Dark Knight Tank Frequently Asked Questions — Endwalker 6.4
On this page, we go over some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Dark Knight and playing it in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (Patch 6.4). As more questions are discovered, we will add answers to them on this page.
Dark Knight FAQs
This page will answer some of the most common questions regarding Dark Knight.
Now that Blood Weapon is guaranteed to last five hits, should we try to avoid Skill Speed?
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.
Do I need to use Blood Weapon and Delirium together?
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.
How does Living Shadow work? Does it snapshot buffs?
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.
Does Salted Earth snapshot?
Salted Earth snapshots the user's buffs on application but checks the target's debuffs on each tick.
Why do the BiS sets sometimes deviate from the stat priority?
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.
Changelog
- 27 May 2023: Updated for Patch 6.4.
- 13 Jan. 2023: Updated for Patch 6.3.
- 28 Aug. 2022: Updated for Patch 6.2.
- 20 Apr. 2022: Updated for Patch 6.1.
- 27 Nov. 2021: Guide added.
Guides from Other Classes
This guide is written by A Pile of Cats, a Dark Knight enthusiast since he started playing during Sigmascape and mentor on the Balance. He enjoys progging, optimizing, and instructing others on the job, and has multiple early tier clears and top parses under his belt.
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