 9 mil or whatever duplus cost on your server.) Pick head, body or hands to get sTP +6 on, (doesn't matter which, unless you are using that piece to ws with as well. However if you are using acro/yorium for ws most likely you don't have the sTP aug instead you have ws acc)Throw on Rajas and K'ayres rings for another 10 sTP.

At this point you are at 29 sTP so you need to pick how you want to do your earrings/ammo slots, if you are aiming directly for 31 sTP due to your xhit build I would sacrifice using trux earring and use bladeborn/steelflash with yetshila. Otherwise you could always do brutal/trux with ginsen which would put you at 33 sTP instead of 31 sTP.
If my build needs exactly 31 sTP due to ws set I would most likely use the blade/steel with yetshila, you gain acc/attk and crit rate/dmg with that combo so it isn't like you lose much with the lack of 1 double attack.


So +or- sTP depending on your ws set. (Only one skirmish armor has the sTP+6 aug and gives +35sTP needless to say you can accept a +2 sTP aug with the math above)

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and this set returns 184 tp with single hit ws, this one is my cata ws set. (No sTP augment on skirmish gear. but total of 11 sTP in grip, brutal earring and hands) Meaning you only need 204 tp per hit in your tp gear.

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If you only need 204 tp per hit then you only need 29 sTP in gear which means you can go with only 1 sTP from skirmish aug, (but who wants to look that cheap right?) For this set you can ditch all the sTP aug's and go straight for crit dmg 3%, double attk 3% and acc/attk +15~20. The set below has +31 sTP, so there is a little tp over flow for the ws + 4-hit but we aren't over doing it like we would if we ran 35sTP (Which causes us to lose other best-in-slot items. Of course with the first set showing you still need a aug piece of 2~6 sTP it doesn't really matter for tp over flow due to one slot will still be sTP regardless.

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Edit: I have more scythe ws sets in my Item Sets
With apoc/cata you don't need to worry about the 22% haste from 5/5 acro either since AM gives haste to cap you.

I'm definitely going to aim for the top set. Easier to get that gear overall, but I'm going to have to use some temp gear until I get it all

The only empy 119 piece I would switch out for specific things is legs for str based ws.

This also means for ws you may use yorium feet with ws dmg aug, for single hit ws, or just go straight str/vit +10 if you want as well. The dmg difference would me so minuscule between them it won't matter. (Also ws acc never hurt anyone, except whomever you might be attacking.) With ws acc aug you may go full attk 20~25 for your third augment.


This info is separate from the obvious gear changes for ja/macro's

Edit: I will adjust the gearsets with heathen when we have the items loaded onto ffxiah.com I know they are busy with who knows what, so we will just have to wait a few more days or so.

So what's a good breakdown of tp and ws gear augments for specific pieces?

I'm curious, will DRK magic bursting do good enough dmg nowadays?

sTP +6 on 1 piece of the tp gear (acro), with acc +20~25 and crit dmg +3%
The other 4 tp pieces need to have DA 3%, crit dmg 3% and acc/attk 15~20

For ws the yorium in the slots I have places you are looking for ws dmg%, attk and ws acc for your 3 augments.

Otherwise you will want other pieces that I have slotted for certain ws with bizarre mods.

Lastly remember, unless you are sinking millions into augments you won't get perfect aug's. If a yorium piece turns out to get tp augs, use that in tp and acro in ws. Why waste millions for a random system that may or may not give you the augment you want on gear that will give you a small increase in your DPS. Unless the outcome is going to beef you up with more than 50 DPS, I don't ever suggest burning millions on 1 item.



Based off the amount of MaB drk gets vs the dmg dealt during swings, it isn't worth the time to spend casting magic. Unless you are hanging back due to weakness or to specifically do magic burst or magic dmg to a mob you will be losing too much DPS from trying to nuke MB things. Figure most times a drk can build tp fast enough to ws all over again in the time it would take to cast a spell and reset your delay for another tp hit.
Keep in mind you have lower than avg MaB and you only are getting t3 spells.

Haven't spent much time toying with it, but the +20 endark actually gave me +39 more endark dmg and +39 more attack. I think with they over all +40 attk and +39 endark I was getting (not on darksday/new moon)
I will have to play with it more and see what kinda sets I can make with it, but I think with only 9 less dmg than macbain perfect aug we may have a contender with new top GS.

for Ragnarok, has anyone thought about/tried out an acro TP set with STP and crit hit damage and a yorium WS set for torcleaver?

Yes I have ragnarok doesn't come close to macbain and falls way short of the new GS Malfeasance. The NQ is actually better for Malfeasance than the +1 is due to the ws +5 hit builds vs the ws +6 hit

Don't try and bring that opinion over to the war forums or cows will be had!

I don't know war, I don't play it, but the base dmg of rag lacks entirely too much to be in the same league as Malfeasance or Macbain (w/aug) Of course war doesn't get last resort or desperate blows so I can see why the war community still holds value with Rag

Edit: I don't think war gets TC as weapon skill either, I think that is drk, pld only. That is another huge gain in dmg drk gets over war due to the sc dmg, and with such high base dmg on macbain(w/aug) and malfeasance, drks best choice would be the two of those, I am personally leaning towards Malfeasance myself. +79 attack from the endark buff and an extra 39 dmg per swing with endark active.

Nah, it's pretty much the same for war. And really can be said about most relics at this point.