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

I wasn't making any claims whatsoever, you're the one putting words in my mouth. I was asking you a simple and genuine question because you specifically asked:


The set you posted has practically zero multiattack from gear aside from Niqmaddu Ring. Also "minimum TP" was obviously in reference to firing off WSs at fast as possible with overflow, not strictly only 1k TP.

You're acting super defensive for no reason at all.

Edit: Besides, if you are actually trying to WS as fast as possible, you should be hitting your WS macro slightly before the attack round that puts you above 1k TP. If you were actually doing that you would not get attack rounds that put you at over above 2k TP most of the time.

Do you even reading comprehension?

TP rate vs WS timing has nothing to do with WS gear, its about TP generation.
Of course that set has practically zero multiattack outside of Niqmaddu ring, its a WS set.

Again, I was just asking you a question out of curiosity as part of the discussion, I was not implying anything with it. You're reading too much into it.

As far as AM3 and multiattack for the TP phase goes, QA>TA>DA>AM3 will always proc in that order. So stacking multiattack will essentially reduce the amount of times the game even checks for an AM3 proc.

This is pretty commonly known, so I assumed you were talking about AM3 procs during WS with multiattack gear. So I asked you what kind of set you would be using for Insurgency where that would even matter. That's all.

What I'm saying boils down to this.
If you try to WS quickly, you will will WS at mid-tier TP levels.
If you try to hold TP, you will run more risk of overflowing the 3k TP mark and losing damage.

I have to go for the next few hours, and will be back later.

I'm just stating the obvious here to reiterate things, but for non-crit WSs you either try to maximize damage from the first hit via WSD or you try maximizing multihits depending on the WS mechanics. If you are firing off Insurgencies at the fastest possible rate by hitting your macro with the correct timing (i.e. slightly before the attack round that puts you above 1k to counter latency), then the fTP of the first hit will be awful and stacking WSD on it makes little sense.

If you are regularly WSing at or above 2k TP (including Moonshade) as I originally suggested one should do to improve fTP, then WSD makes the most sense.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from the way you were talking it sounds as if you weren't aware of how people typically counteract latency to avoid extra attack rounds when spamming WSs as fast as possible. I guess that was my fault, but I assumed that's what you meant you were doing this entire time when you said you were using Insurgencies as fast as possible.

Which means the way you're playing is more or less already doing what I mentioned would be a solid idea. All you would have to do is to stop trying to force that lower 1500 TP range because that devalues your WSD set significantly, in my opinion.

You are talking about some specific super lag situation or you don't know how to use WS with macro like Aerix suggests. If you do WS with macro you need to learn to use it before you have 1000TP, then if you do it right, it will fire off immediately after you get 1000+TP and there is no way that you will make an extra attack round with 500+ delay weapon. The downside of this is that sometimes you think you will get 1000+TP with next attack round, but you wont and you will click the WS macro and end up with less than 1000TP, but with WS gear on and you will do next attack round in WS gear, which sucks a lot. That's why I usually just use WS by spamming it from menu. It's slower than perfect timing on macro, but faster than clicking macro after you get 1000+TP

I'm gonna throw out a subtle hint as to what's wrong with Sandraa

Parsing Liberator vs. Caladbolg between two players is absolutley pointless anyway--whether it's total damage or WS frequency--because there are not only gear and playstyle differences, but also differences in addons, PC hardware and latency.

If we want an accurate comparison between the two weapons then a single person with both R15 weapons needs to do a controlled test parsing on the same mob(s) with identical buffs.

People have been wanting a comparison of R15 Liberator and R15 Caladbolg for more than a year now, and it seems like we are still no closer than anecdotes. Anecdotes make people mad, as evidenced by the last few pages.

How do we get this resolved, OUTSIDE of anecdotes?
Empirical evidence (Actual testing)
Parses have already been dismissed numerous times, no point trying to hammer on them further.
At this point I think we need a video, Geriond mentioned Campaign fortifications, I think that is probably the best target for uninterrupted spam. The hardest part to control here would be Samurai Roll, and even direct video evidence can be met with the "You're doing it wrong" argument. I'm down to give this a shot, constraints must be hammered out ahead of time.

