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

Major Update to lua's.

Includes information on light & dark skillchians, 6 step and less.

Liberator specific sets added. Same link as before. All sets just switch to the correct engaged when you change weapons.

-- DRK LUA.
http://pastebin.com/2XKEUUA9

-- Global File with Augment Gear
http://pastebin.com/qrcug0Cb

nah me and an equally geared drk have done numerous parses on things like woc/kirin/helms/ambu we both have both weapons and near identical gear, playstyle. Both of us win by about 7-10% over the other when we use calad. Its been very noticeable for both of us, sadly he has quit though - so I cant do the same with scythe builds which I really want to now.

Plus I am always using Scoreboard to track my own dps and like to change it up on things, Calad always pushes more dps according to it on nearly anything I do now. So myself vs myself, cant get much more accurate than that!

I find rag will be better for me when acc pushes under about 85%~ (yes you dont even need to be acc capped for calad to win), or when I will often need to hold tp for whatever reason. I love both of them, and both have their place, but I find rags trails by about 20% dps loss under ideal conditions, which is quite significant for one slott.

Also I am going to help your dps alot with a few tricks, most drks dont utilize them either and idk why. On woc/kirin/helms you can 'normally' have some battery trash mob. Just tell your ls to not touch it and then you can start each fight with 5m~ full buffs from the abs line. Thats a nifty trick and oftentimes I will save abs-acc for last and DS/NV abs-acc for 60 acc for 7m+. Your issue here might be that "Now you cant drain3!", well true, technically, if revitilizer didnt exist! After you have got your 7 min abs-acc off (or abs-vit/str your call on acc needs) then pop all your neededs JAS hasso/LR/sacrlet/whatever you want and use revitilizer. Once you get in a habit you can from the abs to finishing ja's in under 10 sec which is most peoples "prep" time in poping a mob. Now you have all your buffs on, and all ready to go, which means a new DS/NV which you can use on drain3 right away if you want :D

I don't know how to quote; but what Azagarth said regarding pre-buffing fights; should always do that.

[q-u-o-t-e] put stuff here, take out the - [/q-u-o-t-e]

or lazy man way, highlight what someone said, and click the quote button at the top of their post.

Guess that is easy. Lazy ftw!

That sounds like the kind of scenario that would make it difficult to make a proper comparison, especially the part in bold. I really like Calad and I really like Torc and I've mentioned the gear I lack but I'll include Knobkerrie, Niqmaddu/Regal rings. At 3k TP I'm hitting around 40kish Torcs on content like Kirin but that's as high as it gets, with the missing gear I mentioned I could maybe hit 10% or so higher but that's speculative at this point. Now with Reso (and Rag) I'm hitting anywhere between 40-60k and higher with 3k TP which I rarely use. At 2k TP I'm still hitting figures close to or higher than my Torcs granted with less consistency so it's difficult to tell at the moment whether the empy AM makes up for any potential dmg that could be lost between Torc and Reso especially in a zerg.

I'm also not of the opinion that Torc will always win a parse due to the possibility it might sc with something and may happen to close it, those possibilities are too random to rely on. Although the same sort of argument can be used against reso for it's lack of L3 SC properties and that it cancels potential sc dmg added to the overall party/alliance parse.

I'll have to continue to experiment and see how things pan out in the future.


Sadly it doesn't for me at the moment. I never spent much time in escha besides fighting NMs and have spent hardly any time in reisen cleave parties I also keep taking breaks which kind of interrupt with that. Not having S.Revits is a massive loss for a lot of things not just my general dps but I always parse well whether it's on blm or drk without them. I guess that is something I'll have to focus on to push dmg through even more but I like the sound of those tricks you mentioned. Cheers!

Looking into it. To be frank, I've been all sorts of behind since working on getting Ragnarok to 119. (I'm perpetually on a tight budget.)

What were the best non-REMA weapons for DRK at the 75 cap? Some of the Magian trial weapons?

I mean, one of the better geared DPS in the game posted a video to refute this, stating skill chains rarely happen so Resolution was clearly the best option..

Said video proceeded to show back to back to back to back to back Light/Darkness Skill Chains during an all out zerg.

So, take that for what it's worth.

