sword/spell dark knight?

[Taskmage]

I just finished leveling my dark knight sub for red mage. I hated it at first but eventually warmed up to it, not only for the satisfaction of solidly outparsing almost every DD I met as a tarutaru , but also for the support I was able to offer through dark magic and the additional techinical diversion of being able to magic burst. The most fun I had as drk was opening a fight with a beetle with Absorb-VIT, dropping Shadow of Death to open for a brutal SA Sturmwind Fragmentation, MBing with the blms and then draining back all my invested mp with an Aspir or two.

So I'm thinking with the proper preperation (read: nice gear, juice, and merits), maybe drk could be the type of spellsword damage dealer that seems to be the dream of every new player. No, you probably couldn't do this as your first job to 75, but that doesn't mean I couldn't still have some fun with it. ^^ So tell me what you think of this:

• Black mage sub — {Magic Attack Bonus} {Can I have it?} Dark knight actually has pretty respectable elemental magic skill (better than a rdm's). It's true that our spell progression is weak, but that doesn't mean our lower level nukes can't still be useful. Smart blms fall back on lower level spells to ration hate and conserve mp, we can use them to supplement our melee damage. MAB gives makes our spells 20% more potent. Really, the reason I push this is that in my last party the whm's Aero was outbursting mine. -.- I can't stand for that. Also this would increase the damage of Drain and Aspir, which are already quite decent spells but not quite decent enough for most drks to consider using them often. The loss of Berserk or Sneak attack would hinder my melee damage a bit, and I wouldn't be popping any ZOMG1337 Guillotines, but that doesn't really bother me. I've been opting for /thf lately primarily to lower my damage output, since I don't seem to have a problem ripping hate off most of the tanks I've had even without using any JAs. A lower natural hate profile just suggests to me that I might be able to actually use Last Resort and Souleater and recoup that lost damage. /rdm might be better from 40-59, for a better balance of melee/magic stats, fast cast, and possibly rapier belt. Rapier belt? I'm getting to that.
• Sword/shield — A few reasons for this. The first being simply that slow two-handed weapons give me fits. I'm always wondering if maybe I'm standing just a little out of range and that's why I'm not swinging, and of course when you miss after waiting 9 seconds it's excruciating. Hang on, I've got better reasons. >_> The thing that made me start considering using a one-handed weapon is Charging Shield. My main gripe with Drain isn't its damage or its cast time but its accuracy, and with the precious little magic accuracy+ gear we get, the best way to do that is to pile on dark magic skill. That shield isn't available til 63, but there are some other decent stat-boosting options until then. Wizard's Shield and Royal Knight Army Shield stand out. Dark knight has a natural B- rating in sword and access to all of its weaponskills. With full sword merits (which I'm already working on for rdm and blu) I would have the equivalent of an A- rating for most of my drk's life, and at the end when it falls noticably behind I can patch it with Suppanomimi. Drk has access to a number of nice swords such as Combat Caster's Scimitar and most of the new caster-oriented scimitars that are being introduced for blu. Sword WS have considerably better skillchain potential than great sword or scythe, which a lot of people don't seem to care about but I enjoy nonetheless. With Vorpal Blade I'll be able to close Distortion or Fusion, so I won't have to wrestle with other melees about holding their TP to make a skillchain happen. Also, if I'm not mistaken, the damage added by Souleater is the same regardless of the delay of your weapon, so a fast sword can take much better advantage of that skill than a ponderous scythe.

Hmm, I thought that list would have more points than that, but I ended up covering most of my other points in the process of explaining my sub and weapon choices.

Opinions? Assuming I gear and equip swap properly for TP gain, spells and WS, could I use this setup and still be a competitive DD? I realize that by using an unconventional setup my invite rate will probably suffer, but since any drk leveling I do past this point will essentially be for S&G I'm not really concerned with that. I just want to have fun and be effective. I'm pretty sold on the fun part of this setup, so the only question is whether it will be effective or not.

