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

If your using a Mythic with AM3 then you've already reduced the effectiveness of MA gear, so It would make sense to stack Store TP. I'm more concerned about Accuracy these days. An accurate 5-hit would be more useful then an inaccurate 4-hit. Thankfully it's looking like Scythe might be making a comeback, not due to raw damage but because it has far better SC properties then GS. Having powerful WS's in three of the four major categories opens up a lot of options vs just having Fragmentation and un-reliable Distortion. Only thing I don't like is that too many of the Scythe WS's have mixed modifies, makes Argosy +1 not so great due to it's lack of MND / VIT / INT.

And I agree that TPing in Argosy is just asking to be killed by OP magic attacks and status ailments. It has great physical defense but without magic evasion and magic defense the player is going to eat every enfeeble and attack at full strength, even with Vex and Attunment.

By 5hit with MA, I meant TA/QA like ganeshas/windbuffet+1, not DA gear. It seems like 1100~ is a reasonable number to top out at with just gear, with 1200 a big maybe with absolutely perfect augs. If you get 5+ STP augs on all your reisenjima TP pieces, it will be hard -not- to have a 4hit lol

I've been playing around with the Dacnomania and I have to say it's capable of putting out some absolutely absurd melee and weapon skill damage during Souleater (using the Drain III trick).





This was with Souleater, Last Resort, Blood Weapon, 9999 HP from solo Darkness, and Dread Spikes. I dropped Warder of Hope within fifteen seconds. It would not surprise me if this was partially why SE nerfed the Revitalizer, because this could have been soooooooo abused by career Dark Knights who got their hands on the weapon. It's also worth noting that I was not capped magic Haste during this and that I did not have a Geomancer doing Indi-Fury and Geo-Frailty on the target. I imagine the damage would have been even more insane if so.

Have to admit, that is pretty disgusting dmg. Now I want one.

It is really one of the most fun weapons. The white damage makes me lolololololol. every. time.

Is he resisting the endrain from blood weapon?

Good thing you have 10k hp and missing 2000 for a few swings doesnt matter much lol

Also wondering if you have the 1200 JP gift for dread spikes.

I've had my liberator for a couple of weeks now and I'm loving it. It's great because I can do light or darkness, depending on who I skillchain with. I remember someone wanting some gearsets, and I have many sets which do not include all the randomly augmented Escha equipment, so if anyone would be interested in that, let me know.

I'm not 20/20 in Blood Weapon Job Points yet so that might explain the lower numbers.

I don't. It's proving extremely difficult to get Job Points on DRK given every single shout I see wants RDM/SCH/BLM/GEO/COR and whenever I start a group people see me on DRK and demand I change to BLU or they'll leave.

Really? On Asura? I'm always happy to see a non-blu so I can try to figure out how to get CP on non FoM jobs, I'm usually pleasantly surprised.

After I get my DRK gear up to par again I'm going to make my own parties and be the skillchain since self-SC with buffed liberator is the easiest thing on the planet.

I also want to grab 5 trusts and try soloing apex mobs for fun, doing 5 or 7 step double darknesses and see how high exp gets per hour.

I've done this with lib on apex crawler/raptor and crab camps. Naturally you have to keep big sc's going, but it's pretty easy with sublime sushi and absorb-acc / dex / agi. (crabs resist on ocassion) If I can remember, I think my cp/hr was about 1.3k with ring up. About 750k/hr with ring down. I used august, apururu, king of hearts, qultada and joachim.

I have done apex on drk/run as tank.
It worked so well.
Thanks Saevel :)

The main reasons why you don't see players asking for DD is because they usually go to Reisenjima and bring an army of BSTs and BLUs to maximize CP. That doesn't work for everyone though, so Apex crabs are a nice alternative for any DD, as long as the DD has the accuracy and knows how to open/close light or darkness.

I've only had two parties on Apex crabs so far, and I managed to close darkness with a Monk using Quietus .. although Quietus is less reliable and more likely to miss. With my father playing Warrior I had him opening with Ukko's fury and myself closing with Insurgency, not just to do Light (+thunder MBs) but to keep aftermath up as well.

