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

My personal experience,

A/E - Torc if I have tp to start for AM then reso but inform group of opening torc to avoid distortion potential.
B/F - Cross Reaper mainly but close darkness sc's when possible with entropy/quietus.
C/G - Torc
D/H - Usually alternate between torc/reso depending on sc properties to either create or avoid sc.

I typically will absorb STR over VIT.

Try forming a light skillchain on A and E instead of spam. I do torc > upheaval > Resolution > upheaval with war and it melts them. Similar one with a sam.

Believe your wasting time on D/H. I don't know I've ever had armor break land on those even with full macc sets and on warrior.

Best way we've found to beat B/F is on a zerg. I use primes but torc works well too. Always want to use Soul Enslavement on F boss so make sure it's either first or last on the run. Make sure second one hour is H boss and that it is either first or last as well.

Only boss I typically asb on is A/E. Your on a tight time crunch and have weigh out what's more important. On the zerg bosses, you need to be pump out dmg immediately.

You should be using a decent ws on D/H. Never use that stupid sword (naegling) on drk. If cald is your best, use that. Cross reaper is good too if you have a rema scythe. Also, not sure why your using raetic. Throw that thing away abd stick to caldbolg. Get your am 3 up every fight.

As hinted at above, drk pairs very well with Sam and or War so if you can line them up in your group it will be a good thing. If you do, make them do def down instead of wasting time and tp gain with weapon swaps

A/E > Calad+Torcleaver*
B/F > Calad+Torcleaver (Soul Enslavement if it's up)
C/G > Calad+Torcleaver
D/H > Soul Enslavement+Calad+Torcleaver*

*I just wait for someone else to Savage Blade/Black Halo and then immediately use Torcleaver, deliberately holding TP. Should be pretty easy to see when a Savage user goes flying in the air. Might be harder if you have another DD not using Savage Blade, but that's what I always do and it's worked for me every time. Have never switched weapons before on bosses and it's never caused a wipe (have gotten one or two unintentional Distortions which healed Aita or Dhartok, but didn't matter at the end of it all). Torcleaver scales greatly with TP overflow, so you're not punished for holding until the right moment.

But I like to play DRK on the edge a little so that playstyle might scare some people a bit.

Insurgency wrecks A/E and is safe.

Your partner will also dictate which WSs to use.

Reatic +1 On A/E is pretty consistent and rapid 50-80k Resos. Not sure how that shapes up against AM3 Calad as I haven't had the courage to risk the distortion. But yeah Naegling is kind of crap.

Surprised to see so many people just Torcleaver A/D/E/H but I guess it can't be too hard. We have COR/GEO/BRD/RDM all spamming WS so I don't think I will have a multistep opportunity.

I was also looking at Insurgency / Cross Reaper but both would require me to make new REMAs (which I was considering anyway).

Been doing Soul Enslavement on F/H and Bloodweapon / Souleater sub like 30%~ when Soul Enslavement wears.

Reso averages with cald are similar and you get the white dmg from am3 on tp phase. It will do more dmg.

This is just my opinion but considering your det up and skill level, I assume you're going for muffins currently and not aiming for aminon yet? If so, swap the geo for another strong dd if possible. Much faster if just farming 8 bosses. Geo is for magic strat and aminon.

Anguta with cross reaper is slept on and will do great dmg if you can get it. Ideally however, you want Foenaria asap. I understand not everyone has muffins to throw around but if you can get it to stage 4 you will not regret it.

Trying to work our way up to 8/9 Boss, our group just returned but we were pretty geared pre-ody. This is actually good advice... our GEO has r15 twash DNC but I am not sure if losing Geo-Gravity against the kiting bosses would work out.

Also yeah, working on Foenaria but just started sortie last month and I mostly rotated DPS jobs for our group so muffins are spent as I get them on various different DDs. Origin seems too incredibly broken to not try and get.

Honestly DRK is a shitty Sortie job. Don't make/gear it for that event. You make it work for sure, I ran DRK for months in Sortie. But its far from ideal.

What DD jobs are considered good at Sortie? (Other than DNC)

Reso averages with cald are similar and you get the white dmg from am3 on tp phase. It will do more dmg.

This is just my opinion but considering your det up and skill level, I assume you're going for muffins currently and not aiming for aminon yet? If so, swap the geo for another strong dd if possible. Much faster if just farming 8 bosses. Geo is for magic strat and aminon.