[Celeal]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

I never tried drk/blm, but tried drk/rdm at level 32 in G.C, becasue the party setup was light on healing side. Those Regen and Cure helped. I MB'ed a few Distortion for fun too, but those tier 1 nuke is about the same dmg as my melee. There as a few times link/pop/aggro/train and I attended to Sleep the link, but resisted all the time (bat resisted dark element, beetles were at the high-end of IT, it was a time when mob won't de-spawn during train/link situation), ended up getting the hate and zone the link. I don't think I was able to land slow/paralyze/blind as drk/rdm either. (I did not have gear to swap for magic casting either)

Hopefully my brief experience on low level drk/rdm helps~

As for sword and shield, honestly I am not sure if a drk has that luxury or not. It is because trying to cap Scrythe and Great Sword are painful process to me. If you joined good exp. parties at low~mid levels, your drk may level up before your weapon skill is capped.

IMHO, cap those A+/A- weapon first before playing with other weapons.

[Taskmage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Yeah leveling great sword and scythe is a pain. I pretty much gave up on keeping them both leveled in the jungles. Even using only scythe, my skill usually only barely manages to cap before I level again. I figure once I hit 50 or so I'll take care of those skills by joining coffer hunts with my drk, but until then I'm going to have to come up with a more creative solution.

I subbed whm through Valkurm and was happy with it. At that level I was a real jack of all trades, pulling, DDing with melee, then turning into a nuker if the crabs buffed too much, and backup healing if the whm got low or things got rough. Fun stuff. I found I ran into far more situations where I was happy to have Cure than ones where I wished I had Provoke, especially since there's precious little else to do with our mp at that point. I figure I could have kept doing that through Qufim and probably Yuhtunga, but I switched to war at 21 since healers were easier to find then. Maybe /whm might become useful again at 42 when we get Cure III, but I dunno if anyone would care by that time tbh. We might be able to backup heal, but we're invited to dish damage, so I was looking at using a mage sub to that end. That does make a fair arguement for using rdm post-60, since the upgrade from MAB1 to MAB2 isn't that large and the healing spells could be useful. Thanks for that thought.

[Omniblast]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

I just finished leveling my dark knight sub for red mage. I hated it at first but eventually warmed up to it, not only for the satisfaction of solidly outparsing almost every DD I met as a tarutaru , but also for the support I was able to offer through dark magic and the additional techinical diversion of being able to magic burst. The most fun I had as drk was opening a fight with a beetle with Absorb-VIT, dropping Shadow of Death to open for a brutal SA Sturmwind Fragmentation, MBing with the blms and then draining back all my invested mp with an Aspir or two.

So I'm thinking with the proper preperation (read: nice gear, juice, and merits), maybe drk could be the type of spellsword damage dealer that seems to be the dream of every new player. No, you probably couldn't do this as your first job to 75, but that doesn't mean I couldn't still have some fun with it. ^^ So tell me what you think of this:

