Dark Knight Tank Frequently Asked Questions — Dawntrail 7.2

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

Gearsets with no Skill Speed are generally recommended. Most sets have both 2.50 and 2.46 GCD options available, and both options perform near-identically, but it is generally easier to keep things properly aligned over long uptime phases at 2.50.

2.50 works best within a reasonable bound of avoiding large amounts of Skill Speed because it divides evenly into intervals of 60 seconds, which avoids conflict with oGCD cooldowns. If for example you use a GCD 7.5 seconds into an encounter and then immediately weave a 60-second cooldown oGCD at 8.2 seconds, a speed of 2.50 means that 24 GCDs later you will press a GCD at 67.5 seconds and then be able to weave that oGCD as it comes off cooldown at 68.2 seconds. 2.46 makes a clean rotational loops in term of resources, but requires more attention to stay aligned; every minute, an oGCD previously weaved in an early slot will instead come up in a late slot, and vice versa. The entire rotation also drifts by about half a second every two minutes.

The change to Tenacity makes it about 80% as valuable as Determination instead of the previous 70%. This means that it is still not the preferred option for melds versus Critical Hit or Direct Hit. However, its presence on gear is not a significant negative.

Living Shadow summons a shadow clone that will use six actions over its duraation. After its startup animation, which takes approximately seven seconds, it will use Abyssal Drain, Shadowstride, Edge of Shadow, Shadowbringer, Bloodspiller, and Disesteem in that order with about 2.2 seconds between each hit.

Before learning traits at levels 90 and 100, the simulacrum will execute Flood of Shadow instead of Shadowbringer and Carve and Spit instead of Disesteem, respectively.

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 Shadowstride 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 in accordance to how the player's version of those skills work, but all actions have the same potency as listed in Living Shadow's tooltip, with Shadowbringer having a potency of 570 and Disesteem a potency of 620.

Buffs and debuffs are checked when each action is excuted rather than snapshotting. While several factors affect the actual damage dealt by the clone, they average out to very close to the listed potency. Living Shadow is affected by all buffs except your own Darkside. Unlike in the past, it is affected by Damage Down and Weakness on the user.

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

Salt and Darkness checks buffs and debuffs on hit rather than snapshotting when Salted Earth is used.

The buff to Tenacity bumped it up from about 70% of the value of Determination to 80%. This means that it is still not a priority to meld over Critical Hit or Direct Hit, but its presence on gear is not a significant downside.

Stat tiers. The exact function of Determination, for example, is to increase your damage by 0.1% every 19 or 20 points. Direct Hit, meanwhile, increases your chance of landing a Direct Hit by 0.1% every 5 or 6 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.