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

It's not how you do it. You go with normal dd setup on blu and you go kill like normal. Whenever you see 20-30 mobs that cj works on, you just gather them on tank like normal and blu stay to CJ them, while everyone else move on.

I can't say how good would be optimized setup that use this strategy, because I barely have time to do 3-4 pugs run per week atm and I'm usually relegated to COR anyway. You would need static with that use blu like that to know numbers. I will ask Mischief, maybe they are using it.

Either way though, Cruel Joke is not going to touch the same segments as other setups such as what I listed earlier: DRK,SAM,BRD,COR,WHM,Tank.
Using that setup my group averages 8.5k segments and even if we coordinated properly I just can't see Cruel Joke beating it. However would love to see/hear from groups who do use Cruel Joke for their numbers.

Cruel Joke setups are “safe” farms where you either have less than 6 people, or need to rely on either trust healers/buffers or not enough mulyiboxing power (I’d wager there are maybe 6 people per server who “main” WHM and/or BRD...). Too much time is spent waiting for ***to die, and with roughly 50% of the mobs in Odyssey being immune, you have to get EXTREMELY lucky that there would be three or more groups in close proximity to make it worthwhile. You’re likely not going to average much better than 3k segments a run relying on it, particularly if your BLU need the tank to pull packs for them. Solo, I can manage around 2k a run provided Sleep doesn’t get resisted/lagged out to where you’re in casting animation but not actually casting (which happens a lot more than it should, really) or CJ just decides that it’s going to be resisted by half of the pack because reasons.

How the F do you average 8.5 segs?

We full clear floor 1 and 2 depending on mob types. Kill all 4 halos, pop 3-4 UNMs, almost full clear Floor 3 and full clear floor 4.
Each group of mobs dies in 45s~

The mobs we get depends if we full clear or not, we skip ***mobs such as clots/malboros/undead.

Normally I'm WHM, I'm popping UNMs/Chests as the DDs are killing. Doing so saves time waiting on afterwards. Saving any time possible is important. I created my own word document for Odyssey and when there's like 2-3 mobs of the group left I run off and go to next group and sometimes make the call whether mobs are good to pull or not. Sometimes BRD does that, but depends.

Also to prevent any unnecessary deaths such as Floor 4 halo, I Divine Seal Full Cure the DD who soloes the Monarch to prevent a death from Eagle Eye Shot. Asylum for Tumult curator pop. Sacro for NIN. Having everything pre-planned is key basically.

Seriously, saving even 10-15 seconds per pull is ginormous in segment farms. I CANT STAND THE TANKS THAT HAVE TO BUFF BEFORE EVERY SINGLE PULL. WHY WERENT YOU DOING IT WHILE EVERYONE WAS FIGHTING????!?!?!?!

Do you save chests for 3rd/4th floor in order for a chance at Aurum boxes?

No. We try open boxes as we see them starting floor 2 onwards. Since not all of us have Strongboxes price reduced to the minimum yet, it costs more than we'd like to use. So it's better for us to open Chests/Coffers at the moment. Only open Strongboxes if needed to use up segments.

Man, we've just been clearing everything from floor 1 until time runs out. Are there specific NMs you pop?

Yes. I try pop UNMs in a certain order for ease of difficulty/speed later on.
Floor 1: sovereign behemoth hides.
Floor 2: sarama hides.
Floor 3: tumult blood.
Optional - Floor 4: hidhaegg scales.
We do not always kill floor 4 UNM, sometimes we don't have enough time.

We do TC on floor 1 behemoth on 2 cerb on 3 and wyrm on 4

And every angon we can. We average about the same as your group looks like.

Aight, thanks guys. Will try tonight.

Mischief avg 4.5-5k segments trioboxing blu brd and cor and only CJing. If you take blu to CJ during normal run, you only CJ if you have right mobs close to each other and only blu is waiting for ***do die. Most of the run blu is just normal strong DD with strong slashing and blunt option that can also buff damage of others by applying aoe def down. I think like I'm explaining this for the 4th time and people still can't grasp the concept.