• Black mage sub — {Magic Attack Bonus} {Can I have it?} Dark knight actually has pretty respectable elemental magic skill (better than a rdm's). It's true that our spell progression is weak, but that doesn't mean our lower level nukes can't still be useful. Smart blms fall back on lower level spells to ration hate and conserve mp, we can use them to supplement our melee damage. MAB gives makes our spells 20% more potent. Really, the reason I push this is that in my last party the whm's Aero was outbursting mine. -.- I can't stand for that. Also this would increase the damage of Drain and Aspir, which are already quite decent spells but not quite decent enough for most drks to consider using them often. The loss of Berserk or Sneak attack would hinder my melee damage a bit, and I wouldn't be popping any ZOMG1337 Guillotines, but that doesn't really bother me. I've been opting for /thf lately primarily to lower my damage output, since I don't seem to have a problem ripping hate off most of the tanks I've had even without using any JAs. A lower natural hate profile just suggests to me that I might be able to actually use Last Resort and Souleater and recoup that lost damage. /rdm might be better from 40-59, for a better balance of melee/magic stats, fast cast, and possibly rapier belt. Rapier belt? I'm getting to that.
• Sword/shield — A few reasons for this. The first being simply that slow two-handed weapons give me fits. I'm always wondering if maybe I'm standing just a little out of range and that's why I'm not swinging, and of course when you miss after waiting 9 seconds it's excruciating. Hang on, I've got better reasons. >_> The thing that made me start considering using a one-handed weapon is Charging Shield. My main gripe with Drain isn't its damage or its cast time but its accuracy, and with the precious little magic accuracy+ gear we get, the best way to do that is to pile on dark magic skill. That shield isn't available til 63, but there are some other decent stat-boosting options until then. Wizard's Shield and Royal Knight Army Shield stand out. Dark knight has a natural B- rating in sword and access to all of its weaponskills. With full sword merits (which I'm already working on for rdm and blu) I would have the equivalent of an A- rating for most of my drk's life, and at the end when it falls noticably behind I can patch it with Suppanomimi. Drk has access to a number of nice swords such as Combat Caster's Scimitar and most of the new caster-oriented scimitars that are being introduced for blu. Sword WS have considerably better skillchain potential than great sword or scythe, which a lot of people don't seem to care about but I enjoy nonetheless. With Vorpal Blade I'll be able to close Distortion or Fusion, so I won't have to wrestle with other melees about holding their TP to make a skillchain happen. Also, if I'm not mistaken, the damage added by Souleater is the same regardless of the delay of your weapon, so a fast sword can take much better advantage of that skill than a ponderous scythe.

Hmm, I thought that list would have more points than that, but I ended up covering most of my other points in the process of explaining my sub and weapon choices.

Opinions? Assuming I gear and equip swap properly for TP gain, spells and WS, could I use this setup and still be a competitive DD? I realize that by using an unconventional setup my invite rate will probably suffer, but since any drk leveling I do past this point will essentially be for S&G I'm not really concerned with that. I just want to have fun and be effective. I'm pretty sold on the fun part of this setup, so the only question is whether it will be effective or not.

I remember when I first started this game, a discussion that DRK/BLM is very, how does a JP put it, selfish.

I'm not sure quite why it's selfish, but that was the word used. I remember that Akosygin said it was a very powerful set up.

Other than that, I'm not sure why it's such a bad set up. Hell, if DRK can go DRK/NIN, with kraken clubs, why not? I say you try it once in a exp party and let us know what's wrong about it. Maybe you'll pull too much hate and end up dying a lot, but atleast you did it for a good cause!

[Lmnop]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Selfish is multi-attacking weapons and Haste build, feeding the mob billions of tp/second. It's true that DRKs are at a point where their hate is so great that more DD from sub is not what they need. However, Drks already don't keep up with many other DDs (it's not their job to be #1. It's their job to be #2 and make everyone else look better. You could say they sacrifice #1 DD ability to improve the entire party's performance. At least, that's what it's designed to be, except for that whole non-scaling unique debuffs thing).

/rdm doesn't really offer any melee stats (/whm would give you higher VIT and STR growth, for instance). So really, /rdm is just a means of getting cures with your MAB, and Gravity would be cool to have. Oh, and you'd have slow/paralyze but I can only hope someone else is taking care of that.

Meh, I'd static with one that I knew and trusted but I'd prolly never invite one.

[Taskmage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Does whm really give higher str growth than rdm? I wouldn't have figured that was so.

Cure would really be the only thing for /rdm then. Drk's enfeebling skill is teh sux. I've never gotten sleep to stick and even poison if it lands wears off almost instantly. Dispel would probably be usable but blowing a chunk of mp once a minute to not get +10 acc from gravity would just make me cry.

It's a shame drk has no native enhancing skill to take advantage of enspells.

