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

This is absolutely not true, especially on enemies that nerf Frailty or when Soul Voice isn't active, and wearing Sakpata makes fully capping attack harder than it normally is.

DRK with JSE Neck and multiple pieces of Sakpata need 5-6 times as much attack as an enemy has defense to cap (for Great Sword at least; Scythe needs even more), and that's not something that is always feasible to hit on endgame enemies even with proper support.

Thank you finally someone understands.

IDK why people keep saying this you are 100% not attacked capped in every form of content. Like Geriond said anything thats nerfing frailty in general means you arent attack capped and full sakpata makes it worse for drk. I really wish people get out of this mind set. Its great you survive just fine with the sakpata 4/5 set I live just fine on things without it. I've seen people using this set and others just like it aka Lilith gear still get one shot while I live without drain 3 defense stats are nice but its not a 100% full on im gonna live. Set is great for trying to evade debuffs and what not but is it better for TP I just dont think so.

This is what makes no sense to me, and where I question if the new gear makes it into a new TP set. While I understand using something for safety, there’s no *** way I’m 5/5ing that ***full time for a mere safety net, especially when I have Drain3 HP up.

It's not just about HP when it comes to defense. The meva offered by Sakpata's is huge, and can easily keep you from debilitating effects like paralyze, slow, amnesia and the like.

I don't know where the gear lands for every set, so I won't say it's the best in any hybrid situation, but the meva is undeniably great.

I feel like anything that you’re not attack capped on is something that’s harder content in which defensive stats are even more favorable.

I’d like to see some examples of content where you don’t you’re attack capped.

My perspective:
Dyna-D? Have a brd, cor, and geo; capped.
Ambu? If you’re on drk there’s most likely a brd and cor; capped.
Ody set farm? Have SV Brd and Cor; capped.
Ody gaol? Going to have SV and COR; capped.
Reisenjima/Ru’aun? Really not hard to cap attack here

I’ll say, by wearing sakpatas I can clearly see when my attack isn’t capped. If a Minuet gets dispelled or drops or Chaos roll drops I can easily see it by my huge drop in Torcleaver damage.

I’m just not a fan of the glass cannon builds. A dead DD does no damage. You can say that you “live just fine”, but every time I see a dead DD on the floor it’s because they’re not in a hybrid build.

I’d truly like to go 1 on 1 with some other DRKs out there in an Ody segment farm and Dyna run. Have an un-bias yag whm and see who comes out on top. Not even for a competition perspective, but even just to compare sets in a real scenario.

There’s so many different combinations out there, especially with DM augments, that it’d be cool to see the comparisons. I think spreadsheets help compare, but i in no way trust them 100% and follow them all of the time.

Odyssey segment farms last longer than Soul Voice, so you're going to be uncapped for 2/3s of the run unless you bring a GEO, which is worth less than an extra DD in this case.

You're not going to be attack capped in T3/4 Odyssey Gaol even with SV and COR; even adding a GEO won't cap you except possibly during Bolster IF you forgo defensive bubbles, and that only lasts only 3 minutes without Wild Card luck.

Gaol I can agree with. For segment farms you spend about 2-3mins running to the first camp and buffing anyways so it’s more like 1/2 of the run is without soul voice. Plus you get lucky with wild card or cutting cards you get it back.

Honestly I haven’t noticed a big/any difference in damage pre/post-SV in terms of Torcleaver in seg farms.

Then you haven't been paying much attention to higher floor enemies (unless you run with a Frailty Geo 24/7, which you might). Most monster types on floor 3/4 have 1500+ or even 2000+ defense, which takes over 8k or even 10k+ attack to cap without defense down.

After SV wears, on floor 3/4 6000 attack isn't even enough to cap without Sakpata, let alone with it. With that much attack, normal Caladbolg hits generally do about 1300-1400 on floor 3 and 1100-1200 on floor 4 (compared to ~1700 for normal cap w/ +2 neck and ~2100 for 5/5 Sakpata cap). Even on floor 2 I'm generally just roughly at normal attack cap or a bit lower with that much attack, which means that Sakpata's PDL doesn't do anything.

Yeah you're definitely not capping attack on Floor 4 segment farms without Soul Voice, especially in Sakpata.
And Gaol you're defintiely not capping attack unless you're applying Shell Crusher/Armour Breaker + Indi Frailty/Geo fury. The NMs just have too high Defense.

Also how is it taking you 2-3 minutes to run to first camp? That sounds so slow for optimal segment farming.

Went and checked mobs on floor 4:
Scorpions defense <= 1359
Imps defense <= 1304
Bugard defense <= 1359
Cluster defense <= 1346
Roc defense <= 1359
Morbol defense <= 1359

None of these mobs are anywhere near 1500 or 2000+ defense. I didn't check beastmen since I was in solo and just ran to the top.

