[Dev] DRK - Magic Usage

Dark Knight is godly if you actually know how to play it. If you are bitching about dark knight, go play a different job.

Maybe you should understand there are situations to not be on DRK, and those are the situations when Occult Acumen might be usable.

I'm plenty bitter because SE gives my favorite job useless traits (Tactical Parry, Occult Acumen) and more crappy sidegrade WS for Scythe.

You sound naive. Maybe you should go play DRK and learn what's wrong with it and how overshadowed it is in almost every application but 'stunbot'.


Fupa, you know who I am. DRK is awesome sure, but there's always a job that does that one thing better, be it damage, nuking, crowd control, soloing, or tanking.

Then go build a apoc. The reason why other jobs shine, is because there empyrians hold purpose compared to their relics in damage output. Apoc is truly amazing...

does oneiros rope stack with boots?

Probably not, and is lesser in effect anyway.

You aren't being clever or innovative. Yours is a fool's quest to make usefulness of an irrelevant and laughable job trait. Do you stack +Parry for the 2 TP you get from them too?

I believe it does, though Gradd's testing didn't really capture a precise value... I think I still have one in my dbox, if I'm not a zombie by the time I finish testing Blade: Shun I'll go fry some rabbits and double check.

I think ppl are missing the point Raelia is trying to make, not that drk is a bad job, but that things like AO are useless JT's and trying to gear towards making use of them in situations where you're fighting something you can't melee is pointless, if you can't melee something why did you come as a front line DD?

If it works in the same way it's around 15%, could be as high as 20% if he was getting 17.9 TP and it only displayed 17, which is sensible to be some value between or equal +1 and +2 DRK boots while BLM can use it and whatnot.

Except you're giving up Goading belt...

So hooray! Now we only have to blow 590 MP for 100 TP!

Actually, from my own back-calculating and a quick glance at bgwiki it looks like one of the bgwiki editors derived the correct answer from his tests. 1.5% would yield 16.x TP given his test conditions, 2.5% would yield 18.x, so if we assume it's an increment of 0.5 it has to be 2% to get 17.x TP off of Blizzard III with /SAM + Rajas (not a static +3 TP as he concluded).

K i think i've been misreading your posts.
Were you argueing that this is a useless job trait for drk's to be constantly nuking up to 100tp just to weaponskill?

You've been misreading a lot of things, but let's make this clear:

If you can melee, you need to get a swing's worth of TP for that casting to have made up for its own casting time, or even to matter at all otherwise you've just generated 105 TP instead of 100 with the same number of swings.

If you can't melee, you need to cast all the way up to 100 TP and the amount of MP involved is larger than DRK's normal MP pool.

Since the former will generally take two spells, and never any decent spells that DRK should be casting, only the latter is really 'viable' anyway, and yet is still utterly ridiculous.

My statement of needing to blow 590 MP for 100 TP, still greater than most DRK's entire MP pool, is only to illustrate how asinine the concept is.

I never assumed to use OA to raise my tp from 0 to 100. mainly just to cast 1 or 2 spells when I couldn't melee then continue generating tp through melee swings

Yea, I don't have a Drk.

Anyways.
ASSuming that DRK gets a spell similiar to Holy (Dark/Darkness), with a .5 second casting time + an MP cost of ~200 or so - sounds like something that could make OA useful.

Given you could do damage + burst with it as well.

Raelia made a good point with how OA doesn't really 'properly' serve a DRK in just about any situation.

And I also feel that these points should be on the official forum.
I skimmed over the DRK threads and didn't really see an OA fails thread.

Whether it would be productive or not towards the improvement of OA is unknown, seems like it would be nice to have another thread of failed mechanics thrown in their faces.

Except I covered that too. Only Blizzard III and Thunder III can be made to give enough TP in one shot to not be still taking the exact same number of swings to 100 TP. You have to cast Bio II 3-5 times to make up a swing of TP.

To say, you have to be casting worthless Elemental magic in a Store TP set for Occult Acumen to have any effect on your WS rate as opposed to not casting anything at all, even if you have ten seconds to waste already.

You're assuming that 5, 10, or even 15 TP has any affect on DRK's WS rate. It doesn't. It just gives you 105, 110, or 115 TP when you finally WS (and you took longer getting there!)


I think there was mention of OA in a 'This is why Conserve TP is worthless' thread on the DRG forum, but I think that thread was deletedTanaka'd.

Assuming that casting a spell could give you enough TP thats equal to a single attack round. And lets say you're a 6 hit build. You swing 4 times, then have to pull off for 10 seconds. Cast a nuke then run in swing then weaponskill. Thats faster than swinging 4 times, waiting 10 seconds, then swinging twice to weaponskill

And you've now blown 128 MP when Absorb-TP would have done the same thing and benefitted your tank a little.

its extra damage, and the tank should be fine if he has decent enough support. And you could absorb tp right after you weaponskill, to you know. be closer to weaponskilling again

If it's something you can't melee for a few seconds for fear of a TP move or something your Tier 3s will do like... 12 damage. Not to mention you're casting it in a lot of Store TP pieces.

But congratulations, you've found a situation where Occult Acumen works. Now show me where in FFXI it ever actually occurs.

Thanks for acknowledging that it is situational, given the chance of that situation actually occuring is rather slim, but still a possible scenario.

It's already been said it's situational

Yes I know, I said it was before.

Sorry if this was already said, I skimmed over thread but didn't see it, may have been missed.

From what I can tell, Oneiros Rope gives 1 level of Occult Acumen.

A non-drk job(also not subbing DRK) gets Occult Acumen I(2.5%) from the belt.

A 95 DRK has OA IV(10%), with this belt, another level is added, so 12.5%

Let's take Gradd's testing for example.