Anguta with cross reaper is slept on and will do great dmg if you can get it. Ideally however, you want Foenaria asap. I understand not everyone has muffins to throw around but if you can get it to stage 4 you will not regret it.
Honestly you're wrong lol Aside from dnc it's the best dd job for sortie (if aminon is included).

WAR is probably the best or most versatile 8-boss job, and Mighty Strikes destroys any boss in that rotation. You'll have Warcry for every boss in it's full duration likely, which is the best front-line-job buff in zergs. SAM shreds everything as well, can use hybrids like Jinpu/Koki/Kagero when properly supported, at the expense of having less defensive safety. Benefit is someone else not having to use Armor Break because SAM can Ageha fast and get back to spamming. You can probably get some use out of DRG (I've seen a really good Stage 5 one put up insane numbers in there). DRK isn't bad, it's very strong, you just don't always get to use its toolkit like Dread Spikes, Absorbs etc. It'll get more use out of Aminon I imagine due to Impact/Absorbs etc. It's less desirable than WAR but gets the job done. DNC of course is good because it excels in shorter fights, can backup heal, has an incredibly DPS-focused SP, adds dps to the group with steps, and comes with Chocobo Jig. That adds the most to the group alongside, pair it with WAR and you have a very nice tandem.

I'm sure most/all DDs work just fine in Sortie anyways, just have to use them properly. For example, AE + CG can be stunned (i do it on GEO as /drk), probably could fit a BLU in there and Sudden Lunge lock it down if you wanted, though not ideal

I'd strongly beg to differ and have experience with most every set up.

DNC is king DD as Buukki suggest. Steps, Burst, Jigs, the job is built for Sortie. It can also use a TPbonus offhand so it does not rely on WAR for spike damage.

WAR has Warcry which boost the entire party and MS for zerging, it can also break without swapping.

SAM has Ageha, Hybrids (99k spam), SP2 wrecks F/H, doesn't need warcry.

DRK relies on Warcry to compete, brings very little to the table for the party and its SP2 is worse than SAMs for sortie.

After a year of 8/8 I’d say top DD combo are:

DNC/SAM => DNC/WAR > DNC/DRG > WAR/SAM > DNC/DRK > WAR/DRG > WAR/DRK

I dont play drk much anymore so this is more just an outside observation but does it seem like drk aged the worst in the TP gain aspect for 2 handers?

WAR: Still naturally the slowest cause no native JA haste and has to rely on sub and/or dnc to get that- pads this out with guaranteeing it gets atleast 2 hits in a round in.

SAM: Zanhasso, bout all that needs to be said there, paired with ikishoten it basically took back any question it was the TP job, got several +hasso to give more JA haste though some of those pieces are questionable to use

DRG: Got job haste +10% so long as the wyverns alive, got its jumps un-linked so it has 4 quick avenues to get a spike of TP

DRK got more job haste added to LR, so you can move a piece or two around to compensate but otherwise, it got soul enslavement? Dont think absorb-TP has aged well beyond it being a good method to cheese some fights/pairs well with a low TP feed scenario, even back in the 75 days it was debateable if using it was worthwhile unless you timed it well and didnt resist iirc

Sorry I know this is the DRK thread, but what is the necessary setup for SAM to crank out 99k hybrids in sortie?

Threnody helps alot, would say its needed tbh, after that its mainly just a good set(which is basically nyame, o.sash and such)

Drk has Soul Enslavement. Soul Enslavement nueters bosses F/H. Drk with origin in invincible in feters more or less. I agree with you that sam can do better dps with Hybrids and i should have put them in my comments. Warrior is good but unless your savage spamming (which our cor is using) I've never been out dpsed by one there, including my own (which has stage 4 laphria and chango). If you think drk is a shitty job for sortie its because your drk sucks.

Dnc utility is good but it's uneeded when your support are doing thier jobs and are /dnc (cor and brd) on an 8 boss run.

My DRK sucks but you don’t understand the job…..got it.

You must be new around here. Taint's DRK definitely does not suck. If anyone has any right to say DRK isn't superior in Sortie compared to other DD, he does. Also, he never said DRK was "shitty". In his experience, he has found DRK isn't as good as the other jobs he suggested, but that doesn't make it terrible.

Sam/Drg is also a great combo. Dnc can be great, but few people understand how to play zerg-dnc IME.

Man, I mainly started working on DRK because I read, they were a good alternative to DNC when attempting 9 boss runs.

