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

After reading something in RUN forums:


So yeah, i'd suggest any DRK keeping both Resolution and Torcleaver sets updated.

Upgraded Cronus is pretty hard to beat when you look at the stats until you get a REMA. Would definitely aim for that until then.


Also, get out of here with testing numbers on WKR's. Even in WKR fights you aren't in "Low buff" situations. what are these situations you in? You have an idris alt? outside of Salvage and a few others you should never be in a "Low buff" situation.

RUN + LH is no joke. Coupled with a competent WAR and/or SMN their numbers will skyrocket.

Can we filter out some of these pages when the guide is updated please. We go through the same stuff with ws and remas every few pages

"not hard content but it gives some numbers on a very accessible content" you missed it Gippali.
That gives numbers for DRK starters or back from a long break.
They wont start playing on T4 Reisen if they back from 1-2years break at least so WKR is nice for that.
I was asking for numbers also when i came back months ago, that helps before you start putting time and efforts.

I didn't miss anything.

Your claim was that Torc was better in low buff situations. How is having a pocket idris geo and everyone else's trusts giving you rolls/songs a low buff situation? Your post is misleading in that if someone was actually coming back and they don't read everything (Shocking!) all they see is Calad/torc > Rag/reso. That is very case sensitive and depends heavily on what buff cycle you are using. Someone else's eyeballed numbers do not help anyone (Much like Kuro's PLD > MNK nonsense). If we go off that logic my Chango WAR doing 50K+ Upheav's beats your Calad DRK...sounds silly right?

Already looking into that.

Edit: some of you need to clean up your post and drop the attitude ASAP, mods are already sick of that crap

Yes Gippali, if anyone read only the WKR numbers post without the pages/posts beforehand and my post after (top of this page) it is totally misleading someone coming back and all they see is Calad/torc> Rag/reso.

Good point, I don't always think about new/returning player gear access. I do fine with 30 str, but some other people might not.


I am currently in the middle of making caladbolg myself, something I have wanted for a while now. Reso might be the better weapons skill, but the ability to chain light/dark is what would bring torc higher.

I currently run AG rag and have spiked more than 60k reso on 150 content, I have also spiked 40k on the same content with torc using AG Rag, which so happens to lack +50Vit from calad.

The benefit of torc is less acc needed throughout the ws, where as reso loses acc after the first hit on top of that the ability to skill chain much easier and the huge benefit of ws dmg%, which drk gets TONS of.(I can think of an easy 46% off the top for drk) No attack penalty, but 410 lower base damage than reso using ds/nv absorb-str With more consistent dmg. I will have 101+317 vit using ds/nv absorb once I get caladbolg, no lib.

The benefit of reso is Str is much easier to come by on war than VIT, not single hit ws that hurts even if you have over 9000 acc you still have a chance to whiff a torc. Better ftp 106+325 str using ds/nv absorb-str, no-lib.

Main argument people tend to forget when looking at ftp of the two ws, adding in fotia to torc, some reason I only ever see people post reso formula with fotia and not torc, not to mention that reso fTP will only matter if you hit all 5 hits, just as torc can miss at capped acc, so can reso. The formulas that are always posted are perfect 5 hits of reso with moonshade/fotia, you are 5 times more likely to miss part of your ws on reso than you are with torc, on the other hand, you are much more likely to miss an entire weapon skill using torc.

That being said, it is not the player nor the ws that makes or breaks the game/job, it is the supporting party around it, which is why I generally get away with less acc in gear, I have r/e/m/a buffers so I need less in gear thankfully.

Final thought: We don't need another bitter argument, we don't need anymore petty jabs or insults. Get along, or get out. This is not targeted at anyone, this is a generalized statement.

You are racing a ferrari vs a lambo, who cares which goes faster if you are still going fast.

I mean we could always make 1 with 30 STR and 1 with 30 ACC! I mean if we really wanted to optimize each Accuracy Tier.

You can code in your lua to toggle ws sets for ws mod or ws acc

For my lua the melee and ws acc toggle are the same so once 1 goes up a level so does the other. (Bokura based gearswap)

That isn't a bad idea, I have mine separated, might combine them now.

I like this point.

I stole it from Zaryun

Going to glow my Redemption next as I have wanted it for awhile, then prob calad.
But I agree with you and BL. It does get annoying seeing the same questions asked on a weekly basis though.

I have been wondering about redemption, I have plans to make it still, probably after I finally finish lib/calad. I am looking at it and I see potential, especially if you have lib for absorb.

I just looked at blending valorous/odyssean gear with ambu cape and the merit ws entropy can get +207 int in gear with lib/ds/nv that is... what, +293 int?

That and an additional +35 str/mnd for CR/Quietus would be pretty beneficial.

So I stayed up WAY to late last night trying to fix my drk sets a bit. I am really trying to get more multi hit into my sets while keeping acc decent. Please give me some input if you can. At this point its hard to make upgrades that arent crazy expensive, or require crazy luck!

ItemSet 347333

Valo Body : 8 int 38 acc 25 attack 4 DA
Odys legs : 25 acc 25 attack 5 DA
Ankou's : 20 dex 30 acc 10 DA
Argosy muffler +1 : path D (3 DA)

Base Stats total: 1143 acc 1634 attack, 48 DA, 4 TA, 56 stp.