Also I was /sam and my dad was WAR/SAM and voking whenever he could. After that I tried the same thing with a BLU (and this BLU is super OP) and he would pull and wait for me to get TP to open with Insurgency. The only thing was that I only had GEO buffs, no BRD or COR buffs, and I was having to use Sublime Sushi and a max ACC set to hit reliably. He would close with Savage Blade.

So it's just a matter of finding a decent skillchain with whichever DD comes along. I don't have /RUN, but it seems interesting because you're not always going to find a WAR MNK or BLU to tank so it would be nice to have that option.

And if anyone's going to turn you away for being a DRK, then they suck because all jobs should be allowed to CP. Make ya own parties if no one's willing to, and you will be pleasantly surprised. It might not be Reisenjima good, but it beats soloing with Trusts.

I thought Apex cp pt > Reisenjima? How much cp/hr do you get in Reisenjima? I find it pretty hard to believe reisenjima pt has higher cp/hr than apex. Also any DD that can SC can do apex cp pt.

It does, just reading his post I know he sucked hard core. One of my good parties will get 180~220JP/Hr, depending on how much CP bonus gifts people have.

Earlier today was GEO, one of my last jobs to get 2100, and we didn't have a single BLM and honestly didn't need our SCH nuking. Our NIN was doing crazy MB's, they got a post of it over on their forum.

Blade: Kamu (Fragmentation) -> Cross Reaper (Distortion) -> Leaden Salute (Gravitation) = dead monster. If the SCH MB'd on the distortion then it was usually dead before the darkness SC could kill it. It was so obscene that I just stopped trying to MB on GEO and focused purely on support. As long as there is a strong closing WS, then it's just a matter of linking a few WS's before hand to pump up the final multiplier. Do it right and it negates the need for a bunch of nukers.

DRK's solid in that is has strong multi-hit linking options in every major SC category and several minor ones.

Here's an interesting one I had to put together earlier (NIN RNG COR)

Blade: Chi (transfixion) -> Trueflight (scission) = Distortion -> Leaden Salute = dead monster.

That's abusing magic WS scaling but you can do similiar with physical, just need to alter buffs a bit.

Absolutely agree with this, I was the DRK in question in this group. I had a good hit rate by using Absorb-ACC, Diabolic Eye (with HP boost so I didn't kill myself), and Swordplay from /RUN (seriously good subjob for DRK). I was using this gear set for TP, minus the mantle which was my CP cape.

ItemSet 341518
You only need +39 Store TP to 5-hit the Dacnomania (528 delay), this set is actually well over that (+55 with augment on Odyssean Cuisses). I could probably drop the Dedition Earring for an accuracy one if the needs must as the situation requires.

You really do not need a BLM or SCH for Apex parties as long as you can construct a good 3-step skillchain ending in a powerful magic weapon skill to really abuse the accumulating modifier. Leaden Salute, Trueflight, and Cloudsplitter are all good options.

anyone have any up to date DRK sets?

I'd love to see how Ragnarok III compares with the other RMEs after the recent update. With aftermath up and afterglow, it has a total of Acc+90, not to mention the Crit Hit Rate +10%.

Afterglow doesn't affect the user, so don't include that in the user benefits. If you play with other melees that use an Aftermath, they won't be receiving it either.

Oh. Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know that. Anyways, still an incredible +75 Acc with Aftermath up on Ragnarok.

Loving my Apoc III though. :)

i dont know if this was posted before, but apoc III gives 10% ABILITY haste

That's more useful than gear haste at least lol

With Hasso you're almost delay capped 24/7 with aftermath and haste 2.

Does APOC 119(I?) still give gear haste? I presume that it would. That's an interesting change though. Makes /war and /thf more viable for when Desperate Blows isn't up, or perhaps some niche use for /rdm or /sch. Defensively, /run gets better from it also. Dark can do some impressive multisteps and drop a pretty fat helix on their own skillchains.

Ohhhhh yes yes yes!!!!

awsome maybe that will make me take up drk again for luls

Wish someone would re-vamp all of the drk sets

Guess you'd better get started on that.

I thought about it, but it's really hard to do considering the many random augments. And then there's whether you use GS or Scythe. I could post my current sets but they don't include all the Escha stuff; and I'm using Liberator. Let me know if ya interested and I'll find some time to post.

I am interested in drk sets made with escha stuff. Especially since my two goals are make an apoc and liberator. Any tips or anything of that nature is fine with me as well.