Dark Knight Tank Frequently Asked Questions — Endwalker 6.4

This page will answer some of the most common questions regarding Dark Knight.

Skill Speed has shifted down the priority list, but it is not always worth going out of your way to avoid. A piece of gear with both Critical Hit and Skill Speed is usually better than one with neither.

Not necessarily. While both skills are usually used at the start of a burst window, they do not have any special interactions with each other. Do make sure, however, that you leave enough room in your Blood gauge to avoid overcapping while Delirium prevents you from spending it.

Living Shadow summons a shadow clone that will attack seven times over its duration. After its startup animation, which takes approximately seven seconds, it will use Abyssal Drain, Plunge, Quietus, Edge of Shadow, Flood of Shadow, Bloodspiller, and Carve and Spit in that order.

If Shadowbringer has been learned, the clone will use it in place of Flood of Shadow. Living Shadow prioritizes the first target that the user hits after its summoning animation is complete, and if there are no enemies in range when it tries to attack, it will use Abyssal Drain followed by Plunge again before resuming its rotation. The actions used by Living Shadow will deal physical or magic damage to a single target or in an AoE, according to how the actual skills work, but all actions except Shadowbringer have the same potency of 270, or 300 if the Enhanced Living Shadow trait has been acquired.

Shadowbringer instead deals 450 potency to the primary target and 337.5 potency to all other targets hit. While several factors affect the actual damage dealt by the simulacrum, they average out to very close to the listed potency. Living Shadow is affected by all buffs except Dragoon's Dragon Sight and your own Darkside, and checks on each attack rather than snapshotting. Unlike in the past, it is affected by Damage Down and Weakness debuffs on the user.

Salted Earth snapshots the user's buffs on application but checks the target's debuffs on each tick.

Stat tiers. The exact function of Determination, for example, is to increase your damage by 0.1% every 13 or 14 points. Direct Hit, meanwhile, increases your chance of landing a Direct Hit by 0.1% every 3 or 4 points. A big lump of Direct Hit is always better than a big lump of Determination at the values we work with, but if values line up such that a single Materia meld can add three tiers of Determination or ten tiers of Direct Hit, it is often better to take that one Determintion meld. This applies to gear as well as food.