I think you're disregarding the occurrences where the BLU sits and waits on CJ only to discover that 4 mobs resisted it and the BLU is left solo'ing those mobs to clean it up. The BLU's group ends up being a slow clear because of this, the rest of the party's group ends up being a slow clear due to just one heavy DD being there for it, and then you feel bad because you realize that with a proper setup, both of those groups would've taken a combined 2-2.5 minutes to clear. Additionally, when the BLU is with the group for mob types that CJ doesn't work on, the slower kill speeds as a result of having a BLU rather than a DRK or SAM also feels bad.

Odyssey

I think you overestimate the difference in dps between sam and blu. Also you don't even need to split, you can just pull doomable group of mobs into undoomable and blu can CJ and everyone including blu can kill undoomable mobs normal way while doomable are ticking down. If anything resist its killed immediately. That way not even blu wait not doing anything.

Edit: I agree its too big off topic tho.

funny, a lot of what you seem to be 'reiterating' we are already in agreement on....

Bringing this all back to DRK, how exactly did BLU's insignificant AoE debuffs help a Sakpata DRK that's supposed to be holding TP to kill Nostos in one WS anyway

You would need to hold less TP?

Multi-attack gear. This is why I’m asking about the trade off of PDL to MA gear. I’d be losing out on 13 attack rounds and 17 STP. If the gains on 5/5 outweigh the MA then alright. Also, no need for the condescending tone.

Its not condescending tone. Its a real question. Im asking what gear exactly, so I can compere it. "Multi-attack gear" doesnt tell me anything. Sakpata is also multi-attack gear.

Flamma head/feet, Dagon, Ody legs with 3 QA, Sak hands.

It’s a DA 14, TA 10, QA 3, STP 17 VS the 30 DA from Sakpata.

Are you using Dagon on Caladbolg or scythe? Just wondering maybe I missed it in the whole blue mage stuff on wrong page.

Uncapped attack (around ~2.7 cratio, depends which set)
Your set is 4.3% dps ahead of Sakpata R0 and 1.1% behind Sakpata R20

Capped attack. Your set is even with R0 and 4.2% behind R20 (and by R20 I mean only head here, since everything else doesnt matter).

Calad. I use a different set for Apoc.

Thanks Simon.

If no dagon will you use sakpata body or a valorous mail with 5da on that cala set?

The only thing that a Valorous Mail has over Sakpata is 3 STP. Sakpata has 1 more DA and an abundance of other nice stats.

Yes if you have bad rolls on Valorous mail it does. But really all Sakpata has over Valorous is 1 DA and PDL for when you capped attack in low end stuff.
EDIT: It has more attack than Valorous sorry forgot about the attack.

Sakpata hands R20 matters too for capped set.

According to my spreadsheet, under conditions of ~3.0 PDIF, Minuet 4/5, capped magic/ja haste, Caladbolg AM2 (a good median because you won't always have AM3, but AM2 is easy to hit), and a +60 STP Samurai Roll:

Flamma +2/Hjarrandi/Sakpata R20/Ignominy +3/Flamma +2 has the highest DPS, and beats 5/5 Sakpata R20 by about 4.8% (with the head and feet being bigger proportions of the increase than body and legs). Swapping Hjarrandi to Dagon caps your gear haste for when LR is down, with a minor DPS decrease down to 4.4% better than 5/5 Sakpata R20 (but still slightly better than Sakpata body R20). With R0 Sakpata, this jumps to about a 7% difference.

With the same conditions, but with capped attack, I have Flamma +2 Head/Feet and R20 Sakpata Body/Hands/Legs being the highest DPS set, and beating 5/5 R20 Sakpata by about 1.94%.

Slight differences in WS sets, TP accessories, or buffs will change the numbers a bit, of course.


These are fairly minor DPS differences and Sakpata wins durability by a landslide, though, so it's up to the player when such a difference matters.

I ignored hands because they were in both his set and 5/5 Sakpata.