[Armando]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Hm...looks decent on paper but the potential losses are painful. Regarding /BLM, you have to ask yourself: How much of your total damage output is your casting currently taking up? I can't answer that question, obviously, so I wouldn't know what to think of it. Just keep that in mind - is a 20% boost to that portion of your total damage worth giving up boosts to the other two aspects of DRK (meleeing and WS?) Also remember that the heavier your reliance on magic, the slower you'll gain TP, and on top of that the more MP you'll have to recover (though you probably knew that!) Even if you can indeed squeeze enough damage out of your nukes, you'll have to consider that loss as well.

As for sword...well...to be frank, I believe there's better options. Early in the game, Great Axe wins, no questions asked. There is simply no arguing with -40 Evasion (which in turn gives way to being able to stick Acid Bolts for a further -12.5% Defense, on top of that.) Early on, Sword WS are just "bleh." Fast Blade is remotely decent, but nothing stellar; you can get similar numbers out of a Shield Break. Burning Blade and Red Lotus Blade are...ok...nothing stellar either. Flat Blade...skip that. Shining Blade and Seraph Blade aren't really any stronger than the previous two, just Light and MND-based rather than Fire and INT-based. Circle Blade, skip that. Spirits Within...nah. Ok, so it gets good at Vorpal Blade, but you also get Guillotine at 60 (right?) 4 Scythe swings obviously put 4 Sword swings to shame. Plus, there's no swords really worth it before 34.

The only thing similar to what you're looking for that comes to mind and has good potential working is DRK/BLU. Wrote a bit about that on the SMN/BLU thread, if you're interested. But even then I would discourage sword use for most situations

[Celeal]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Maybe post level 62, DRK/RDM can handle Dispel (rare and situational), but I never seen that in parties

But to be honest, I think DRK/WAR or DRK/THF can handle magic just fine without /blm or /rdm, for the core minimum amount of magic (just Drain, Absorb-TP, a few Stun, maybe Aspir). If I see a DRK/BLM in my party uses dark staff and go thru Absorb-MND, Absorb-INT, Absorb-STR, Absorb-VIT, Absorb-AGI, Absorb-DEX, I would be like .... huh, there is a "bone" (undead) in my party (O_o)?

[Taskmage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Great axe would've undoubtably been superior to anything I've used hiterto, but that skill lagged way behind as I left Qufim and put a level gap between my war and drk. Between trying to keep great sword and scythe leveled, I was never able to go back and recover my great axe skill to a usable level.

With that weapon out of the equation, sword stacks up fairly well against scythe ws, which suck as bad or worse, and great sword ws, which aren't that much better. The other night I had an odd party at 35 that contained a pld/nin trying to be DD already. She didn't keep up with myself and the sam in DoT of course, but her fast blade humbled my poor SA slice. Another thing to consider is that red lotus blade is affected by MAB, which most sword users don't have. It actually escaped my attention until I was playing with weaponskills on rdm and noticed that my burning blade is situationally stronger than my fast blade. That's with MAB3 of course, but still that first tier might make enough of a difference to bump those skills up to goodness. The same is true for the crappy scythe WSes that nobody uses.

Thing is, I'm not really concerned with losing Berserk and Sneak Attack and melee stats. SA right now adds maybe 60 damage to my total every fight, and Berserk is a no-no unless I've got an above-average tank. Using those subs, I'm actually forced to hold back my JAs to stay under the hate line, and I still parse as top DD most of the time. Bumping down my normal damage a bit or losing those tools just gives me more breathing room to use the tools I still have, the way I see it.

/blu is definately the sub for soloing for skillups while lfp. Prebuffing with Cocoon and throwing Head Butt after every swing gives me enough survivability that I could solo Ts at 30, though admittedly there was still a chance I'd get double crit or something and taste dirt. Against DCs and EMs it's solid and Pollen helps to reduce downtime nicely.

I don't think I'd bring /blu to a party though. It's missing that element of MAB that I'm after to enhance my existing spells, and I don't want to dedicate the amount of mp necessary to spam blu spells enough to make a significant contribution. To the end of keeping TP up, I'd be relying on juice and aspir when possible to cover my absorbs, drains and MBs.

