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

Up to date sets and gearswaps There are still some very serious DRKs that play this game and help people out.
The rule for drk gear is simple,
Haste > Acc > xHit > Multi-attack

The only difference between most those gearsets and what career drks use now are a few of the ambuscade +1 pieces. That is highly dependent on the augments you get from valorous/odyssean or what sets you might be after.
Drk can get more than 60% double attack if you are magic haste capped, LR up, and sam roll that would be a set to look into. (Done with a few lucky augments)
Hopefully that bandwagon dies before it gets too out of control. Mnk is already becoming bandwagon on Asura and the update hasn't even hit. So there is hope.

Doesn't change anything, JA haste caps at 25%, last resort alone can hit 25%, the only difference is running seigan/3eye during LR if you want. Hasso when LR is down. You could actually drop some gear haste if you are capped magic haste, but very little play room and not really worth it if you don't have a solid lua set up.
Gearswap for dummies thread
I don't use.

At this point, I think most career Dark Knights use updated versions of Motenten's spreadsheets in order to plot out their gear choices. If you're serious about gearing DRK, I suggest getting yourself a post-PDIF update copy, and use that.

Dusted off my Anguta last night and used it in ambuscade with Saevel on warrior. The TP bonus from warcry combined with the tp bonus of the Aoenic and the bonus from moonshade, made it a incredible high damage WS choice for cross reaper spam. This was ideal for ambuscade where you are only likely to get 2-3 ws out before the match is over.

Larger zergs where you can afford to get AM3 up and running, lib still deals more, but worth a look for an ambuscade party.

Test it out, you wont be dissapointed

Where are you finding the updated version? I have not been able to find an updated one.

I still have no idea how to use scripts and stuff. gearsets and macros from the ffxi vanilla itself. smh

Do drk's actually have accuracy problems on high end content? Do you have to take off good gear to use subpar gear with more accuracy?

If so, for scythes, wouldn't that make apoc better than liberator in these situations? +75 acc (60 from weapon, 15 from aftermath). Or is liberator just that much stronger even in situations where you're acc starved?

So a drk walks into a bar...

Joke didn't start because it's funny.

Depends on the gear the DRK has. My DRK use's practically the exact same gear as my WAR so there is very little accuracy issues, but I can see how a new DRK would be struggling. DRK's job doesn't have a lot of natural +Accuracy from Traits or Gifts, instead it's got a ***ton of attack. Pretty much always stuck with sushi. And yes in situations needing accuracy Apoc wins, though Ragnarok would be better.

Liberator will generally still win IF you are able to still cap accuracy by swapping in more accuracy gear than you would need if you were using Apoc, though it depends on the selection of accuracy gear you have available.

If you physically cannot get to (or very close to) the cap with just your buffs and armor, then Apoc's much higher accuracy will make it win.

If you are about mid-level DRK doing high content (few hq argosy pieces, high valorous acc augments), chances are you'll be fine with the right buff support. I just fought WoC last night with a war and BLU. The BLU parsed 90% acc the first fight, me and the war both parsed mid 50s. It was troubling. We ended up re-attempting the fight after, and I made some significant gear changes (which hurt some of my builds, but acc >). I ended up parsing around 90+% acc the second time around and the parse was ping-ponging until I died. I had to make some huge sacrifices (specifically in cape, legs, feet, hands, ear1), but it ended up with me in the top spot anyways, so I guess its tolerable. Edit: Mind you, this could have been completely buff-related, as the war also suffered the same as me, but the BLU (who had two REM weapons) had no real acc issues at all.

My only issue is that other jobs can have far less accuracy support and match or even outparse a DRK, so as Saevel said, its pretty much stuck with sushi(+1) for anything you do.

For numbers sake, the first fight I managed to hit 1350~ acc before buffs, second fight I was around 1480 with buffs and vorseals, but before rolls/bubbles/songs/abs-acc etc

Ya its the lack of acc on lib that prevents me from getting it.... Losing 60 acc would just be to hard to overcome. I only use my drk on endgame stuff though, so acc is a factor. If you just did <135 mobs then lib is going to perform better, but at that point who cares eithers going to kill it practically the same speed, you can just do lower man with apoc due to cata is all :D

I have a DRK, I have an Apoc, ugh, Apoc DRK

If your doing high end zerg type fights then use a Ragnarok and spam Resolution, much better results then Apoc. Scythe is for when you need to make a multi-step SC because GS kinda sucks for that. The other choice is an Anguta, if you happen to have a good WAR in the party for buffed Warcry.