W/O Belt
120MP Bliz III @ 10% base OA = 12TP
Add 20 STP (15/sam, 5 from Rajas) = 14TP

With Belt
120MP Bliz III @ 12.5% OA = 15TP
Add 22 STP (15/sam, 5 from Rajas, 2 from belt) = 17.2TP

With that being said, here's what I propose for DRK and Magic Usage.

First, and I'm sure it's already going to happen, but give dark native Occult Acumen V.

"Darkness"
Deals Dark elemental damage to an enemy.
150MP, 1.5 second cast, 60 second recast
Magic skill: Dark Magic
While under the effect of "Dark Seal", increases "Endark" effect on target(added DMG/attack bonus).

Now I'm not really sure of DMG formulas, but I would like to see the spell do acceptable damage. Not asking for some crazy outrageous 8k nukes, but come on, the tier III nukes are just pathetic.

I could see this spell useful in a lot of ways.

1. Acceptable DMG in ordinary circumstances, maybe even a very decent(again, nothing insane) nuke if geared properly, during certain circumstances, if the need arises you to "play BLM" for a short period of time during a fight, without having to actually be a BLM.

2. Increasing DMG output slightly through Endark, when Dark Seal is available (5min recast with merits).

3. 150MP cost, 15% Occult Acumen (would be with OA V + Rope) = 22.5TP
plus Bale sollerets +2 = 27TP, and that's not counting whatever STP gear you use for your X-hit build.

Maybe it's stupid, idk, just my opinion ; ;

Nope.

12*1.2=14.4, not 14.0

120*0.125*1.22=18.3

As I said further up this page, Oneiros Rope must return 2% of MP cost as TP:

120*0.12*1.22=17.5

OA isn't the problem it's a symptom, it's not that it can't be used, it that with the spells drk currently has it shouldn't be used. Now if SE adds a Dark based nuke with a short casting time and good base dmg (800+) with a lower recast (1 minute or less) then AO might be useful, but then it's not AO that is being useful but having a spell with a good design.

i know drk is a good job when played well. It use to be my main for a long time.

and no I AM NOT FLAMING YOU OR ANYTHING NEGATIVE JUST USING THIS QUOTE AS AN EXAMPLE, I DUNNO IF ANYONE BITCHED ABOUT IT SUCKING IN PAST PAGE I SKIMMED OVER FORM MY LAST POST (:

The problem doesnt lie so much in this thread of people saying it sucks, but more with se's obsession with making us more magic based which is what the players do not want at all.

this is what i get from the thread, and this is what i agree with.


we dont need nuke spells because we dont use the ones we ever had at all anyway.

drk magic spells use is limited and doesnt justify the casting time.
(after abs tp nerf, how often did you cast it on anything that mattered?)

we know what drain is for so its used when needed no problems there for the most part.


But when they make a scythe ws for our highest levels (im not being ignorant that it will be the last although it could be)

why do we need it to be focused on absorbing mp.

Sorry, missed your above post, you're right (I had a brainfart and forgot how to STP).


Exactly, I was just trying to come up with an idea to make AO useful, not making the spell useful because of AO.

lets be honest macro in AO enhance gears will likely drop your haste gears and increase casting and recast timer, then even worse thing is it don't give you more tp than your normal swing!!! Do drks out there really want to cast a spell that get resisted instead hit a decent swing dmg with more tp return? wtf logic is this. the only situation I see this useful is drk/sam standing out of aoe range and spam spells to gain tp while waitting for meditate and absord tp timer aka red trigger zerg on VWNMs but even that isn't much an option when there are dusty wings every time you red trigger it. Maybe when new level 99 content comes out without temp items then drks can start spaming every damn spells from the sideline to gain tp and run in ws whenver its possible.

imo the casting for tp concept is very dumb, they should just give drk an alternate version of elemental enspells that cost mp per swing and per ws. drk is not a mastery of elemental spells like blm and they are not par the brut force like war, I think the idea of drk using elemental magic to boost their attack output is a very good concept and make the job unique.

i was simply stating that if we went off of raelia's orignal argument of a 4 second melee swing vs magic i was simply saying that more ppl can make a different X-hit build with bio2. with /sam and some +Stp gear it not hard to get +40 stp and without that belt just bale+2 you can get 6+ tp from bio2 which before any fast cast gear only takes 1.5 seconds.

so if you have a 5 hit scythe build that lacks haste because of the stp you need then really you can mod it to a 5hit +bio2 with more haste and it might be better. but like it said idk since im not a ffxi math whiz. but bio2 for 6tp can be a nice and faster way to get to 100tp than waiting for that last hit.

sooo drk gets OA V which is 12.5% and bale+2 is 2.5% and rope is 2% so thats 17%. which makes with no stp thunder3 do like 21.7. with /sam wouldnt that give 25tp? 30.4 in a +40stp set. which is kinda nice...

anyways that being said back to bio2 which is 36mp at 17% is 6.12+ /sam=7tp. but that in the same +40stp is 8.5. so idk i think even if they dont add more gear that gives it more punch its decent.

Okay, now take a step back:

Why are you casting these spells instead of swinging twice in the same amount of time for twice as much TP?

When not potentially useless, it's functionally useless.

I'm glad you're doing the math and seeing what the trait can do, but now you need to take your hands off of it a second and just look at it from a wider view.

Ask yourself: Why?

You're looking to spend a third of your MP pool and twice the time it takes to swing once to deal 1/10th the damage for the same amount of TP. This is bordering on insane fanaticism to somehow prove that Occult Acumen is anything but useless.

Meanwhile you're gimping the potential or real use of these spells by casting them in a Store TP set instead of a more appropriate one.

Why is more important than how even if you can show some case where Occult Acumen gives a decent return (40+ TP).