Thanks for the input, though. ^^ I'll consider more carefully what the balance is between my physical and magical damage. I sure wish I'd stored my last few parses somewhere. ;

[Armando]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Ok, so what level is your DRK? If you've made up your mind, I certainly won't try to discourage you; but there are points where you may be better off with Scythe/Great Sword rather than sword. For example, if you have the resources to get Wind Fans, Gust Sword should put up a lot of added effect damage...I believe Spider-Dan had done a test with Hydro Chopper or Hydro Cutter, whatever the 30-ish Hydro Pump-based Great Axe was called, in a Garlaige Citadel party. The added effect was 30-ish, and had a ~25% proc rate.

[Icemage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

The Gust weapons all have a very useful add effect proc, especially for the level they appear. I'm not sure that it makes up for the difference in DPS/utility vs. Great Axe, but it at least repairs some of the shortfall.


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

I used Reppus with Kilo Fans on my nin til 40 and the added effect was quite impressive when it went through unresisted. I think 30ish would represent a 50% resist on the effect, but resists were quite common. My recollection of the proc rate is considerably lower than 25%, but since Reppu are much faster weapons perhaps their proc rate is adjusted accordingly. I only burned two stacks of fans between 32 and 39 to give you a general idea. I think Hydro Cutter is the best axe for its level pumps or not, but Kilo Pumps are hard to find. I'll give it a try when my war reaches that level in any case.

My drk is 37. I wouldn't say I've made up my mind. I haven't even decided definitively that I'll continue to level drk, but I'm playing with this idea in case I do. So far I've been given some good things to think about, but nothing that looks like a red flag that this definately would be sub-par or unworkable.

It seems that the main concern about my choice of sub is the loss of Berserk or Sneak Attack, which I think will trade evenly or better for stronger drains and MBs and more liberal use of Souleater and Last Resort. My philosophy on that is that the loss of one or two job abilities is negligable in the scenario that I'm not able to use all my JAs to their full potential anyway, which has been my experience so far except for the blissful 20 minutes where I had a good pld and a good thf at the same time. Whether that pans out in practice is something that only experience will show.

Regarding my choice of weapon, the problem is that I'm trading down from the utility of Shield Break in early levels and the damage of Guillotine in later ones. On the former point I have to concede, Shield Break is incredible. The only reason I haven't been using great axe is that I let the skill slip too far behind and I was in a hurry to complete drk sub asafp to meet the expectations of my new dynamis linkshell, thus didn't want to take the time to go back and recover it. My current project is war 21-37 to for nin sub, so if/when I return to dark knight I'll have the option of using g.axe until the early 60s, when Guillotine, Vorpal Blade and Charging Shield become available. I think it's fair to say that Guillotine will beat Vorpal Blade in raw damage. I'm looking to two things to hopefully overcome that difference: One, that Vorpal Blade has useful skillchain properties. Closing a level 2 skillchain essentially adds 30-60% to the WS's damage, at least that's how I'm treating it on paper. I don't know what the actual resist rate is. Second, using a low delay weapon essentially doubles the damage output of my Souleater. Correct me if I'm wrong on that point; I may not have a proper understanding of Souleater's mechanics.

At any rate, it'll be a while before I try this. I still need to finish sword merits to give my dark knight an acceptable skill rating, and it'd be well advised for my to finish my war sub before continuing whether I decide to use it or not.

[Icemage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

DRKs aren't nearly as limited at later levels (40+) since PLD and NIN both have better hate gaining tools and tricks by that point. Pre-37 yes. But Ninjas gain Utsusemi: Ni which lets them full time tank at 37, and Paladins gain Flash (though to be fair you also get Stun at that level which balances that scale).

By the time you hit level 60, DRK/THF no longer has much of a problem due to Trick Attack, and you'll have had Defender for a while if /WAR.