Did you check Crabs, Wamouras, Wamouracampas, Black Puddings, or Marids? Those are some of the most defensive C mobs. Most might not have been the right word to use, but even 1350 defense mobs take over 8000 attack to cap with Sakpata on.

not when there is limited spawns per KI for me to check. I also couldn't sit and change gear to get an exact value on defense. but since SE likes to use a template of sorts for mob stats now, I wouldn't put crabs that much higher. I'd put crabs probably around 1400 tops. the normal mobs in sheol at least are very similarly statted as apex mobs.

They've always used templates for non-NM, non-HP mob stats, but that results in PLD mobs having noticeably higher defense than others due to job traits and they often have high VIT ranks as well.

and apex crabs have less than 60 defense more than any others of the same level, even if you assume the max possible results from a quick check I just did, that would only be around 1420 defense, not anywhere near 2000.

All these of these are wrong and like someone already stated it you using sakpata its even worse. No shot are you attack capped in a hybrid set anyway. We do agree on a dead DD does no damage for sure but when i see people die in hybrid sets and im still alive I ask how they feel. I dont use hybrid set if drain 3 is up because im normally at 5k+ hp. If someone one shots me at 5k hp then the game wanted me to die lol. In namis wave one and wave 2 im sure you attack capped but wave 3 if you using march mad mad min no shot are you attack capped. If you using march mad min min even with fury you aren't attack capped. If the geo debuff is nerfed like SE is pretty much doing in most content coming out now no way can you say with just bard cor geo are you capped. Like somoene also said you not taking a geo in with cor and brd for segment farm otherwise its a wasted spot.

Thanks for taking the time to find this info out. Out of curiosity, how did you determine these values? It'd be extremely useful to be able to do so for other content as well.

when you check a mob that doesn't show impossible to guage, if it says low defense it means you have your attack is at least 1.25 x their defense. so if a mob has 1000 defense and you have 1250 attack, it will check low defense. since it's timed and i didn't have a lot of gear to swap around to increase and decrease my attack by small amounts, those values are going to be higher than what they have

You chage your attack value via gear changes and check the mob. Based on what check message you get you'll get a rough value of what the defense is. This was the same method used to get the original evasion values for Apex mobs.

Thanks! I admittedly didn't know they weren't impossible to gauge...I take it there isn't a way to determine the defense of a target that is impossible gauge?

the normal mobs aren't

and no, not without a lot of trial and error.

Which means use soul voice for floor 3 and 4 and use diaga and you should be attack capped on DRK even with all the PDL.

Ofc it's even easier if BLU or BST is in the party and can AoE def down (and blu is one of the best jobs for segments farming anyway).


The safety part is not really about damage, but debuffs. Doom, dispel, stun are things that can either kill you or drop your survivability or dps by a lot (dispel on sv honormarch or last resort or drainiii). Also many NMs have some mechanics now that make you very easy to kill after. Like Kalunga Lahar or Mboze Tiiimbeeer.

Also please tell me what set you would use for TP with AM3 Caladbolg that's not 5/5 Sakpata either for attack capped or uncapped that will produce any significant gains in dps. I'm very curious about it.

I dunno man, every good segment I have been in BLU has been lowest on parse, falling behind COR.

Cruel Joke is mediorce at best for segment farming anyway, so that's not a good reason to bring a BLU.

Best party I've ever done with segments is tank, COR, DRK, SAM,BRD, WHM. BLU nor BST fit in that party as much as it hurts me cos I love BST, but just the way it is.

His point is BLU can boost the DPS of all the other players. AoE Def down, sleep, entomb, heavy, Mighty Guard are all easily applied by BLU and all give a off/def benefit to the group.

You pull 20-30 mobs, CJ them while party goes to kill other stuff. How is that mediocre? Unless you want to tell me that other dd can kill 20-30 trash mobs in a minute 4-5 times in a run? You can also pull another group into Agon group and let trash die from CJ while killing Agons.

Even if you consider bad luck in mob types from time to time, this is easily several times more than any parse difference between blu and sam.

DDs can kill a full group of mobs within 30-45s providing good damage types. I've never heard of a cruel joke farm going above 7k segments. Might be good for pugs/lower end geared players, but Best in Slot Drk/Sam gonna beat that.

This (beside mighty guard) on top of CJ.

No they wont. You are talking about 2dds, cor and brd killing a group of mobs in 45 sec. How is that better than blu CJ 20 mobs in one minute, while 1 DD, cor and brd killing other group of mobs in the same time. We are not talking about pure CJing while other pt members waiting for stuff to die.

Are you talking for a PUG segment farm or for a solo with Trusts situation or something? It seems like a CJ strat can certainly produce better results than an average PUG, but it's far from optimal. I'd love to be proven wrong with a 9K+ CJ run video though. Until someone posts that video, I remain skeptical of this statement.

Ok well tell me, what is the average segment farms using your Cruel Joke strategy.

The way I see it is you will end up spending too much time moving around rather than killing, by the time you get the right number of mobs, either not much to kill left or skip too much. Seems unproductive.

As I've mentioned to other people, an endgame group shouldn't get below 6-7k segments on average. I've never heard of any cruel joke setups beating that average.