Depending how you use ur DS+NV, Liberator is a straigh +87 Stat aka +87 STR or DEX to everyone.
It catchs up the acc from relics, or boosts WS of the whole ally.

That's not quite how that works. SE modified how much evasion NM"s get from AGI, meaning that draining it's AGI will hardly change it's evasion. VIT just adds a few points of fSTR due to it's poor scaling. Your best bet would be to use NV DS on Absorb-Accuracy but then you miss out on the larger HP pool of Drain III. That HP pool is critical if your riding the -35% defense from LR and / or the HP reduction of Souleater.

Anyhow the big problem with Scythe is the same as Great Axe, the WS's mostly suck compared to Resolution / Stardiver / Vorpal / ect. Anguta gets a pass with Warcry because you can get some really silly numbers on CR with +1450 TP Bonus.

Should be noted that AGI completely stops affecting Evasion entirely after a certain point. Not sure where that is other than that it's somewhere around 200 AGI less than whatever Apex 135s actually have. My guess is 100 AGI.

So yeah, forget about Absorb-AGI.

Anyone know what drk new smite numbers are? I can not seem to find an exact number on the patch notes.

New Smite values:

Smite1 - 25/256 (9.765625% att boost; same as old Smite3)

Smite2 - 38/256 (14.84375% att boost; same as old Smite5)

Smite3 - 51/256 (19.921875% att boost)

Smite4 - 64/256 (25% att boost)

Smite5 - 76/256 (29.6875% att boost) < DRK

Yeah nobody better be arguing about Resolution's attack penalty now.

Thanks Flowen, I appreciate that.

Moooooooooore! I want mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore! /hides

This is basically my concern.
I have no idea if liberator is even worth getting, can't you basically make 3 relics in the time it takes to finish a single mythic too?

Lib is worth it. Just get all of 'em, I'm planning to AG my Rag so I can use either given the situation.

Lib has a narrow situation usage. When you start with 3k TP and the fight is longer then 60s. Otherwise it's Rag resolution or Anguta Cross Reaper spam.

Well I generally mainly lowman stuff so I'm not sure if <1m fights are going to be common for me.

I made Liberator because I enjoy the job. Not because of what any spreadsheet or forum post ever told me. Upgrade what you have fun playing.

Well low man stuff I usually just go BLU but I get it if you wanna do DRK. In that case it's usually Apoc and do 2 or 3 step SCs. Cata and AM is nice when you don't have dedicated support.

Liberator is still my favorite beat stick of choice but agree its situational, however anything over 60 seconds of madness it will pull ahead due to the frequency of TP gained from the aftermath. The minus accuracy from a relic is never really noticed in high buff zerg situations imo and although the maths never quite make sense, I still pull very high end insurgencys at a consistent rate when using this

Anguta combo with a Saevel in your party does deal excellent cross reapers due to the massive TP bonus from warcry, this was apparent in ambuscade last month

Ragnarok / Resolution has always been fun on DRK but will never be as good as it can be on warrior.

Apoc NV/DS drain combo should always be paired with souleater to further push the damage

All of the above are great weapons in the right situation and you should strive to obtain all of the them. I will complete some smite testing with the new valves and see how good resolution is now

How is that so? I'm under the impression that reso is one of if not the best ws in game at high pdif situations. And DrK just has high attack.

Id guess it's probably because war has warcry but I may be wrong.

It's Warrior's Warcry that gives +700 TP Bonus which absolutely breaks any fTP scaling WS for 60s. Good thing is that this buff is party wide so the DRK would also get it and thus the Broken Resolutions.

And yes Resolution is one of the most powerful WS's in the game, stronger then any Scythe or Great Axe WS. The only other 2H WS that comes close is Stardiver for the exact same reasons.