All good! Working on getting Apoc to 119 myself (god damn trials...). I can take a crack at what I think the best sets would be given some of the newer-ish options in a few days as well if someone else doesn't have up-to-date sets.

Maybe I didn't phrase it properly but what I meant to say was; sure you will eventually SC using Torc and close an SC, hell you'll eventually SC using Reso and happen to close one with less consistency. That doesn't mean closing an SC with Torc isn't random in a zerg and it doesn't guarantee huge SC numbers either. Just like you aren't guaranteed to constantly get 5/5 hits with Reso.

I don't want to confuse anyone into believing I'm saying "Calad isn't very good you should use Rag" because that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm saying they are not as far apart from my own experience* as some would make them out to be. The variables both bring with them seem to make them plateau DPS wise, for me at least. I've also said in posts from a year or so back that I believe Calad has the greater potential and I still believe that.

OAT scythe or the martial weapons. honestly strongest choice is likely martial with rid offhand using savage blade.

If you're having so much better results with Resolution in zergs, why not use Resolution with Caladbolg? Any good zerg should give you plenty of accuracy, and Caladbolg using Resolution is no worse than Ragnarok doing it in that situation, so you'd get both Resolution and OTT if you did a single Torcleaver at the start.

Also, you seem to be talking about holding TP to 2000/3000 when using Torcleaver w/ Caladbolg, which is something you shouldn't do when using that WS. Sure, with SAM roll and multi attacks, you'll occasionally hit 2000 even when trying to WS as early as you can, but your TP will usually be closer to 1000 if you're not waiting. Resolution outperforming Torcleaver at 3000 TP doesn't matter very much, since unless you're getting amnesia'd often, it'll only happen once at the beginning of the fight. With a good set and quick WSing, Caladbolg w/ Torcleaver will outparse Ragnarok w/ Resolution (or Caladbolg w/ Resolution) even without counting skillchains.

Even without skillchains, it's a pretty huge difference; fully buffed, my spreadsheet puts Calad + Torc at almost 20% stronger than Ragnarok + Resolution in a zerg situation. With skillchains, it's even higher (though by how much is not possible to reliably estimate). Not only does low TP Torcleaver (w/Caladbolg) hit slightly harder than similar TP Resolution with proper sets, but your melee DPS is nearly 50% higher. The more your group can debuff the foe's VIT, the more Caladbolg will pull ahead (as increasing fSTR helps melee attacks more than it does WSs), so putting a buffed Absorb-VIT on the target is pretty huge, especially if you don't have anyone that is landing a good Impact.

I've tried, my reso's for whatever reason fall short on Calad compared to Rag probably because of my augs on argosy being path A. I could rejig to make the most of reso on Calad but it just seems to be working well on Rag for now.


I'm not. I can see why you might of read it like that but I was only giving a general idea of what my Torc dmg was like at each TP stage. I do however hold reso until 1750 tp at least.


Spreadsheets do not account for variables. I'm not saying they are pointless but if you think they show you the whole picture then you're going to be disappointed. Again I'll say that I believe Calad has the superior potential but the two weapons are not as far apart as people or spreadsheets will have you believe, unless you have an optimal Calad setup. Show me practical parse SS's between the two weapons as visual confirmation is a lot harder to dispute. Far less speculation based on a perfect situation too. Better yet you could prove this yourself?

I'll try to do some parses myself on higher level content and show you guys where I'm struggling with Calad. Although you've all been helpful so far to which I'm thankful.

Anyone have any thoughts on scythe dark overcoming or matching greatsword with the new gear set with scythe skill? Thinking about picking up the set soon.

I think the consensus a few pages back was that despite getting a bunch of scythe skill + on the new gear, it's still rough given the scythe WS modifiers. It's good to know that it's at least on the devs' minds though. Maybe scythe will receive a little more love going forward.

I think Quetz and Aza agreed that it is a great set for Apoc users though given the huge HP+ bonuses and WSD+ for Catastrophe.

Scythe has been more about synergistic plays lately than raw damage anyways. It SCs well with many weapon types and most scythes have unique properties that augment your spells or defenses (Liberator for Absorbs, Apoc for self-preservation, Anguta for MB Damage for stronger Drains). This set will be great for Cross Reaper and Quietus but the latter is rarely needed since DRKs don't have the issue other jobs have with attack and mostly for closing double darkness.