TP is 56 stp which with /sam means you MUST ws in 23 stp or you will not 5 hit. 1 stp less on either and your sol. Lucky for us Argosy sets + grip is 23 exactly, however on scourge/Torc you maye have to make a few sensible changes to ensure your ws will have 23 there. You will have 7 from grip already, so 16 from other gear. On scourge I get 5 from odys legs, 3 from wsd valo body, 5 petrov, and 3 from apate ring. On torc I simply trade off apate ring for ginsen so I can use 1 titan+1. Overall not huge losses on ws for either.

Gorget / Belt make so little difference for Torc though, not even sure it's BiS due to having other VIT options though the occasional free TP might be good. I use the fTP of each to demonstrate scaling, especially these days when it's common to over-TP. Missed WS's are the same as 0 damage WS's, so just multiply Torc's damage by 0.95 to get the real average, this also makes it annoying for multi-step SC's since you want to reliably hit things. The real dealbreaker for me was the one hit property making Store TP a PITA to deal with.

What it really boils down to is DRK's wanting to hate on Rag / Reso because of it's "Bandwagon" status from the Voidwatch era. It's a sore point for all the old DRK's who had their Apocs sidelined. So everyone's out looking for some reason, any reason, even a paper-thin reason, not to use Rag / Reso. DRK actually gets better use out of it then WAR due to it's insane attack bonus's nullifying Reso's weakness so that silly "It's only for WAR's!!!101101" argument is just bogus. I posted that set because it's identical between the two jobs, same with Torc / Upheaval sharing a lot of gear options. I've done a lot of experimenting with other WS options on CL130~135 (anything less simply doesn't matter) and ultimately nothing does nearly as well as Rag Reso spam, with the single exception being that your the only DD making a mutli-step SC on your own.

I'm of the opinion that you should attempt to use the best option within reason. Things are "bandwagon" for a reason. Hell Idris GEO is officially "bandwagon" now, does that mean we should encourage all our GEO's to stop using their Idris's?

Rag is listed as the 11th most made listed weapon on FFXIAH.com

Rag is possibly the most commonly talked about weapon and reso is arguably the most talked about weapon skill in the game.

By far the most brought up of things in the drk forums. For the most part people only use rag/reso as a polling point, we have heard all the supporting evidence as to why it should be used. Some of us just take the time to take a job further than just one dimension.

If it were only this then there would be no problems. I often screw around with off builds like Swords, Axes, Clubs, Polearms and even staves. I have WS sets for all sorts of stuff, every situation imaginable. But that's not what gets brought up. Every other poster trying to convince people, and themselves, that their Torcleavers, Insurgencies, or just generic Apocalypse/ Liberators are more damage. I get PM'so and in game tells from people asking about sets and clarification on the stuff posted here.

DRK is a DPS job first and foremost. A DRK needs to establish that baseline offensive capability first, then split off into situational builds and circumstantial weapons. They don't even need Rag, a well augmented Reisen GS will do.

Most of my WS gear for resolution is NQ argosy and I can't pull numbers as close to my torcleavers. So in sub optimal situations (to/for me) it seems torcleaver > resolution.
I'm sure I'll see way more of a difference if I had 5/5 HQ argosy instead of 4/5 NQ. So for people who are still building up those fancy gear sets is torcleaver the better ws?

That is fine and dandy, but not everyone wants to play your way. You should really consider this before jumping in the drk forums every 3 days to make condescending comments towards other players that play differently than you. It is really getting old to more than just me, there have been many complaints about the way you talk to people in this forum and people are pretty flat out fed up.

Buffs mostly, you will see a large difference once you get buffed properly. Also use dark seal/nethervoid absorb-str. That is a large bonus to your reso set.

That is the dumbest statement possible, literally that's the "I'm a special snowflake" argument.

People don't care what others do with their trusts in a corner soloing stuff, we care about party centric content and events. In that context DRK is a DPS job and we want our DRK's to deal damage and kill ***ASAP, that's the entire focus of the job. Trying to argue otherwise would be like a PLD asking the alliance leader to bring him as a DPS for a zerg. The number of people who agree or disagree is irrelevant, ignoring this will only result in DRK's being laughed at for being "those special people" and specifically excluded from events. "Umm it's nice you have DRK but, could you change to BLU cause we need a DD". I've made DRK do a ***ton of damage before, by abusing game mechanics to inflate certain stats above others, and not by "playing in my own special unique way".


Whats your target CL, whats your TP accuracy and Resolution accuracy? Biggest mistake I see everyone make is go full tilt STR on Resolution only to end up ~40 accuracy (20% hit rate) under their TP accuracy and whiffing hits on Resolution. What augment paths did you chose on NQ Argosy? The biggest difference between NQ and HQ Argosy is actually the accuracy and not the set bonus. Set bonus is nice, but the extra accuracy is far more important. This applies to all multi-hit WS's. Hell Ragnarok isn't even the strongest GS for Resolution spam but all that extra Accuracy means a ton.

If people don't like hearing the truth then that's on them. You said a dumb thing and I pointed it out. Specifically because it pertains to the most important part of a MMO, group centric content. Just imagine a group forming up for an event and deciding to take a chance and invite a DRK over "another BLU", only to find out that DRK is screwing off and "playing their own unique special way" because someone on the forums encouraged them to. Now a group leader with some balls and knowledge would just kick that person and replace them, but most groups would want to avoid conflict and proceed anyway and probably fail or barely pass. The other members would take note of the piss poor performance of that DRK and then never invite someone on DRK again.

It's not fair but that's how social systems work. I'm giving people the information they need to kick *** and not under perform and therefor encourage more people to invite DRK's, and other non-BLUs to events.