Mathematical Modeling (I'm working on this)
Mathematical models have to be based in, and reflect reality, they also have to be transparent. Transparency is where existing DPS spreadsheets break down. In order for a model to have validity, a reader must be able to follow step-by-step logical progression, or else errors cannot be readily recognized and corrected. The last time I tried to use someone's DPS spreadsheet it gave completely garbage information, which the owner and I tried to correct over a period of weeks, and it never did work right, despite the protestation of the spreadsheet owner. I didn't make it, I can't see the logical progression, therefore cannot debug it, hence it is worthless to me.
Right now, for my modeling, I need more information on how gear multiattack interacts AM3. I have made some progress here and I think I have a set of logic that works, but it could use review.
Also, I need more information on forced delay, because what I'm reading on BG doesn't seem to fully line up with my experience.

I have to go to the hospital and will be back later.

wrote that bit of code of my phone but should be easily able to tell how it works

I'm not going to try to convince anyone of its validity, but the DRK spreadsheets I've been very meticulously keeping up to date have, with my sets (very close to BiS other than dark matter augments) with a good (but not perfect) Samurai roll, AM3 R15 Liberator is around 5% behind AM3 R15 Caladbolg when attack uncapped, and around 12% behind when attack capped (discounting Skillchains). The gap widens if you throw absorbs in, since Insurgency's mods are pitiful. The exact difference will of course change with your specific gearsets and buffs.

If you're curious, the reason the gap is larger at capped attack is because GSD doesn't have any head or hand pieces with both very high Attack and WSDMG (unless you have absolutely ridiculous Odyssean augments), so you need a mix for best results normally, but can go all WSDMG when capped attack. In contrast, Ratri +1 has excellent of both, so there's nothing to swap out for at capped attack even when the ATK is no longer helpful.


If anyone was interested, I could post my spreadsheets (I've got them separated into GSD and Scythe versions to make updating easier).

I'd be very interested in seeing the spreadsheets. Regarding Liberator vs. Calad: how many buffs are we talking for DRK to completely cap its PDIF? With PDL and Neck+2, they have a PDIF cap of 4.675 which I imagine isn't easy to reach without 1hr buffs even for DRK.

Scythe file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xY3GiaKAGDSGeIQntN09995P2XioK2k-

Great Sword file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=17iARqI33fQ48tqv5Ouct2pbsLgvtgZUB

All updates and mechanics changes have been kept up to date, and Torcleaver and Insurgency are programmed to have the full R15 WS bonus if the relevant weapons are equipped. You'll have to add conditionals for other R15 REMA WSs if you want those. All augments are currently the ones I have on my pieces, so you'll have to change them in the Gear page to what you have. Also, the 2% in the custom stat rows is because of the King Behemoth cheer I generally use; feel free to replace it with your cheer of choice.

As I was just doing basic tests of uncapped attack and capped attack, I didn't mess with buffs directly; I just gave the target mob -99% defense (and changed WS sets to capitalize on that) for the capped attack scenario.

It's far easier than you think.
In my Tocleaver WS set with
Marcato Honor, Minuet V, Chaos 11 (regal, no CC) and Last Resort I have 5451 attack in town and this still can be pushed further with endark II, Absorb and other attack buffs like Fury.
EDIT: 5820 with Endark II

Fair enough, I suppose I underestimated how much of a difference Smite V and Endark II make. Although I'd be hesitant to use 11 Chaos Roll as a baseline.

Capping attack on anything that GEO isn't nerfed on is easy as hell. It's once you get into Frailty -50%/-75% nerfed territory then it gets a bit harder to cap.

I agree, but its what I got at first try when I wanted to check it fast :)

I think its still easy for DRK. Lets even take 5200 attack as base line. You are caping attack vs mobs around 1100 def. So even with just dia2, def down ws and 75% gimped geo you still caping attack vs 2200+ def mobs, so probably vs most stuff in game?

Against most stuff, yeah, but the stuff that tends to have geo debuff resistance tends to be on the high end. I think Dynamis Wave 2/3 NMs/bosses have 3000-4000+ defense, as do Master Trial mobs.

This is also assuming that you have someone that can land defense down reliably (not every group does), and there's also the fact that Last Resort isn't going to be up full time.