Afaik they are, for animon, great at getting TP through a boosted abs-tp, and impacts with occult acumen

Its just the other 8 bosses with em, can still do it im sure but dnc is both a tp generating monster with solid dps to boot, but also amazing utility, drk only has half of that and its tp generation only shines in that particular instance imo

9/9 runs require a pretty specific set up to do consistently. DRK is good for Aminon but the kill times are much slower than with DNC.

We did fun runs for a while after we got burned out on consistent Sortie strats. I went as DRK and tried the various scythes I have: Redemption, Apoc, Father Time (Path B), and something else I'm forgetting. I don't have Lib or Anguta. I swapped in Calad when relevant for certain WS/SCs, but we did try a few other off the wall strats (like just using Redemption for AM3/white damage while everyone else used their WS).

I felt they all worked alright, but didn't have any obvious benefits that I could find. Redemption has great white damage, but getting AM3 up with Quietus can be delicate and slow down others trying to WS to avoid SCs at times, the fights also don't really last long enough to see the benefits IMO. Apoc and Father Time seemed about on par with one another damage wise and I couldn't tell much of a difference in clear or kill time with either.

I've had it a while and not found much good use for Father Time. I'm sure someone can point out I'm wrong, and there probably are good uses for it, but IMO with Sortie being so time optimized and FT needing a good drain to really get the most out of it...it isn't something I'd go out of my way to make/RP again. You could probably get just as much out of Apoc, which has more overall utility than FT IMO. It was just too fiddly trying to get the HP boost needed to get the 3% of HP increase in attack, it's not a huge burden but I'm also not sure it really makes it excel enough to justify the cost/effort.

The best one is probably Anguta, though, the TP bonus is great for Cross Reaper. I just reached a point I didn't care enough to make it because we weren't trying to optimize every aspect of the run or we'd have gone back to our old strat. You also don't get to use Cross Reaper for every mob, I had to switch it up between Torcleaver, Cross Reaper, and Insurgency IIRC.

Take that FWIW and keeping in mind they were mostly casual runs. I didn't make a conscious effort to really strategize and while we tweaked it some here and there, I didn't try to optimize it. I just don't see where FT would have optimized anything beyond what the other scythes offer, though: TP bonus, white damage, Cata, etc and getting the most out of it required more coordination than value.

Hey just wondering how my DRK TP sets is stacking up :). Any thoughts?
- I don't have Skapata stuff yet sadly :(
- And I still have i119+1 empy armour :(
- Working on Utu grip and some of the rings from Omen too D:

Weapons
- Caladbolg R0 - GS
- Apoc R0 - Scythe
- Lycurgos - GA
- Naegling - Sword

General TP
DA:+33% STP:63 ACC:1150
ItemSet 397754

AM3(For Caladbolg)
DA: +51% STP 40 ACC:1151
ItemSet 397757

Damage Taken
DA: +22% STP: 40 ACC:1131 DT: -51%(cap 50) MT: -2%
ItemSet 397756


Accuracy
DA: +33% STP 53 ACC:1201
ItemSet 397755

*Cape is Dex/ACC/ATT/DA/DT, Neck is R19
*Valor mail aug is +5DA +21ACC
*Acro Gloves aug is +7STR/DEX +19ACC/ATT +5STP

Other pieces of gear I have are:
Salifi+1
Valor legs aug is +20acc +9STP
Kentarch+1
Flamma Ring

Sadly easiest answer is to just get sakpata, outside of that theres options like emicho gloves +1 for acc, or +2 emp gloves for more acc/atk but less stp, +3 af legs, rest are things you already mentioned, utu does alot for you as does stuff like niqmaddu, regal ring etc

Ah the Emicho+1 set I forgot about. Would Emicho Haubert +1 path B good to throw in for the AM3/ACC sets?

Otherwise! I'm more or less on the right path then?

For accuracy yes emicho body/gloves were a usual acc swap for the extra 4% da set bonus ontop of their normal stats, but if you dont need acc then a well augmented valor body was best if i remember pre-ody/sortie days right.

Theres also vim torque r15 if you want a bit of spice

Hm. With Sulevia Hands I get 43 ACC and +6DA. Valor body atm has 41ACC and +5DA... So total +84 ACC +11 DA. Emi hands and body +1 would be... +114 ACC, +9DA.

Body by itself is +57 ACC, +5DA. I wonder if I could throw that in my AM3 set, and the hands and body in the ACC set.

O-o Vim torque eh?

What server are you on, and is there a reason you can't get a V0 Kalunga clear? And if you're on Asura, just send me a tell and I'll help you get it. Sakpata's set is just too good, and a lot of those pieces are significantly worse than that set. Almost a waste of time to pursue most of them IMO.