You've got that backwards; the spreadsheets are the only accurate way to compare the DPS of two weapons and gears sets for the same player. Parsing is MUCH less accurate because if you've got the same player in two parses the circumstances and buff loadouts are different, while if you have two players in the same parse, the play style and gear are different. Parsing is a LOT easier to dispute, because differences can be based on many variables that are impossible to know the precise effects of. Spreadsheets take out all the variables that change from fight to fight, and give you a useful point of comparison using variables that aren't affected by any of that.

The spreadsheets aren't very good for comparing between players or jobs, or finding actual DPS, but for determining the differences between weapons, gear, and buff loadouts (in terms of percentages), nothing is more accurate.

And indeed, my experience regarding damage using Caladbolg is that it's much higher than when I use Ragnarok; I win parses more often and by bigger amounts, kill things solo much faster, and just do a lot more damage in general.

Plus, that defense +75 that Caladbolg gives is nice, too.

Literally there is no noticeable difference for dmg on reso between rag and calad (at acc cap), reason being the dmg rating is 1 difference which means next to nothing and neither add attack or STR or wsd. However, the only times you will get a difference is when acc is uncapped.

If you truly arent eyeballing and you are seeing big difference between calad and Rag reso #'s its 100% due to accuracy issues. However if your parse shows you with calad at 95% acc, then your capped and there is no reason you should be using rag, even if you want to just reso spam and get a massive dps boost by calads AM.

Plus technically the highest reso #s dont even come from rag, an augmented zulfigar or w/e will pull your highest dmg.

I would have thought that was heavily implied when I mentioned my path on argosy +1? Lets just say if there is disparity between any of Rag/Calad/Zulfiqar on reso it's more than likely to be an accuracy issue so I'm not sure why it has to be mentioned but hey I missed an obvious correlation of rounded multi attack dmg on battlemod so I can't blame you for not seeing something so obvious.

And technically if I'm not hitting reso's with the same consistency on Calad as I do on Rag I doubt I'm going to be opting for zulfiqar dude. No offence.

Change your head to path D and hands to path D might help overall then since your having acc issues, leave feet path A. I use af+3 body/legs though, but if you cant get those argosy+1 legs/body path A.

Well calad has 0 acc, rag 60/75, and zulf will be somewhere in the middle, so... I wouldn't get it but it has its place.

Cheers man that's the kind of advice I was after. I'm just saying I haven't worked out how to optimise sets for Calad yet. Utu grip/Regal ring would go a long way to mask over any acc issues. I think sometimes people who have certain end game pieces of gear forget how game changing they can be especially when paired with the right weapon.

Also I have a zulf I use it for /thfing stuff like erinys mainly because the gear on my thf is atrocious but it does well. AF body is the only +3 I have atm although legs should be +3 by tomorrow/saturday at the latest.

Question:
"Ankou's Mantle" what augments are best for 1st mantle ?

STR+20 ACC+20 ATK+20 Double Attack+10%

or should I go with VIT DEX INT MND ?


Thinking STR would benefit more due to adding extra ATK+ , right ?

1st WS Cape: STR+30. ACC/ATK+20. DA+10 (Assuming Resolution)
2nd WS Cape: VIT+30. ACC/ATK+20. WSDMG+10 (Torcleaver)
3rd WS Cape: STR+30. ACC/ATK+20. WSDMG+10 (Cross Reaper or Scythe)

1st TP Cape: DEX+30. ACC/ATK+20. DA+10 or STP+10

EDIT: You would also be able to use the Resolution cape as a TP backpiece if you don't have a TP one made already, so would help with that.

Martial anelace? Swords. Wasn't expecting that!

Thanks!

Ty there are so many mod on scythe that makes it a bit hard to know which to focus on X.x

Apoc 119 AG!

First AG hype is real :D

Congrats! I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Still have a DT- set with mine in it just for those moments when sh*t + fan are looking like they might connect. Have fun!

Congrats! Love that weapon. MB Drain 3 on Darkness and riding souleater is just way too much fun.