DRK itself can land Armor Break reliably with Lycurgos if absolutely necessary, so it should always be up on high-end NMs even if you don't have any WAR/DRG/SAM/MNK in your group for whatever reason.

On high end ones like Wave 2/3 bosses, yeah, but the normal Wave 2/3 NMs are at the awkward position of being durable enough that them dying faster is useful, but not quite durable enough to be worth swapping weapons and losing Aftermath on every single one.

On another topic, if anyone uses those spreadsheets and finds any calculation errors in them, throw me a message about them so I can fix them too.

That's true, but going between Lycurgos and Calad AM1 Torcleaver spam shouldn't be a huge DPS loss since the fights are relatively short as you said and it benefits the Alliance considerably. And you can reapply AM3 afterwards.

But yeah, DRK definitely shouldn't be the job doing it except in instances like 6-man parties doing Ambu/HTBFs without any other jobs that can apply Def Down.

ItemSet 369371

Assumes Regal Necklace CC SAM roll 2 or 11

Oseem Augments Crit Dmg +5 acc +30

Totals:

Crit DMG + 41%

Crit Rate + 45% (Up to like 71% if you had a 2nd COR for Rogues I guess)

61 STP In gear the previously mentioned SAM roll would get you to like 136-144 STP

Also would assume capped haste/LR ofc.

Far as a crit oriented build for Liberator goes idk how it could be better.

I have R15 Calad and R15 Lib. Fan of both but I tend to gravitate towards Scythe out of personal preference.

I'm not seeing where 41% is coming from.
Crit atk bonus: 8%
Feet: 9%
Legs: 5%
Head: 5%
Ammo: 6%

I'm seeing 33%. So theres 8% lurking somewhere I dont see?

gifts

Tyty

So, I've been busy lately, which has held up my responses.

I had run some testing on my own last week to get some actual data as opposed to anecdotes, and that came out as:
Libertor WS'd 27.7% faster than Calad
Calad WS'd 35.5% harder than Lib
So yeah, not as stark a difference as I threw out earlier, and that was without Sam roll entirely. I'm still working on analyzing the data, but its reasonably consistent for what it is. Maybe I'll edit this post with test parameters, but its kind of a low priority.

I have been working on multiattack logic, and should probably share what I have. Thanks Austar for that bit of code, I think it matches my logic, just coming from a different angle. I think its still a good idea for me to actually talk out the logical progression of what is happening.

Order of Operations (From BGWiki)Logical Progression (A spredsheet makes this far easier)Example
I hope that is a good description of how multiattack from gear interacts with AM3.
An interesting observation came up when working with this logic on my spreadsheet, you probably noticed the bolded bit in the Mythic DA portion above. Its common knowledge that Mythic AM3 gives an observed 40% Double Attack and 20% Triple Attack. What I am observing from this model, is that the Mythic Double Attack value actually grants 50% double attack, and that Mythic Triple attack is overriding the extra 10%, which gives us the observed value of the 40/20 split.

Finally, I got around to actually buying a pair of Ratri Cuisses +1 to play around with and compare to the Fallen's Flanchard +3 that I've been using for ever so long. In doing so I revisited my Store TP build spreadsheet, and notice that this whole time I've been building around a single-hit TP return with Liberator. Works great if I'm modeling Infernal Scythe or Shadow of Death for Dynamis Sandy D, but Insurgency generates a good bit more TP, respectively. Changing quantity of hits from 1 to 4 showed on paper what I knew from experience, that WS+2 hit builds with Liberator are actually really common with Samurai Roll.
I had previously thought 2hit builds were in the realm of 11 Samurai Rolls only, but with 17 store TP in the WS set, 74 store TP in AM3 set, and 4 hits landed with Insurgency, I only need 47 store TP from Samurai roll for a 2hit build.
With a Regal Neck, let alone a Rostam, 47 store TP from Sam roll is really easy to get, and with the multiattack rate from earlier, that means I'm almost always ready to WS in one attack round after my previous WS.
Thats actually a pretty big deal.

what you’re saying about 50% and 10% override makes no sense. there is a check for a proc then it’s a 2/3 and 1/3 split, which equates to the 40/20 people expect and easy to see in the bit of code i posted for weapon skill multi hits