Vorpal Blade will not make you happy as a DRK. By the time you get it, your ATK and ACC scores will have fallen far behind what it would be with either Scythe or Great Sword. As a multihit WS, you'll be hard-pressed to make Vorpal Blade land for respectable damage.

Regarding Souleater, you lose 10% of your current HP to do that much add effect damage. This does work with multihit WS, which is why WHMs around Vana'diel have a queasy feeling in their stomach whenever they see a DRK activate Souleater + Guillotine since they're losing 10 + 9 + 8.1 + 7.3 = 34.4% of their HP just from using it with the WS, plus another 6.7% if they're /WAR and get a Double Attack - and with that much damage, there's likely a hit coming right at them in the next combat round.

I'm actually of the opinion that one of the best all-around subs for DRK these days is /SAM. You get Third Eye at 30/15, Zanshin at 40/20, Hasso at 50/25, Meditate at 60/30, and Seigan at 70/35. All of which are very useful.


Icemage

[Taskmage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

Sword skill for Vorpal Blade isn't really an issue, since I'm taking full merits in that as a precondition before even considering the weapon for drk. At 62 I should have 7 active merits, giving me 215 sword skill vs 212 scythe or 211 great sword. Many swords drk has access to have an accuracy bonus as well, though I haven't done any in-depth analysis as far as whether the swords with acc bonuses would necessarily be the best swords at their respective levels.

The shift in the hate situation after level 37 is the most worrisome thing brought up so far. I'm largely justifying the loss of job abilities on the basis of not being able to use them without generating too much enmity. If that changes and I'm able to cut loose with subjob abilities more freely, I'm going to have to answer to that if I want to continue believing blm is a competitive sub.

Data from my last party, based on human memory unfortunately rather than stored logs: I do 450 melee damage a fight, plus 50 damage from Aero MB and an impossible to measure amount from Drain. This is on low-IT bats and beetles in GC. (No, I wasn't draining the bats.) Unfortunately I have no idea how much my Thunder MB was doing, but as a sample to test with let's just keep the low MB and say I was able to drain a generic mob.

I have a reasonable belief based on a high capped result and a presumed 90% resist that Drain hits in the 150 range when unresisted, and I was always able to drain twice a fight. Resist rate of Drain is all but impossible to determine because of the way it's logged. For the sake of arguement, I'm going to assume that the average resist rate of drain is the same as the average hit rate of the party's warrior with a great axe and no sushi, so 56% effectiveness. 300 x 56% = 168 + 50 from the MB = 218 average magical damage vs the 450 physical damage. MAB1 will increase the smaller number by 20%, adding 43.6 damage on average to each fight.

I'm not as well versed in the dynamics of melee damage so I'm going to be generous and call a % increase in attack the same as a % increase in damage. Berserk gives a 25% bonus 3/5 of the time, so we'll call it a 15% bonus all the time. 450 x 15% = 67.5 damage added per fight. Bah, except that number was pointless to calculate since that 450 damage includes two sneak attacks, and +% attack most certainly does not translate directly into +% damage ... The real number is sure to be lower, but I have no idea how much lower.

It's too late at night to be doing this kind of thinking. I'll get back to it in the morning.

[Icemage]

Re: sword/spell dark knight?

With full merits for Sword, it looks like you'd get Vorpal Blade one level EARLIER than unmerited Scythe would receive Guillotine (Level 59 DRK caps Sword at 191, plus 5 capped levels of Sword merits = 201, Guillotine you'd get at level 60 at 201 skillcap).

Berserk doesn't really add 25% to your damage, but it does do a lot. The net effect really depends on how far up the damage tiers the extra Attack score places you.

Nonetheless, however much or little it does, it still does more than /BLM's MAB+10, which basically gives you maybe 5 extra damage per typical spell per your numbers given above.

While we're on the topic of spending MP, it's very likely that you're better off spending MP on Absorb-AGI or Absorb-VIT - not only does it help your damage/accuracy, but the rest of the party as well (this value isn't easily quantifiable, and depends on the stats of your party members).


Icemage